SUMMARY OF THE DISCUSSION HELD IN CAMBRIDGE, MA, 14-15 MARCH 2009

The Agenda recalled that the Circle was founded to contribute putting in practice the main decisions of the UN World Summit for Social Development held in Copenhagen in March 1995. This conference had declared that governments should better address the material and spiritual needs of their citizens; that reduction of poverty and inequalities, full employment and social integration were legitimate and attainable goals; that human rights and development were the two faces of the same process; that ethics, politics and economics were not separate realms; and that the economy, local and global, was to be organized for the benefit of all.

Fifteen years later, there is considerable evidence that there has been regression rather than progress in the fulfillment of these goals. The current multifaceted crisis – in the economy, in the human ecology, and in the capacity of peoples and nations to coexist and cooperate in peace – and the persistence or aggravation of old threats – notably the availability of atomic and chemical weapons -, constitute blatant and enormous failures for the leading nations and for the international organizations responsible for the promotion of the common good. For organizations such as the Triglav Circle who have been critical of a number of aspects of the dominant modernity, the world situation of today is both a vindication of the pertinence of their analyzes and a confirmation of their great difficulty at influencing the centers of decision. The Agenda then proposed for the discussion two themes assorted of some questions:

Theme 1: Reading and interpretation(s) of the current world situation

– Are the current crises exposing flaws in the dominant conception of modernity, or are they accidents along a path that cannot or should not be fundamentally changed?

– How should the view that societies ought to respond better to the “material and spiritual” needs of people (pledge of the Social Summit) be interpreted today?

Theme 2: Domains of the public discourse in particular need of enrichment

– What are the measures that could reconcile freedom and morality in the world economy?

– How to establish a balance between rights and responsibilities in the world polity?

– How can we regain an enchanted perspective of the world and the natural environment?

In addition, participants were asked to debate of the practical ways through which the Circle could develop its relations with like-minded organizations.

I The crisis (es) and its interpretation

The limited debate on the world situation revealed unsurprising differences of perspective.

There are those who believe that the different crises, problems and threats that beset the world at the beginning of the 21st century are linked – the spectacular financial crisis being the most talked about because it affects the rich and powerful -, were predictable, were avoidable, and are not accidents but symptoms of a flawed political ideology. Global capitalism has failed, as blatantly as communism has failed.

There are those who agree that there is a crisis – essentially economic and financial -, that this crisis – at least its non-cyclical aspects- could have perhaps been avoided by more prudent and sophisticated policies of the main financial powers and that some reforms are needed. Nothing should be done, however, that would risk jeopardizing the basic principles and the “machine” on which the world economy rests.

And there are those who, while recognizing that “things” are not indeed at their best, refuse to dramatize. Man and his deeds are always imperfect. There are ups and downs. We should be satisfied when avoiding the extremes of totalitarianism and anarchism. Let’s make adjustments that the least stupid possible. Today as yesterday, a benevolent and skeptical moderation is in order.

The language of these three “types” is different. The “idealist” talks of global capitalism, universalist ideals, human rights and global community, The “reformist” likes to refer to the market, to entrepreneurship, to technological progress, to freedom and to the roles of the private and the public sectors. The “conservative”, allergic to abstractions and generalities, might evoke courage, realism and the “order of things.”

Here are extracts of the remarks made:

This is the first crisis of globalization and it is mostly due to the lack of governance. It is the unintended consequence of greed. The global system needs reforms, but care has to be taken not to break the engine of this system that is feeding people. Energy and food remains the two major issues in a world still threatened by population growth.

It is actually our way of life that has to be changed. But the world does not know how to do this. The attitude of “the have” is very disturbing. The whole non-profit sector of activities is downgraded.

There is need for new ideas. Capitalism needs regulation. Unbridled capitalism is destructive. Capitalism is not only competition. Equal access to the market and a level playing field are components of capitalism. And there are different sorts of capitalism. One should consider linking the level of pay with the quality of the work produced.

One should emphasize the irresponsibility of corporations. Social democracy has a number of answers since many years. Why is it ignored? Similarly the UN has accumulated a knowledge informed by the moral values of the Charter and the Declaration. And it is marginalized.

The notion of global citizen should be developed. There is presently an opportunity for global transformation. The traditional virtues of patience, discipline, moral rigor have to be re-emphasized.

