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World Affairs
In Search Of A new Paradigm: For A Sustainable Human Order
J C Kaper
All our search for knowledge through the sciences and religious beliefs is a search for truth. The search for a new paradigm is also a search for truth. The truth about how our past actions have brought us to our present state, and how our action in the present will determine our future. But the unanswered question before a paradigm evolves concerns about the image of the future and the set of parameters, the values and constraints, which should guide us towards that future.
Our planet earth is an infinitesimally small part of the cosmic universe. And the orderliness of this universe is guided by eternal forces of infinite magnitude. The human affairs on this planet can only be conditioned by the same orderliness whose constraints govern the transcendental reality. In an attempt to understand the vastly complex infinite cosmos, the scientists fragmented those parts of reality, which they could perceive into smaller and simpler units till their nature became evident.
These processes of fragmentation of the scientific order also got reflected in the societal order, through the separation of the material from the spiritual, and through the rapid development in the material realm without any limitations, ethical or moral constraints. The new sciences transformed the very idiom of science, and established the interconnectivity of all phenomena, showing that these two orders, spiritual and material, must move synchronously. The logic and compulsions of uncontrolled material expansion and the interests of the colonial oligarchies coincided in a manner that liberated the new sciences from the compulsive constraints imposed by technological vulnerability, the speed of change and disorders in an uncontrolled socio-politico-techno-economic state. We are thus brought to our present state of chaos and disorder. And the processes that brought it about continue unabated.
The preservation of the status quo that is the concern to maintain the dominant position of the oligarchies of the unipolar system despite the mounting compulsions of mass deprivation and poverty, has made the present situation elusive and dangerous at the same time. This has also given a business focus to science, religion, philosophy and aesthetics.
All living beings and forms are expressions of cosmic laws. The notion of cosmic laws was expunged from the socialist system and has now been banished from the market place. The new scientific discoveries are repeatedly trying to establish that there is no reason to believe that the truths discovered in the yesteryears will always remain valid. Similarly revelations frozen in time from another age and another environment cannot address all the concerns of our era. And yet an alternative paradigm based on science perceived through a higher level of consciousness is considered a threat to both the material and metaphysical systems. Hence there is an urgent need to transcend those self-imposed limitations, in order to approach our dilemmas from higher levels of understanding of our present situation, including both philosophical and physical issues and the concerns of the growing numbers of victims of deprivation worldwide which leads us to seek a new definition of human rights, and the right to a dignified survival for all. The profit motivated breakthroughs tampering with the biosphere and the human genetic structures are posing a threat to all life and in particular to human nature and human dignity. This hierarchy of values will also assign a high priority to ecological security and enshrine a deeper commitment to moral and ethical concerns and spiritual beliefs.
But what we are witnessing today is the exercise of unchecked self-serving power by the oligarchies within a unipolar system. Planning is being done for a new human order, with a unidirectional compass and a road map in which all the roads lead into the closely held fortress of the oligarchies. It will be appropriate here to reflect on how this is being brought about, through a metaphor of the rats being controlled by the snakes and the snakes by the mongoose. The mongooses of the world are therefore in great demand to help operate and protect the paradigm of ‘armament protected consumerism’.
Under the cover of globalisation, what is emerging is an anarchical situation. Most countries of the world, particularly the developing world are being threatened or overwhelmed by some or the other effects of the parameters governing this paradigm, especially having ecological consequences.
The present system is forcing the pace of globalisation, while at the same time fragmenting the politico-socio-techno-economic parameters to make the world more graspable and controllable. And this widening schism has resulted in an uncontrolled drift of the human system. The mechanism to put the new world order together with weapons of mass destruction and resort to overt and covert actions is failing due to the forced and self-propelling processes of fragmentation. The rats, the snakes and the mongooses are all being tossed on to a ship in a turbulent sea.
But the search for a new paradigm is a search for truth, and implies re-harmonising what has been fragmented for profit. In terms of the new sciences, the dualistic thinking does not correspond to the structure of reality. And the material reality cannot be equated with total reality. The infinitesimal cannot be equated with or challenge the infinite.
