Topic: Global Civilisation and Cultural Identities

Morning Session, Oct. 14

Ivan Gabal
Ladies and Gentlemen, let me tell you about the change in the program of our Conference. If you will allow, we will start the next panel on Global Civilisation and Cultural Identities right now, and then we will have the coffee break after the first presentation.
The first presentation will be by Adam Michnik, who is a famous Polish dissident, because he has to leave our Conference earlier due to other duties and we won’t want to miss his ideas on our topic. The other reason is that Adam Michnik is not only a former dissident but he is the editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, and he is one of the most influential opinion-makers, and I would say shapers of opinions, from the post-communist countries capable of presenting our prospective around the world, where he travels quite often and, last, but not least, capable of running newspapers, probably the only one from the region to be quoted and monitored by the world media, so I think Adam is now going to shape our opinion on issues of Global Civilisation and Cultural Identity. Adam, the floor is yours.

Adam Michnik
When my friend Ivan Gabal called me a dissident I felt a certain nostalgia because a person is either a dissident all his, or her, life long or has never been one. A dissident is like a recusant, a rebel. For a long time people from the democratic opposition, such as Andrei Sakharov, Václav Havel or my Polish friends, were opposed to the usage of the term “dissident”. We said we were not dissidents, but rather people who represented the whole of society, our entire nations. In our opinion, dissidents were those who - like the Communists - derived their power from coercion and lie and represented no one but themselves. Today, we must correct that opinion to some extent, because we now know that Communism had a real background in our countries and that it was not all coercion. In order to take issue with the public opinion at present, we must have something of a rebel, or a dissident, in us.
I am deeply moved to speak on this occasion, because we are all here as guests of Václav Havel. I cherish memories of the time when, twenty years ago, we met - as Czech, Slovak and Polish dissidents, as we were then called - at the Czech-Polish border at the peak of Sněžka in the Giant Mountains and issued the first joint statement on the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Czechoslovakia. It was also twenty years ago that we agreed to jointly publish a book; the fruit of that agreement was Václav Havel’s essay “The Power of the Powerless”, one of the most significant essays and intellectual documents of that period. All this sounds rather odd at present; it is like a fine and sentimental American movie, even though not a good one. It is not a good movie because it has a happy ending, and my view is somewhat different in this respect. And yet, my feeling is that we in central and Eastern Europe can talk about a happy end. The end of the 20th Century, which was the century of Hitler and Stalin, of Auschwitz and the gulags, finds us living in democratic and sovereign states even though, understandably, these states are not perfect. Our present discussion about globalization and about the identity of national cultures leads us to questions concerning threats. It has been said at this conference that these threats lie between McDonald’s and Jihad. What does McDonald’s mean? We call it consumerism, hedonism, relativism, uniformity, or post-modernism, where there is no truth, but only an illusion of truth, where everything is a text and everything needs to be interpreted. Everything is a dialogue of interpretation.
It seems - we have heard it here as well - that the disintegration of the family is a product of the “mcdonaldization” of the world. As far as family is concerned, let me remind you that one hundred and fifty years ago, in a composition entitled “The Communist Manifesto”, two authors predicted the end of the family as an institution of the bourgeois world. The family has survived to this day; I believe that it will continue to live and I would not be afraid that McDonald’s or Disneyland are capable of jeopardizing the family. We have even heard it said in this hall that McDonald’s is at present the same kind of symbol that the church used to be in the past. I think this is a misunderstanding. People go to a church, a mosque or a synagogue in order to meet with God. They go to a McDonald’s restaurant in order to have a hamburger. I find nothing wrong with a person eating a hamburger after having attended a service, nor do I find in it any threat to cultural values. When we speak about the threat of uniformity, I do not think that McDonald’s places in New York, Prague, Paris or Tokyo have the kind of influence that would make American, Czech, French or Japanese cultures lose their specificity and become one like the other. I rather believe that McDonald’s represents a new embodiment of that which we used to call modernization or westernization. In this respect, we can say that westernization has failed, that it has been rejected. Modernization in Japan will have a specific Japanese character, and in India a specific Indian character, which does not mean that these countries will be lacking in technological advancement or will fail to enjoy a growth of freedoms, or that such advancement will threaten their national cultures. Globalization means that the world is becoming smaller. In the past, Prague used to be terribly far from New York; at present, the distance is not so long. Telephone, aircraft, and television have made our world a different place - a global world. Another factor that has helped to make our world a global entity is the market. The latest financial crisis that began in Korea and afflicted the Asian tigers had repercussions on the stock exchanges all over the world. As a consequence, the crisis brought a renewed awareness of the fact that we are living in a common world. This is a problem, but let us remember that we knew crises before the time of globalization and it cannot be said that crises emerged because of globalization. And what is the lesson to be learned from this latest crisis? The one which was stated by Rabbi Lau - that we are all sailing on one boat. It can be Noah’s Ark, it can be some other ark, but it is a fact that the world is increasingly becoming a communicating vessel. This is an argument against the logic of national egoism, and against the logic of the war of nations as a Darwinian struggle for survival. This, however, does not mean uniformity or Gleichschaltung. We now have the same ads for toothpaste, automobiles, shampoos or macaroni in the whole world. We also have the same road signs everywhere, and thank God for that, because the drivers would otherwise be killing one another. I see no threat in the tendency to standardize certain fragments of our life. I think this is the right thing to do. I do not entirely agree with Huntington’s thesis about a clash of civilizations, but I agree with Huntington that the differences within human civilization cannot be eradicated in the decades ahead. To my mind, this is a good thing: a guarantee that the uniformity that we fear so much will never come, because it cannot come. What we are experiencing is an enrichment of our human fate through experience from elsewhere.
Finally, let me say that it is not that some civilizations were good and other bad. I think there are good and bad political movements, there can be good and bad people, but the conflicts we are witnessing are conflicts which generally, or very often, take place within our civilizations. The bloody wars between the Hutus and the Tutsis, between the Croatians and the Serbs, between the Taliban in Afghanistan and Iran, between the Shiites and the Sunnites, between the Hindus and the Moslems in India.... When I hear about this conflict of civilization, I ponder on who killed Anwar Sadat, who killed Yitzhak Rabin? The time in which we live is a time of integration and disintegration. This is specific here in Europe. While the Poles, the Czechs, the Slovaks and the Hungarians have the ambition to join the European Union, we have witnessed in our part of the continent at the same time the disintegration of Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. We have also observed new developments in Western Europe - a virtual break-up of Belgium, the tremendous problems with the Basques and the Irish, we see what is happening in Corsica. I therefore believe that there will never be a European nation resembling the American nation. The situation in Europe will be different. Instead of one new nation, there will always be a mosaic of many peoples. In Europe we are witnessing a threat arising from attitudes that can hardly be defined by a traditional language, because they are neither traditional right-wing nor traditional extreme left-wing attitudes. In this context, it seems to me that social and political phenomena such as Le Pen in France are rather movements of the 21st Century than a dead wave of pro-Fascism. It is not correct to define approaching phenomena with language of the past ones and it seems that Europe will become the scene of a new dispute about the future of our civilization. To my mind, this will no longer be a dispute between the left on one side and the right on the other, but a dispute between the visions of an open society and a closed one. It must be said that certain question marks are currently emerging about American civilization. If it were to be a model of globalism, I would view that model with concern. On the one hand, I observe the forming of a culture which I call the “gadget” culture. A gadget itself is not dangerous, as long as it remains a gadget and does not pretend to be anything else. It begins to be dangerous when it pretends to be culture. It is also dangerous that we see a so-called Christian coalition within the Republican Party which, in my view, represents an American version of religious fundamentalism. Third, we see the case of Attorney Starr. I am deliberately saying “the Starr case” instead of “the Clinton affair” because to me the most important element in this case is indeed Attorney Starr, and what he did. This means an invasion of the logic and the methods of a totalitarian system in a democratic country; the use of listening devices, police provocations - as if Attorney Starr took lessons from Vladimír Mečiar.
We observe Russia - a crisis of leadership and a crisis of identity. Russia is a big unknown. Our feeling today is that various avenues are still open to that state, including the path of democracy. It appears that reasonable support for the democratic course is now an obligation; that is, reasonable support without enthusiasm about yet another leader, and without the belief that the deluge will come once Gorbachev is gone, or once Yeltsin is gone; reasonable support meaning critical dialogue without an absurd waste of money.
Furthermore, let’s look at Kosovo. It is very good - and I am very glad - that a modus vivendi has been found at least for a certain period of time. The problem of Kosovo - and of Bosnia as well - is a problem of differing truths. Truth is where contradiction is. In Kosovo everybody has a truth of their own; that is why this problem is so difficult to solve. However, when such problems arise we have to be very careful about morality. I wholeheartedly agree with what my friend Sergeuy Kovalyov said here, but I must say that Kissinger is right as well. Morality will not replace politics, especially when troops have to be sent to a foreign country. I think that Kosovo is a classic example of the fact that we will always be different. The experiment envisaging the formation of a Yugoslav nation did not succeed; in my opinion, it will never succeed. At least in this respect, I am not afraid that globalism will destroy national cultures. I think that national cultures will exist because we will differ from one another in terms of religion, language, history, and culture. That is why I cannot listen without protest when the West is blamed for not being perfect. Yes, it is true that the West is not perfect, but then, only God is perfect. The West is not perfect because it is not consistent. Perhaps this inconsistency is a virtue. Perhaps only that which is cruel is truly consistent. Democracy is known to be inconsistent in its essence. Democracy is erratic. The fundamentalists say: “We have our own, non-liberal concepts of the state, of the good, and of the truth of humanity.” The fundamentalists say: “We know the path toward happiness and you don’t.” And here we face a problem. The Christian tradition includes a deeply rooted idea of the church as a symbol of adversity. Yes, but we see how often the church becomes, or strives to become, not a symbol of adversity but a symbol of violence, and this is the essence of the matter. To my mind, a classic symbolic example is the case of Salman Rushdie. From Tehran - a city that accuses the West of every sin - there came a message saying that a man is to be murdered. Until I hear, from religious and political leaders, a clear statement that this man must be protected instead, I will not believe any of their other statements.
We hear that in global civilization television is a symbol of the culture of entertainment and consumerism. I should like to reassure those who are afraid of this. We know such television programs that call for religious hatred even though they pretend to profess love. American tele-evangelists are like that. We in Poland also have one such institution, called Radio Maria. While pretending mercy, it preaches hatred. I am aware of the huge potential of nihilism that is contained in the so-called cool liberalism, that is, a liberalism which says “let me live and I’ll let you live” and abandons active defence of the trampled values of persecuted people. I also know of the large totalitarian potential in religion - in any religion that aspires to follow the “all or nothing” logic. The Jacobins said: “Either you become my brother or I shall kill you.” Very often, we hear people of the church saying: “Either you go with me or you shall be rejected.” It is possible that God’s plan is like this, that God does not wish me to step across the threshold of this shrine. And it is also possible that God’s plan is such that God wishes to have also a few non-believers in the world. Is it not dangerous that the church and priests so often want to take the place of God? That is why I find it important that the prevalent logic in this global world (in this respect, I am an advocate of global uniformity) is the logic of dialogue, not of monologue; the logic of compromise, and not of war. Of course, there are different models of globalization, but two have most often been mentioned in the 20th Century: the Soviet model and the American model, sovietization and the melting pot. I should like to propose a third version of globalism, a Prague globalism. I think of Prague as a city of various languages and religions; a city that was inhabited by Hašek and Franz Kafka. They did not know each other but both breathed the same air of Prague. The Czech city of Prague has been not only a city of Czechs, but also a city of Jews, Austrians, exiles from Russia and Ukraine. One of the heroes of this city was a great Czech patriot who had previously been a Soviet Communist in Spain, and before that a Polish Jew of Stanislavov - František Kriegel. It seems that the secret of this Prague globalism, the secret of this magic golden Prague, lies in its gift - similar to the one possessed by King Midas - to transform everything it touches into gold. After this meeting with Prague and with President Václav Havel, every one of us is endowed with a little bit of this most precious gold of our global era: kindness, wisdom, freedom, and tolerance. For all this, I thank Prague and Václav Havel.
Thank you.