The world suffers from a loss of spirit. Sources of knowledge others than instrumental rationality are ignored. And happiness is confused with the accumulation of “things”.

The state is the main problem. Corruption is generalized. And nationalism is becoming very strong.

One should not forget that the delinking of capital markets from the market of goods and services is the root of the crisis. And prior to this, there had been the delinking of the human economy from the human ecology. This double delinking has to be corrected. The task is to recast human activities to reintegrate then into human ecology, this being the environmental setting in which the life of the human community take place.

Capitalism and communism are both offensive to the human ecology. They are mechanistic approaches to human relations. This mechanistic character of our societies was further aggravated by the policy developments which separated the capital markets from the real economy. Any link with the human ecology was then radically severed. The crisis is therefore not an accident that can be fixed by a few measures. It brings to the surface a fundamental and systemic problem. The underlying challenge is to recast our understanding of socio-economic activities so that we can begin to reintegrate economy and ecology. This will have consequences for the concept of growth and for many other socio-economic objectives.

When was the first rupture, between economy and ecology? Perhaps when the agrarian society started to crumble and when the division of labour became the foundation of the economy.(see Adam Smith and its warnings and see also Karl Marx But the intellectual roots are deeper and are to be found in the Western thought before the Enlightenment mentality. ( Francis Bacon and its Novum Organum, at the beginning of the 17th century?) This western thought has no parallel in Buddhism nor in Taoism, but the current policies of China and other Asian countries suggest also a rupture.

It is the functionalist approach to nature and society that has to be broken.

The double reintegration evoked above would not be possible as long as politics is not back to what it is supposed to be, that is a service to humankind.

The Earth Charter is an attempt at launching the needed reintegration of the economy in the ecology. It can be seen as a completion of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in that it lays out human responsibilities which must accompany the basic freedoms if civilization is too survive.

The crisis (crises) is evidence that humankind is entering a new dark age. The landmark of a civilization is its culture. And culture is dying. Culture requires time and efforts. Patience and steadiness. In modernity, everything is fast and has to be obtained immediately, without efforts This is the death of culture and the death of culture is opening new dark ages. And there is no culture without an aristocracy. Can plutocracy generates an aristocracy?

We cannot ignore the benefits of the “democratization” of culture. Is it really insignificant that “ordinary” people are now ( since the 1960s) able to frequent museums and attend concerts? But, on the other hand, people are so busy working and shopping that they not have time for anything else, except watching television and playing with their computers.and young people do not read books.Yet, it is what we call “high culture” which is ossified and dying. There is a vibrant culture, for instance in music.”We” the Triglavians are perhaps simply reactionary.

When we talked about culture, about the arts, about beauty, we should not exaggerate the distinction between the objective and the subjective. Merleau-Ponty said that every artist must create its own public.

II Domains of the public discourse in need of enrichment

Freedom and morality
The first question of the agenda under this second theme, relations between freedom and morality, was considered too abstract. At a practical level, there are indeed conflicts between freedom and morality. But generalities on this subject are meaningless.

Rights and responsibilities
On the second question, rights and responsibilities, some comments were offered. In common parlance, the two are often linked. Traditional cultures insist more on responsibilities than on rights. As a minimum, rights had to be gained, had to be deserved. At least in the Western World, a shift occurred in the second part of the 20th century. Following the Universal Declaration, basic or fundamental rights – right to a fair trial, right not to be tortured, etc -became a ‘given” and, progressively rights in general became individualized and, to some extent, separated from responsibilities. It remain true that rights – civil and political as well as social and economic- are to be honored so that people can fulfill their responsibilities. The “capability approach” of Amartya Sen is complementary of this notion. But is also true that the dissociation of rights and responsibilities raises serious problems. What is often called “excessive individualism” testifies of the difficulties that have people of affluent societies to understand that the living in a society implies some obligations.

There are efforts to establish a universal declaration of responsibilities. Rights relate to a community. They are not simply individual. See the volume “Bridging the divide”.

Disenchantment and re-enchantment
There are not any more mysterious forces that are at work in the world. The “mathematical model ” has permeated all aspects of nature and human relations. There is no need any more to refer to forces beyond rationality. Such is the disenchanted world described by Max Weber. Those who do not like this dominance of rationality can, if they so wish, escape in the religious or in the esthetics, but they do so at the price of sacrificing the demands of their intellect.

