A volcano erupts where the layers of earth are thinner, but the volcanic activity remains underneath.
A volcano erupts where the layers of earth are thinner, but the volcanic activity remains underneath. (1) Samuel Ruiz on the situation of the indigenous peoples of the world.
Our comfortable First World societies have grown inert, cynical and indifferent. People everywhere, not only in Europe, are desensibilised through the media by floods of footage on wars elsewhere, tremendous pictures of dying people and coverage on the most recent outbreaks of urban violence especially in big cities. The TV programme schedules shows that can only serve to desensibilise mass audiences even further, and the advertising breaks are becoming longer and longer, programming our brains to recall that fabulous new product as absolutely indispensable on our next trip to the supermarket. People everywhere get fed information from the TV-box, the Internet, poster walls, or huge cinema screens, which they take in, in chunks, and swallow, unchewed, unreflectedly. We have become automata of comfort and consume. Our ideals have been replaced by well-fed sarcasm, we are too bored with our unadventurous, undemanding lives to produce, we are indifferent to the suffering of others – even though sometimes conscience will make us buy a packet of fair trade coffee or put a coin into that kid’s Oxfam tin – we cannot imagine living without running water, and we are frustrated when the nearest by corner shop has run out of our favourite ice-cream. Issues such as racism, gender-violence or social segregation be it for reasons of diseases such as HIV/ AIDS, religious belief, sexual orientation or lack of economic power, arediscussed in the media. However, too few people have a real say on these new societal issues. Most keep their involvement down to the basics: the consumption of headlines and breaking news stories, without any further reflection.
Sex, drugs and violence are, paraphrasing Marx (2), the new opium of the people.
This article has been motivated by a deep concern about the modes of human coexistence in contemporary societies, by the rise of indifference towards the situations of others and a general lack of respect in human relationships, be they formal or informal, institutionalised or private, short or long term. Its objective is to propose a positive solution and answer to the attitudes of incivility that seem to be spreading out across the planet, and especially so in the well-fed, secure and comfortable so-called First World countries. Luckily, what has been said up to here, does not do justice to those who do in fact speak up through civil societyorgans, by means of writing readers’ letters to magazines and newspapers voicing a sense of concern about incivility, indifference and the likes. There is, definitely, a renascent tendency to allow philosophical thought into international relations debates. After all, it is true that – the great void of philosophical considerations, the dark years of ethics in international relations during the Cold War having ended – there is now a new opportunity and demand for humanistic considerations and perspectives on international relations topics that go beyond politics, law and economics and that tackle the role of the human being as a humanbeing in these complex interstate and inter-civilisational relations. The contemporary world is marked by deep controversies and conflicting phenomena: on the one hand there are the undeniable and worrying rise of indifference towards others, lack of respect and intolerance, but on the other hand we witness the emergence of a whole new group of people, from different generations, who are genuinely preoccupied about the neglected role of ethics in human relationships and the continuing and growing injustices in this world. In the same society major incivility and civic human conscience exist side by side; senseless acts of vandalism, racist violence, domestic abuse and ideological and religious intolerance, to name but a few, are contrasted with social awareness campaigns, a rising number of citizens implied in voluntary work in the social sector and a general increase in the number of NGOs, international fora, debates on human rights issues and critical newspaper articles on the varied issues of the contemporary world.This article reifies this powerful positive tendency which infuses us with the real hope for a fresh breeze into international relations.
On global civil society . To begin with, I affirm: Global civil society does exist! It exists as a reality – something which can easily be confirmed: we only have to have a look at the vast amount of civil society activity taking place in the international realm advocating common causes and demanding respect for the basic rights of all of humanity (3). But global civil society is far more than that: it is an ideal that is capable of defending its own ethic! In other words, global civil society is legitimate from a moral philosophical point of view. It is a sphere of ethical contact, coexistence and cooperation of human beings. And since there is no binding definition of the term ‘global civil society ’, there is margin for adopting the most adequate perspective of global civil society for the purposes of confirming the existence and ethical potential of civil society ‘gone global’.