Ivan Gabal
Thank you, Mr. Michnik. We will continue with a panel focus of Global Civilisation and Cultural Identities, and our next speaker Ashis Nandy from India, is an internationally recognised political scientist, and Director of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. His main interest is the research of violence and he is a psychologist by profession who has published several books on that subject. Mr. Nandy, the floor is yours.

Ashis Nandy
Dr Gabal has given me 15-20 minutes to solve all the problems of globalisation and cultural identities in the coming millennium. I will try to do so in 15 minutes flat. However, to be kind to the interpreters and to the listeners, I will confine myself to three, or perhaps four, prefatory points by way of a preface or introduction, and then perhaps make five substantive points. But given the constraints of time, I shall have to be telegraphic. If you are interested in arguing all the details, we might do so during the discussions or outside in the hall when the meeting is not taking place.
1) I shall start by reminding you that this is not the first change of a century that human beings are witnessing. A hundred years ago, and being an Indian I am almost tempted to say “only a hundred years ago”, another change of centuries took place. On that occasion, one particular institution invited virtually every well-known name in Europe and North America to make predictions about the 20th Century. This was during the last years of the 19th Century. A few years ago, one of the journals of the future reprinted these predictions. These predictions are very educated. The most common feature of these predictions is that they are virtually all wrong and all err on the side of consumerism. The best known scientists couldn’t even predict that we would have cars as a mode of transport, or that there would be aeroplanes. In fact, some of them specifically argue out these possibilities, including radio and television. One or two of them predict something like an air-ship. The maximum speed the greatest scientists at the end of the last century, including people like Rutherford, could predict was a speed of 250 miles an hour. So if you would allow me to propose, as a first prefatory comment of my presentation, that our predictions and our analysis are not going to be very deliberate after a few years.
I do not think that ideas like globalisation will last beyond one or two decades. The idea of Westernisation was pushed by some of the most powerful colonial powers for something like 150 years. But that idea is more or less dead. Subsequently, at the end of the Second World War, the idea of modernisation was proposed as a substitute for Westernisation. Westernisation was thought to be too ethnocentric, too cultural-bound. Despite the fact that it was backed by some of the most powerful global powers, that concept is evidently in its last gasps. It has not lasted more than 40 years, at least it has not lasted in good health. I propose to you that the idea of globalisation will not last more than two decades.
2) I do notice, not only in the global culture of politics, but in public life in country after country, especially even in countries that dominate the global scene, a deep fear of people. Most people, including most intellectuals, appreciate the fact that they can choose their leaders once in a while through open elections. But what they do not say is this: that they would also like to choose those people every five years if you give them a chance – because somehow there is a deep distress of what these people will do. Otherwise, I do not see any reason why there is such lack of confidence, even in the world of the victors, even in societies and cultures that dominate the world, so very little generosity. They don’t even have the victor’s generosity to stand other concepts, cultures and even the categories which some of the most peripheral cultures of the world use.
It is a situation somewhat analogous to the search for absolute security. I am told that the United States, at the moment, has not less than 21,000 nuclear warheads, which can kill everybody, including all the Americans, 14 times over. I would have thought, being not so deeply wedded to the principles of scientific rationality, that once could have been good enough. If you can kill everybody in the world, including yourself once, that is adequate, but even that does not satisfy. You have to have 14 times the capacity to kill everybody in the world including yourself, and that is supposed to be rationality. But it springs from a certain deep insecurity even when you are victorious, even when you have dominated the world, even when your voice, your culture and your categories are reigning.
3) I do believe that there is always a continuity between the dominated and the dominant, between the victors and the losers. What you do to others, ultimately you do to yourself. In some sense by peripheralising large parts of the globe, by marginalising civilisations, in some sense you impoverish yourself. Whether the marginal civilisations lose or do not lose from the process of being in the margin is a secondary issue. I think those who are in the centre of world affairs also lose something, it also provincialises them. I am afraid that the dominant global culture, whether in Europe or in North America, shows all the signs of increasingly becoming more and more provincial in its outlook.
4) A final prefatory point and I will not develop it, I will just say it. Dominance is not the proof of finality. Just because you dominate somebody or some people, it does not make you automatically the final choice, whether or not it is in the context of the end-of-civilisation argument. Nor does the fact that something, at this point of time, looks inevitable, or human begins cannot find an alternative to something that is dominant, automatically give it a moral status. It does not become morally preferable or morally justified. These were by the way of prefatory remarks.
Now to my five substantive propositions.
1) We live in a post-Einsteinian world. Space and time are supposed to be convertible. What has happened is that this convertibility has also given us a certain kind of confidence in our social revolutionary way of looking at cultures and civilisations.
At one time, you at least had the right to dislike others, other civilisations, other cultures, other groups, other persons. I mean, for instance, I may not like Dr Gabal very much. I may not like his name, I may not like his dress, I may not like his food habits, I may not like his lifestyle. At one time, it was seen as natural that I may dislike. But at least there was the possibility that I might also grant him the right to dislike me, because he might not like my looks, my dress, my food habits and my personality, for that matter. That is not fashionable any longer. You cannot say you dislike somebody because he or she is different.
Now I have to say that I like Dr Gabal very much, he is no different from me. However, I am given the right to say that Dr Gabal today is what I was yesterday. If Dr Gabal reads my textbooks, if Dr Gabal obeys what I say, if Dr Gabal conforms to my values, tomorrow he will be like me. Now that gives me certain privileges vis-à-vis Dr Gabal.
First of all, I become an expert on Dr Gabal. I know Dr Gabal better than he knows himself, because he is only Dr Gabal, whereas I have been Dr Gabal and transcended that stage. I have become better, so I can be a specialist consulting to him on how to be Dr Gabal. I have also, in the process, hijacked his future, because he doesn’t know his future. I know his future better than he does because I am his future. I know his future better than he can know it himself. I become a consultant to Dr Gabal not only on his present, but also on his future, and how to move from the present to the future.
If, in the case of Dr Gabal, if it becomes a personalised thing, it looks very unfair, very impolite and somehow very controlling. But if I can think of a good name for the process, if I can call it modernisation, or globalisation, then of course I have met my point. It doesn’t look like personal bias at all. It looks like an enlightened self-interest for Dr Gabal to conform to that model.
2) The world is divided – Dostoyevsky says it, not me – between anthropologists and their subjects. The world has only two kinds of people – the anthropologists and their subjects. Now I belong to the subjects, that is a different story, but this is the way it is defined. Now, there are many ways anthropologists can handle their subjects.
Anthropologists can show a lot of respect to their subjects. They can even try to protect the culture, the lifestyle, the values, of the subjects. I propose to you that there has been, traditionally, five ways of handling the subjects. First, you can put them into reservations, where they can live their lives in peace and in harmony with nature and in conformity with their traditional way of life. You can even, on weekends, take your children to the reservation to show them those who live in reservations as an exposure to other cultures and other civilisation and other lifestyles, and show your empathy, as an enlightened person in the contemporary world, with how others live in reservations.
Secondly, you can put cultures of your subjects on the stage. You can go to listen to them playing the zither at weekends, or you can even see Peter Brook’s Mahabharata on the stage, paying 75 dollars for a seat, and feel very happy that you are exposed to other cultures and civilisations. You can even take your friends and children to give them a lesson in the beauties of other cultures and civilisations. You can put them on stage.