But in the market place, the resting place for the operating paradigm, the things that cannot be sold or exchanged or marketed have no value in principle. So our real selves have no value.
Simultaneously pressures are being exerted with a monotheistic fervour to force widely diverse ethnic, racial, religious and cultural groups, entities and nations into consumerist life styles and cultural mores. All influence and power is being appropriated by the hegemons within a unipolar system whose structure is visibly becoming unsustainable and has reached a destructive, and aggressive stage of ‘armament protected consumerism’.
This is not only a crisis of immanence because those who order our world by controlling the pinnacles of science have chosen, or are unable to relate to the imperatives of the new sciences. These new sciences reveal the transcendental interconnectedness of all phenomena and thereby call for bringing the socio-economic parameters in synchronicity with the instruments of the new sciences. And even more serious in human terms is that our rulers are forsaking their own capacity to relate to the shifting idioms of science.
Thus the consumerist and secular world view that is being propagated and the institutions that are being created emerge from a fragmented view of reality in line with the old sciences. These are becoming increasingly inadequate and fragile because of their inherent contradictions as also because of an incapacity to comprehend the role of higher human dimensions, culture, spirituality and as important vehicles for human evolution. And our ruling ideologies are thus missing the connecting link, which brings together the material and the spiritual.
We are manipulating the world as a part of creation in which we do not include ourselves and we expect nature to function like a clock. "And take over God’s work after the job of creating is done".
And for this, the dominant forces need a submissive population moronised to unconditionally respond to their messages without exercising its own will. The media is playing its own role to bring about such an order.
Similarly the powers that be cannot see the deeper connections that make us a part of a common infinity, of a large complex system, integrated in a highly sensitive way. So by destroying the environment, we are destroying ourselves.
But how did such a paradigm come into being?
The chart below shows some of the important historical periods — from the fourteenth century to the present and events which in many ways shaped our present and are impacting our future.
Block-1
shows the four pillars on which human development has to be structured to assure stability.
The succeeding blocks highlight the various events that have impacted and shaped the world and trends in the centuries that followed.
Block-2
Fourteenth to Sixteenth Century — Renaissance
Great revival of arts, literature learning and spirit in Europe
Block-3
Sixteenth Century — Reformation
Period of theological monotheism. Paradigm dominated and structured around the church
A struggle to liberate the science from this domination
Block-4
Sixteenth to Seventeenth Century — The Cartesian Shift
Separation between the mind and the body; material and spiritual as two separate orders
Science unfettered by constraints of spirit
Block-5
Eighteenth Century — Classical Sciences — Newton
•High point of classical science
•Laws of nature based on reason rather than experience
•Fragmentation of a small part of reality into smaller and simpler units until a solution became evident
•Acceleration of the industrial revolution
•Goal of science: To conquer and control the universe
•Racial superiority, colonialism to contain the pressure of growing materiality
•The Church — a part of the support system to justify colonialism
Block-6
Nineteenth to Twentieth Century — Reckless Material Expansion (Colonialism)
•Shrinking role of the qualitative in human affairs
•Emergence of the new sciences
•A new vision of reality — The material universe, a field of energy, could only be understood in relation to the whole, which is present in every part
•The universe is made of matter and form, not just matter
•The most violent century
•Two world wars
•Breakdown of colonialism
•A free, divided India
•Emergence of the Soviet Union and communist China
•Industrialisation of Japan and south-east Asia
•Vast expansion of Western science, technology, industry and power
•Declaration of Cold War
•Breakdown of the Soviet Union
Block-7
1990-2001 — Breakdown of USSR — End of history
•Emergence of US as a unipolar superpower, structured on
‘armament protected consumerism’•Intellectual conceptualisation of the ‘end of history’
•Arrival of the ultimate human state to freeze the movement of the world under own control
•Threat of civilisational conflicts (Huntington)
•Survival of the superpower dependant on the control of energy and other resources
•Growing worldwide tensions
•Events of September 11, 2001 and a fight against terrorism
•Breakdown of ecological, economic, and social systems
•To safeguard economic and security interests of the unipolar power system, an effort is made to nuetralise the growing resentment against the globalisation of poverty and exercise of indiscriminate power
