Tuesday, August 30, 2011
ਮੰਨੋ ਜਾਂ ਨਾ ਮੰਨੋ : ਅੰਨਾ ਵਰਤਾਰੇ ਤੇ ਕੁੱਝ ਸਵਾਲ -ਆਨੰਦ ਸਵਰੂਪ ਵਰਮਾ
ਅੰਨਾ ਹਜਾਰੇ ਨੇ 28 ਅਗਸਤ ਨੂੰ ਦਿਨ ਵਿੱਚ ਸਾਢੇ ਦਸ ਵਜੇ ਵਰਤ ਤੋੜਨ ਦੇ ਬਾਅਦ ਰਾਮਲੀਲਾ ਮੈਦਾਨ ਤੋਂ ਜੋ ਭਾਸ਼ਣ ਦਿੱਤਾ ਉਸ ਤੋਂ ਆਉਣ ਵਾਲੇ ਦਿਨਾਂ ਦੇ ਉਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਦੇ ਏਜੰਡੇ ਦਾ ਪਤਾ ਚੱਲਦਾ ਹੈ । ਇੱਕ ਕੁਸ਼ਲ ਰਾਜਨੀਤਗ ਦੀ ਤਰ੍ਹਾਂ ਉਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਨੇ ਉਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਸਾਰੇ ਮੁੱਦਿਆਂ ਨੂੰ ਭਵਿੱਖ ਵਿੱਚ ਚੁੱਕਣ ਦੀ ਗੱਲ ਕਹੀ ਹੈ ਜੋ ਸਤਹੀ ਤੌਰ ਉੱਤੇ ਵਿਵਸਥਾ ਤਬਦੀਲੀ ਦੀ ਲੜਾਈ ਦਾ ਆਭਾਸ ਦੇਣਗੇ ਲੇਕਿਨ ਬੁਨਿਆਦੀ ਤੌਰ ਉੱਤੇ ਉਹ ਲੜਾਈਆਂ ਸ਼ਾਸਨ ਪ੍ਰਣਾਲੀ ਨੂੰ ਅਤੇ ਚੁੱਸਤ - ਦੁਰੁਸਤ ਕਰਕੇ ਇਸ ਵਿਵਸਥਾ ਨੂੰ ਪਹਿਲਾਂ ਦੇ ਮੁਕਾਬਲੇ ਕਿਤੇ ਜ਼ਿਆਦਾ ਟਿਕਾਊ , ਜਾਬਰ ਅਤੇ ਮਜਬੂਤ ਬਣਾ ਸਕਣਗੀਆਂ । ਅੰਨਾ ਦਾ ਅੰਦੋਲਨ 28 ਅਗਸਤ ਨੂੰ ਖ਼ਤਮ ਨਹੀਂ ਹੋਇਆ ਸਗੋਂ ਉਸ ਦਿਨ ਤੋਂ ਹੀ ਇਸਦੀ ਸ਼ੁਰੁਆਤ ਹੋਈ ਹੈ । ਰਾਮਲੀਲਾ ਮੈਦਾਨ ਵਲੋਂ ਗੁੜਗਾਂਵ ਦੇ ਹਸਪਤਾਲ ਜਾਂਦੇ ਸਮਾਂ ਉਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਦੀ ਏੰਬੁਲੇਂਸ ਦੇ ਅੱਗੇ ਸੁਰੱਖਿਆ ਵਿੱਚ ਲੱਗੀ ਪੁਲਿਸ ਅਤੇ ਪਿੱਛੇ ਪਲ ਪਲ ਦੀ ਰਿਪੋਰਟਿੰਗ ਲਈ ਬੇਤਾਬ ਕੈਮਰਿਆਂ ਤੋਂ ਦੀਵਾਰ ਉੱਤੇ ਲਿਖੀ ਇਬਾਰਤ ਨੂੰ ਪੜ੍ਹਿਆ ਜਾ ਸਕਦਾ ਹੈ । ਵਿਵਸਥਾ ਦੇ ਅਸਲਾਖਾਨੇ ਵਲੋਂ ਇਹ ਇੱਕ ਨਵਾਂ ਹਥਿਆਰ ਸਾਹਮਣੇ ਆਇਆ ਹੈ ਜੋ ਵਿਵਸਥਾ ਬਦਲਨ ਦੀ ਲੜਾਈ ਵਿੱਚ ਲੱਗੇ ਲੋਕਾਂ ਲਈ ਆਉਣ ਵਾਲੇ ਦਿਨਾਂ ਵਿੱਚ ਇੱਕ ਬਹੁਤ ਵੱਡੀ ਚੁਣੋਤੀ ਖੜੀ ਕਰੇਗਾ ।
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Human destiny in new millennium - Jatinder Sharma
Previous millennium has left human civilization at the crossroads of promise and peril. A lot has been achieved in last few centuries but the record of debacles has also been awful. Civilizational advances have created conditions for improving the life of larger number of people by eradicating hunger, poverty and ignorance, but due to lack of better value consciousness, alienation, dehumanisation, mechanization, automation, anguish, dread, despair, etc. have undermined the civilizational advances. Recent achievements in the field of information technology, communication and internet are not being harnessed so much for common good, rather they are being used more for spreading crime, violence, terrorism and pornography. The shortsighted vulgar utilitarian attitude towards nature is
threatening the very existence of human species. History -which has been a process of human self-creation– has infact reached a critical juncture of civilization where the peril of self-destruction has become an equally real possibility. Human civilization has reached a point where collective perishment or collective betterment has become a practical choice. The simultaneity of becoming real of both these possibilities has made the decision to choose between them almost an imperative for humankind.
We are at a turning point of history and as G.M. Trevelyan, a British historian, puts it rather elegantly, history sometimes fail to turn at the turning points.1 In such an eventuality the alternative available at present is to linger present state of confusion by a few more decades. But that itself would be living in bad-faith and opting for doom as civilization is systematically moving towards a slow but sure death of environmental decay. Overcoming the ‘victory’ over nature Humans have an essential and necessary relationship with nature. It is this relation that forms the base of human life and consciousness. The process of human self-creation-which has also been a process of creation of values as well as building of civilization– moved ahead in a sort of harmony with nature. In fact culture has been created by imparting new meanings and significances to nature as well as natural processes. In processes pertaining to human self-creation both nature as well as culture worked in tandem to form basis for development of civilization and expanding the sphere of human consciousness. Thus nature has been an essential element of human life as well as human consciousness.
Humans progressed in lap of mother earth while celebrating festival of life and creativity. In modern age of civilization there came an era during which materialistic tendencies overshadowed the spiritual nature of human beings. This resulted in decline of values as well as ethical standards leading to fracturing of natural relation between humans and the mother earth. In order to fulfill their desires
and lust humans started one sided war against nature for victory over it. Exhibiting deep patience of a mother, the nature allowed humans to continue their one sided war without any sort of initial resistance. But this not only effected the life giving capacities of the mother, rather it effected her own longevity as well. It not only effected other sons and daughters of the mother, rather with the passage of time its bearings on human destiny also started crystelising rather clearly. It is a tragic scenario that the process of
human self-creation is now getting transformed into the process of human self-destruction. Environmental and ecological problems have their roots in deterioration of human–nature relationship. When harmonious relation of humans with nature was fractured
and natural equilibrium was disturbed, the environment started getting polluted, giving rise to ecological problems. During the second half of last century, when environmental problems were first recognised, they were identified initially as less important problems having local significance only. But today it cannot be denied that these are global problems and at stake is the future of our planet as well as species. Due to pollution the percentage of green house gases in atmosphere is on the rise resulting in the increase of temperature leading to problem of global warming. The cycle of seasons is becoming increasingly irregular with an expansion of the summers and contraction of the winters. The ice in polar regions is melting and causing an increase in water levels of oceans, thereby threatening the coastal population and ecology. Ozone layer is getting torn with holes. The fact of the matter is that with the present rate of increase in pollution levels the ozone layer will be reduced by ten percent by the middle of this century itself. Ozone layer in atmosphere acts as natural life-saving shield for living beings of the earth as it absorbs incoming ultraviolet rays of the sun. Due to holes in this layer, ultraviolet rays are threatening the life-forms of the planet by reaching surface of the earth. Pollution is transforming the rain into an acidic medium, and downpour of acid in lieu of water is turning the rain into a life-destroyer. Water bodies have got polluted. Nectar like mother’s milk has tested positive for carcinogenic pesticides and insecticides. Noise pollution has ended up becoming a permanent resident of urban areas. Radioactive pollution is also on the rise. Reaching us through mobile
phones and transmission towers, it has become an ndistinguishable part of our everyday life.
Such problems have necessitated a rethinking about the concept of progress. It has compelled us to ponder if phenomena considered to be constituting progress are taking us forward, or the path ultimately leads to destruction only. The problems are scientific only to a very limited extent, and to that extent only their nature is technological. But science and technology alone cannot overcome this ‘victory’ over natures as problems are related less to domain of facts and more to the sphere of what ought to be done. The solution
necessarily touches the realm of values and ethical principles. Need is being felt for a perspective that takes a mcomprehensive view of human-nature relationship and helps in dweling on problems related to ecology, providing grounds for their solutions. Such a perspective has to be full of eco-friendly values and ideals that aim at expansion of human consciousness by making environmental awareness an integral part of itself. Rather we need a sort of metaethics that evaluates existing values and ethical principles to see if
they are conducive to such an endeavour or not. It also needs to be analysed whether the values created by humans for interaction among themselves are good enough for human-nature relationship as well –i.e. whether they do justice to environmental consciousness or not. Today, only non-anthropocentric comprehensive perspective, that sees humans and nature in harmony with one another can help in overcoming the ‘victory’ over nature.