Thirdly, you can put them in the curriculum. You can study them the way proper anthropologists do, but also historians of medicine do, or historians of sciences do, you can have ethno-musicology at your university, or ethno-sciences, you can study African sciences at your university and also teach the ethno-sciences. If you do proper science, of course, you are in the Department of Physics, but if you do ethno-science, you are in the Department of Anthropology. But that is a minor difference. If you are doing proper music, you are teaching Beethoven or Bach at the Department of Music, but if you are teaching ethno-musicology, then you are at the Department of South Asian Studies or the Department of Chinese Studies. That’s a minor difference, but you can put them in your curriculum.
Fourthly, you can also museumise them, you can museumise other cultures, other civilisations. You can put them into museums, so that you can go and see them at the weekends. Many people have pointed out to me that Mexican civilisation survives better in the Mexican museum in Mexico City than in Mexico itself. That’s a possibility: you can museumise a culture, and that is one of the standard available ways of saving a culture and getting exposed to a culture. Finally, you can also reduce, or convert, a culture into a form of entertainment. If you can go and have Chinese food in a restaurant once in a while, and if you have learnt to distinguish Sichuan food from Hunan, then you, of course, know something about the culture, you know something about others. So that was the second proposal I wanted to make, that this is the way cultures can also be handled. You can see that I am not taking any positions, I am giving you the options of what to do with these things in the next millennium. You have many options.
3) You can declare cultures and civilisation obsolete. You can define them as obsolete, not fit for the contemporary world. You can say that there are good points and bad points in a civilisation. The good points should be retained and the bad points discarded, by which you actually mean those parts of a culture that are compatible with your ideas of good points should be retained, and those parts of the culture that are not compatible with your idea of what is a good point should be discarded. You can even open a dialogue with cultures on that score. Nasty people would say that actually it is not a dialogue but a monologue because you are actually talking with yourself in the guise of other, but I won’t agree with those. You can open a dialogue with the good parts of a culture and disown the bad parts, by which you might mean that the culture should be remoulded according to your priorities. That is also possible. The cultures sometimes, and I say it as footnote to this proposition, unfortunately scream and create problems for you. You might not appreciate the fact and cultures might not do it consciously, but it’s natural that they might scream.
There is a lovely story that I once heard, I do not know true it is, but in some sense it captures the spirit of what I am saying. It is about the death of Sir Francis Bacon, who did so much to define the world in which he lived. It is said that Sir Francis Bacon, being the scientifically-minded person and the rationalist that he was, and an empiricist, decided to find out what happened if you force-fed a chicken with snow, and he wanted to try to find out empirically what would happen. So he took a living chicken and went out of his house on a wintry London night and started force-feeding it with snow. Now, not living in London and being exposed to snow, I would have guessed what would happen to the chicken, if you took it out and force-fed it with snow, and exactly that’s what happened: the chicken died. But, Sir Francis, in the process, caught pneumonia and died himself. I’m afraid there is a moral to this also. There is a moral to this story.
4) Finally, and I say this with some sorrow, if you do not pay attention to the cultures, and the categories, and the values with which people live in this world, if you wait for the day when you can elect people, in addition to political leaders, because, like nature, the world of culture abhors a vacuum, and others will fill that space. I often give the example of people who leave their country-house as not something up-to-date. The plumbing is not good, and it is not centrally heated. The architecture is something you do not like anymore, so you move to a new house and leave that house behind. If somebody comes and occupies it, then you become very disturbed. You begin to say that they do not know how to use the house, they are poachers, they are misusing the house and they will destroy it. But you are the one who left it in the first place. You are the one who left it empty for others to come and occupy it. If you leave the area of culture and civilisation and think you can manipulate the world through financial instruments, institutions of international monetary order, or global institutions that depend only on the relationship between nation-states, I am afraid the area of culture and values will be occupied, increasingly, by people whom you do not like. Then you can scream and say to the world that these are fundamentalists who are taking over, they do not know anything about Islam or Hinduism or Christianity, they are misusing religion to justify their own violence and pursuing their own agenda. I am afraid it will be too late. As I said, the world of culture abhors a vacuum as much as nature does. Culture is not only high culture.
The day before yesterday, Dr Karan Singh spoke of the Vedas and the Upanishads, and we have had both in the Cathedral today. We have heard some very serious scholars talk about religious traditions. I am not afraid that the high culture of Hinduism will collapse. I don’t think the high culture of Confucianism will collapse, or that of Judaism or Islam. But all cultures are not that powerful. All cultures do not have something like one billion supporters, and all cultures do not enjoy that kind of legitimacy in the global order of knowledge. Many cultures have already been wiped out because they were peripheral, small and forgettable. They were declared obsolete and banished, thrown into the dust-bin of history – not only by psychopathic rulers, but almost by carelessness or almost by default.
Some years ago, I came across the work of a young American anthropologist, not well known. He had gone to one of the Pacific islands, a small Pacific island, to meet and get apprenticed to one of the last available navigators. This Pacific island had been inhabited for at least the past 5,000 years, and this navigator, an old man, was one of the last ones who followed traditional navigation methods. These methods had allowed these people to traverse and cross the fierce Pacific Ocean and move from island to island, or survive even on the smallest islands. This American anthropologist went and apprenticed himself to this navigator and began to learn from him how to traditionally navigate the Ocean. He learned how you have to read the flight of birds, the colour and the movement of flower, the colour of the water, the vegetation floating on the water, the subtle currents you can feel when you handle the oar or when you handle the rudder. After years of training, he came to know something, how to do it without modern navigational aids, how to navigate an ocean as fierce as the Pacific Ocean. It is possible for us to say that this knowledge is superfluous, that the people who carry this knowledge are themselves also superfluous and this ancient mariner, or ancient navigator, should ideally retire and his children should work in McDonald’s, selling hamburgers. Possible. That’s an option. I grant the legitimacy of that position, too. But it is also possible that by ignoring the knowledge of others, that very humble, modest peripheralised knowledge, we have also lost some of humankind, some insight into human capabilities. We have lost something which tells you something about human nature, its range and possibilities. You have missed out something of human creativity, which you need not have. Because I am not telling you to give up all your modern navigational technologies, I am telling you that at one corner of the globe, there could have been a space for that ancient mariner pursuing his own vocation. It wouldn’t have brought down the international monetary order, it would not have brought down the great transport systems of the world, but, maybe, we would have left for our children other possibilities. Maybe we would have left for them a future slightly more open than we have at the moment. Thank you very much for your attention.

Ivan Gabal
In my position, I am not supposed to comment on the question raised, but it’s my pleasure to learn that once having my own consulting company, I have finally found somebody who may advise me on my own problems. Thank you, Mr Nandy.
Let me propose the order Professor Musil introduced yesterday. We will continue our work with other members on this panel and, after their presentations, I would like to open the floor for questions and discussion. Please, keep your questions for Mr Nandy and maybe also for Mr Michnik, if he’s back after the following presentation. Now I would like to ask Rabbi Friedlander because he has to leave us a little bit early. So, Rabbi, the floor is yours.