Global civil society as a concept includes all organised elements of civil, i.e. non-governmental, society worldwide who address global problems, issues (potentially) concerning all of humanity, either locally, regionally, internationally, or, naturally, globally in an essentially non-violent manner. These elements can be individuals, groups, associations, non-governmental organisations, intellectual networks, and so on. Excluded are those actors on any level of human societal organisation who work for criminal or terrorist ends or infringe on the basic ethical principles of global civil society : i.e. respect for the human rights and duties, recognition of common humanity and the instrinsic worth of the human being of any colour, belief, political adherence, social class, sexual orientation, economic income or any other classifying factor. Within the realm of global civil society different civil society groups from different cultural or civilizational backgrounds or defending different world views find room to clash. It is not an elitist sort of society even though the elites can naturally be represented through its organs. Global civil society is an essential building stone of ‘global governance’. Its entities are the representants of a direct form of democracy that has the option of bypassing political parties. However, they can never entirely bypass governmental institutions who they necessarily have to be linked up with in order to make real progress. After all, it is the governments who make the polical decisions and who set the scene for structural change, even though civil society actors do a great deal in stimulating debates about structural change and in implementing policies once they are ratified. We can find many examples of an emerging physical reality of global civil society corresponding to the concept.
Global civil society as an ideal is an intellectual space for ethical debate, behaviour, and the exercise of tolerance and respectful relations among different huamn beings where the fundamental, thin as the American scholar Michael Walzer (4) would say, values of humanity – such as freedom, equality and respect – are celebrated, agreed upon, reinforced and through whose mechanisms they are diffused worldwide. To enter this space requires of the individual to be elastic in the sense of Ernest Gellner’s modular man (5).
In the historically only recently globalised and highly mixed up world-reality, in which societies are made up of more and more different, often diverging, elements with different and often clashing world-views, and where the threats to human beings have become global threats to the existence of humanity, this ideal yet possible global civil society made up of adaptable and respectful, thinking human beings has the enormous potential for becoming a true medium of exercising direct democracy. It is one possible and promising solution to the aforementioned emotional and humanistic void present in many contemporary societies, particularly in the so-called Western First World societies. It has the capacity of reinfusing into national politics and international relations hope for the possibility of human understanding or at least the recognition of an existing common humanity, an element of cohesion that connects all human beings, no matter from what culture, social class, belief, or else they might be. The hope that this might in fact be possible rests on the promising existence of a number of people doted with a characteristic civil courage that allows them to raise their voices against all forms of incivility and let actions follow upon their words. The human being needs ideals and the big humanistic ideals, such as socialism, have not died out altogether. Inert, consumerist subjects of capital-oriented societies in which the primary points of reference for any action, including moral ones, are: “How much will I gain economically from this? or “How great is the economic risk in that?”, lack humanistic ideals that could teach them to acknowledge common humanity. Moreover, the consequences of such acknowledgement are not drawn: most are hesitant to adopt attitudes of respect, civility and solidarity towards others because such attitude can be expected to go in detriment to the achievement of certain personal consumerist goals.
The world needs at least one new ideal. And this must be one we can actively take part in, one we can create and feed, an ideal that is attainable, not a utopia that will forever remain outside our reach and only aliment our cynicism. What could be such an ideal?
On universal ethics. Addressing the issue of global civil society from an ethical perspective means that we have to cast an eye on the possibilities of a universal ethic. Immediately a number of examples of the incompatibility of moral systems and different ethical world-views of different societies or even just differen individuals might rush to the reader’s mind. It is of course true that we are day-in day-out faced with moral dispute, misunderstandings, and genuine confrontations of different ethical points of view on the same topic. We might very well wonder, how the claim of a global civil society ethic can be compatible with a world-reality in which confrontation, often the bloody version, seems to be indeed much more widespread than reconciliation, tolerance, respect and understanding. No matter how hard scholars, activists and idealists search for a universal ethic, they just do not seem to find any convincing ethical systems that responds to the moral needs and understandings of every individual of the planet from any society or civilization. Intercultural ethics are on the rise but there is no patent for cracking the difficulties the boundaries of culture, language and religion pose to all those who are trying to live in harmony alongside each other or even with each other, especially in the big cities of the contemporary world.