Certain developments within the sciences themselves, notes Max Weber, render the physicists and other scientists less affirmative over the power of reason and the certainties derived from scientific reasoning. But the fundamental separation between nature and human culture cannot be reversed. The enchanted view of the world enjoyed by indigenous cultures cannot be found again. The presence of spirits, the possibility of communicating with them, is gone forever. Such disenchantment of the world started with the Judeo-Christian view of God and of the divine reality of all things.

A number of movements, for instance the eco-feminist movement, are attempting now to reverse this tradition. We now know more about the extent to which human life is a natural part of nature. The various separations that came down to us and are reflected in the views of Max Weber are put into question by the very discoveries of science. But is there a way back to an enchanted view of nature? Perhaps not, said the participant who started his commentary with an evocation of Max Weber. We may have to come to terms with the dominance of human rationality and the split with the natural world that it implies. But, as a minimum, we can no longer take nature as an object and a resource to exploit.

Arts and poetry as sources of re-enchantment? Also, does religious symbolism develop an attachment for people who are trying to go beyond the split between Man and Nature?

As this is (March 2009) the anniversary of Darwin, can we say that the evolutionary doctrine has contributed to a disenchantment of the world?

A closer look at natural selection is needed to answer this question. Every creature has a parent. Natural selection implies variations. Where do these variations come from? The process is randomly. The vast number of cells present in our body are constantly bombarded. These cells are filled with chromosomes.(the “rapporteur” apologized for his ignorance and the resulting scientific approximations or.nonsensical statements..) There is actually no way of establishing with complete certainty that the process of selection is perfectly randomly. There is an element of freedom in the evolutionary process. May be this can be seen as an element of enchantment. The uncertainty of the universe is a source of wonder. Then, Heisenberg would provide an avenue for enchantment.

It could be argued that the notion of limits, the sense of limits that all human beings have, is a reason for seeing the world with some wonder. The French word “emerveillement” is more appropriate to convey this feeling.

“Limits” has two meanings. First is the esthetic, the feeling of wonder, of emerveilement, for “things” which are beyond usefulness. Then is the philosophical meaning. See the Kantian philosophy.

The opposite of an attitude of enchantment is violence, war. Competition, seen and lived as a sort of absolute, is also the opposite of enchantment.

The link between enchantment and the question of rights and responsibilities is the notion of dignity. Let’s reflect on the question of protecting human dignity. Dignity is not an inherent quality that we carry with us . Dignity depends on a relationships of recognition, on a self-reflective relationships. Even under extreme situations of deprivation, a human presence is able to keep this fragile and vulnerable value called dignity. The formulation of human rights is a way of suggesting those points, those situations when dignity is fragile and needs protection. Then rights and responsibilities are linked. And comparable points can be made about the dignity of animals, of plants, of all elements of the natural world. Notion of dignity of the universe. Behind the legal or philosophical thinking on human rights, there is the notion of human dignity, this dignity that depends on the recognition by others. And there is the question of the relationships between dignity and honor.

Dignity might not be an intrinsic quality, but it can certainly grow, like a good seed does.Dignity has something to do with self-transcendence.

The preamble of the Universal Declaration mentions the “human family”, thus stating that dignity and rights and responsibilities exist in a relational context. My freedom is always conditioned by the freedom of others. To allow the exercise of freedom without hurting others is the definition of morality.

Is it not love which is the best and the only road to a re-enchanted world?

III Points on the mode of operation of the Triglav Circle

• Need for a focus. Suggestion that health could be this focus. Observation that Triglav was born from the UN and should keep its universal and global perspective. Working on the notion of “global citizenship” would provide a good focus.
• View that it is not necessary to “reinvent the wheel”. Triglav has its vocation and its ways – however modest- of reaching people. What is needed is active and dedicated members.
• Often repeated view that the current crisis offers an opportunity for Triglav. For instance: the old paradigm has crumbled and it is now clear that the distinction between the public and the private is largely obsolete. Triglav should work on the “depassement” of this dichotomy public/private.
• Need to collaborate with universities and other NGOs. Yes, perhaps, but without losing our “soul”.
• Use of videos and other modern technological devices.
• Recruit younger people.