MODERN CIVILIZATIONS ON TRIAL
The Crisis of Global Modernity
Modern civilizations are on trial. The historian Arnold Toynbee in his 1948 Civilization on Trial summed up the central contradiction of our modern era. He notes that “our world has risen to an unprecedented degree of humanitarian feeling. There is now a recognition of the human rights of people of all classes, nations, and races; yet at the same time we have sunk to perhaps unheard of depths of class warfare, nationalism, and racialism. These bad passions find vent in cold-blooded, scientifically planned cruelties; and the two incompatible states of mind and standards of conduct are to be seen today, side by side, not merely in the same world, but sometimes in the same country and even in the same soul.”
The modern world has spawned the ideals of the Enlightenment. Building on the world religions, the range of concern has extended to the entire world and all humanity. But the acceptance of universal ideals such as liberty, equality, and fraternity has not noticeably affected our behavior. We have slaughtered each other in the name of the nation; tribal passions abound and inequality of wealth continues to increase. There is little moral progress. Technological advance increases our power over nature and others but human beings with awesome power in their hands seem unable to use that power wisely.
As a result, humanity is forced to deal with multiple crises. There is great danger and instability in a world where the power dynamics are shifting, with increased risk of nuclear war. As Toynbee pointed out, our ability to tap atomic energy before war was abolished raised the possibility that the two world wars might be only a prelude to a supreme catastrophe. At the end of the Second World War, the United Nations was set up to ensure peace. But the unwillingness of the United States to give over its nuclear weapons to an international body meant that a nuclear arms race was inevitable, placing humanity at great risk. The rise of non-Western nations such as China injects the element of racial and cultural difference into an already volatile situation.
Unfortunately, we are by no means out of danger. There is the risk of nuclear war taking place not only over the war in Ukraine but also over Taiwan. If the US takes continuing liberties with the One China policy, China may take more aggressive action thereby inviting escalation; if China decides it is strong enough to take China by force and the US responds militarily, then nuclear conflict is not inconceivable. The 2020s is a very dangerous decade.
Another great danger has come into focus, a crisis of sustainability due to environmental disruption. The two crises are related since the second partly came about as an answer to the first. The high-growth economies of the postwar international system were designed so that enough goods would be available to satisfy all the major powers and there would be less need to prey on each other. But the models of unlimited growth ran up against the limits of a finite earth’s climate and its depletable resources.
Based on his climate research carried out in the 1970s, James Hansen testified before a US Senate committee in 1988 that climate change was the result of human activity, bringing the issue to the attention of a mass audience. He stated 30 years later that although the nations of the world have agreed there is a problem, their leaders refuse to acknowledge what they need to do in order to address it. The reason why we have faltered in the face of the first two crises is related to a third major crisis, one of meaning, as our sources of transcendence have slipped away.
In the modern world, the scientific revolution has weakened belief in supernatural explanations, the dominance of rational understanding has taken away our sense of wonder about the world, and greater individualism has loosened the hold of religious communities. As these forces sweep across the globe, they encounter more resistance in some quarters than others as people feel the loss of connection with the world that they once felt an integral part of.
Although greater individuality and freedom have been gained, we have also become more disconnected from the world, the source of our lives. Losing our spiritual fullness, we search for meaning rather than perceive and experience it. The quest for individual mastery and control has led to estrangement from the body, nature, others, and the cosmos. Many feel we have lost our way. Understandably, modern individuals more and more want to regain what has been lost without giving up the gifts that the modern world has brought.
The Search for Transcendence
Today’s modern world of nearly autonomous technology, rationality often uninformed by vision and imagination, and humans viewed as separate and apart from their environment is running out of motivation and purpose, offering mostly more of the same, a full technological remake of the world. Voices within non-Western civilizations are reviving older sources of guidance and adjusting them to present conditions as they look for ways to steer us beyond modernity, now that it has clearly become more anxiety-provoking than liberating. These wisdom traditions have also become more accessible in the West, facilitating curiosity about these traditional ways of life.
New technologies like artificial intelligence can serve people in very beneficial ways, relieving them of the need to do bureaucratic tasks so that they can engage in creative pursuits. Artificial intelligence systems are capable of greatly contributing to the solution of the technical problems we will face as the crises intensify. But if we remain at our present level of awareness, the applications of these technologies are more likely to lead to destructive consequences. So there ought to be more focus on accessing wisdom than on technological salvation; technology is a tool, the servant of human consciousness.
The spiritual traditions of Asia and the Islamic world are a repository of the knowledge and practices that lead to unity consciousness and enlightenment. Despite appearances to the contrary, they are not fundamentally opposed to science and can be harmonized with it. Werner Heisenberg, introduced by Tagore to Indian philosophy, came to recognize the parallels between Eastern thought and quantum physics, realizing that relativity, interconnectedness, and impermanence which make up the basic substratum of physical reality, are at the heart of India’s spiritual traditions.
Transcendence refers to a set of ideals or ethical values that are a source of authority not present in the ordinary world. Recently, ecological transcendence has become more popular among middle-class people all over the world as they adopt ecological philosophies in which humans and nature, organisms and environment are the basic reality. In rural parts of China and India, there is a strong religious connection with nature, the foundation of their livelihood, so people appeal to religious values and demand just practices that protect their environment. They oppose large-scale construction projects like dams that displace them and whatever takes away their ability to fish, farm, or live off the forest.