Albert Friedlander
Thank you. Rabbis are basically commentators of sacred texts and of the wisdom coming to us from other teachers, so that I feel, first of all, I should comment on Ashis Nandy’s remarks because they, at least, lead all of us into different patterns of thinking. When Ashis Nandy says that globalism has a sell-by date and it’s not too far away, I would like to remind you (probably I just speak for myself) that it will exceed our life-span; that it will still be around in the immediate, and possible beyond that immediate, future; that at this point, in any event, we have to deal with it. We live in this society and, if I have this pessimistic thought about a life span, then it’s also a question of what happens to us next.
Well, I can turn to our colleague Bishop Jonson, and so many others, to remind you that in my father’s house there are many mansions. Places have been prepared for us as we sit here, and that I think is your worry or your hope. But in any event we live in this society. We ask what religion, what our culture, what our own patterns of existence can do within the framework of this new society, of a society dominated by globalist thinking and the “economic patterns” which seem to be at so much of its roots, and there I think Hans Küng’s comments on relating economics and morality come very much into play.
But, like Rabbi Lau, rabbis also tell stories. My story I actually heard first from Elie Wiesel, of the righteous man who goes into Sodom, the city of wickedness, in order to convert them, to preach to them, to teach them, to change them. A little boy follows him and after a couple of days the boy tugs at his coat and says: “Listen, they are not listening to you.” He says: “I know that.” – “So why?” And he says: “Well, it’s very simple. When I came here, I thought at first I could change them. Now I preach and I shout and I teach and I don’t stop talking, because I don’t want them to change me.” And that, I think, is a pattern of religion in our society. It’s been changed in so many ways already: it evolves; it is part of a creative process in which we hear new insights, new visions; and, in which we are very much tied to the society in which we live.
Society has changed all religions, and yet if we try to say “But isn’t there an identity that we have to preserve, that identity does exist?” – it exists no matter whether one moves into a global village, or whether one comes to see that the achievements of modern technology have had something to do with our own change. It’s quite true that you can get the most banal religious teachings on the Internet by now. You have to search a lot, surf through it, to find something that has valid things to say to you, but you can still find that in a house of worship. As we have said before, we know by now that ethics and morality are not confined to the religious teachings, that it exists alongside of us, that it is there beyond us.
Sometimes we feel very powerful within religion. If Ashis can tell us that the Americans can destroy all human beings ten times over, you can go to many religions who are convinced they can save every human being ten times over. Whether that’s a threat or a promise is, again, open; but, we aren’t doing it in any event and let’s hope that the military weapons will not cause a proliferation of small or large wars in which our society, our world, is destroyed.
I liked, so much, what Amitai Etzioni had to say, perhaps because, after all, since you know Bible, Amitai is the father of Jonah, who tried the same thing: going into a society to change it. He didn’t succeed, but in the end he saw an alternative given by God, who listened more to that society where there was a spark of redemptive power, rather than to an angry prophet who wanted to wipe things out and start all over. We need a good society, a moral society for religion to flourish.
Now, that again is a statement that can be challenged in so many ways. Sometimes it’s the evil society that keeps religion alive, because it pushes us out of positions of power; and again, Havel’s book on powerlessness is something that comes to mind, that it is at that point that we can be ourselves, that we can fight against the structure around us, that we can achieve something. Judaism has been stronger because of the societies in which it lived, which marginalised it, which attacked it, which tried to destroy Jews and Judaism. It did make us stronger.
I marvel at a person like the Chief Rabbi, who came out of Buchenwald as a young boy and did not become cynical, who turned to religious insights and, in his own way, achieved much as a witness, as a kind of prophet, and there one hopes for the pattern of a Jeremiah rather than a Cassandra. Cassandra was never believed. Sometimes prophets are listened to for a moment. Sometimes religious insights do work and create at least a situation where the religious and the non-religious can work together – where there is the recognition that outside the overall structure of the society in which we live, there are pilgrims on the same path, that strive towards a universal truth, and that universal truth does unite them. I learned more working outside of my tradition rather than inside (perhaps an overstatement, but not much), but I think, also, it’s only because of the outside influence that I find myself developing as a religious person, that I achieved my identity.
From the day I was born, the Nazis told me what my identity was. I lived through Kristallnacht, through that 9th of November, and walked across shards of broken glass in Berlin and hid in attics and survived. My story is nothing compared with that of Chief Rabbi Lau but, because of it, and because of my wanderings then through society, living first in Cuba and then in Mississippi, I discovered more of myself. It was probably more the Berlin experience that made me walk along with Martin Luther King from Selma to Montgomery; that made me take a hundred students from Columbia University where I then worked, to work in that place where work was needed, where the religious and the non-religious worked together; where young students could come up to me in the streets of Selma, and on the walk itself, and say: “I never go into the synagogue, bar mitzvah factories, or whatever, I am alienated from it. When I see someone in the streets working for the things I believe, then I’m drawn back to religion.” And that is part of the pattern of religion.
As Bishop Jonson indicated, in each religious community we have ethical goals which are linked to the ethical goals of our society. I’m deeply, and firmly convinced, in his fight against the death penalty and other areas, where the religious organisations have to show compassion and awareness of the needs of others.
How can we achieve our identity within the cultural pattern in which we live? By being ourselves, but not in terms of moving into ghettos of our own creation, where we’re safe and secure behind patterns of ritual, of worship, of closed walls against outside influences, where we can live a beautiful, quiet, segregated existence from the world. Religion has to go into the world itself, it is part of the world. At the point where it seeks to be only itself, it cuts its roots from humanity.
The fact, as I said in my meditation in the Cathedral the other night, that we are aware of the Mitmensch, of a fellow human being, is an awareness that is religious, that informs us, but that is universal, that comes from an absolute fountain of truth that we can and must believe exists in the world. Science, technology and all the other areas of human endeavour quest towards realisation of something that is true, that can inform us. Einstein would also say that God does not play cosmic dice with the universe, there is something beyond that gives meaning.
No matter what society we live in, no matter how it changes, no matter how various religious patterns change, converge or separate, as long as we acknowledge it, call it the revelation that exists in all religions, call it the awareness that we must not let one religion, my own or any other, claim the total truth for itself, that long we are on the same road. If we are united as families, if we share a common community, we can work together and achieve an identity. But what I do believe and what I think is really the closing comment to our speaker is that there is a role for religion in the world. It must be a prophetic role, it must be a role of self-healing – once we love ourselves, we can love others, but we cannot, must not, make a distinction. We are all humanity, and religion is an aspect of that humanity which should never be destroyed. Thank you.

Ivan Gabal
Thank you, Mr Friedlander, who is also a dean and a teacher. Now, I would like to invite other panellists for comments and their contributions. Can I ask Mr Mehmet Aydin for comments?

