Notes on the Discussion
The Triglav Circle met on Sunday the 6th of May, in the Harvard Yenching Institute to pursue ideas on how societies can respond more effectively to material and spiritual needs of individuals, families, and communities. Convinced that any vision of a developed society that does not address the moral and spiritual needs of the individual and the community is incomplete, the Circle considered a number of underlying issues generally overlooked in contemporary debates on development in national and international fora.
Fundamental to evaluating economic growth in relation to social progress should be the criterion of whether it has enhanced or hindered the capacity of the individual and the community to enjoy an holistic or spiritually fulfilling life experience. While offering people more goods, material options and comforts, the market and the overall economy do not necessarily contribute positively to the lives of individuals and societies. Material advances can produce heavy individual and overall social costs.
Measuring progress in terms of whether people are better able to experience life’s vast spectrum of possibilities is a qualitative and intuitive exercise. It is open to a great deal of subjectivity. People have different visions of life, its meaning, and its opportunities. Nevertheless, discernment of classical philosophers, theologians, poets, physicists, and political idealists from different cultures suggest holistic criteria for gauging such progress. Their wisdom and perceptions of human nature transcend empiric analysis. Piercing the veil of material circumstances and social behaviors, they perceive as the essence of humanity, innate appreciation of beauty, dignity, integrity, and grace. Life’s satisfaction and fulfillment derive from expression of these qualities — in giving affection, in labor that ultimates as service to others, in manifesting courage, and in victories of spirit over material conditions.
The Circle explored some practical applications of such holistic criteria in a variety of domains; architecture, globalization of the world economy, and human nature in the context of the present social crisis. The discussion was intended to contribute ideas for the forthcoming Copenhagen Seminar on Conditions for Social Progress: A World Economy for the Benefit of All, to be held in Denmark, 4-6 October. A background note was disseminated to participants for that purpose.
Architecture as a Litmus Test of Culture and Society
A particularly tangible subject area is the assessment of progress in meeting the basic need for shelter. Obviously, development is achieved by providing buildings for housing. The question considered was whether the multiplication of buildings contributed meaningfully to social progress when criteria of the human spirit were added to the equation. There is considerable controversy in the field of architecture related to this issue.
One of the most basic needs considered in contemporary development discourse is housing. A world conference recently took place in Istanbul on this subject. Providing adequate shelter becomes increasingly pressing as population growth in major regions of the world escalates at exponential rates and concentrates in cities. A realist response to this pressing demand is: Think not about roses when the forests are burning.
This stance, presently dominant in major schools of architecture and driven ostensibly by the urgent necessity to house hoards of urban poor, sacrifices aesthetics in the hard business of building construction. In the design of basic shelters and of related physical amenities emphasis is on efficiency and economy. Concomitantly, design is subordinate to the prescriptions of mechanistic technology and the limitations imposed by low cost building materials. This view has dominated the field since World War II.
Another view, also present in major schools of architecture, continues to contend for the value of roses even where forests are ablaze. If architecture is a litmus test of culture, the rapid global spread of low-cost, concrete complexes with scant aesthetic appeal is poor augury for the fabric of society. The lack of attention to aesthetics in this modern age reveals a culture of impoverished imagination wherein needs of the human spirit are secondary to the dictates of technological machinations and financial calculations. Mass-produced concrete apartment complexes are not only the public response to poverty-stricken masses in densely populated urban centers, but these common block buildings now pepper the planet sheltering rich and poor alike. Functionalism of this kind blurs the distinction between beauty and ugliness.
Uniformity, per se, is not the only indicator of crisis; and variety, in and of itself, would not solve the problem. To be a positive factor, variety must be accompanied by quality and express a diversity of cultures. The principal problem emerges from failure to consider buildings and shelters as reflections of the human spirit. This view holds that architects must seek inspiration and give necessary time and thought to fulfill their responsibility for feeding humanity’s innate hunger for aesthetic satisfaction from its surroundings. Beauty and the sense of poetry disappear in a cultural mentality that suppresses or ignores sensitivity to the quality of its surroundings.
