Title: A New Culture of Peace: Can We Hope That Global Society Will Enter Into a Harmonious Information Age?
Abstract: Can we hope that global society will enter into a harmonious information age, as Russian sociologist Leo Semashko suggests? Or is this nothing more than an illusionary wish? Currently, the gap between rich and poor widens, both locally and globally, and the havenots watch how elites overindulge in luxury goods. We live in a ramshackle global village, resembling what John Stewart Mill in the nineteenth century called a ramshackle state. In many ways we face the anarchic world that Robert Kaplan (1994), describes in The Coming Anarchy, with overpopulation, resource scarcity, terror, crime, and disease compounding cultural and ethnic differences and rendering us a chaotic, anarchic world. A central question of our times is whether the deplorable state of the global village is an expression of the essence of globalisation or a side effect that can be remedied. My proposition is that the current obscene state of the world is indeed a side effect and that we need more globalisation and not less, however, that we have to create a new kind of globalisation, namely globalisation wedded to what I call egalisation. I believe that we have a chance to build a decent global village, following the call for a decent society by Avishai Margalit (1996), if we manage to harness globalisation with egalisation. I suggest that we need to begin by looking at human history in a different fashion than is usually done, namely by using a larger time horizon. William Ury (1999), anthropologist, and director of the Harvard University Project on Preventing War, drew up a simplified depiction of history. He pulls together elements from anthropology, game theory and conflict studies to describe three major types of society: a) simple huntergatherers, b) complex agriculturists, and c) the currently emerging knowledge society. Samuel L. Gaertner and John F. Dovidio show in their research that an environment that is defined by win-win framings is more benign than environments of win-lose conditions. A win-win situation lends itself to cooperation, while zero sum circumstances increase the likelihood of divisions among people. If we take Ury’s historic picture, we find that a rather benign period of hunting-gathering (the resource being wild food, rendering a win-win frame) was followed by a comparably malign period of agriculture (the resource being land, forcing people into a win-lose frame), leading up to today’s benign promise of knowledge rendering a win-win frame. In other words, the innovative ideas that push modern technologies that in turn power globalisation render a benign winwin push towards cooperation. As invisible as this benign trend might seem at the current point in history, it nevertheless does rest at the heart of what we call globalisation. Another benign aspect in globalisation, aside from knowledge fostering a win-win frame, is the waning of out-group bias. Humankind is being freed from destructive biases in tact with the emergence of the idea and reality of one single family of humankind who
Publication Year: 2006
Publication Date: 2006-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 1
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