Mehmet Aydin
Thank you, Mr Chairman. I have two comments. One on the cultural identity and the second one on religious dialogue, or dialogue in general, which is, in a very serious sense, related to cultural identity as well. I am of the opinion, or in fact to be more precise, I have the feeling that cultural identity is not a thing, it is not a substance, or even an essence to be discovered. It seems to be, to use a Whiteheadian terminology, a nexus, it is a happening, it is an event in the making, an organically related whole, a structure if you like, but not in a very tight sense, a process which has a recognisable continuity, and thus a reality.
Normally, cultural identities are open and they do not function monolithically. A cultural identity functions, varies, from person to person and it also shows a great deal of variations within the life span of the one and the same person. Like many of us, I too have to make some generalisations when I am to talk about cultural identities, without forgetting the irksome fact that such endeavour runs into many difficulties, empirical and logical in nature.
Here is my first generalisation. Now I am talking autobiographically, existentially if you like. The classical, and to the very large extent the traditional, Muslim cultural identity, for example, was richer and more open compared with the identity of a typically modern Muslim. That identity was largely enriched by the teachings of the Koran, to begin with, which were themselves open to the teachings of Moses and Jesus in a direct way, and to the teachings of other great religious traditions in an indirect way. It was also thoroughly familiar, that cultural identity, with Greek, Hellenistic thought, experience and wisdom. Because of such a background, that identity could feel itself at home, I would like to underline this phrase because it is very much related to cultural identity, it could feel itself at home with the Jewish and Christian identities for many, many centuries. Before we start talking about the West and the rest, these identities shared a very important common universe, common ground. Al-Farabi, the greatest Muslim philosopher, accepted Aristotle as his first and greatest master. Maimonides the Jew accepted Al Farabi as his guide in logic and in metaphysics. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest father of the Church, let the Islamic and the Jewish ideas pour into his mind and to his heart freely.
My second generalisation. Like many, if not all, cultural identities in the West, and elsewhere, the modern Muslim cultural identity has many difficulties and shortcomings to cope with. To begin with, due to many reasons, it has failed to carry enough of the life experiences from the rich historical identity that I just mentioned, into the mainstream of its modern life. Were their cultural identity successful in this, it might have faced the challenges of modernism, rather than modernisation and westernism, and of course above all Orientalism, more creatively and productively. In short, it has failed to create its own synthetic process of modernisation, in other words a modernisation with its own culture. To be more precise, a modernisation with Islam, and I am glad that somebody talked about this type of modernisation and made Japanese and Indian modernisation examples. They can modernise in the way that their culture leads them. Actually, I see some signs for a slow emergence of this type of modernisation and of this type of cultural identity.
I, myself, see no future for a religious consciousness and, thus, identity is crudely politicised and imprisoned within an integrationist frame. Only a broad, if you like “liberal” in a very large sense, interpretation of sources of the fundament, and of historical experience which relates interpretation to being, to use a Heideggerian term, at personal and interpersonal levels can pave the way for a renewed enriched cultural identity. What I have said so far in respect to the Islamic identity can reasonably be thought of about the Christian and Jewish identities, or other religious identities as well.
Now, here I wish to make a very brief reference to dialogue, as I said, which some our religious leaders touched upon in the morning. A true, significant dialogue ought to be carried out at three different, but organically related levels.
A. - The first level is the descriptive or the informative level. We don’t know about each other’s cultural identities because we do not know enough about each other’s cultures. Some of us stay in Istanbul or in Cairo for three weeks or three months and, when they go back home, they usually write one or two volumes on Islamic or Turkish-Islamic culture or cultural identity. A global framework cannot do us good with the amount of ignorance that is frighteningly looming over all of us.
B. - The second level is the critical and evaluative level. Without a critical mind, talking to each other about religions, or other major issues, will lead us, I believe, nowhere. Here I have no intention of denying the importance of saying nice things to each other.
C. - The existential and experiential level of dialogue. I have obtained enough knowledge, and I have used my critical power, and then I have to ask the question: for what purpose? Well, there may be many good purposes for such an endeavour, but the important question is this: Can one bring anything at all to one’s own personal life from dialectical meetings, dialogues? I think one can, and what he or she brings can be existentially extremely important, important for the enrichment of our cultural identities and important for our interpersonal relations.
Thank you very much.

Ivan Gabal
Thank you. I would like to invite, according to the list, Mr Kóei Kani, representing the Japanese Tendai Buddhist school.

Kóei Kani
I am a representative of the Japanese Buddhist movement. I come from the Mountain Uji, which is not far from Kyoto. I would like to thank President Havel, first of all, for inviting us to this Forum.
Forum 2000 is a conference at which a number of very interesting ideas have been presented. I believe that the very question of civilisation is a highly complex one. To understand what we mean by civilisation, that is one of the most complex issues that we are dealing with at this Forum. I am a representative of one religion here and, therefore, I would like to speak about this religion, or to tell you what I think about religion.
Churches or religions, if you will, as it has been discussed by a number of speakers before me, comprise people who believe in the uniqueness of their truth. Most of these people are virtually unable to adopt anybody else’s ideas or truths and, as such, are in opposition to other teachings. But God’s teaching, I believe, does not include this element of “fight”, or conflict. There is no element of any fighting between nations. I think that the very concept of fight, or conflict, is one of the major problems of world civilisation and, as such, has contributed to a number of problems. Most of these problems, most of the conflicts, have been due to this concept.
In terms of the concept of globalisation, we should not forget that there is also what we call Asian globalisation and there is a major difference between these two types of globalisation. As you all know, both Japan and China are two countries that are important parts of the global economy. In terms of economics, these two countries are globalised, but in terms of culture, each of these countries has its own long history and traditions and in no case is it possible to globalise these particular cultures.
Japan is an island. It is a country that is almost a monolithic nation, is constituted of a monolithic nation. It is also a country where we have not witnessed any major religious conflicts or wars. The Japanese Ministry of Culture has its own statistics and I can tell you that the number of people who are the followers of major religions, in fact, is believed to cover almost the whole Japanese population. For example, when there is a wedding, very often young people get married in a Christian church these days. A funeral usually takes place in a Buddhist Temple. Shinto gods live in trees, in mountains, in nature; also, in Buddhism we worship trees and grass and, of course, also man and all the animals.
All these are a source of Buddhism, in other words: Everything, for us, is a source of Buddhism. Under certain conditions there are certain characteristics that unite; and, perhaps because we are such a country, for these reasons. In 1945, we were the country on which the nuclear bomb was dropped and a lot of people died as a consequence. Those who died were then buried and, during these burial ceremonies that took place in Buddhist temples and also in Christian churches, we all tried to arrive at reconciliation. The Shinko Kyoha religion, which is a new religion in Japan (these new religions join in all the different worships and ceremonies with other religions) again, attempts at arriving at reconciliation. I myself, for example, travelled in August this year to Nagasaki and paid tribute to all those who died in 1945, and I think it is very important to remember that we are all capable of joining in these worships and in these ceremonies.
We, the representatives of the Tendai School, in 1987 in Assisi, all took part in prayers for peace together with the representatives of other religions. In 1988 our Japanese representatives, representatives of our sect, organised a meeting with the representatives of other religions on Uji mountain. On that occasion, all those who presented their views were not only Buddhists, but also Christians, Muslims and representatives of other religions.
I mentioned Nagasaki a minute ago, the place where the nuclear bomb was dropped. Our country is a tiny country, in fact, but there are larger countries too, and I believe that our ideas, that is truly Japanese ideas, cannot be applied in these large countries, but still, I must mention here one thing and that is that everything is fluid. We did not believe that the Berlin wall would ever fall, and it did collapse. I think that it is very, very important that representatives of every single religion speak together, this could open up a better future for all of us. Globalisation and religion is often focused on this dialogue.
Thank you.

Ivan Gabal
Thank you, Mr Kani. I would like to invite Bishop Jonson, according to the list. Please, the floor is yours. Jonas Jonson

Jonas Jonson
Moderators, I’ve taken so much of your time already, I will limit myself to three very brief comments, resounding what has been said already by Dr Nandy and Dr Friedlander.
There is an African proverb saying that it takes a village to raise a child, and this is the title of one of the famous books by Mrs Hillary Clinton. But I would like to remind you that it takes a village to raise a child. It takes a community with roots, traditions, values, social responsibility, a community where one is seen and heard and respected, to mature as a human being and as a citizen. Only those who are rooted, truly rooted somewhere are able to live an international life and an intercultural life. Therefore, the need for the small community, for family, for social, religious and cultural communities giving identity is ever increasing as the world is globalised. That’s my first point.
The second point, and this is just to remind all of us, is that civilisation, as was said earlier today, can be defined as the ability to live with, and appreciate diversity. A global civilisation must be based on such ability and in this global civilisation tolerance, the word we often use, simply does not suffice anymore, because tolerance is always determined and defined by the majority and by the powerful. Therefore, it can also be eradicated by the same majority. We have to work for a positive affirmation of the other, a declared and agreed right for the other. That’s a different thing, and it’s a much more demanding thing, and a much more challenging thing, not least to those of us who represent religions.
My third brief point is that while our identity – cultural, linguistic, national, religious, whatever it is – is indispensable, any identity without identification with the wider world, with people of other identities, will deteriorate into self-sufficiency. I heard Dr Friedlander say this, and I repeat it. An identity without identification would make a ghetto. But on the other hand, identification with the world and its concerns without identity will lead nowhere. Identification without identity leads to what the French sometimes call an “open boulevard”, it leads us nowhere. Therefore, this is the challenge to all of us: to hold these things together, identity and identification, the small community and the wide community, the local and the global; and, it is only if you are able to live globally at the local level that this world will survive.
Thank you.

Ivan Gabal
Thank you very much. The next speaker is Mr Shariff Abdullah. The floor is yours.