Producing Beings or Consuming Beings
One of the most significant factors that effect environment inversely is consumerist culture. Production has almost undisputedly been considered to be the differentia of human beings as compared to other beings living their lives in collectivities. For example ants and bees also live a collective life but their collectivities are only food-gathering ones. Against this human beings live in a collectivity that is
based upon producing food and other goods that they need. Transformation of human collectivity from foodgathering to foodproducing has been an important and significant step in the process related to human self-creation. Production has been the basis of reward system as also of stratification and distribution of social respect in most of the cultures. The process has seen a significant change in recent times and in present scenario consumption has been acquiring more and more importance. As has been seen in the previous chapter, present generations are being shaped and trained as consumers first. Today, more and more people the world over are living a market mediated life and spend most of their time consuming, or thinking, planning and getting information about things that they intend to consume. They can shop not only away from home but also while being at home. There are T.V. channels dedicated to home-shopping exclusively, and home-shopping networks are available on internet also. One can shop through them when one does not feel like going out. But it must be noted –as Tony Blackshaw points out- “going to the mall has a special kind of pleasure all of its own”.2 Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise captures the experience of shopping very well. Its main character goes to the mall for the first time and describes his experience as follows :
“We walked across two parking lots to the main structure in the mid-village Mall, a ten storey building arranged around a center court of waterfalls, … into the elevator, into the shops set along the tiers, through the emporiums and department stores, puzzled but excited by my desire to buy … . We smelled chocolate, popcorn, cologne; we smelled rugs and furs, hanging salamis and deathly vinyle… . I shopped for its own sake, looking and touching, inspecting merchandise I had no intention of buying, then buying it. …I began to grow in value and self regard … I traded money for goods. The more money I spent, the less important it seemed. I was bigger than these sums … I felt expensive, inclined to be sweepingly generous. … I gestured in what I felt was an expansive manner …. brightness settled around me.”3 People inhabiting the present consumer society consider consumption to be having capacity to show them the way to pleasure and happiness. In this sense consumer goods are not simply objects, rather consumers see their own reflections in them. As a matter of fact the individuals in consumer societies are constituted by their consumption choices. In a significant manner of saying they are taken to be what they consume. This is so because in consumer society, as has been noted earlier, when consumers purchase
something to consume, they are purchasing the signs, the images and identities that go along with it. Bauman points out that consumerism “stands for production, distribution, desiring, obtaining and using, of symbolic goods”.4
Baudrillard also points out that “in consumer society signs are exchanged not by virtue of what they represent, but on the basis of their exchangeability with other signs”.5 In this discourse it is insisted that it is through forms of symbolic communication that consumer needs are constituted and expressed. The concept of basic human needs is questioned as it is conflated with the idea of innate needs. It is contended that in consumer society the concept of innate human need is untenable. If one thinks that objects are useful as they serve some basic human need, then one is considered to be suffering from some anthropological illusion.6 On the basis of such premises it is argued that in consumer society there is a reversal of relationship between the object or commodity and the need. It is argued that in consumer society, instead of objects answering some human needs, the needs themselves are brought into being by the commodities,
and our desires play the intermediary role.
In present scenario more often than not objects are sought not because they fulfill some need and hence are functional, rather they correspond to consumer’s desire(s). To use Baudrillard’s terminology, rather than being functional, they in fact are hyper functional. A particular model of computer or cell phone might be fulfilling one’s needs in the sense of being functional for him/her. But one does not seek something that merely fulfills one’s needs, rather one hunts for something which is latest in the market and has features that are not present in the previous models. It is in this sense that object is aimed at fulfilling one’s desires and hence is hyper functional. In a significant manner of saying the object rather than being practical is obsessional. The object or gadget no longer serves the world, it rather serves our dreams and desires. Sometimes such objects are so much related to human fantasy and desire that they represent empty hyper functionality, far removed from reality. All that we have to do is to remind ourselves of some such object that we purchased thinking it to be highly functional and also satisfying our desire, but ends up gathering dust in the cupboard as it is hardly of any use. In this sense, instead of serving some real purpose, consumer products are designed according to fantasy and desire.
In consumer society more budget is kept for the generation of desire as compared to production itself. The desire is generated through media images and advertisements. The images used for this purpose represent novel seeming commodities to be associated with affluent and newer life-styles and also generating happiness. Such developments make consumption not a matter of choosing some useful products, but of making life-style choices.
Social stratification and reward system, which previously have been associated more with one’s place in the system of production, have now increasingly been linked to consumer choices and patterns of consumption, as also with life-styles associated with such consumption patterns and choices. The present sociality redraws the boundaries between social class divisions as a relationship between those who happily consume and those who cannot. The poor who are not able to perform their consumer duties are considered to be flawed consumers,7 and inversely those who cannot behave as right and proper consumers are viewed as poor. In
media also there is a shift from the heroes of production to the heroes of consumption. There is a comodification of every thing ranging from birth to death. There are several sites on the internet that directly exhibit the act of birth giving, and the recent example of actress ‘Goody’ –who became rather infamous for her racist comments against Shilpa Shettey in reality show ‘Big Brother’– selling the telecast rights of her last moments after discovering that she was suffering from cancer is quite well known. In prevalent consumer culture, the spectacles associated with celebrities have acquired a special dimension –be it divorce, break ups, affairs, deaths, cricket matches, real lives of cricket, movie or soap opera stars. There is celebration of anything and everything that makes life magical. Bauman points out that masses are seduced by the consumer culture and instead of repression or ideology being central to social control, it is the power of seduction that is backbone of social control in consumer society. Consumerism is allowed to answer all the questions. Baudillard also insists that in consumer society people live a life shielded by signs, in the denial of the real and seduced by hyperreal simulations. Against Baudrilland, it needs to be pointed out that it is not possible to keep venturing in the realm of hyperreal all the time as the reality of environmental problems is so grave that it is not possible to live in its denial any more. It also needs to be stressed against Bauman’s consumers inhibiting the present world, that consumerism cannot be allowed toanswer all the questions as instead of providing answers to the environmental problems, it has been a basic cause of most of these problems. Polluting waste is not the only factor associated with consumerism that effects the environment adversely, rather the production processes associated with it
are also responsible for ecological degradation. This also shows that despite superficial appearance of disjunction between consumption and production, there is a deep relation between the two. There is a dialectical relationship between consuming and producing –consumption influences the production and production influences the consumption, as human beings are producing
as well as consuming beings. Any reductionist approach that views human beings as either producing or consuming beings only is bound to give rise to conceptual confusions and practical problems. The view that human beings are consumers first, and all the rest afterwards is taking humanity towards a slow but sure death of environmental and ecological decay.
The view that human beings are primarily consuming beings is reflected in processes associated with globalization also, and is responsible for several anomalies associated with it.
The Post-industrial Globalization World has once again been proclaimed to be globalized by contemporary thinkers. Whereas previous globalization has been considered to be associated with industrial phase of the society, the globalization in its concrete present form is considered to be associated more with post-industrial era of society. We are well aware of the fact that industrialization changed the face of the globe by changing social, political and economic structures of the world previously based upon agriculture. Similarly post-industrialization has also effected significant changes in global structures and the world is considered to have become almost a global village. The sphere of economic activity is usually divided into three sectors : primary, secondary and tertiary. The primary sector is considered to be dealing with economic activity that is aimed at obtaining objects more or less in the same form as they appear in nature e.g. agriculture, fishing, mining etc.
Secondary sector deals with transforming natural objects and producing commodities and goods for the market. The tertiary sector consists of the domain of services. It has been pointed out by thinkers theorising about relation between changes in economic sphere and other domains of human activities that pre-industrial times were the age of primary sector; secondary sector became dominant
in the industrial age; and increasing significance of tertiary sector associated with the domain of services has given rise to post-industrial society. Daniel Bell has pointed out that post-industrial society is “a society which had passed form a goods-producing stage to service society”8 and insists that “if the dominant figures of the past hundred years have been the entrepreneur, the businessman, and the industrial executive, the ‘new men’ are the scientists, the mathematicians, the economists, and the engineers of new intellectual technology”.9 Thus whereas the economies of industrial age were centered around the industrial production, the post-industrial economies revolve around the services sector. A new kind of world market based upon vastly improved systems of communication, information technology and circulation capital has been created that has given rise to new commercial opportunities on the world wide web.
Space and time have shrunk to almost nothing as the world is literally at our fingertips as we can choose and purchase almost everything we want from anywhere we want.
Similarly on the marketing side also the companies are transnational and can market their goods and services where ever there is demand and desire for them. We live in a world market that has been globalised. Along with increased access to the global market, there is almost complete integration of individuals with the world market, which is based on the notion that as consumers we all are almost some. Our position and identity as consumers associated with world wide web of global market has become more significant as
compared to other positions, roles and identities lying outside the domain defining our economic capabilities. This blurring and softening of national, religious and ethnic boundaries has been institutionalised by the transnational companies who position themselves in a manner that takes advantage of global dimensions of trade. Thus globalization is not that much a result of respect
for global values; or human rights; or some other humanitarian obligation like vasudhaiva kutumbakam, rather it has its roots in the endeavour of transnationals to access the global world market. Individuals also become adherents of globalisation not so much out of respect for humanitarian commonalties, rather they become so more out of desire to enable themselves of accessing commercial opportunities available on the world wide web. The globalisation is associated not only with the post-industrialisation of the society but also with the view that as consumers we all are same. Hence it may be seen as post-industrial consumerist globalisation. This globalisation has also been associated with the thesis of the end of history.
The End of History
The thesis of end of history has been proposed by
Francis Fukuyama and Jean Baudrillard from divergent
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perspectives. Both of them are responding to the philosophy
of Hegel, but in different ways. Fukuyama in his book The
End of History and the Last Man insists that what he
suggested had come to an end was not occurrence of events,
but “history understood as a single, coherent, evolutionary
process”.10 This understanding of history has been associated
with Hegel and is considered to have been made part of
everyday intellectual discourse by Karl Marx. Both Hegel and
Marx are considered to be holding that evolution of human
societies was not an open ended process, rather it was
supposed to come to an end when humankind achieves a
form of society that satisfies its fundamental longings.
Fukuyama insists that both these thinkers posited an end of
history. For Marx it was communist society, whereas for
Hegel it was liberal state. This does not mean that important
events would not happen, nor that newspapers reporting
them would cease to be published, rather it means that
“there would be no further progress in the development of
underlying principles and institutions, because all of the
really big questions had been settled”.11
Thus the idea of history as progress is taken to imply
that if there is a goal of progress, there must be the
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possibility that this goal will be reached some day and history
would come to an end. Fukuyama considers history to have
achieved its goal in the market oriented liberal democracies
of the west. His view that West has reached end of history is
based on arguments drawn from perceived homogenisation of
all human societies and Hegel’s idea of desire for recognition.
He insists that unfolding of natural science has had a
uniform effect on all societies that have experienced it. This is
for two reasons. First, technology confers decisive military
advantage, and no state that values its independence can
ignore the need for military modernization. Second, natural
science helps establish a uniform possibilities of economic
production. It makes possible the accumulation of wealth to
satisfy an ever expanding set of human desires. This process
results in increasing homogenization of all societies,
regardless of their cultural origins. All countries undergoing
economic modernization must unify nationally, urbanise,
replace traditional forms of social organization like tribe, sect,
family with economically rational ones based on function and
efficiency, provide for the universal education, etc. In a
nutshell these countries must increasingly resemble one
another and become increasingly linked through global
markets and the spread of consumer culture.
