AGENDA AND PROGRAMME OF WORK

Background

The World Summit for Social Development, a conference organized in 1995 by the United Nations and attended by a large number of heads of State and Government, adopted a Declaration in which governments pledged to better address “the material and spiritual needs of individuals, their families, and the communities in which they live.”This commitment/exhortation was part of a text rich in moral judgments and reflecting a holistic vision of the development of societies. It was a departure from the predominantly neutral and prudently technocratic language of the United Nations and, as the preparatory seminar on “ethical and spiritual dimensions of social development” had some responsibility in this change, participants in this seminar decided to continue working on the enrichment of the public discourse through the Triglav Circle.

In the United Nations, this Copenhagen World Summit was rapidly forgotten and superceded by the Millennium Development Goals. Meeting the “material needs” of humankind became reducing extreme poverty in the developing world. The many policy measures recommended by the Summit, including on fair and progressive taxation and the curbing of corruption, were ignored. In the atmosphere of economic and social laissez-faire characteristic of the triumphant neo-liberalism of the turn of the 21th century, there was no room for redistributive or simply corrective public policies. The resulting overall increase in various forms of inequality was seen as the normal outcome of the interplay of “market forces”.

As to the “spiritual needs” of individuals treated as consumers and producers and of societies identified with markets, they were relegated as usual to the private and religious spheres. It ought to be noted that the unit of the Secretariat of the United Nations which was struggling to keep alive the message of the Copenhagen Summit never attempted to define these spiritual needs and to identify the conditions under which they could be addressed by public national and international institutions. Overall, it was as if the spirit that lead to the exceptional Declaration of the Social Summit had been a rather extraordinary phenomenon made possible by the improbable conjunction of circumstances and personalities, a sort of nice aberration after which everybody on the international scene was anxious to return to more familiar grounds. Only a few non-governmental organizations, most notably the Triglav Circle created for this purpose, tried, in the United Nations context, to reflect on the meaning of spirituality and ethics in secular societies.

In September 2008, however, when the Presidency of the General Assembly of the UN was given to the Nicaraguan priest Miguel d’Escoto, references to the Copenhagen summit re-appeared and the language of the common good and its intellectual and moral exigencies echoed again on the East River shores. But there is no evidence that this is not another “aberration” soon to be disposed by the diplomatic culture of the pragmatists and realists.

It is this “story” that begs to be “revisited” and, for this, three themes for discussion are proposed:

– What are the spiritual needs of individuals and societies?

– In what manner are public institutions involved in the meeting of such needs?

– What would be the spiritual dimensions of a harmonious world community?

Theme 1: What are the spiritual needs of individuals and societies?

Relevant questions include the following:

• What are the philosophical assumptions underlying the distinction between the “material” and the “spiritual”? To what extent does this distinction reflect Western traditional forms dualism? Is there a sort of identifiable spiritual “realm”, or is the spiritual a dimension of every “thing”?
• What are the reasons for attaching the concept of “needs” to the spiritual? What are the commonalities between material “needs” and spiritual “needs”? Are they in apposition? Is it possible to make a “list” of spiritual needs? Or, is spirituality a quest for some meaning, some absolute, some transcendence that defies any categorization and definition? And, if the latter is true, how is spirituality more than an individual issue?
• What are the possible links between spirituality and rationality? Does the spiritual call for “non-rational” or “supra-rational” forms of access to knowledge? Under which conditions would it be possible to re-create the continuum between knowledge, spirituality and wisdom?
• Is love the essence, or the necessary manifestation of spirituality? How could this concept be presented in an acceptable form in political fora?

Theme 2: In what manner are public institutions involved in the meeting of spiritual needs?

Relevant questions include the following:

• Knowing that there can be a number of “bad” reasons for governments to be attentive to the spiritual needs of their citizens – totalitarian, theocratic, and authoritarian regimes are obviously keen to control minds and souls – what could be the “good” reasons for such a request?
• In the classical liberal tradition, governments are best promoting and protecting the freedom of their citizens, including the freedom to pursue artistic or spiritual activities, when these governments refrain from interfering in the lives of individuals; what can be said about the relevance of this tradition in the present circumstances?
• Even in liberal democracies, public authorities have traditionally played a significant role in the organization and delivery of education. If the continuum between knowledge/spirituality/wisdom is found to be desireable and realistic, how should the policies of governments be articulated to realize this approach to education?
• What can be said of the role of governments in promoting appreciation of beauty?

Theme 3: What would be the spiritual dimensions of building a harmonious world community?

Relevant questions include the following:

• A different relationship between humankind and nature is an emerging and highly important element of the slow, conflicted but seemingly inescapable process of elaborating a viable world community; is it possible to realize in this more respectful relationship the foundation for a renewed form of spirituality?
• There is a growing feeling that centuries of domination of scientific and technical rationality applied to most domains of society – first in the Western culture and now in the entire world- have led to a de-humanized culture in which Man is becoming obsolete and that the world is in need of re-enchantment; what are the constituents of this re-enchantment?
• Both the ecological crisis and the crisis of global capitalism seem to make a powerful case for the adoption of simpler life-styles; aspirations and models of what constitute a good and successful life would need to change; could it be then that ascetic forms of spirituality would re-appear?
• Have international organizations a “spiritual role to play”?

Note: Extracts from the Copenhagen Declaration and from the Triglav Notes on spirituality and ethics will be circulated prior to the meeting.