•Increasingly marginalised role of culture and spirituality in society and its consumerist orientation
Block-8
2000-2002 — Five memos from the Superpower for their control of the twenty-first century
During the last two years particularly as a follow up of the events of 9/11 the unipolar superpower has issued five memos as an expression of supremacy of its oligarchy over the world’s socio-politico-techno-economic system. These include:
•Abrogation of the nuclear proliferation treaty (NPT)
•Abrogation of the ‘Kyoto Protocol’ representing the consensus for a minimum effort to reduce the green house gases and other grave environmental concerns
•National Security Document 2002 — challenges the right of any nation or group of nations together to out-perform its economy or pose a threat to its security. It has assumed for itself the preemptive right to defeat any such attempt
•Abbreviating or downsizing the authority of the United Nation, using it as an instrument for the promotion of economic, political and security interests of the unipolar system. Events related to Iraq highlighted these trends and concerns
•Home Land Security Documents 2002 — designed to curb, control and subvert the rights, liberty and privacy of the citizens. Such instruments to curb terrorism are more likely to create a state of fear and terror within the country while even more stringent laws are in the offing.
We are rapidly arriving at a point of no return. And, both the success or failure of the paradigm in its present form will have far-reaching consequences for the flow of life on this planet. If the paradigm continues to dominate, it will further strengthen the hold of narrow oligarchies with the acquiescence of local elites of the developing world in collusion with a few countries of the developed world. It will lead to an ever widening disparity in wealth and increase deprivation, instability and terrorism. It will also bring about an environmental disaster and make the damage to the life support system of the planet irreversible.
If on the other hand, the ‘consumerist paradigm’ implodes through aggregating contradiction, without alternative social arrangements, it would as in the case of the Soviet Union, leave the economic infrastructure and cultural mores of many nations including the United States in shambles.
During the Soviet Russian revolution, a slogan was raised: ‘workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains’, yet the Soviet system broke down because, it was structured on science and materiality alone, there was no cultural or spiritual strength, nor a psychic force within the system to recreate a new paradigm of social welfare, distinct from ‘armament protected consumerism’. The world has once again been brought on the same path, though with some structural variations. The same is largely the case with China and India too.
In the ‘unipolar system there is an implied slogan ‘elites of the world unite, you have all to lose outside the system’.
The entire world community whether affluent or dispossessed has to take a position now, on the state of this planet and life for the future generations. What is at stake is not just democracy or human rights or the market; what is going into flames is the entire life support system. And the creation of vast areas of human, moral and material misery, which no sophistry, no jugglery of figures and media promotions can explain away.
Our choices are rapidly narrowing down and instead of a search for new cooperative architecture, the unipolar system has declared in no uncertain terms that no other state or a group of states shall be allowed to challenge its position of domination and the policies that it entails. Any state which is even perceived to have that potential will be destroyed through preemptive action. Translated into paradigmical terms, it would mean that the infrastructure of power, finance, technologies and arms with its record of habitual resort to violence and its readiness to inflict economic and environmental devastation on others is planned by the unipolar power to remain permanent and regarded as the only viable human state, to be loved and cherished by all.
It means that the unipolar power will preempt and eliminate any attempt to change this situation with its superior economic and military power. Or in other words, the interests of the oligarchies of the unipolar system, are sacred, and unchallengeable. Any one challenging this state or any one of the parameters of its basic structure or the paradigm itself will deserve and receive now the well-known, free market treatment. The oil of Iraq or Central Asia or whatever else the unipolar power so defines becomes a part of its domain. It can call upon nations to change their laws in the economic interests of the system, accept economic investments, give free access not only to their genetically modified products, but also to their spiritually or aesthetically drained culture and its emissaries. Failure to do so could invite the odium of being called an evil, unethical or immoral empire or axis singled out for ‘regime change’, or declaration of a holy war or crusade against it, leaving such dissenting states unprotected against the growing terrorist menace.