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Fukuyama further insists that the logic of modern
natural science would seem to dictate a universal evolution
in the direction of capitalism as experiences of Soviet Union,
China and other socialist countries indicate that while highly
centralised economics can only reach upto the level of
industrialisation reached by Europe in the 1950s, they are
inadequate in creating post-industrial economics.
Thus according to Fukuyama, historical mechanism
represented by modern natural science is sufficient to explain
the character of historical change and growing uniformities of
the present day societies. “But where modern natural science
guides us to the promised land of liberal democracy, it does
not deliver us the promised land itself for there is no
economically necessary reason why advanced
industrialisation should produce political liberty”.12 This
leads him to Hegel’s idea of desire for recognition. Hegel
contends that humans differ fundamentally from other
animals, because in addition to natural needs and desires,
they desire the desire of other men, i.e. they want to be
recognised. Humans want to be recognised as human beings;
as a being with a certain worth or dignity. This worth is
related to human willingness to risk life in a struggle over
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pure prestige. According to Hegel, the desire for recognition
first drives two primordial combatants to seek to make the
other recognise their humanness by staking their lives in a
mortal combat. When the natural fear of death leads one
combatant to submit, the relationship of master and slave is
born. The stakes in this battle at the begning of history are
not food or shelter, but pure prestige. And since the goal is
not biological, Hegel sees the first glimmer of human freedom
in it.
The relationship of lordship and bondage, which took
various forms in different unequal aristocratic societies,
failed to satisfy the desire for recognition of both the master
and the slave. The slave was not acknowledged as a human
being in any way, but the recognition enjoyed by the master
was incomplete as well because he was recognized by the
slave whose humanity was incomplete as yet. Hegel believed
that contradiction inherent in the relationship of lordship
and bondage was finally overcome as a result of the French
revolution. Such revolutions replaced the unequal recognition
of masters and slaves by universal and reciprocal
recognition, where every citizen recognizes the dignity and
humanity of every other citizen. The dignity is also recognized
by the state through granting of rights.
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According to Fukuyama this reconciliation of desire for
recognition in liberal democracies provides the missing link
between liberal economics and liberal politics. On the basis of
above arguments he proclaims the end of history as he
considers liberal democracy to be the ideal form of social
organization that could not be further improved upon.
Whereas Fukuyama used Hegel’s argument to prove
that history has ended in contemporary liberal societies
based on liberalised economics, Baudrillard presents
contemporary culture as a distorted realisation of Hegel’s
view about relation between actual and rational. In
contemporary culture, Baudrillard insists, the reality and
simulations have collapsed into one another, giving rise to the
hyperreal, as has been seen in chapter V. The collapsing of
the signs and reality into one another generates the language
and code of postmodernity. The real has now been replaced
and transfigured by simulated rationalized models and as a
result the possibility of a critical and speculative distance
between them has collapsed and with that has ended the
possibility of history as a rational grasp of reality. He further
insists that we have reached a point where things happen too
quickly to make sense. He points out that “the acceleration of
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modernity, of technology, of events and media, of all
exchanges –economic, political and sexual– has propelled us
to ‘escape velocity’, with result we have flown free of the
referential sphere of the real and of history”.13 He points out
that a degree of slowness and distance is required for the
crystellisation of events termed history. But these have been
lost in contemporary hyperreality. There are multiple
interpretations of anything that happens, and these
competing interpretations compete to be fastest and
accessible. In the process the event is pushed to the
background and it is almost impossible to know what really
happened. In a way it also is not relevant for the media
presentations. He insists that “Events now have no more
significance than their anticipated meaning, their
programming and their broadcasting”.14 Thus the
contemporary world is world of simulations whose referents
have become immaterial, rather in a manner of speaking,
they have disappeared. There is a playful depthlessness and
there is a loss of critical distance between reality and
rationality. As a result the “history it self has to be regarded
as a chaotic formation, in which … turbulence created by
acceleration deflects history definitely from its end”.15 History
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has ended in an illusion in which the immediacy of the
meaning projected in the media hides the fact that meaning
has infact been lost. Humanity is lost in the realm of
hyperreality which denies the distance between experience
and their questioning. It is in this sense that Baudrillard
insists the historical perspective has been lost.
Let us analyse if the collapsing of the real into the
rationality of the hyperreal is of such a degree that with it
collapses the space for questioning the experience as also the
possibility of a critique leading to the loss of historical
perspective, or not. Consider his arguments regarding the
Gulf War discussed in previous chapter. He argues that “War
is not measured by being waged but by its speculative
unfolding in an abstract, electronic and informational
space”.16 The hyperreal was generated by computer software
or analogous systems. The war was programmed and its
events unfolded according to the programme. The spectacular
images and seemingly instantaneous reporting by world
media, instead of providing information about its reality
generated signs and simulations that transformed it into a
hyperreal conflict from which the truth of suffering and death
was rigorously excluded.
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Baudrillard insists that the deception of the Gulf War
was that it was a clean war devoid of bloodshed and
suffering. Baudrillard’s response to this lies in the sentence
that “A clean war ends up in an oil slick.”17. But this
suggests beyond any doubt that critics can differentiate
between hyperreal and the real, and we are not that much
caught in simulated hyperreal as may lead to the collapse of
historical perspective. Thus Baudrillard’s own critique of Gulf
War suggests that there still is space for questioning of the
experience, pointing to the possibility of historical
perspective, indicating that history has not infact ended as
suggested by Baudrillard.
It would be pertinent to note that this view of looking at
history makes it closer to the concept of ideology. The same is
true of conception of history being held and forwarded by
Fukuyama also. The thesis of end of history put forward by
him is quite closer to the thesis of end of ideology that was
forwarded earlier by Denial Bell. Bell in his collection of
essays The End of Ideology argued that political ideology has
become irrelevant and polity of the future would be driven by
piecemeal technological adjustments of the existent system.
He insisted that ideology was outdated and useless reminent
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of the previous age which could now be abandoned. The view
is based on the belief that some ultimate uniformity has been
achieved and a rough consensus existed as to what was
economically, politically and socially desirable.18 Later
Fukuyama suggested that the experience of Soviet Union and
other eastern block countries indicates that another effort to
tell a different story of human development has collapsed,
giving a boost to the conception of end of history. It can be
seen that the conceptions related to end of ideology and end
of history are quite similar to one another and are based on
the perceived homogenisation of the world.
It may be argued against such views that the perceived
homogenisation, rather than being universal or based on
some single, coherent evolutionary process, is infact
disguised effort aimed at creating hegemony of the West, and
hence is ideological itself. Contemporary western culture is
based on buying power. And apparently borderless,
globalised world exists only for the western elites who have
means to choose their lifestyles and to consume whatever
they feel like. In contrast to them, there also exist
dispossessed people in many parts of the globe for whom
poverty, disease, hunger, illiteracy, ecological degradation
198
etc. are real problems related to the reality of every day lives.
For whom globalisation, rather than being an expression of
opportunity, is loss of security and self-determination. For
them the simulated hyperreal consumer lifestyles are only
fantacies and hopeless aspirations. For them even the
otherwise borderless globe becomes a world divided into
richer and poor nations and they find borders of richer
countries even more tightly patrolled to ward them off from
perceived promise of prosperity and liberty. These differences
bring us back to history, as Paul Hamilton rightly points out,
may be “the way back to history is through the
interminability of difference –economic, cultural, political,
religious”.19
Even in case of societies that are considered to have
reached the end of history as a single coherent evolutionary
process, can it be said that in future there would be no new
significant conceptual changes and developments? Will they
close their doors to the generation of new concepts? If not,
then new concepts produce new orientations and directions
for thinking. Concepts not only systematise reality, rather
more often than not they create reality. Many concepts put
forward by the thinkers discussed in this study may be taken
199
as examples of such creations. If our language is not a closed
system, it cannot be said that there would not be newer
dimensions added to human cultural domain, and therefore
it cannot be an end of history. Even Karl Marx -who is
considered to be holding that with the advent of communist
society history will end– insists that much cannot be said
about the social formations beyond communism.
Let us now discuss the view that with the end of
ideology, the history has not ended, but has entered the
domain of clash of civilizations.
Clash of Civilizations
It has been seen that theorists like Francis Fukuyama
argued that the world has reached end of history in a
Hegelian sense, where only alternative left for the people are
liberal democracy and free market economy. Before him,
Danial Bell has also declared the advent of an era based on
end of ideology in which polity would be driven by piecemeal
technological adjustments of the existent system. Samuel P.
Huntington contends that while the age of ideology has
ended, the world has reverted to a state-of-affairs
characterised by civilizational conflicts. He proposed the
theory of clash of civilizations.20
200
He traces the genealogy of the conflict and points out
that after emergence of modern international system the
conflicts of the western world were largely among princes,
emperors and monarchs aiming to expand their armies,
economic strength and the territory they ruled. In the process
they created nation states. And beginning with French
revolution, the principal lines of conflict were between
nations rather than monarchs. This pattern, according to
him lasted until the end of World War I. Then as a result of
Russian revolution and reaction against it, the conflict of
nations yielded to the conflict of ideologies. First it was
between communism, facism-nazism and liberal democracy,
and later between communism and liberal democracy.
During the cold-war this conflict was embodied in struggle
between two super-powers. None of these super-powers was
a nation state and each of it defined its identity in terms of
its ideology.
His hypothesis is that the fundamental source of
conflict in post cold-war world would not be primarily
ideological or economical, rather it would be cultural. The
principal conflicts will occur between groups of different
civilizations. According to him civilizations are differentiated
201
from one another by religion, history, language and tradition,
and the clash of civilizations will dominate the global politics.
The fault lines between the civilizations will be the battle
lines of the future. His hypothesis is based on the theory that
West would like to continue its domination over the rest of
the world. With end of the cold war the military-industrial
complex of the West is in search of an adversary and a
perspective that would justify their sustenance in adequate
strength, and maintain the flow of funds towards them. That
rationale, according to Huntington, would be provided by the
civilizational differences and conflicts. He lists eight such
civilizations : Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu,
Slavic, Latin American, and African. He insists that the
primary conflicts in future would be along fault lines
separating these civilizations. According to him the
differences among civilizations are more fundamental than
divergence in economic, political and ideological views.
Cultural commonality promotes economic regionalism, and
as economic regionalism increases, the enormity of
civilizational differences gets increased. The global economic
processes tend to weaken the national identity and role of
religion as providing collective identity is on the rise. These
processes, in conjunction with changes in the field of
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information technology and communication revolution are
restructuring the globe, and feeling of a shrinking world
intensifies civilizational consciousness on the one hand and
highlights the differences between civilizations on the other.