Elites have suppressed and looked down upon rural peoples with less education and wealth. But people in the local areas, especially the indigenous people, have a more ecological outlook, tending to live outside the logic of industrial society. Paul Hawken’s words in Blessed Unrest (2007) resonate. “For indigenous people, in the time that defines one’s life, the relationship one has to have with the earth is the constant and true gauge that determines the integrity of one’s culture, the meaningfulness of one’s existence, and the peacefulness of one’s heart. In most indigenous cultures there are no separate social and environmental movements because the two were never disaggregated.”
China and India are important to focus upon when we talk about problems of peace and the environment because their huge populations and level of industrial development ensure considerable military power and potential for environmental destruction; their ability to affect the rest of the world is increasing all the time. If we look at the arms race and the nuclear buildup, it has been led by the United States, the world’s policeman that easily outspends all other major powers. In the area of environmental pollution, Western industrial nations have been the main culprits, although China has now forged ahead. The question is always raised as to who should compromise most, the worst perpetrators of the past or the present and future ones?
The Perilous Transition
A crucial point about the interrelated crises is that the governments of the United States and China are locked in a struggle for hegemony, so there is little incentive to cooperate with each other in order to benefit the entire world. Instead of devoting their energies to addressing these crises, the US and China are building up their military strength and their economic clout. India and China are also at odds. In all these countries, economic growth and national power take precedence over the spiritual and environmental realms and the requirements of peace. The imperative under these disheartening circumstances is to establish links between groups in the rival nations and work together to exchange information and strategies while reducing enmity among their peoples.
Modern times have been characterized by the Western challenge to other civilizations thereby forcing them to respond; the most dynamic responses (1980s Japan and China today) have been taken by the West as challenges because these civilizations do not acknowledge Western leadership. These challenge and response cycles must be put to rest in favor of global cooperation. Of course, this requires unprecedented levels of cooperation between civilizations while confronting many obstacles: difficult histories of intercivilizational relationships, different worldviews and values, and the current engagement in competition for world hegemony. But in light of the crisis of global modernity, the stakes are now so high that there is no other choice but to find ways around these obstacles.
If human beings are successful, the next phase will be a move beyond nation states themselves. In reality, the nation state, the central institution of the modern era, is giving way to the power of global capitalism on the one hand and civilizational or regional identities on the other. The ideal, though, is a genuinely global civilization with a strong planetary identity balanced by allegiances rooted in local areas and communities. The mode of production would be cosmolocal, that is, an integration of the digital commons based on open knowledge and design with local manufacturing and automation technologies (design global, manufacture local).
Still, the difficulties of carrying out changes of such magnitude without new forms of transcendence and a raising of consciousness are overwhelming, since people will be required to adapt more quickly than they can manage in their present mental reality. So there must be inner development. Otherwise, as confusion and chaos multiply, authoritarian regimes will take over without resistance as people look for a savior.
To avoid possible misunderstandings about the nature of civilizations, let me say that civilizations are the outcome of the will and creativity of groups as they culturally respond to the political economy in the broadest sense, including technological developments and the social structure. Identity comes from how people understand themselves as they interpret their civilizational past, a process which is always changing. And, although often ignored, civilizations are the outcome of relationships with each other; only in rare cases have they developed in relative isolation for long periods of time.
Non-Western civilizations are creating alternative modernities. They are enriched by having access to their own traditions as well as modern Western thought, whereas the West tends to be trapped within Eurocentric ways of thinking. Feelings of inferiority and a desperate wish to recover their dignity have motivated non-Western peoples to great efforts while experiences of dislocation have forced them to come up with new adaptations. The West’s technology advantage which began during the early modern period and accelerated during the industrial revolution is passing. We are entering a time when there will be several centers of civilization followed by a global civilization.
But it will not be like the globalized world we have today. A centralized economy will break down. Environmental, social, and political instability will prevent the coordination needed to keep the far-flung lines of supply going. The worldwide division of labor between rich and poor will no longer function,
As a result, the spiritual and ecological wisdom of rural peoples will come into play. The poor of the world will not storm the citadels of the wealthy; the world system will crack and splinter as ecological damage, the unresponsiveness of the elites, and alienation and loss of meaning take their toll. It will then be time for those who have access to the memories of a simpler but deeper life of higher purpose to step forward.
Chief Phil Lane Jr. is an indigenous sacred activist, a modern person saturated with the spiritual wisdom of his native American elders. He has been a leader in developing community-based digital networks for promoting education, human development, the protection of children, and social and environmental justice and has promoted initiatives to build community among the indigenous peoples of the world. Chief Lane writes that the prophecies of his people “foretell that after a long spiritual wintertime of 500 years, the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas and beyond, will become so spiritually and intellectually advanced that we will be a unifying and guiding global force.” This is the meaning of their 500 years of suffering, preparing them for what the world is facing now.
If we survive, the world will have been turned upside down. The valuable knowledge accrued by civilizations will be retained in a new mixture with the older wisdom traditions. Machines and numbers, the vehicles of power and control for corporate and bureaucratic elites, will no longer set the tone for our civilization. There is a great drama ahead of us.