Shariff M. Abdullah
Thank you. I am going to try to keep my remarks short and coherent in the interest of time. I want to thank President Havel for inviting me, and all of us, to this gathering. I want to thank our speakers, especially today Dr Nandy and Adam Michnik, for enlivening our conversations. I want to start off with a couple of preface remarks.
We’ve come to the realisation that humanity is destroying the world and destroying our niche in the world. We’re dissolving human societies, we’re creating a world and we’ve created a world that works for only a few. None of us plan on doing this. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says: “I think I’ll destroy the world today.” All of us are participating in this but none of us want it, so we are caught in a trap and we need to find ways out of that trap. I am hoping that things like Forum 2000 and other Forums will create that world.
Just as all of us, to some extent or another, participate in the destruction of the world, all of us, to some extent or another, can participate in the salvation of the world. All of us can create a world that works for all. We can do that through the practice of inclusivity. I believe the practice of inclusivity is our spiritual quest of the 21st century. By inclusivity? I want to define the word because, again, just like globalisation and everything else we’ve been talking about a lot of words but we don’t necessarily understand what it is that we are talking about. By inclusivity I mean the set of behaviours that say that our lives are inextricably linked to the other and that what I do to, and with, the other is going to have some relevance in the quality of my life. This is a fancier way of talking about the golden rule.
I want to tell you something that happened to me back in January. I was on a panel discussion, actually I was a keynote speaker for a discussion on the anniversaries of the births of King and Gandhi and two of the other speakers that were on that panel were two men from Northern Ireland. One was Roman Catholic, the other was Protestant. They were working together and going around the world together to talk about peace and harmony. But they talked about it from their own personal backgrounds. The Protestant said that he had several Roman Catholics in his car, but they had always been in the trunk of his car. The Roman Catholic talked about going to Protestant neighbourhoods and burning the houses down and hoping that people were in the houses so that he could kill them along with burning their houses down. These two men, from their backgrounds, were able to transcend what they thought was their religion and get to the point that they could recognise that they had something in common with each other and could work for that common goal. I think that our question is: in this world, separating into the trends for fundamentalism and exclusivity, and the trends for inclusivity and further understanding with each other, how can we support the trend for inclusivity, how can we support the trend that leads to greater depth and greater understanding?
We kill each other and we are willing to be killed because of a thought about our culture, or our identity, or who we are, or what we are. We have to begin the process of changing those thoughts. Legislation is not going to do it. Setting up a global watch-dog, or a global police force is not going to do it. Each of us has a heart and each of us can police ourselves, but we can’t begin to do that unless we start exploring what some of those thoughts are.
In these last few days, we’ve been saying a lot of words and we’ve been talking a lot, and we talk about religion and we talk about God and we talk about the spirit, but I’m not sure how much we’re digging into our hearts to find out what we need to do to make the world a better place, to create this world that works for all.
I know that this was not an academic exercise for me: I was in Sri Lanka a few months ago and I was going from one village to another and I was in a van full of Sinhalese, and we came to a funeral, where people were getting ready for a funeral procession. These were all Tamils. For a moment, I could feel the tension between these two groups. There weren’t any profound religious leaders around. There weren’t any people talking about ecumenical activities or anything like that. There were just two groups and I realised I could be very close to losing my life right now for issues I didn’t even understand.
Unless we start talking about the Roman Catholic who is willing to kill Protestants, unless we’re willing to talk to the Jewish separatists that are willing to kill Muslims, and the Muslim separatists that are willing to kill Jews, then we’re going to end up with a 21st century that I don’t want to live in. And, since this the only planet we’ve got, we don’t have that as an option. I could go on but I won’t.
Thank you.

Ivan Gabal
Thank you very much. The last speaker on the panel... I would like to ask for comments from a representative of the Student’s Forum 2000 – Yael Ohana from the Central European University in Budapest.

Yael Ohana
Thank you, Mr Chairman. Distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, first allow me to say what a pleasure it is for me to be able to take part in this conference and to thank you very much for the opportunity to actually take the floor.
As the topic of this panel is Global Civilisation and Cultural Identities, and as I am a student delegate and also a youth worker, I would like to offer my perspective on this issue as it relates to young people, even though some of the more general comments will necessarily relate to every age group. Please indulge me for a moment and allow me to suggest the following mental exercise.
Imagine if you will, the cross-section of an onion. The first thing one notices about this is that under the skin one sees a layer, and under that layer one sees another layer, and so on, and so on. This simple analogy is to illustrate that identity is a multi-layered concept and it is a complex reality for each individual to form and live. Turning to the onion once again, it is an interesting exercise to ask ourselves which are the components of our identities, placing each component in a layer of the onion, and in which rank ordering we would place them, the most important elements at the centre, or the core, and the lesser ones in the outer layers. It’s more difficult to do that than it seems at first.
Culture is only one element in the construction of an identity, but it is present every time I do this exercise with the young people I work with. Very often, it is considered as the core element. It leads one to think, finally, that there is something more to this cultural thing after all. The conditions of the globalised society and economy have made identity formation more complex and its mediation more of a conscious effort. While I cannot say this of all young people, it is certainly true of Europe, North America and the affluent areas of Asia.
Young people no longer identify solely with traditional religious, social, political or cultural identities. They also identify with the images they see on TV, youth sub-cultures and peer groups. Young people have more freedom of action and, in certain societies, more resources to choose their affiliations than once was the case. They have more access to the world beyond the territorial borders of the country in which they live and, thereby, more access to different cultural messages and realities.
While these are positive developments, representing the opportunities that globalisation can bring with it for young people, risks are also inherent to this process. Such risks are represented by the increasing number of young people who succumb to alcohol and drug abuse, suicide or eating disorders, who become homeless, and who risk exclusion and marginalisation as a result of the cut-throat competition of the global labour markets, or who experience racism and xenophobia. This is clearly not the majority of young people, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a problem. What is clear from this situation is that identity formation amongst young people is no longer as straightforward as it once was. If society and social relations are more complex, then so will be the way in which young people define themselves.
Culture or rather cultural self-definitions have become more important to this process. That is to say we can understand a young person’s membership in a single issue movement, such as in the realm of human rights, environmentalism, or the anti-racist field, or their homosexuality, for example. These cultural identities often run parallel to ethnic, religious, or national identities and affiliations. There are not just one or two more layers in that onion of ours as a result of globalisation, but also various faces to it.
Coming to an emotional acceptance of this is often an extremely difficult business. No young person wants to be in the position of having to choose between total assimilation and extremism. Many fall by the wayside in the process of mediating these choices. There are some relatively simple reasons for this shift, including the fact that young people continue to find themselves alienated from the traditional national political process and its institutions and that traditional role models, once found in the family, school, university, the trade union or religious community, are less familiar and less present than in previous stages of modernity.
Another important reason is that in the information overflow, the flood of media messages, about how to look, who to be, what to eat, what to wear, what to even think, young people turn to other and necessarily alternative self-definitions. In essence, what we are talking about here is the need to accept a new identity reality among young people. A reality which involves not only the many layers in identity construction but also its many facets.
We are dealing with multiple identities in the globalised society. Young people are also living in multicultural societies and continue to face, on a daily basis, that which is different to them. Whether the difference takes the form of colour, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, or gender, is actually irrelevant. It’s the difference which counts. It’s the fact of “otherness”. Confronting that which is “other” to you means putting yourself into question. Some small change will take place in your way of thinking. It’s a little like the moral dialogue which Amitai Etzioni spoke of yesterday, but on a me-to-I basis. Most people fear this possibility.
Such questions are never easy to pose or to answer, for that matter. A stable cultural identity, as understood above, can help young people to overcome these fears and to deal with differences in a capable and constructive way. Learning to live with “me” makes “him or her” easier to live with. The intercultural communication skills needed by young people to negotiate their way in the global society, those being in particular empathy, solidarity and tolerance of ambiguity, and role distance, come to the fore of the debate.
But how does a young person get these skills? And without a generation possessing such skills, how can the notion of transnational citizenship, referred to so often in this conference, ever be translated into a reality. There is more to this debate than a lesson in emotional intelligence or amateur psychology.
Yesterday there were two contributions that touched me a lot and made me reflect, in a more practical way, about the issue of the “how”. In the first place, Mehmet Aydin strongly advocated the need to redefine the educational paradigm we have been stuck in for centuries, that is almost solely guided by instrumental rationality and which is prevalent in our school systems. They certainly don’t teach tolerance and ambiguity in school. I learned it in a seminar which brought together young people from Jewish, Muslim, Christian and homosexual or lesbian backgrounds, to discuss the issue of being a member of a minority. Empathy I learned the first time I was involved in a humanitarian action to aid refugees. Solidarity I learned through strong friendships across national and religious lines. As for role distance, I’m still trying to learn it and the progress is slow. Is this not what we should be teaching in our schools alongside mathematics and foreign languages? From a pedagogical point of view, there is no valid argument for not integrating intercultural approaches, already practised for over 25 years in the out-of-school education field, into formal school curricula. In fact, from the point of view of the socialisation role of schools, it is even to be recommended.
In the second place, Miklós Sükösd referred to what he termed as the “inter-generational love test”. Can this generation of policy-makers and academics content themselves with paying lip service to the fact that young people are the inheritors of the future? I think we agree that the answer is no. It is clear from the above, and from everyday life, that young people need to be prepared and trained to deal with new-world realities, to form stable cultural identities, and to live in peace with themselves and their culturally “other” peers. How long will education systems fail the inter-generational love test? Along with a clean environment, I would put this on my wish list for my generation’s inheritance.
I realise that I’ve taken up a lot of time with these remarks, and I hope I haven’t overstayed my welcome as a result; but I would just like to conclude by posing a question to our distinguished panellists, and that is: how do you actually perceive this problem, given that you all come from different culture heritages yourselves, and what action would you take to remedy this?