Turning of these civilizational consciousness movements into
militant movements may lead to conflict. He sees almost an
immanent clash between western Christian civilization and
the Islamic civilization. He believes that Islamic and Chinese
civilizations will cooperate with one another in their conflict
with other civilizations, particularly the West, and considers
Russia, Japan and India as swing civilizations that may
favour either side. The 9/11 events and subsequent
happenings in Afghanistan and lraq are sometimes cited as a
vindication of the clash of civilizations theory.
Against this it can be argued that the main cause of
violence and conflict is when people view each other as
having a singular identity as opposed to multiple affiliations
-e.g. Hindu, women, professional, mother, art lover, sister,
daughter, member of socio-economic strata or a class etc.
any of which can be an individual’s choice for identity.
It can also be argued that evidence for an inherent and
immanent civilizational clash is not that convincing when
relationships such as between Western world and Saudi
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Arabia, Dubai etc. are considered. It can also be seen that
the values are also trans-civilizational and are more easily
transmitted and adapted than Huntington’s proposals
suggest. India, Turkey, South Korea, Several East European
and Latin American countries are vibrant democracies
whereas several western countries remain constitutional
monarchies. The clash thesis fails to do justice to the
dynamic interdependence and interaction between cultures
and civilizations that has been going on since times
immemorial and has increased many times in recent times.
It would be pertinent to note here that the concept of
Dialogue among civilizations -which was introduced by the
former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami– became the
basis for United Nations naming the first year of new
millennium as the year of Dialogue Among Civilizations. It is
in such initiatives that the value consciousness for the new
millennium lies.
Sketching a framework for value-consciousness for New
Millennium
Perspective that forecasts an era of clash of civilizations
is based on an erroneous perception of the world as a
juxtaposition of watertight compartmentalised and
204
partitioned civilizations. It presumes that people see
themselves singularly as belonging to a particular civilization
which provides them the only identity that they have. This
partitioning of people of world is based on what Amartya Sen
has described as a solitarist approach to human identity
which sees individuals as members of one group only.21
Whereas in their every-day lives people see themselves
simultaneously belonging to a variety of groups and
collectivities. Each of these groups and collectivities provides
individual a particular identity, none of which can be taken
as his/her solitary identity. Rather in today's multicultural
societies individuals have plural identities and it is they who
decide on relative importance of the identities in various
contexts. It needs to be stressed that it is important for
individuals to choose and create each of these plural
identities themselves -through their authentic choices- rather
than borrowing them form pre-fabricated identities available
in the market. In case of civilizational identities it is rather
more important that they are based on authentic choices of
the individuals. They should be based on an understanding
that everything around is informed with human meanings
and hence is not pre-given, natural or unchangeable.
205
Constituted reality exists for human purposes and can also
be changed in accordance with those purposes. It can be
changed in accordance with internal logic of the tradition and
also as a result of communication with other traditions. If
carried on the basis of such assumptions, the dialogue
among civilizations will be enriching for entire humankind.
Such a dialogue should shun cultural monism as a basis
for trans-civlizational communications on the one hand and
cultural relativism on the other. Monism refers to the view
that only one way of life is fully human, true, or the best, and
that all others are defective to the extent that they fall short
of it. 22 Relativism on the other hand refers to the view that
concepts of rationality, truth, validity and reality etc. must be
seen as relative to competing conceptual schemes, alternative
theoretical frameworks, incommensurable paradigms, forms
of life and cultures.23
Both monism and relativism spell doom for any
trans-cultural dialogue. Cultural monism seeks
homogenization of the civilizations and societies.
Homogenisation in cultural realm infact is nothing but
another name for hegemonization of certain powerful
civilization, and hence is detrimental to any dialogue among
206
civilizations. Cultural relativism, on the other hand
considers reality to be such a social construction that varies
from culture to culture, and hence finds no way of resolving
cross-cultural differences as it denies the possibility of any
comparative appraisal. As one is prisoner of one's own
conceptual frameworks and standards of appraisal, the
possibility of any meaningful cross cultural and civilizational
communication is denied in principle.
Thus neither cultural monism nor cultural relativism
is conducive to any meaningful and constructive
communication among different cultures and civilizations.
Such a communication and dialogue can only be based on a
perspective of cultural pluralism. Like relativism, cultural
pluralism denies that there is only one way of life that is
fully human, true or the best, and accepts the plurality of
competing conceptual schemes and alterative theoretical
frameworks etc. that may vary from culture to culture; but
unlike relativism, it denies that there are no ways of
comparing and evaluating the competing claims, and accepts
the possibility to trans-cultural criteria for appraisal of
conceptual schemes, theoretical frameworks, etc. It accepts
the commonalities among cultures and civilizations without
207
subsuming them under some overarching universal
frameworks. It seeks to underscore commonalities without
denying differences. Rather than seeking to eliminate
differences, it endeavours to accept and recognize them.
A dialogue based upon such a perspective not only
underscores commonalities among various civilization, rather
it highlights their differences also as different ways of doing a
thing -thereby expanding the range of available options and
freedom of choice. It prevents dominance of any one way of
looking at things and facilitates emergence of better and
novel ways of thinking. If individuals are not provided an
opportunity to venture out of their own cultural practices,
they tend to perceive them as natural and the only way of
pursuing every-day cultural life. Dialogue with other cultures
and civilizations help individuals to see their own culture and
civilization in a better light.
As has been pointed out earlier, human beings are finite
beings and can choose, pursue and master only some of the
alternatives available to them at any point of time. This
finitude of human existence is reflected in embodiments and
articulations of human creativity also. Civilizations being
systematizations and objectifications of human creativity,
208
also reflect this finitude that delimits the sphere of their
activities. As such none of the civilizations is encyclopedic
and each one of them can realize only some of the great
creative human values. Since non can realise all the values at
any given point of time -or even all the aspects of any single
creative value- therefore the possibility of getting enriched by
sharing the value realising experiences of other civilizations
through dialogue would always be there for all the historical
civilizations.
Such an attitude towards diversity in the domain of
culture and civilization is even more important in the context
of present day societies, where as a result of increase in
avenues of communication, transportation, trade, etc. people
with various cultural backgrounds inhibit together. As
plurality in the domain of culture has a value of its own,
therefore value-consciousness for the future should be
informed by the ideals and values that not only tolerate and
accept differences, rather they should be conducive for
generating an attitude of respect towards them.
However it needs to be stressed that in the name of
respect for differences such a perspective should not lead to
the conception of anything goes. This can be done by
209
accepting the notions of justice, emancipation and human
rights as means of reconciling various language games that
constitute a culture. Even in an era that has cast suspicion
on various values of previous eras, Lyotard has rightly
pointed out that "justice as a value is neither outmoded nor
suspect".24 A conception of justice that forms basis of
value-consciousness for future should not inflict injustice in
the name of justice, and hence it should not be based on
pre-conceived and pre-determined content or essence of
justice; rather it should be judged case by case, depending on
the merits of the case. Such a conception of justice should be
based on an open recognition of heterogeneity and multiplicity
of language games and the people. It has reference to respect
for differences. Injustice is inherent in preventing some voices
to participate in the game of justice -either by silencing those
voices or forbidding them from being heard. Being just is
related to allowing various voices to participate in the game of
justice by letting them being heard, thereby respecting the
differences. Such an idea and practice of justice is not linked
to consensus, nor is it associated with any pre-determined
essence of justice. While discussing the matter a decision will
have to be taken according to the situation and merits of a
210
particular case. By allowing different voices to be heard on
their own terms, it can open up pluralist modes of polities in
which no one is forbidden from participating in the process of
deciding what justice amounts to in a particular case.
Pluralist politics based on such thinking, and associated
concept of justice, is free from pre-determination and resists
all types of totalitarianisms - whether they be based on
grandnarratives associated with modernity, or on criteria of
efficiency and profit associated with present day societies.
Notion of emancipation is still relevant as a means of
reconciling various language games constituting a culture as
large segments of people in various civilizations are still
suffering from ignorance, poverty and hunger. Similarly, the
notion of human rights is essential to stress the
commonalities of human beings and to resist their
continuance in ignorance, poverty, hunger, bad health etc. in
the name of respect for cultural differences. In order to stress
the dialectics of commonalities and differences in case of
human realm, a balance has to be maintained between
human rights and the cultural rights of various communities.
In a framework of value-consciousness for future,
notion of human rights has also to be balanced vis-à-vis
211
animal rights and rights of other life-forms. Thus such a
framework has to shun anthropocentrism in fovour of
biocentrism. It would be pertinent to note here that under the
influence of mainstream intellectual tradition of modern age,
the ethical tradition of this age has also been primarily
anthropocentric. Everything has been evaluated from the
perspective of human beings. Anthropocentrism considers
human beings to be more valuable as they are equipped with
reason, wisdom and conscience. It holds that since humans
are only valuing agents in the otherwise value neutral
universe, so the value of everything else is relative to, and in
relation to them only. Though such theories consider
humans to be valuable as they are equipped with conscience,
but they fail to use this conscience while keeping other
species and nature out of ethical community. Extrapolating
the views of Gandhiji, it can be said that endowed with
reason, thought and conscience, humans are trustees of the
rights and interests of entire nature as well as other species.
And therefore they are the trustees of their moral respect and
value as well. Value framework and ethical principles drawn
form such a perspective will not only help re-establish the
harmony between human and non-human nature, rather it
212
will facilitate them to move ahead in harmony with one
another also.
Inculcation of a value-consciousness indicated by the
above framework may not be possible if the colonization of
life-world by instrumental rationality -that seeks efficiency
for the sake of efficiency, without any ethical or aesthetical
concerns- is not resisted. Conditions conducive for such a
value consciousness can only be achieved if all the three
spheres of reason -i.e. instrumental, ethical and aestheticalenrich
not only the life of every individual, but also the
hermeneutics of every-day communication. Such a value
consciousness will not only stop the transformation of the
process of human self-creation into the process of human
self-destruction, rather it will help in expansion of human
consciousness towards new depths and heights of the
universe and will facilitate the civilizational advances.
213
REFERENCES
1. Trevelyan, G.M. (1922) British History in the Nineteenth
Century, New York : Longman’s, p. 292.
2. Blackshaw, T. (2007) Zygmunt Bauman, London :
Routledge, p.115.
3. DeLillo, D. (1985) White Noise, London : Picador,
pp. 83-84.
4. Bauman, Z. (1992) Intimations of Postmodernity, London
: Routledge, p. 223.
5. Baudrillard, J. (1998) Symbolic Exchange and Death,
trans. Iain Hamilton Grant, London : Sage,
p. 7.
6. _______________ (1988) Jean Baudrillard : Selected
Writings, ed. M. Postor, Cambridge : Polity
Press, pp. 131-32.