Environmentalism’s criteria for progress and what constitutes aesthetic appeal challenges both the architectural fire fighters and proponents of roses. It says to the first: economic resourcefulness and construction efficiency without concern for sustainability is short term expediency with long term wasteful entanglements. To the other, it suggests that aesthetics are not only visual but are reflected in the way buildings use resources. True roses are buildings that are functional and constructed in harmony with sustained resource availability in the natural environment. Thus, the modern aesthetic should embrace concern for energy consumption and the environment. Teaching in schools of architecture should emphasize the synthesis between the various requirements – including housing needs, aesthetics, cultural individuality, functionality, and environmental sustainability.
Soulless or not to begin with, the appearances of buildings, once inhabited, reflect choices and behaviors of the residents as they turn their dwelling places from houses to homes. Beyond their visual appeal, the attractiveness of buildings depends on the willingness of inhabitants to respect property and to police destructive behavior. All too often new buildings are rendered ugly by the filth, graffiti, and slovenliness of the dwellers and the neighbors sharing the environment. This behavior is perhaps as symptomatic of rebellion against poverty in the spirit and soul of humanity as it is of rebellion or despondence for lack of pecuniary wealth. In this connection it is observed that buildings, beautiful in a natural way, are often left unscathed while the unbecoming and the more ostentatious buildings with beauty bespeaking class or affluence are particularly vulnerable to attack.
Thus, by measure of the human fulfillment criteria, the completion of building programs alone is an inadequate measure of social progress.
Globalization and Disparity
Arguments for globalization are extremely potent. They combine appeals to reason and emotion. They are consistent with a modernist interpretation of enlightenment philosophy and give legitimacy to the quest for ever escalating material progress and abundance for humanity. Resistance to this economic evolution is perceived to express fear, nostalgia, jealously, and reactivism in light of change. Nevertheless, strong voices contend that the process, as such, is incomplete and its promises are deceptive. Different economic indicators show serious problems in the present development path. Holistic criteria demonstrate that this global economic message obscures or downplays realization of the humanity=s potential for attaining wisdom, social harmony, and the sheer joy of living.
Economic development is rapidly leading to globalization, or the rendering of the world into a single village of common opportunities and material conditions. According to traditional economic criteria, the creation of a global market and society is beneficial for humanity. An American entrepreneur can invest in Russia and in Indonesia, a Korean entrepreneur in China and the United Kingdom, and both will make a profit while providing jobs and income in the recipient countries. A consumer in Lagos or Hanoi can drink a coca cola or watch a television program produced in New York, both at low prices. Globalization is bringing about greater material equality in certain dynamic developing regions. Masses of people, most notably in Asia, are improving dramatically their material lot. China and India are now experiencing the emergence of a strong middle class.
And, this is perceived as only the beginning of a process that is to have immense benefits for humanity as a whole. According to present economic wisdom, while poverty is still so widespread, when so many people are hungry and deprived of the basic physical amenities enjoyed in the western world, it is inhumane to propose putting brakes on the liberalization of the world economy and on the initiatives of free market entrepreneurs and financiers who serve the world economy while they pursue their legitimate interests. Presently, more than 50% of the world=s population lack access to telephones. International and national political rhetoric indicates that the possession of such amenities are principal aspirations of the majority of humankind that can only be satisfied in the global market.
Moreover, rather than causing uniformity — a widespread concern of the culturally sensitive–, some data suggest that the development process leading to globalization may ultimate in more product and cultural diversification as the process continues. Statistics in the most advanced developed societies indicate that mass produced consumer goods no longer constitute the most dynamic or profitable sector in their parts of the global village. K-Marts and other retailers of generic low priced goods are leaving economic leadership to industries responding to the needs of the affluent. This phenomenon is particularly notable in the US where the advertising of automobiles focusses increasingly on high-priced models. This development has been interpreted as signaling movement towards more differentiated high quality goods as societies reach certain development thresholds.
For its proponents, globalization expresses the direction of modern culture and is the stage in human history to be marked by progressive abolition of physical and other constraints to the full enjoyment of earth’s material potential for humanity. It gives vent to the capacity of humanity for innovation, openness, and dynamism. Globalization is the definition of progress. Globalization and its virtues form the substance of the dominant social message emitted by the most powerful media.