It is obvious that no human system based on such an extravagantly authoritarian and unstable value structure can lead us towards a sustainable future. Apart from the personalised excesses it allows, the unipolar power system is inherently structured on the qualified and shifting understanding of reality of a Newton, an Einstein, a Marx, a Keynes or a Freud, and is out of touch with the larger realm of nature and consciousness. It has imposed upon itself the compulsion of unbridled use of the limited physical and ecological resources and transformed the psychic framework of man for the unifocal attainment of material goals and the subordination of his mental, aesthetic and spiritual attributes to the accelerated realisation of this illusion. This model of life on the planet has been driven to the stage of self- immolation, because of its inherent inability to raise the level of consciousness sufficiently even to grasp these dilemmas.
The world of yesterday marked by colonialism and gunboat diplomacy died with the Second World War. The world of today, structured around an ‘armament protected consumerism’ is in a deep crisis brought about by its physical and psychic excesses. And not all the weapons of mass destruction and media excesses can now transform it into the globalised preserve of the unipolar oligarchies. A new more just and a sustainable order has to emerge:
The strength of the paradigm of ‘armament protected consumerism’ within the unipolar system rested on large paper and plastic money surpluses generated through the ballooning of market capitalisation. And through the accumulation of domestic, corporate, and national debt of over US$ 30 trillion as against a GDP of the US$ 12 trillion to fuel the economy. When the market system begins to decline and stock markets nosedive, as is happening with many of the sectors of the economy such as information technology, ground transport, civil aviation, banking and financial institutions, the ability of the economy to support its unipolar superpower infrastructure also begins to decline. The free markets and even more, transnational corporations begin to decline and often survive only because of state subsidies and protection. While the infrastructural foundations of the unipolar consumerist armament system are being forced under state protection to avoid bankruptcy at the same time, pressures are being mounted on countries worldwide to privatise, and denationalise key sectors of the economy. This in other words means that the monopolies and profits are private while the losses are public.
Unable to cope with the growing pressure from the unipolar superpower system, nations in many parts of the world have begun to seek integrative relationships or alliances to safeguard their national identities and economic and security interests. A multipolar world system has thus begun to re-emerge. The National Security 2002 pronouncements by the unipolar system, which carry the threat of preemptive strikes against any nation or group of nations are sending shockwaves amongst thinking people worldwide. This is also likely to catalyse a psychic drift away from the delights of the market place, and further depress the world economic system.
Science and technology can provide the means to create an infrastructure for human material welfare but cannot provide a meaning and purpose of life. A civilised existence can only be realised through the containment of human wants as part of a process of broader development of consciousness, culture and spirituality and above all the social welfare and the satisfaction of the minimum basic needs for all.
The market system is designed so as to engender new wants to keep the system going. It has thus become hostage to a limitless growth in production and consumption. It is also forced to control the world resources and the market and want to transform cultures within the process of modernisation to bring these in tune with the needs of the consumer system.
Many nations still retain the potential to restructure their economic institutions within the larger fourfold framework of human development of science, materiality, philosophy, culture and spirituality, so that the economic processes are contained within the larger search for the meaning and purpose of life. This is ingrained in the psyche of the people in many cultures and will help them rebuild their economic infrastructures on secure cultural foundations.
The present world economic turmoil centered in the United States of America is caused by the illusion of getting rich quickly and also due to the role of the oligarchies acting as suction points of the world’s wealth.
A substantial proportion of the devotees of the market place survive because of the subsidies or protection of their respective governments or international institutions, while millions of unemployed roam the streets fuelling violence and terrorism.
India for instance, is one of the few countries, which had the experience of a mixed economy. This guaranteed that the basic framework of the economy remained in the public domain, while it encouraged private initiative for the satisfaction of basic human needs. And this has been as in other countries under pressure for change towards an open market economy.
From the present moment in history the Gandhian model of culturally and economically secure rural republics and sane and responsible mixed economy may well be the developmental role model in the twenty-first century for our beleaguered world trapped by the mystique of a dream- world of consumer delights.
We have just emerged from the most violent century in human history. And we now stand at the crossroads of history with largest arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, and many irresponsible nations ready to use them.