Ivan Gabal
We thank you. Now, we will open the discussion for all others here; however, I would like to stress that we have 25 minutes, so please be brief. The first on our list is Karan Singh.

Karan Singh
Thank you, Mr Moderator. I would like to congratulate my good friend Ashis on a very brilliant and thought-provoking alternative viewpoint on globalisation, which will surely make all of us think very deeply.
There are two comments I would like to make, two comments which I think need to be considered. The first is that it’s not simply a question of change being forced, as it were, down the throat by the victorious cultures. A lot of people want to change. We travel around our constituencies, we go to villages, these so-called traditional cultures or the local cultures. They don’t want to stay the way they are. For example, the son of that ancient mariner wouldn’t want to be a mariner, he’d want to join the marines. So, there’s a generational change here and if you were to tell them: “No, no, you’re a very valuable cultural pluralistic asset to the world and, therefore, you must not change,” they’re not going to listen to that. So, I would submit that it is not only a question of what the victors are doing, it’s also a question of people. They want change, they want modernisation, they want running water, they want electricity, they want all these requirements, and so, this is one point which, perhaps, was not stressed in your presentation.
The second very brief point is that you predicted that globalisation will not last more than a decade or two. I would submit the process of Westernisation (I don’t know what exactly you called it) or modernisation, the words may not be used any longer, but the processes are continuing. For example, would you define Parliamentary Democracy as Westernisation? It came from the West, but surely, we are the largest democracy in the world now, so it’s as much ours as the West’s. So, although the words, the semantics, may change, I think the processes of globalisation are now so strong that they will not disappear. In fact, the only prediction we can make is that globalisation will take place probably much quicker than any of us in this room expects.

Ivan Gabal
Thank you, next on my list is our colleague, Mr Sükösd.

Miklós Sükösd
Thank you very much, Mr Chairman. There are many questions on the table and I would like to add two more, very briefly.
One is about humankind’s extermination of other species, that I find an extremely deep ethical question. Presently, as a result of environmental destruction we are wiping out other species. Some scientists estimate that 5-10 per cent of existing species are being blown away by humankind from the surface of the Earth. We are killing these species and I would like to ask the distinguished representatives of world religions and spiritual traditions about their opinions about this. To me this is the greatest sin that humankind can commit – to exterminate God’s creations, or sentient beings, to use the Hindu or Buddhist term. What would the church, the mosque, the synagogue think about this. If we do this to human people it’s called genocide, which is the highest or deepest sin we can commit, and now we’re doing it to whole other species, one species doing it to another, and wiping out genetic material from the Earth.
The second question relates to this: this is about genetic engineering and the ethical dimensions. We are creating new creatures. That was hitherto considered the job of God. I would like to invite some reflection about this, especially because we are in the city of Prague, the place of the Golem myth, where all the Frankenstein myths are coming from, and it’s my understanding that bad science, as it was referred to by our panel chair yesterday, is doing similar things. Genetic engineering is changing the very notion of what a human being is. What is human body, what is human mind, what is human soul? Think of the cloning of animals, and within 2 or 3 years of humans. I would greatly appreciate if you can give us spiritual guidance.

Ivan Gabal
Thank you. Now I think it’s Mr Weiming Tu.

Weiming Tu
Thank you, Mr Moderator. I am very much in support of Sharif Abdullah’s notion about inclusivity, in the sense that we hope that this will be a continuous, single conversation rather than many different conversations. But my question is addressed to Professor Nandy, especially the first substantive point, I think in short, is the notion that your future is my past; therefore, it’s an imperialistic, hegemonic, controlling attitude.
If we look at the situation in East Asia, very briefly, the East Asian intellectuals have been devoted students of Western learning for more than 100 years. If you take case of the Japanese: you have Dutch learning, British learning, French learning, German learning and, more recently, American learning. They’ve been so seasoned in this particular rhetoric, we call it Westernisation or modernisation, that they became major defenders.
Right now this is the argument, as you pointed out, for this kind of hegemonic notion of scientists and rationalists. You don’t find too many major defenders in Cambridge, Massachusetts, or Paris, or Frankfurt; but you do find defenders in Tokyo, Beijing or New Delhi, and it’s so much a part of that mentality that the question is: how are you going to deal with it?
Let me give you a brief case of a Hawaiian spiritual leader who has been so much seasoned with Western ideas that they are already part of the layers of complexity of his own consciousness. For example, the very poignant notion that when the missionaries first came: You had the bible, we had the land; now we have the bible, you have the land. Yet, in that kind of complicated power relationship, and many of the spiritual leaders are Christians, and how do they deal with their own indigenous resources as well as the Christian tradition? How do the East Asian intellectuals deal with enlightenment mentality, which is very much a part of their own cultural psyche, and also their own indigenous tradition? Sometimes the indigenous tradition becomes a distant echo, whereas the rhetoric that forms the ideas turns out to be enlightenment mentality. I think you are quite familiar with that problem.

Ivan Gabal
Thank you, now I would like to ask Hans Küng to make his comment.

Hans Küng
Thank you, Mr Chairman. I would have liked to ask the Chief Rabbi, when he was still present. Unfortunately that is not possible now, but it’s basically a question which is addressed to all three religions.
I think we heard wonderful speeches from all of them, and I liked, very much, what the Chief Rabbi said about his meetings with King Hussain, or with regard to his visit to Al Azhar University; but, what I missed was really one word about this big conflict which is at the origin of a great deal of wars and hatred, and we, the whole world, are very much concerned about this and peace in the Near East. I would have expected one word about that.
I talked to the Chief Rabbi about it privately and I would agree with him when he said that he is not a political figure and he doesn’t want to interfere with political issues. I would not expect that the three religions, I’m speaking to all of them, would now really interfere directly politically. Nevertheless, we would expect a little more from religions in the Near East, and I am including my own, the Christian religion.
You see, the basic conflict with regard to Israel and Palestine is basically that we have two people who pretend to have the right to the same territory, and these rights are founded in a religious way. Very much in a religious way. So, if religions will not speak out about what is possible, there will always be a war going on, a hot war or a cold war. It is here that I think religions should speak about what is possible, which is more than just a political message, that we are also able to renounce certain rights, and I’m speaking to all three religions.
I’m a Swiss citizen and I have observed very carefully. I have taught in Germany for decades. Peace between Poland and Germany, peace between the Czech Republic and Germany, is only possible if there is a willingness to renounce certain rights. If you come back again, and again, to the notion that you have rights to a territory, for instance eastern German territories, you will never have peace. I know that there are still people in Germany who have not digested that, but the great majority of people have digested that, and they have renounced certain rights.
Now, is it not possible that in the Near East we could also, from all sides, renounce certain rights in order to have peace? This would then make is possible to have some of the problems of frontiers defined. The Hebrew Bible is not very clear about the frontiers of Israel, we have very different indications in the Hebrew Bible about that. It would be possible to discuss this issue, but I think we need not only a change of heart, and not only a change of diplomacy.
I don’t think that the diplomacy we are experiencing now, already for several months, will go anywhere. I know we need a political arrangement but, I must say, when today we have a settlement between Germany and Poland, between Germany and France, there were, to a great extent, religious impulses behind it. President Havel, when he gave arguments for peace, these were basically religious arguments that we have to have peace; so, why is it not possible for religions to be more active in the Near East. I know that we have here the former adviser to President Anwar Sadat. I think this was also a great thing that he went to Jerusalem without having riots and renouncing certain things. He was killed afterwards because of it, but I think that this was, nevertheless, a better thing than any other thing that we have had in diplomacy.

Ivan Gabal
Thank you, Mr. Küng, both you and Adam Michnik prove that not only dialogue among religions but also dialogues between political sciences and religion may be very interesting. Now, Mae-Wan Ho please, your comment.

Mae-Wan Ho
Thank you for the floor. As a scientist and agnostic humanist, I want to support a lot of what was said this morning about inter-generation love by the last panellist, and also Bishop Jonson’s saying that tolerance is not enough, that we have to have positive affirmation of the “other”. And, in the “other” I would include generations yet to be born, as well as other species; and Mehmet Aydin mentioned Whitehead, and this is very important, he was an English mathematician and philosopher who was speaking after quantum theory and, basically, he was an organicist arguing for the universal entanglement of all being. So I wish to extend Bishop Jonas’s remark: enhancing the “other” is enhancing oneself, and this is a Whiteheadian view. Finally, I would like to congratulate Ashis Nandy for holding up a mirror to the provincialism and thoughtlessness of our dominant culture and I would like to give a very concrete example, and that is in the patents on living organisms, that is the patents on life, which is now very much associated with the bio-tech industry. What it does is, it turns life into commodities, in the first instance. In the second instance, using this bad science, bad dominant science, it excludes all other knowledge systems. Geneticists from corporations are now going into the Third World stealing seeds and plant varieties, as well as the knowledge of indigenous communities, and patenting them as their own invention, and then exploiting them commercially. Not only that, under the so-called Homogeno diversity project, geneticists are now going around collecting blood from indigenous tribes under the pretext of giving medical care, then immortalising their cell lines, their blood cells, and screening them for genes for the so-called benefit of humanity, before these tribes are driven to extinction by the activities of these corporations. And, of course, this is all to be exploited in the pharmaceutical industries.