My answer to the problem goes as follows: global civil society ethics is an ethic of fundamental human values and perhaps a highly restrained number of first principles. It is illusory to think that it is or will become a full moral system including behavioral indications and containing direct and explicit responses to any and all moral situations, in particular situations of moral dilemma. Yet, by providing a basic canon of values and first principles (based on the assumption of common humanity, the possibility for human consensus on existential topics for humanity, i.e. those issues that deal with the very survival-expectancies of the human species, and on the acknowledgement of the instrinsic worth of the human being), global civil society sets out to be the means of bridging cultural and civilisational gaps between different moral universes humanity has brought forth. Global civil society has the capacity of breaking the resistance of culture-specific ethics without destroying them. The ideal of global civil society does provide a point of reference for moral decision making that is hard to ignore, since the values brought forth by its adepts can coherently claim that all people can have good reason to accept them. Now, if these universally acceptable values do indeed exist, it can do no harm identifying them clearly. What are the values?
Due to the limited space left for the last few paragraphs of this article, I have to restrict myself to enouncing my favourite candidates for values and first principles without grounding them on the firm grounds of philosophical arguments in their favour. I appeal at the intuition of the particular to accept them, hopefully, or refuse them, which would be a pity – not so much for myself as rather for humanity.
(i) liberté,
(ii) égalité,
(iii) fraternité – in the sense of solidarity,
(iv) maximising chances for human survival and happiness, and – last but not least –
(v) civility.
These are the values that form the basis of the new ideal of global civil society . They are a proposal, not a final canon. In fact, it is one of the functions of global civil society to proof-check these values among the people constituting contemporary humanity. They are debatable and open for discussion. Maybe discourse on a global level will bring us closer to agreeing on what values common humanity entails and on what topics human consensus is both urgently needed and about to be reached.
There is an old German proverb that says: “Nimm die Welt wie sie ist, nicht wie sie sein sollte. (Take the world as it is, not as it ought to be)” It is of course true and legitimate to first take the world as it is, observe and analyse it, before adventuring into the field of how it ought to be. However, upon initial observation of the facts, it is admissible to think, within the confines of reason, about how the world ought to be in order to be the best possible place for human beings to live in and to live in accordance with their nature. I would, therefore, like to propose a slightly different motto for a positive human attitude in the contemporary world: “Nimm die Welt wahr, wie sie ist, und arbeite daran, dass sie so werde, wie sie sein sollte. (Perceive the world as it is, and work so that it may become as it ought to be)”. I have consciously decided to be an optimist Global civil society does not always have great visibility and can be criticised for that. However, there is a human substratum of concern for the state of humanity and, indeed, where the layers of tolerance have been thinned out too much, civil society action, globally, erupts. Samuel Ruiz’ statement at the head of this article holds for the dynamics of global civil society , too.
Global civil society is an attempt to return to older, humanist philosophies. In this world of indiferrence, inertia and intellectual submission, global civil society promotes an old ideal that becomes a new one in the era of globalisation: it is the ideal of humanity in the sense of living peacefully and non-violently together and respecting others in their decisions and modes of life.
Note
1) MUÑOZ, Sergio (1998), “Samuel Ruiz mediating for peace and social justice in Chiapas, Mexico” in Los Angeles Times, 10 May.
2) See MARX, Karl (1844), “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right” in Deutsch-französische Jahrbücher, February.
3) We can here think of phenomena such as the worldwide anti-Iraq war demonstrations, organised civil society events attracting huge numbers of actors from all four corners of the world such as the World Social Fora, or puntual manifestations of different civil society elements coming together to voice concern or dislike about a concrete fact, political decision or attitude such as could be observed in the 1999 ‘Battle for Seattle’ against the actions of the World Trade Organisation.
4) For an exposition on this line of thought see WALZER, Michael (1994), Thick and Thin: moral argument at home and abroad, Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press
5) For further information see GELLNER, Ernest, “The Importance of Being Modular” in HALL, John (2003), Civil Society: Theory, History, Comparison, Cambridge: Polity
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