7. Bauman. Z. (2002) In Deniel Leighton, ‘Searching for
Politics in an Uncertian World: Interview with
Zygmunt Bauman’, in Renewal : A Journal of
Labour Politics, (2002), 10 (1).
8. Bell, D. (1971) The Coming of Post-industrial Society : A
Venture in Social Forecasting, London :
Heinemann, p. 37.
9. ibid., p. 34.
214
10. Fukuyama, F. (1992) The End of History and the Last
Man, Harmmondsworth : Penguin, p. xi.
11. ibid.
12. ibid., p. xv.
13. Baudirllard, J. (1994) The Illusion of the End, trans.
Chris Turner, Cambridge : Polity Press, p. 1.
14. ibid., pp. 21-22.
15. ibid., p. 111.
16. ____________ (1995) The Gulf War Did Not Take Place,
trans. Paul Patton, Sydney : Power, p. 56.
17. ibid., p. 43.
18. Bell, D. (1960) The End of Ideology, Illinois : Free Press
of Glencoe, pp. 372-75.
19. Hamilton, P. (2007) Historicism, London : Routledge,
p. 180.
20. Huntington, S.P. (1996) The Clash of Civilizations and
The Remaking of World Order, New York :
Simon & Schuster.
21. Amartya Sen (2006) Identity and Violence : The Illusion
on Destiny, New Delhi : Allen Lane (Penguin
Books), p. xvi.
22. Bhikhu Parekh (2000) Rethinking Multiculturalism,
Hampshere : Palgrave, p. 18.
215
23. Gautam, Satya P. (1994) "Against Relativism : A
Pluralist Approach to Language, Culture and
Cognition" in Knowledge, Culture and Action,
ed. Rekha Jhanji, Delhi : Anjanta
Publications, p. 49.
24. Lyotrad, Jean - Francois (1984) The Postmodern
Condition : A Report on Knowledge, trans.
Geoffrey Bennington and Brian Massumi,
Manchester : Manchester Univ. Press, p. 66.172
CHAPTER - VI
HUMAN DESTINY IN NEW MILLENNIUM
Previous millennium has left human civilization at the
crossroads of promise and peril. A lot has been achieved in
last few centuries but the record of debacles has also been
awful. Civilizational advances have created conditions for
improving the life of larger number of people by eradicating
hunger, poverty and ignorance, but due to lack of better
value consciousness, alienation, dehumanisation,
mechanization, automation, anguish, dread, despair, etc.
have undermined the civilizational advances. Recent
achievements in the field of information technology,
communication and internet are not being harnessed so
much for common good, rather they are being used more for
spreading crime, violence, terrorism and pornography. The
shortsighted vulgar utilitarian attitude towards nature is
threatening the very existence of human species.
History -which has been a process of human
self-creation– has infact reached a critical juncture of
civilization where the peril of self-destruction has become an
equally real possibility. Human civilization has reached a
point where collective perishment or collective betterment has
173
become a practical choice. The simultaneity of becoming real
of both these possibilities has made the decision to choose
between them almost an imperative for humankind.
We are at a turning point of history and as G.M.
Trevelyan, a British historian, puts it rather elegantly, history
sometimes fail to turn at the turning points.1 In such an
eventuality the alternative available at present is to linger
present state of confusion by a few more decades. But that
itself would be living in bad-faith and opting for doom as
civilization is systematically moving towards a slow but sure
death of environmental decay.
Overcoming the ‘victory’ over nature
Humans have an essential and necessary relationship
with nature. It is this relation that forms the base of human
life and consciousness. The process of human self-creation
-which has also been a process of creation of values as well
as building of civilization– moved ahead in a sort of harmony
with nature. In fact culture has been created by imparting
new meanings and significances to nature as well as natural
processes. In processes pertaining to human self-creation
both nature as well as culture worked in tandem to form
174
basis for development of civilization and expanding the
sphere of human consciousness. Thus nature has been an
essential element of human life as well as human
consciousness.
Humans progressed in lap of mother earth while
celebrating festival of life and creativity. In modern age of
civilization there came an era during which materialistic
tendencies overshadowed the spiritual nature of human
beings. This resulted in decline of values as well as ethical
standards leading to fracturing of natural relation between
humans and the mother earth. In order to fulfill their desires
and lust humans started one sided war against nature for
victory over it. Exhibiting deep patience of a mother, the
nature allowed humans to continue their one sided war
without any sort of initial resistance. But this not only
effected the life giving capacities of the mother, rather it
effected her own longevity as well. It not only effected other
sons and daughters of the mother, rather with the passage of
time its bearings on human destiny also started crystelising
rather clearly. It is a tragic scenario that the process of
human self-creation is now getting transformed into the
process of human self-destruction.
175
Environmental and ecological problems have their roots
in deterioration of human–nature relationship. When
harmonious relation of humans with nature was fractured
and natural equilibrium was disturbed, the environment
started getting polluted, giving rise to ecological problems.
During the second half of last century, when environmental
problems were first recognised, they were identified initially
as less important problems having local significance only.
But today it cannot be denied that these are global problems
and at stake is the future of our planet as well as species.
Due to pollution the percentage of green house gases in
atmosphere is on the rise resulting in the increase of
temperature leading to problem of global warming. The cycle
of seasons is becoming increasingly irregular with an
expansion of the summers and contraction of the winters.
The ice in polar regions is melting and causing an increase in
water levels of oceans, thereby threatening the coastal
population and ecology. Ozone layer is getting torn with
holes. The fact of the matter is that with the present rate of
increase in pollution levels the ozone layer will be reduced by
ten percent by the middle of this century itself. Ozone layer
in atmosphere acts as natural life-saving shield for living
beings of the earth as it absorbs incoming ultraviolet rays of
176
the sun. Due to holes in this layer, ultraviolet rays are
threatening the life-forms of the planet by reaching surface of
the earth. Pollution is transforming the rain into an acidic
medium, and downpour of acid in lieu of water is turning the
rain into a life-destroyer. Water bodies have got polluted.
Nectar like mother’s milk has tested positive for carcinogenic
pesticides and insecticides. Noise pollution has ended up
becoming a permanent resident of urban areas. Radioactive
pollution is also on the rise. Reaching us through mobile
phones and transmission towers, it has become an
indistinguishable part of our everyday life.
Such problems have necessitated a rethinking about
the concept of progress. It has compelled us to ponder if
phenomena considered to be constituting progress are taking
us forward, or the path ultimately leads to destruction only.
The problems are scientific only to a very limited extent, and
to that extent only their nature is technological. But science
and technology alone cannot overcome this ‘victory’ over
natures as problems are related less to domain of facts and
more to the sphere of what ought to be done. The solution
necessarily touches the realm of values and ethical
principles.
177
Need is being felt for a perspective that takes a
comprehensive view of human-nature relationship and helps
in dweling on problems related to ecology, providing grounds
for their solutions. Such a perspective has to be full of
eco-friendly values and ideals that aim at expansion of
human consciousness by making environmental awareness
an integral part of itself. Rather we need a sort of metaethics
that evaluates existing values and ethical principles to see if
they are conducive to such an endeavour or not. It also
needs to be analysed whether the values created by humans
for interaction among themselves are good enough for
human-nature relationship as well –i.e. whether they do
justice to environmental consciousness or not. Today, only
non-anthropocentric comprehensive perspective, that sees
humans and nature in harmony with one another can help in
overcoming the ‘victory’ over nature.
Producing Beings or Consuming Beings
One of the most significant factors that effect
environment inversely is consumerist culture. Production has
almost undisputedly been considered to be the differentia of
human beings as compared to other beings living their lives
in collectivities. For example ants and bees also live a
178
collective life but their collectivities are only food-gathering
ones. Against this human beings live in a collectivity that is
based upon producing food and other goods that they need.
Transformation of human collectivity from foodgathering to
foodproducing has been an important and significant step in
the process related to human self-creation. Production has
been the basis of reward system as also of stratification and
distribution of social respect in most of the cultures.
The process has seen a significant change in recent
times and in present scenario consumption has been
acquiring more and more importance. As has been seen in
the previous chapter, present generations are being shaped
and trained as consumers first. Today, more and more people
the world over are living a market mediated life and spend
most of their time consuming, or thinking, planning and
getting information about things that they intend to
consume. They can shop not only away from home but also
while being at home. There are T.V. channels dedicated to
home-shopping exclusively, and home-shopping networks are
available on internet also. One can shop through them when
one does not feel like going out. But it must be noted –as
Tony Blackshaw points out- “going to the mall has a special
179
kind of pleasure all of its own”.2 Don DeLillo’s novel White
Noise captures the experience of shopping very well. Its main
character goes to the mall for the first time and describes his
experience as follows :
“We walked across two parking lots to the main
structure in the mid-village Mall, a ten storey
building arranged around a center court of
waterfalls, … into the elevator, into the shops set
along the tiers, through the emporiums and
department stores, puzzled but excited by my
desire to buy … . We smelled chocolate, popcorn,
cologne; we smelled rugs and furs, hanging
salamis and deathly vinyle… . I shopped for its
own sake, looking and touching, inspecting
merchandise I had no intention of buying, then
buying it. …I began to grow in value and self
regard … I traded money for goods. The more
money I spent, the less important it seemed. I was
bigger than these sums … I felt expensive, inclined
to be sweepingly generous. … I gestured in what I
felt was an expansive manner …. brightness
settled around me.”3
180
People inhabiting the present consumer society
consider consumption to be having capacity to show them
the way to pleasure and happiness. In this sense consumer
goods are not simply objects, rather consumers see their own
reflections in them. As a matter of fact the individuals in
consumer societies are constituted by their consumption
choices. In a significant manner of saying they are taken to
be what they consume. This is so because in consumer
society, as has been noted earlier, when consumers purchase
something to consume, they are purchasing the signs, the
images and identities that go along with it. Bauman points
out that consumerism “stands for production, distribution,
desiring, obtaining and using, of symbolic goods”.4
Baudrillard also points out that “in consumer society signs
are exchanged not by virtue of what they represent, but on
the basis of their exchangeability with other signs”.5 In this
discourse it is insisted that it is through forms of symbolic
communication that consumer needs are constituted and
expressed. The concept of basic human needs is questioned
as it is conflated with the idea of innate needs. It is
contended that in consumer society the concept of innate
human need is untenable. If one thinks that objects are
181
useful as they serve some basic human need, then one is
considered to be suffering from some anthropological illusion.6
On the basis of such premises it is argued that in consumer
society there is a reversal of relationship between the object
or commodity and the need. It is argued that in consumer
society, instead of objects answering some human needs, the
needs themselves are brought into being by the commodities,
and our desires play the intermediatery role.
In present scenario more often than not objects are
sought not because they fulfill some need and hence are
functional, rather they correspond to consumer’s desire(s).