Ivan Gabal
Hazel Henderson.

Hazel Henderson
Thank you, I would just like to endorse everything that my friend Professor Ho has just stated, and just make a short reference, personally.
I was brought up by two atheists in a very strict atheist household and this required me to find my identity by exploring all moral, religious and ethical traditions. What I found in most of them, when you stripped everything else away, was very serviceable, the Golden Rule; and, it relates also to the inclusivity that Mr Abdullah was talking about. What I don’t understand, really, is why it is so difficult not to go back to this fundamental kind of understanding. To me this implies reverence for all life, reverence for the planet and the earth ethics that we need in order to survive. So that’s my question: Why is it not possible to go back to the simplicity underlying all these great religions?

Ivan Gabal
The last comment or remark by Mr Evans.

Gareth Evans
On the subject of cultural identity and harmony that’s been addressed this morning, I’ve got some good news and some bad news to relate to you from Australia.
The good news is: it is the case that multicultural societies can work brilliantly and successfully. I represent, as a Parliamentarian, an electorate in suburban Melbourne which has these characteristics: it has 80,000 people, more than half of whom were born outside of Australia, overwhelmingly from non-English speaking countries. They were born in 140 different countries, in fact, those 80,000 people. Nearly three-quarters of them were either born overseas or have at least one parent born overseas. They reflect every migration tradition from the Mediterranean, from the Middle East, from Southeast Asia, from China, from the Horn of Africa. It is a delightful community to represent, delightful in terms of the kids in the schools, delightful in terms of the way that the community integrates, lives, works, shops together in the marketplaces. I’ve seen the future and it works. I’ve seen it, I live with it daily, and it works.
One of the reasons it works is because policies have been adopted, in recent years by government, to fully respect the diversity of people’s cultural identity. The prevailing ideology of multiculturalism in Australia is not the metaphor of the “melting pot”, which is the one we most characterise with the United States; nor even is it the metaphor of the “mosaic”, which a lot of other people find attractive within a larger picture where you still get individual blocks of colour, separately identifiable. The prevailing metaphor is of the salad bowl, multiple ingredients mixed, tumbled together, in a kind of harmonious bowl, but each ingredient retaining its identity; and, a lot of attention is given to encouraging people, through government programmes and other forms of support, to keep their separate places of worship, their community schools, their language – and it’s all been, I think, very successful. The degree of that success was reflected in the fact that in 1995, for the 50th Anniversary of the United Nations, we hosted a conference on global, cultural diversity attended by Boutros-Ghali and all the rest of the international leaders, and the success was acknowledged.
The bad news is that all of that is desperately fragile, and in the absence of strong and intelligent and responsible political leadership it can come crumbling down very, very rapidly and we’ve had some experience in Australia – in recent years, in the last three years – that you may have read about which I think amply demonstrates that.
We’ve had a political movement developing, in itself not unknown elsewhere, of a particular woman leading a populist movement, which is essentially racist, xenophobic, insular, parochial, and prejudiced in its character. The reason why it won more political support than it could and should have done was that it was dealt with in absolutely the wrong way by our national political leadership. Aid, comfort, succour, nourishment was given to this indecency. What was inherently disreputable was made respectable by our political leadership saying: this is the proper exercise of free speech; this is a reaction against the political correctness of recent years; people should be allowed to think the “unthinkable”, not only to think the “unthinkable,” but to say the “unsayable” and maybe, to some extent, do the “unthinkable”.
As a result, the people in my community experienced, for the first time since they’d been in my country, acts of prejudice, acts of humiliation, signs painted on walls, abuse in the street. Just the little things, not much overt violence, not much visible disintegration in any physical sense, but a very, very serious psychological assault on an atmosphere of harmony.
There’s been, now, something of a reaction against that. Community leadership, the political leadership, has recognised the mistake in being excessively tolerant of this particular movement and, as a result, they’ve been much less successful in the recent election just conducted a few days ago.
But I simply make the point that political leadership has a huge responsibility if we’re to get this right in the new globalised environment where population flows, and the mixing and mingling of cultures, and the urge and the anxiety to preserve and protect those cultures within larger national unity and international harmony, where all these currents are going to run more and more. There’s a desperate responsibility on political leadership here, as elsewhere in the region, to understand the currents at work and to get it right: to act strongly, intelligently and responsibly. When that doesn’t happen at the political level, social disharmony is not very far away.

Ivan Gabal
Thank you very much, Mr. Evans, and now I would like to ask Mr Ashis Nandy to deal with a number of questions in one or two minutes.

Ashis Nandy
Fortunately, some of the questions answer themselves. I don’t have to respond to them. But two or three points I might, at the end, emphasise.
A) Mr Friedlander’s witnessing. I think there is a point where our age has been called the “Age of Testimony” by some. But testimony requires two aspects: 1) the ability to listen, not only with your two ears, but as one psychoanalyst calls it, listening with the third ear. Are we willing to listen? That is my question to myself. 2) As far as bearing witness goes, I think we, as intellectuals, and probably also others, bear no allegiance, and we bear no responsibility, to support the categories of the powerful and the rich. These categories can take care of themselves; but it is our responsibility to bear witness to those who are weak. We might not be able to help the meek inherit the earth, but we can at least help the meek to survive, and that is good enough for us, as far as witnessing goes.
B) I do agree that cultures borrow from each other but there is one way of borrowing, when the cultures do it on their own. Another way is that cultures are made to borrow because there’s no option left. Chile came to India from Mexico, and most people now identify it with more India than with Mexico. That is normal, natural cultural borrowing which comes out of a volition of cultures. But there are other types of culture. I would like to believe that democracy, in some form or another, in the form of tolerance of diversities, 1,800 languages, 20,000 casts, 15 national languages (at least, probably 22 now, I think if I am correct). India has lived with diversity, India knows how to live with diversities, that is also one way, at least a modest definition of democracy, so in that sense democracy is not imported, it came from within, the external institutions might be secondary, I don’t know.
C) Extinction of species as well as cultures. I think this comes partly from the kind of taxidermist concept of culture we often have. I remember one of the saddest days of my life when, in the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, I found a corner which is not usually noticed. Usually in Holocaust museums there are mandatory photographs of chimneys and the dead. Now, here was a corner in the Los Angeles Museum where there was assembled a number of small artefacts collected from Jewish communities. They were collected by the Nazis, and the sign there says that these were collected for a projected museum of an extinct race. After you finish off, after you exterminate a species you then, like a taxidermist, take out the artefacts of the culture to set up a museum of an extinct race. In some way the psychology behind it, however pathological it might look to us at a distance, is not alien to us, it is also part of our world, of our culture.
Finally, I do not think that tolerance, by itself, will do. We do need tolerance, but we need something more than that, and I have no better way of putting it than to say that it is some form of self-recognition, it is not only tolerance in our own self-interest. We must recognise and effectively have a dialogue with others, because the other is not only other but is also the self.
In Sri Lanka I once found that most of the Buddhists have a Hindu camp inside their own campus, and when I asked them why there was a Hindu Temple right within the Buddhist Temples the said that it was because the Hindu Gods are open to negotiations. The Buddhist Gods are too other-worldly and too austere, whereas the Hindu Gods are open to negotiations. If you can offer them proper bribes they can do things for you. So, this bitter civil war is going on in Sri Lanka, which has already killed 40,000 people. Many of the Sinhalese soldiers who go to fight these dangerous Hindus in the North, before going to fight there they go to these Hindu Temples to take the blessings of the Hindu Gods to go to fight the Hindus in the North.
So, there we have “multiple-selves” of the kind that Dr Karan Singh was speaking of, but there is also another kind of “multiple-selves”, recognising that the self is a painful process and I was mainly driving at that kind of “multiple-self”, so that the tolerance of multiculturalism, which comes from tolerance, is not adequate. Multiculturalism, which comes from confrontation of self with self, with his own self, is the kind of multiculturalism I was talking about.
I remember Gandhi’s famous saying: I am a Hindu, a Muslim, a Christian and a Jew; and, so are you. When I was in Israel, I recognised, with some pain, that they want to try to clean up Hebrew of all these Arabic words because Judaism and Islam have grown so close to each other that, in some fundamental sense, the Jews and the Muslims are each other’s other, and they are telescoped within themselves. It’s that kind of multiculturalism I was talking about.