But, the same economic indicators that support the proponents of globalization stimulate another assessment of current trends in the reduction of poverty and inequalities. The official text of the Social Summit, held in Copenhagen in March 1995, states the following: We are witnessing, in countries through out the world, the expansion of prosperity for some, unfortunately accompanied by an expansion of unspeakable poverty for others. It also states that: within many societies both in developed and developing countries the gap between rich and poor has increased. Considerable data corroborates this experience and confirms that, at least in the industrialized countries, both the number of poor, and the gaps between rich and poor and rich and middle class have increased during the last ten or fifteen years. Above all unemployment levels are extremely high in most parts of the world. Not surprising then that expressions such as marginalization, social exclusion, and dual societies, are current in the political discourse in both developed and developing societies.
Many signs indicate that societies, at least in the Western world, are becoming increasingly stratified. In the West, disparity in income levels correlates with disparity in status and opportunity. While CEO’s are amassing increasingly large salaries, significant portions of the middle class are sinking into lower income stratums. The beneficiaries consider that such salaries reward their talents and are reflections of their market value. Others consider that increased profits, rather than rewarding business acumen, reflect technological changes that permit down-sizing and consequent savings on labor’s wages, salaries, and social benefits. Moreover, stratification is attributed to declining mobility, both in geographical terms – people are moving less than before to find better jobs- and psychological terms – people are less confident that their children will have a better material life than they themselves have enjoyed.
The human capital factor complicates the discourse on disparities. While there is increasing inequality in wealth and status, adding human capital to the equation gives a different balance. One view holds that inequalities are over-estimated because human capital, defined in relation to education, training, and access to information, is more equally distributed than income as compared to the past. However, another view points to newly emerging data that show increasing gaps in literacy defined as capacity to handle basic technical operations or bureaucratic requirements– including, for example, the filling of social security forms. Moreover, there is a growing gap between people who understand the electronic bases for the functioning of modern societies and those who do not. Those who do not understand have access to large amounts of information but have no leverage to influence what is going on in their societies. Information is a new currency replacing money, and while access to it may appear to be very evenly distributed, it is in proclivities to comprehend and apply this newly exploding information that strong inequalities are now emerging.
A fundamental challenge to the current course of economic development and the globalization process is the observation that during the past ten to twenty years, the United States and other countries, have have experienced mathematically positive increases in GDP that in reality have added much less or even subtracted from the real wealth of the country. In these countries an increasingly significant portion of GDP is made up of environmentally destructive activities (cutting forests, mining coal), defensive activities in coping with modern social complexities (traffic lights, six lane highways, insurance payments), and social protection (more police, bigger prisons, home defense weapons, drug programs). These activities either add to or are necessary responses to negative externalities of the modern economic machine including pollution, resource exhaustion, over crowding, material glut, social disparities and conflict.
From a holistic perspective, excesses of greed and materialism, uncontrolled in the globalization process, threaten to quench the natural spirit of people. Self-worth and dignity, attributes of spirit, are commonly perceived in elite and ordinary people in traditional or long historically established cultural settings. In urban centers of developing and industrialized countries the poor appear to have lost sense of their inherent worth and dignity. And, so have former middle class managers in modern societies who have lost their jobs. Add to their numbers, young people in down-sizing economies where meaningful employment opportunities are diminished; and many social groups, marginalized by forces of technical and economic change.
There are a number of philosophical, political, and economic reasons for taking measures to avoid allowing significant social and economic disparities to grow or to remain among people in societies or between societies. Morality, nature, common sense, and even enlightened self interest indicate that significant inequalities are poor augury for peace and prosperity in any society.
In philosophical terms there is the belief that all people share a common humanity grounded in a spiritual heritage. Humanity’s intrinsic dignity requires that efforts be made by the most advantaged to correct the inequalities that circumstance creates for the less fortunate. This action is an inherent exercise of human flourishing, an aspiration of humankind to do what is good and fair.