To use Baudrillard’s terminology, rather than being
functional, they infact are hyperfunctional. A particular
model of computer or cell phone might be fulfilling one’s
needs in the sense of being functional for him/her. But one
does not seek something that merely fulfills one’s needs,
rather one hunts for something which is latest in the market
and has features that are not present in the previous models.
It is in this sense that object is aimed at fulfilling one’s
desires and hence is hyperfunctional. In a significant manner
of saying the object rather than being practical is
obsessional. The object or gadget no longer serves the world,
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it rather serves our dreams and desires. Sometimes such
objects are so much related to human fantasy and desire that
they represent empty hyperfunctionality, far removed from
reality. All that we have to do is to remind ourselves of some
such object that we purchased thinking it to be highly
functional and also satisfying our desire, but ends up
gathering dust in the cupboard as it is hardly of any use. In
this sense, instead of serving some real purpose, consumer
products are designed according to fantasy and desire.
In consumer society more budget is kept for the
generation of desire as compared to production itself. The
desire is generated through media images and
advertisements. The images used for this purpose represent
novel seeming commodities to be associated with affluent and
newer life-styles and also generating happiness. Such
developments make consumption not a matter of choosing
some useful products, but of making life-style choices.
Social stratification and reward system, which
previously have been associated more with one’s place in the
system of production, have now increasingly been linked to
consumer choices and patterns of consumption, as also with
life-styles associated with such consumption patterns and
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choices. The present sociality redraws the boundaries
between social class divisions as a relationship between those
who happily consume and those who cannot. The poor who
are not able to perform their consumer duties are considered
to be flawed consumers,7 and inversely those who cannot
behave as right and proper consumers are viewed as poor. In
media also there is a shift from the heroes of production to
the heroes of consumption. There is a comodification of every
thing ranging from birth to death. There are several sites on
the internet that directly exhibit the act of birth giving, and
the recent example of actress ‘Goody’ –who became rather
infamous for her racist comments against Shilpa Shettey in
reality show ‘Big Brother’– selling the telecast rights of her
last moments after discovering that she was suffering from
cancer is quite well known. In prevalent consumer culture,
the spectacles associated with celebrities have acquired a
special dimension –be it divorce, break ups, affairs, deaths,
cricket matches, real lives of cricket, movie or soap opera
stars. There is celebration of anything and everything that
makes life magical. Bauman points out that masses are
seduced by the consumer culture and instead of repression
or ideology being central to social control, it is the power of
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seduction that is backbone of social control in consumer
society. Consumerism is allowed to answer all the questions.
Baudillard also insists that in consumer society people live a
life shielded by signs, in the denial of the real and seduced by
hyperreal simulations.
Against Baudrilland, it needs to be pointed out that it is
not possible to keep venturing in the realm of hyperreal all
the time as the reality of environmental problems is so grave
that it is not possible to live in its denial any more. It also
needs to be stressed against Bauman’s consumers inhibiting
the present world, that consumerism cannot be allowed to
answer all the questions as instead of providing answers to
the environmental problems, it has been a basic cause of
most of these problems. Polluting waste is not the only factor
associated with consumerism that effects the environment
adversely, rather the production processes associated with it
are also responsible for ecological degradation.
This also shows that dispite superficial appearance of
disjunction between consumption and production, there is a
deep relation between the two. There is a dialectical
relationship between consuming and producing
–consumption influences the production and production
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influences the consumption, as human beings are producing
as well as consuming beings. Any reductionist approach that
views human beings as either producing or consuming beings
only is bound to give rise to conceptual confusions and
practical problems. The view that human beings are
consumers first, and all the rest afterwards is taking
humanity towards a slow but sure death of environmental
and ecological decay.
The view that human beings are primarily consuming
beings is reflected in processes associated with globalization
also, and is responsible for several anomalies associated with
it.
The Post-industrial Globalisation
World has once again been proclaimed to be globalised
by contemporary thinkers. Whereas previous globalisation
has been considered to be associated with industrial phase
of the society, the globalisation in its concrete present form is
considered to be associated more with post-industrial era of
society. We are well aware of the fact that industrialisation
changed the face of the globe by changing social, political and
economic structures of the world previously based upon
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agriculture. Similarly post-industrialisation has also effected
significant changes in global structures and the world is
considered to have become almost a global village.
The sphere of economic activity is usually divided into
three sectors : primary, secondary and tertiary. The primary
sector is considered to be dealing with economic activity that
is aimed at obtaining objects more or less in the same form
as they appear in nature e.g. agriculture, fishing, mining etc.
Secondary sector deals with transforming natural objects and
producing commodities and goods for the market. The
tertiary sector consists of the domain of services.
It has been pointed out by thinkers theorising about
relation between changes in economic sphere and other
domains of human activities that pre-industrial times were
the age of primary sector; secondary sector became dominant
in the industrial age; and increasing significance of tertiary
sector associated with the domain of services has given rise
to post-industrial society. Daniel Bell has pointed out that
post-industrial society is “a society which had passed form a
goods-producing stage to service society”8 and insists that “if
the dominant figures of the past hundred years have been
the entrepreneur, the businessman, and the industrial
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executive, the ‘new men’ are the scientists, the
mathematicians, the economists, and the engineers of new
intellectual technology”.9 Thus whereas the economies of
industrial age were centered around the industrial
production, the post-industrial economies revolve around the
services sector. A new kind of world market based upon
vastly improved systems of communication, information
technology and circulation capital has been created that has
given rise to new commercial opportunities on the world wide
web.
Space and time have shrunk to almost nothing as the
world is literally at our fingertips as we can choose and
purchase almost everything we want from anywhere we want.
Similarly on the marketing side also the companies are
transnational and can market their goods and services where
ever there is demand and desire for them. We live in a world
market that has been globalised. Along with increased access
to the global market, there is almost complete integration of
individuals with the world market, which is based on the
notion that as consumers we all are almost some. Our
position and identity as consumers associated with world
wide web of global market has become more significant as
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compared to other positions, roles and identities lying outside
the domain defining our economic capabilities. This blurring
and softening of national, religious and ethnic boundaries
has been institutionalised by the transnational companies
who position themselves in a manner that takes advantage of
global dimensions of trade.
Thus globalization is not that much a result of respect
for global values; or human rights; or some other
humanitarian obligation like vasudhaiva kutumbakam, rather
it has its roots in the endeavour of transnationals to access
the global world market. Individuals also become adherents
of globalisation not so much out of respect for humanitarian
commonalties, rather they become so more out of desire to
enable themselves of accessing commercial opportunities
available on the world wide web. The globalisation is
associated not only with the post-industrialisation of the
society but also with the view that as consumers we all are
same. Hence it may be seen as post-industrial consumerist
globalisation. This globalisation has also been associated with
the thesis of the end of history.
The End of History
The thesis of end of history has been proposed by
Francis Fukuyama and Jean Baudrillard from divergent
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perspectives. Both of them are responding to the philosophy
of Hegel, but in different ways. Fukuyama in his book The
End of History and the Last Man insists that what he
suggested had come to an end was not occurrence of events,
but “history understood as a single, coherent, evolutionary
process”.10 This understanding of history has been associated
with Hegel and is considered to have been made part of
everyday intellectual discourse by Karl Marx. Both Hegel and
Marx are considered to be holding that evolution of human
societies was not an open ended process, rather it was
supposed to come to an end when humankind achieves a
form of society that satisfies its fundamental longings.
Fukuyama insists that both these thinkers posited an end of
history. For Marx it was communist society, whereas for
Hegel it was liberal state. This does not mean that important
events would not happen, nor that newspapers reporting
them would cease to be published, rather it means that
“there would be no further progress in the development of
underlying principles and institutions, because all of the
really big questions had been settled”.11
Thus the idea of history as progress is taken to imply
that if there is a goal of progress, there must be the
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possibility that this goal will be reached some day and history
would come to an end. Fukuyama considers history to have
achieved its goal in the market oriented liberal democracies
of the west. His view that West has reached end of history is
based on arguments drawn from perceived homogenisation of
all human societies and Hegel’s idea of desire for recognition.
He insists that unfolding of natural science has had a
uniform effect on all societies that have experienced it. This is
for two reasons. First, technology confers decisive military
advantage, and no state that values its independence can
ignore the need for military modernization. Second, natural
science helps establish a uniform possibilities of economic
production. It makes possible the accumulation of wealth to
satisfy an ever expanding set of human desires. This process
results in increasing homogenization of all societies,
regardless of their cultural origins. All countries undergoing
economic modernization must unify nationally, urbanise,
replace traditional forms of social organization like tribe, sect,
family with economically rational ones based on function and
efficiency, provide for the universal education, etc. In a
nutshell these countries must increasingly resemble one
another and become increasingly linked through global
markets and the spread of consumer culture.
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Fukuyama further insists that the logic of modern
natural science would seem to dictate a universal evolution
in the direction of capitalism as experiences of Soviet Union,
China and other socialist countries indicate that while highly
centralised economics can only reach upto the level of
industrialisation reached by Europe in the 1950s, they are
inadequate in creating post-industrial economics.
Thus according to Fukuyama, historical mechanism
represented by modern natural science is sufficient to explain
the character of historical change and growing uniformities of
the present day societies. “But where modern natural science
guides us to the promised land of liberal democracy, it does
not deliver us the promised land itself for there is no
economically necessary reason why advanced
industrialisation should produce political liberty”.12 This
leads him to Hegel’s idea of desire for recognition. Hegel
contends that humans differ fundamentally from other
animals, because in addition to natural needs and desires,
they desire the desire of other men, i.e. they want to be
recognised. Humans want to be recognised as human beings;
as a being with a certain worth or dignity. This worth is
related to human willingness to risk life in a struggle over
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pure prestige. According to Hegel, the desire for recognition
first drives two primordial combatants to seek to make the
other recognise their humanness by staking their lives in a
mortal combat. When the natural fear of death leads one
combatant to submit, the relationship of master and slave is
born. The stakes in this battle at the begning of history are
not food or shelter, but pure prestige. And since the goal is
not biological, Hegel sees the first glimmer of human freedom
in it.
The relationship of lordship and bondage, which took
various forms in different unequal aristocratic societies,
failed to satisfy the desire for recognition of both the master
and the slave. The slave was not acknowledged as a human
being in any way, but the recognition enjoyed by the master
was incomplete as well because he was recognized by the
slave whose humanity was incomplete as yet. Hegel believed
that contradiction inherent in the relationship of lordship
and bondage was finally overcome as a result of the French
revolution. Such revolutions replaced the unequal recognition
of masters and slaves by universal and reciprocal
recognition, where every citizen recognizes the dignity and
humanity of every other citizen. The dignity is also recognized
by the state through granting of rights.