There is a vast aggregation of deprivation and suffering in our world. The present paradigm has become a hostage to its own excesses and there is a compulsive need for change, which may call for the total reorganisation of human affairs. In order to outline future directions, it is necessary to seek answers to an entire range of complex questions. And some of these are outlined below.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Economy
The breakdown of the USSR, and its planned economy is now history. But the search for a new paradigm, raises a question: Is a planned economy still a possible basis for future development. In this context, how do we view the success of the economic development efforts of the Peoples’ Republic of China?
Debt-based market economies create an illusion of wealth but sooner or later the countries find themselves in a situation of unbearable indebtedness, leading to the collapse of the production systems and infrastructures, leading in turn to large-scale deprivation, and suffering. All available data from official sources point to the rapid deterioration of the world financial system, including some of the world’s largest economies such as the USA and Japan.
Can the free market economy in its present form be the basis for a sustainable development model? Can pressures for economic privatisation be justified despite the growing unsustainability of financial, infrastructural and industrial organisations worldwide, many of them needing state intervention to survive?
Does it imply that we should re-examine the policy of marketisation of the economy and convert to a system which ensures individual freedom and private enterprise while controlling the commanding heights of technology and industry to protect the common weal from the unchecked influence of oligarchic interests?
The recent upsurge in terrorism is in many ways related to the promotion of the concept of intercivilisational wars to serve politico-economic objectives.
Energy and Ecology
The greenhouse gas emissions and other major environmental factors are creating momentous disruptions in the planet’s climate, causing large-scale suffering and deprivation, particularly for the people without social safety nets. How can the use of fossil-fuel based energy be limited and attempts to control oil and gas resources by the force of arms, be contained?
Is there a need for a mechanism of international trusteeship to ensure the conservation and equitable distribution of the non-renewable assets at reasonable prices?
Culture, Science and Spirituality
One of the most significant phenomenon of the last several decades has been the worldwide breakdown of the ethical and moral orders across the entire spectrum of human activity.
Can this state of affairs be modified through a few changes in the laws or will the solution come from a major qualitative social transformation? What is the role of culture and spirituality in the endeavour to achieve broadbased, all-round human development?
Can a human welfare system respecting the needs and priorities of diverse cultures be preserved under a unipolar superpower system? How and in what form could a multipolar system emerge to meet these imperatives?
The emergence of the European Union, is a healthy development; likewise taking into account the commonality of cultures and religious traditions in Asia, there is a need for cooperation between nations within the region on a broad spectrum of socio-politico-techno-economic plane.
Science and technology can provide an infrastructure for material welfare but cannot provide a meaning or purpose for life. A civilised existence calls for the containment of wants within the broader development of culture and spirituality. There is a need to restructure economic institutions within the larger framework of fourfold human development. The consumerist paradigm has become a hostage to new wants in order to keep itself afloat through the limitless use of goods and services. This in turn requires the control of world resources and markets — and the transformation of cultures to ensure their subservience to the consumer system. The current endeavour to denigrate and transform other cultures in order to make them fall in line with the consumerist paradigm is having destructive consequences.
Societies are sustainable only if and when all relevant parameters such as science and material concerns, culture and spirituality are adequately integrated within the human system. The trivialisation of the subjective or qualitative elements in civilisation is causing terminal damage by destabilising it and triggering conflicts everywhere.
We have to go forward with the new sciences expanding yet contained within a cyclical thought process in an interconnected universe of unbroken continuity. All human attributes must converge on the same central goal with equal energy and not be made subservient to by material priorities.
At this critical crossroads of human destiny, India and some other countries can make an important contribution by showing the critical pathways and correct entry points into the spherics of eternal harmony.
The faculty of consciousness reveals to both the scientist and the yogi the joy of new and true perception. This is the supermind which is radically changing human beings in their capacity to observe, measure and perceive the true notion of creation.
"Fearlessness alone brings victory", said a famous sage. And Gandhi showed a way to freedom through non-violent means.
With a will, we can do it again, blaze a trail towards a sustainable human future.