Common sense suggests that by correcting inequalities, notably inequalities of opportunity, society releases or makes available the human resources that are required to make communities and the world function better. In other words, it generates reciprocal altruism and avoids the waste of unused talents and unexploited potentials.
It makes economic sense to avoid excessive inequalities if the market is to continue to be dynamic. Politically speaking distributive justice is a way to social stability. Uncontrolled, social Darwinism ultimates in political instability. There are limits to what is acceptable as the social/economic gap between rich and poor.
History affirms that a powerful political reason for redistributive policies is fear of the poor, of their revolt against living conditions and humiliation. The situation now seems hopeless for a great portion of humanity: depletion of world grain reserves combined with denigration of the traditional agricultural way of life, have led to mass migrations from rural to urban areas, and from agricultural activities to other activities. Arriving in urban centers migrants meet unemployment and slums. To a large extent, the question of foreigners, migrant workers, and in general movements of peoples across national and regional borders is conceived and discussed in an atmosphere of fear.
In seeking solutions, it is considered that there are many different types of modernity and different ways of expressing the life experience rooted in collective wisdom. It is not necessary nor desirable for some countries to adopt the Western model. In East Asia, while the model of development could appear to be similar to the Western capitalist model with its commercialism, industrialism, competitiveness, and general disregard for the environment there are still major differences in economic and cultural way of life. In the East there remains a spirit of collaboration, emphasis on rituals and less on legal framework, and individualism constrained by communal ethics. Overall, however, the negative social externalities wrought by industrialization of East Asia confirms need for an alternative to the dominant model of development.
Human beings deserve a minimum economic base that is universal but culturally tailored. From this base, individuals and social groups find many ways to express their identities and to mark their differences. Nevertheless, this base implies not only a certain level of production but also redistributive measures such as progressive taxation and other compensation, as a minimum, when the reespective economies do not operate in the best interest of the whole society.
Social Crisis and Human Nature
More obvious than the possible negative consequences of globalization of markets, is the pervasive crisis in values and the culture of people. Societies are held together not only by laws but by modes of behavior transmitted from generation to generation. By this criteria it would appear that present societies are spinning out of control. The powerful mass media are conveying an overall message of economic, social, and cultural laissez faire. People have license to do whatever they feel and want.
The fundamental problem at this stage in human social cultural evolution is that the model of Aright behavior that industrial homo sapiens has internalized no longer gives valid guidance for dealing with twenty first century problems. The dominant social paradigm that has evolved in response to the affluence of the industrial revolution has shaped a society that is ill-prepared to cope with an era of increasing constraints. Moral systems are in disrepair. The authority of the state has eroded. Market forces lead to environmental destruction. And, even the mechanism which pass survival relevant information from one generation to the next are falling apart.
In brief, at this point in history the human race is painting itself into a corner. The rapidly spreading material expectations of an upwardly mobile generation around the world cannot be met, and this creates a potentially revolutionary situation. The basic question before us is whether the human race is clever and creative enough to build new institutions and moral systems capable of sustaining it through an era of transformation that begins the new millennium.
Comment submitted by Dennis Pirages, 5/20/96
Participant in May 6 meeting
Historically, the breakdown of the contemporary moral order can be traced back to the oversight of the philosophers of the 18th century who, having to struggle against the temporal power of the Church and the clergy, neglected the spiritual needs and dimensions of individuals and societies. In encouraging rebellion against the Church, they ignored the distinction between freedom to and freedom from (see Isaiah Berlin). Democracy, at the origin, was a legitimate struggle to achieve freedom from abusive power. Then, confusion emerged between such freedom and the freedom to do whatever pleases the individual, at the neglect of the freedom of others. Leading societies moved from an ethic of satisfaction of needs to a culture of satisfaction of desires.
Architecturally speaking, but now in metaphor, today’s competition to claim possession of the tallest building among cities, countries, and major enterprises is symptomatic of the competition for individual power and the drive to excel that marks rugged individualist societies wherein social Darwinism is condoned and in different circumstances even fostered. Competitiveness is also espoused in the global village. Korea and Taiwan are used as illustrations of global development success.