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According to Fukuyama this reconciliation of desire for
recognition in liberal democracies provides the missing link
between liberal economics and liberal politics. On the basis of
above arguments he proclaims the end of history as he
considers liberal democracy to be the ideal form of social
organization that could not be further improved upon.
Whereas Fukuyama used Hegel’s argument to prove
that history has ended in contemporary liberal societies
based on liberalised economics, Baudrillard presents
contemporary culture as a distorted realisation of Hegel’s
view about relation between actual and rational. In
contemporary culture, Baudrillard insists, the reality and
simulations have collapsed into one another, giving rise to the
hyperreal, as has been seen in chapter V. The collapsing of
the signs and reality into one another generates the language
and code of postmodernity. The real has now been replaced
and transfigured by simulated rationalized models and as a
result the possibility of a critical and speculative distance
between them has collapsed and with that has ended the
possibility of history as a rational grasp of reality. He further
insists that we have reached a point where things happen too
quickly to make sense. He points out that “the acceleration of
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modernity, of technology, of events and media, of all
exchanges –economic, political and sexual– has propelled us
to ‘escape velocity’, with result we have flown free of the
referential sphere of the real and of history”.13 He points out
that a degree of slowness and distance is required for the
crystellisation of events termed history. But these have been
lost in contemporary hyperreality. There are multiple
interpretations of anything that happens, and these
competing interpretations compete to be fastest and
accessible. In the process the event is pushed to the
background and it is almost impossible to know what really
happened. In a way it also is not relevant for the media
presentations. He insists that “Events now have no more
significance than their anticipated meaning, their
programming and their broadcasting”.14 Thus the
contemporary world is world of simulations whose referents
have become immaterial, rather in a manner of speaking,
they have disappeared. There is a playful depthlessness and
there is a loss of critical distance between reality and
rationality. As a result the “history it self has to be regarded
as a chaotic formation, in which … turbulence created by
acceleration deflects history definitely from its end”.15 History
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has ended in an illusion in which the immediacy of the
meaning projected in the media hides the fact that meaning
has infact been lost. Humanity is lost in the realm of
hyperreality which denies the distance between experience
and their questioning. It is in this sense that Baudrillard
insists the historical perspective has been lost.
Let us analyse if the collapsing of the real into the
rationality of the hyperreal is of such a degree that with it
collapses the space for questioning the experience as also the
possibility of a critique leading to the loss of historical
perspective, or not. Consider his arguments regarding the
Gulf War discussed in previous chapter. He argues that “War
is not measured by being waged but by its speculative
unfolding in an abstract, electronic and informational
space”.16 The hyperreal was generated by computer software
or analogous systems. The war was programmed and its
events unfolded according to the programme. The spectacular
images and seemingly instantaneous reporting by world
media, instead of providing information about its reality
generated signs and simulations that transformed it into a
hyperreal conflict from which the truth of suffering and death
was rigorously excluded.
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Baudrillard insists that the deception of the Gulf War
was that it was a clean war devoid of bloodshed and
suffering. Baudrillard’s response to this lies in the sentence
that “A clean war ends up in an oil slick.”17. But this
suggests beyond any doubt that critics can differentiate
between hyperreal and the real, and we are not that much
caught in simulated hyperreal as may lead to the collapse of
historical perspective. Thus Baudrillard’s own critique of Gulf
War suggests that there still is space for questioning of the
experience, pointing to the possibility of historical
perspective, indicating that history has not infact ended as
suggested by Baudrillard.
It would be pertinent to note that this view of looking at
history makes it closer to the concept of ideology. The same is
true of conception of history being held and forwarded by
Fukuyama also. The thesis of end of history put forward by
him is quite closer to the thesis of end of ideology that was
forwarded earlier by Denial Bell. Bell in his collection of
essays The End of Ideology argued that political ideology has
become irrelevant and polity of the future would be driven by
piecemeal technological adjustments of the existent system.
He insisted that ideology was outdated and useless reminent
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of the previous age which could now be abandoned. The view
is based on the belief that some ultimate uniformity has been
achieved and a rough consensus existed as to what was
economically, politically and socially desirable.18 Later
Fukuyama suggested that the experience of Soviet Union and
other eastern block countries indicates that another effort to
tell a different story of human development has collapsed,
giving a boost to the conception of end of history. It can be
seen that the conceptions related to end of ideology and end
of history are quite similar to one another and are based on
the perceived homogenisation of the world.
It may be argued against such views that the perceived
homogenisation, rather than being universal or based on
some single, coherent evolutionary process, is infact
disguised effort aimed at creating hegemony of the West, and
hence is ideological itself. Contemporary western culture is
based on buying power. And apparently borderless,
globalised world exists only for the western elites who have
means to choose their lifestyles and to consume whatever
they feel like. In contrast to them, there also exist
dispossessed people in many parts of the globe for whom
poverty, disease, hunger, illiteracy, ecological degradation
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etc. are real problems related to the reality of every day lives.
For whom globalisation, rather than being an expression of
opportunity, is loss of security and self-determination. For
them the simulated hyperreal consumer lifestyles are only
fantacies and hopeless aspirations. For them even the
otherwise borderless globe becomes a world divided into
richer and poor nations and they find borders of richer
countries even more tightly patrolled to ward them off from
perceived promise of prosperity and liberty. These differences
bring us back to history, as Paul Hamilton rightly points out,
may be “the way back to history is through the
interminability of difference –economic, cultural, political,
religious”.19
Even in case of societies that are considered to have
reached the end of history as a single coherent evolutionary
process, can it be said that in future there would be no new
significant conceptual changes and developments? Will they
close their doors to the generation of new concepts? If not,
then new concepts produce new orientations and directions
for thinking. Concepts not only systematise reality, rather
more often than not they create reality. Many concepts put
forward by the thinkers discussed in this study may be taken
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as examples of such creations. If our language is not a closed
system, it cannot be said that there would not be newer
dimensions added to human cultural domain, and therefore
it cannot be an end of history. Even Karl Marx -who is
considered to be holding that with the advent of communist
society history will end– insists that much cannot be said
about the social formations beyond communism.
Let us now discuss the view that with the end of
ideology, the history has not ended, but has entered the
domain of clash of civilizations.
Clash of Civilizations
It has been seen that theorists like Francis Fukuyama
argued that the world has reached end of history in a
Hegelian sense, where only alternative left for the people are
liberal democracy and free market economy. Before him,
Danial Bell has also declared the advent of an era based on
end of ideology in which polity would be driven by piecemeal
technological adjustments of the existent system. Samuel P.
Huntington contends that while the age of ideology has
ended, the world has reverted to a state-of-affairs
characterised by civilizational conflicts. He proposed the
theory of clash of civilizations.20
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He traces the genealogy of the conflict and points out
that after emergence of modern international system the
conflicts of the western world were largely among princes,
emperors and monarchs aiming to expand their armies,
economic strength and the territory they ruled. In the process
they created nation states. And beginning with French
revolution, the principal lines of conflict were between
nations rather than monarchs. This pattern, according to
him lasted until the end of World War I. Then as a result of
Russian revolution and reaction against it, the conflict of
nations yielded to the conflict of ideologies. First it was
between communism, facism-nazism and liberal democracy,
and later between communism and liberal democracy.
During the cold-war this conflict was embodied in struggle
between two super-powers. None of these super-powers was
a nation state and each of it defined its identity in terms of
its ideology.
His hypothesis is that the fundamental source of
conflict in post cold-war world would not be primarily
ideological or economical, rather it would be cultural. The
principal conflicts will occur between groups of different
civilizations. According to him civilizations are differentiated
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from one another by religion, history, language and tradition,
and the clash of civilizations will dominate the global politics.
The fault lines between the civilizations will be the battle
lines of the future. His hypothesis is based on the theory that
West would like to continue its domination over the rest of
the world. With end of the cold war the military-industrial
complex of the West is in search of an adversary and a
perspective that would justify their sustenance in adequate
strength, and maintain the flow of funds towards them. That
rationale, according to Huntington, would be provided by the
civilizational differences and conflicts. He lists eight such
civilizations : Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu,
Slavic, Latin American, and African. He insists that the
primary conflicts in future would be along fault lines
separating these civilizations. According to him the
differences among civilizations are more fundamental than
divergence in economic, political and ideological views.
Cultural commonality promotes economic regionalism, and
as economic regionalism increases, the enormity of
civilizational differences gets increased. The global economic
processes tend to weaken the national identity and role of
religion as providing collective identity is on the rise. These
processes, in conjunction with changes in the field of
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information technology and communication revolution are
restructuring the globe, and feeling of a shrinking world
intensifies civilizational consciousness on the one hand and
highlights the differences between civilizations on the other.
Turning of these civilizational consciousness movements into
militant movements may lead to conflict. He sees almost an
immanent clash between western Christian civilization and
the Islamic civilization. He believes that Islamic and Chinese
civilizations will cooperate with one another in their conflict
with other civilizations, particularly the West, and considers
Russia, Japan and India as swing civilizations that may
favour either side. The 9/11 events and subsequent
happenings in Afghanistan and lraq are sometimes cited as a
vindication of the clash of civilizations theory.
Against this it can be argued that the main cause of
violence and conflict is when people view each other as
having a singular identity as opposed to multiple affiliations
-e.g. Hindu, women, professional, mother, art lover, sister,
daughter, member of socio-economic strata or a class etc.
any of which can be an individual’s choice for identity.
It can also be argued that evidence for an inherent and
immanent civilizational clash is not that convincing when
relationships such as between Western world and Saudi
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Arabia, Dubai etc. are considered. It can also be seen that
the values are also trans-civilizational and are more easily
transmitted and adapted than Huntington’s proposals
suggest. India, Turkey, South Korea, Several East European
and Latin American countries are vibrant democracies
whereas several western countries remain constitutional
monarchies. The clash thesis fails to do justice to the
dynamic interdependence and interaction between cultures
and civilizations that has been going on since times
immemorial and has increased many times in recent times.
It would be pertinent to note here that the concept of
Dialogue among civilizations -which was introduced by the
former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami– became the
basis for United Nations naming the first year of new
millennium as the year of Dialogue Among Civilizations. It is
in such initiatives that the value consciousness for the new
millennium lies.
Sketching a framework for value-consciousness for New
Millennium
Perspective that forecasts an era of clash of civilizations
is based on an erroneous perception of the world as a
juxtaposition of watertight compartmentalised and
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partitioned civilizations. It presumes that people see
themselves singularly as belonging to a particular civilization
which provides them the only identity that they have. This
partitioning of people of world is based on what Amartya Sen
has described as a solitarist approach to human identity
which sees individuals as members of one group only.21
Whereas in their every-day lives people see themselves
simultaneously belonging to a variety of groups and
collectivities. Each of these groups and collectivities provides
individual a particular identity, none of which can be taken
as his/her solitary identity. Rather in today's multicultural
societies individuals have plural identities and it is they who
decide on relative importance of the identities in various
contexts. It needs to be stressed that it is important for
individuals to choose and create each of these plural
identities themselves -through their authentic choices- rather
than borrowing them form pre-fabricated identities available
in the market. In case of civilizational identities it is rather
more important that they are based on authentic choices of
the individuals. They should be based on an understanding
that everything around is informed with human meanings
and hence is not pre-given, natural or unchangeable.
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Constituted reality exists for human purposes and can also
be changed in accordance with those purposes. It can be
changed in accordance with internal logic of the tradition and
also as a result of communication with other traditions. If
carried on the basis of such assumptions, the dialogue
among civilizations will be enriching for entire humankind.
Such a dialogue should shun cultural monism as a basis
for trans-civlizational communications on the one hand and
cultural relativism on the other. Monism refers to the view
that only one way of life is fully human, true, or the best, and
that all others are defective to the extent that they fall short
of it. 22 Relativism on the other hand refers to the view that
concepts of rationality, truth, validity and reality etc. must be
seen as relative to competing conceptual schemes, alternative
theoretical frameworks, incommensurable paradigms, forms
of life and cultures.23
Both monism and relativism spell doom for any
trans-cultural dialogue. Cultural monism seeks
homogenization of the civilizations and societies.
Homogenisation in cultural realm infact is nothing but
another name for hegemonization of certain powerful
civilization, and hence is detrimental to any dialogue among
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civilizations. Cultural relativism, on the other hand
considers reality to be such a social construction that varies
from culture to culture, and hence finds no way of resolving
cross-cultural differences as it denies the possibility of any
comparative appraisal. As one is prisoner of one's own
conceptual frameworks and standards of appraisal, the
possibility of any meaningful cross cultural and civilizational
communication is denied in principle.
Thus neither cultural monism nor cultural relativism
is conducive to any meaningful and constructive
communication among different cultures and civilizations.
Such a communication and dialogue can only be based on a
perspective of cultural pluralism. Like relativism, cultural
pluralism denies that there is only one way of life that is
fully human, true or the best, and accepts the plurality of
competing conceptual schemes and alterative theoretical
frameworks etc. that may vary from culture to culture; but
unlike relativism, it denies that there are no ways of
comparing and evaluating the competing claims, and accepts
the possibility to trans-cultural criteria for appraisal of
conceptual schemes, theoretical frameworks, etc. It accepts
the commonalities among cultures and civilizations without
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subsuming them under some overarching universal
frameworks. It seeks to underscore commonalities without
denying differences. Rather than seeking to eliminate
differences, it endeavours to accept and recognize them.
A dialogue based upon such a perspective not only
underscores commonalities among various civilization, rather
it highlights their differences also as different ways of doing a
thing -thereby expanding the range of available options and
freedom of choice. It prevents dominance of any one way of
looking at things and facilitates emergence of better and
novel ways of thinking. If individuals are not provided an
opportunity to venture out of their own cultural practices,
they tend to perceive them as natural and the only way of
pursuing every-day cultural life. Dialogue with other cultures
and civilizations help individuals to see their own culture and
civilization in a better light.
As has been pointed out earlier, human beings are finite
beings and can choose, pursue and master only some of the
alternatives available to them at any point of time. This
finitude of human existence is reflected in embodiments and
articulations of human creativity also. Civilizations being
systematizations and objectifications of human creativity,
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also reflect this finitude that delimits the sphere of their
activities. As such none of the civilizations is encyclopedic
and each one of them can realize only some of the great
creative human values. Since non can realise all the values at
any given point of time -or even all the aspects of any single
creative value- therefore the possibility of getting enriched by
sharing the value realising experiences of other civilizations
through dialogue would always be there for all the historical
civilizations.
Such an attitude towards diversity in the domain of
culture and civilization is even more important in the context
of present day societies, where as a result of increase in
avenues of communication, transportation, trade, etc. people
with various cultural backgrounds inhibit together. As
plurality in the domain of culture has a value of its own,
therefore value-consciousness for the future should be
informed by the ideals and values that not only tolerate and
accept differences, rather they should be conducive for
generating an attitude of respect towards them.
However it needs to be stressed that in the name of
respect for differences such a perspective should not lead to
the conception of anything goes. This can be done by
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accepting the notions of justice, emancipation and human
rights as means of reconciling various language games that
constitute a culture. Even in an era that has cast suspicion
on various values of previous eras, Lyotard has rightly
pointed out that "justice as a value is neither outmoded nor
suspect".24 A conception of justice that forms basis of
value-consciousness for future should not inflict injustice in
the name of justice, and hence it should not be based on
pre-conceived and pre-determined content or essence of
justice; rather it should be judged case by case, depending on
the merits of the case. Such a conception of justice should be
based on an open recognition of heterogeneity and multiplicity
of language games and the people. It has reference to respect
for differences. Injustice is inherent in preventing some voices
to participate in the game of justice -either by silencing those
voices or forbidding them from being heard. Being just is
related to allowing various voices to participate in the game of
justice by letting them being heard, thereby respecting the
differences. Such an idea and practice of justice is not linked
to consensus, nor is it associated with any pre-determined
essence of justice. While discussing the matter a decision will
have to be taken according to the situation and merits of a
210
particular case. By allowing different voices to be heard on
their own terms, it can open up pluralist modes of polities in
which no one is forbidden from participating in the process of
deciding what justice amounts to in a particular case.
Pluralist politics based on such thinking, and associated
concept of justice, is free from pre-determination and resists
all types of totalitarianisms - whether they be based on
grandnarratives associated with modernity, or on criteria of
efficiency and profit associated with present day societies.
Notion of emancipation is still relevant as a means of
reconciling various language games constituting a culture as
large segments of people in various civilizations are still
suffering from ignorance, poverty and hunger. Similarly, the
notion of human rights is essential to stress the
commonalities of human beings and to resist their
continuance in ignorance, poverty, hunger, bad health etc. in
the name of respect for cultural differences. In order to stress
the dialectics of commonalities and differences in case of
human realm, a balance has to be maintained between
human rights and the cultural rights of various communities.
In a framework of value-consciousness for future,
notion of human rights has also to be balanced vis-à-vis
211
animal rights and rights of other life-forms. Thus such a
framework has to shun anthropocentrism in fovour of
biocentrism. It would be pertinent to note here that under the
influence of mainstream intellectual tradition of modern age,
the ethical tradition of this age has also been primarily
anthropocentric. Everything has been evaluated from the
perspective of human beings. Anthropocentrism considers
human beings to be more valuable as they are equipped with
reason, wisdom and conscience. It holds that since humans
are only valuing agents in the otherwise value neutral
universe, so the value of everything else is relative to, and in
relation to them only. Though such theories consider
humans to be valuable as they are equipped with conscience,
but they fail to use this conscience while keeping other
species and nature out of ethical community. Extrapolating
the views of Gandhiji, it can be said that endowed with
reason, thought and conscience, humans are trustees of the
rights and interests of entire nature as well as other species.
And therefore they are the trustees of their moral respect and
value as well. Value framework and ethical principles drawn
form such a perspective will not only help re-establish the
harmony between human and non-human nature, rather it
212
will facilitate them to move ahead in harmony with one
another also.
Inculcation of a value-consciousness indicated by the
above framework may not be possible if the colonization of
life-world by instrumental rationality -that seeks efficiency
for the sake of efficiency, without any ethical or aesthetical
concerns- is not resisted. Conditions conducive for such a
value consciousness can only be achieved if all the three
spheres of reason -i.e. instrumental, ethical and aestheticalenrich
not only the life of every individual, but also the
hermeneutics of every-day communication. Such a value
consciousness will not only stop the transformation of the
process of human self-creation into the process of human
self-destruction, rather it will help in expansion of human
consciousness towards new depths and heights of the
universe and will facilitate the civilizational advances.
213
REFERENCES
1. Trevelyan, G.M. (1922) British History in the Nineteenth
Century, New York : Longman’s, p. 292.
2. Blackshaw, T. (2007) Zygmunt Bauman, London :
Routledge, p.115.
3. DeLillo, D. (1985) White Noise, London : Picador,
pp. 83-84.
4. Bauman, Z. (1992) Intimations of Postmodernity, London
: Routledge, p. 223.
5. Baudrillard, J. (1998) Symbolic Exchange and Death,
trans. Iain Hamilton Grant, London : Sage,
p. 7.
6. _______________ (1988) Jean Baudrillard : Selected
Writings, ed. M. Postor, Cambridge : Polity
Press, pp. 131-32.
7. Bauman. Z. (2002) In Deniel Leighton, ‘Searching for
Politics in an Uncertian World: Interview with
Zygmunt Bauman’, in Renewal : A Journal of
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8. Bell, D. (1971) The Coming of Post-industrial Society : A
Venture in Social Forecasting, London :
Heinemann, p. 37.
9. ibid., p. 34.
214
10. Fukuyama, F. (1992) The End of History and the Last
Man, Harmmondsworth : Penguin, p. xi.
11. ibid.
12. ibid., p. xv.
13. Baudirllard, J. (1994) The Illusion of the End, trans.
Chris Turner, Cambridge : Polity Press, p. 1.
14. ibid., pp. 21-22.
15. ibid., p. 111.
16. ____________ (1995) The Gulf War Did Not Take Place,
trans. Paul Patton, Sydney : Power, p. 56.
17. ibid., p. 43.
18. Bell, D. (1960) The End of Ideology, Illinois : Free Press
of Glencoe, pp. 372-75.
19. Hamilton, P. (2007) Historicism, London : Routledge,
p. 180.
20. Huntington, S.P. (1996) The Clash of Civilizations and
The Remaking of World Order, New York :
Simon & Schuster.
21. Amartya Sen (2006) Identity and Violence : The Illusion
on Destiny, New Delhi : Allen Lane (Penguin
Books), p. xvi.
22. Bhikhu Parekh (2000) Rethinking Multiculturalism,
Hampshere : Palgrave, p. 18.
215
23. Gautam, Satya P. (1994) "Against Relativism : A
Pluralist Approach to Language, Culture and
Cognition" in Knowledge, Culture and Action,
ed. Rekha Jhanji, Delhi : Anjanta
Publications, p. 49.
24. Lyotrad, Jean - Francois (1984) The Postmodern
Condition : A Report on Knowledge, trans.
Geoffrey Bennington and Brian Massumi,
Manchester : Manchester Univ. Press, p. 66.
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