If the dynamic competitive society is the epitome of the development model, a corollary thereto can reasonably define a flourishing democracy as a plutocracy of winners in the economic game of fierce individualism according to which each player operates virtually unrestrained in self interest striving to be the best. Such a democratic government is, de facto, of, by, and for the economic winners. On the world scale, for many countries such an outcome is not attractive because it means virtual dependence on winners who, according to the values of the “Darwin” ethic, should not engage in economic activities that do not ultimately serve personal interests.
This popular view perceives in human nature a primary instinct to strive for differences and superiority. In other words, the proverbial pecking order represents the natural order of social life. Attempts to impose equality in societies have always failed and have often led to totalitarianism. Neither Kibboutz nor the Soviet system provide satisfactory alternatives. In the framework of a society driven by competition and desire to excel, cooperation, ordinarily the antonym for competition, has become an expedient means to achieving personal goals.
From the common sense perspective, self interest and competition is not by definition bad. It is the driving force of development and progress in democratic societies. And, since the CEO and the successful athlete are role models of today=s society, it is futile to deny their attractiveness. Suffice it to point out that their position imposes on them great responsibilities towards the community and the world. In the past, it was more common that the most economically successful entrepreneurs and the heroes of society took their social obligations seriously and set ethical standards for others by their philanthropy and responsibility towards their workers and society as a whole.
In the same vein, those who criticize the current social order often make comparisons with distant civilizations and with primitive cultures. It is to be recalled that in societies of the past, notably Judaic/Christian, the distribution of roles and status was set with very few people in positions of power. And, there was neither possibility nor need for mobility and a different distribution of roles and goods. In the modern world built on the interplay of transactions, society has moved from status to contracts. And, democracy has irresistible appeal.
Yet, for those sensitive to the modern malaise and breakdown in moral order, there is urgent need for a more humane vision of human nature and for a different perspective on progress. Human nature is not fundamentally as competitive as the rugged individualist model suggests. Being the best, the tallest, and the grandest, is not necessarily to be the king of the mountain. In modern life there are so many fields and ways to excel, that being the top winner is, at best, being one of many thousand successes. For others, satisfaction is not to be the best among others, but to try one=s best given one’s own gifts. In other words, it is in opportunities to exercise natural talents, to gain wisdom, and to enjoy beauty that an improved quality of life is measured.
Alternatively, personal satisfaction does not necessarily arise from individual excellence or achievements in terms of dominance in society or in terms of fulfillment of individual goals, but can be derived from having done one’s best as part of a team and, in the larger sense, of a society working for a goal. This vision accords with the Confucian notion of human flourishing through involvement in networks of human interrelationships. In this perspective it is vital for a society that individuals have their own spiritual self definition that is communal in its core. A communal self definition is the foundation for cooperation defined as an antonym of competition. It is also consistent with basic tenets of Christianity and other great religions traditions.
In sum, human nature has two basic needs: energy and opportunity to grow as an individual and relationship connections through family, institutions, society, nature and the universe. Both of these aspects in human nature have to be encouraged and brought into balance. What seems to be a source of trouble in dominant western societies is that their educational institutions and socialization processes give too much weight to the first need while virtually neglecting the second. Such emphasis is consistent with these societies single minded focus on the market as the central focus of the life experience.
Responsibility at all levels is a condition for regenerating a sense of the spirit. Harmony in a democratic society is dependent on the contribution of its participants. Every society requires balance, respect for nature, and moderation in all aspects of human endeavor. Society would benefit from awakening to the presence of a transcendental vision of life that would offer humankind a way to peace and harmony with the universe. For this, as well as for the acquisition of knowledge and sociability, education has an essential role to play. Education has the capacity to develop the virtues that lie dormant in the human heart. These virtues are particularly important for public servants, merchants, entrepreneurs, and information suppliers in all the media given their powerful influence on society. A spiritual identification of the self is a strong basis for self respect and can be fostered by education that instills appreciation of the humanities as well as the acumen needed to be effective in a particular vocation.
The Golden Rule stated in the negative is a most potent prescription for present society- thou shall not do unto others what you do not want others to do unto you.
Notes prepared by Barbara Baudot, Secretary and Coordinator of the Triglav Circle.