The Inner Limits of Mankind Part 4

THE INNER LIMITS OF MANKIND

HERETICAL REFLECTIONS ON TODAY’S VALUES, CULTURE AND POLITICS

ERVIN LASZLO

One World Publications                   1989

PART IV

 

Chapter 4: Political Limits: The Crisis of International Political Will (Cont.)

The unperceived imperatives

• The UN would be the obvious instrument for defining global goals and coordinating the policies required for their achievement but it is incapable of generating the political will needed for their implementation.
• Correcting or eliminating inequalities, redressing injustices, reducing gaps between rich and poor, assuring economic and social development cannot be achieved while leaders press for their own immediate economic and political advantage.
• The plight of the UN is but the visible manifestation of obsolete values and expectations. The peoples of the world perceive their own interest independently of the general human interest and want their leaders to be watchdogs of their immediate national concerns and material benefits.
• Unless global goals are pursued through international cooperation, insecurity, hunger, energy and resource shortages, rich-poor gaps and environmental conditions will worsen.
• The inner limit associated with the current crisis of political will is eliminable. But whether the nations of this world will collectively vanquish it, or whether they will be ultimately vanquished by it, is still anybody’s guess.

 

Chapter 5: Transcending the Inner Limits. Ground Rules for a World to Be

• Having criticized people’s failure to recognize the obsolescence of modernism, deplored the atrophy of positive vision in contemporary cultures, and noted with alarmthe crisis of international will, it behoves us now to produce some constructive suggestions.
• New and pragmatic rules are needed to orient the evolution of personal values and aspirations, to guide the rejuvenation of contemporary cultures, to motivate the emergence of higher levels of political will, and to provide points of reference for the mutual attitudes and relationships of peoples and nations.

 

Ground rules for the orientation of human aspirations

• Since time is short, a few basic ground rules should be adopted to keep the transcendence of inner limits on globally as well as locally appropriate tracks. Truly universal values do exist. They lie at the core of all the major religions and our most noble cultural traditions.
• The values of universal brotherhood, love for one’s neighbour, and the golden rule of treating others as we would wish to be treated are just some of the ideals that are common to all cultures. They have fostered social union and amity between people for countless generations, inspired great works of art, and continue to underscore our highest aspirations.
• Today’s world would indeed benefit from a profound affirmation of these essential spiritual truths. The adoption of such values on a global scale will guarantee the right of all humanity to strive to fulfil its basic needs for life, progress and justice.
• Given our interdependence, failure to attain conditions where life, progress and justice are assured everywhere constitutes a threat to peace and fulfilment everywhere. Not only individuals societies, but the entire world community of peoples and nations must strive to fulfil these needs.
• The world community as a whole must be able to guarantee the right to life with human dignity to all its members; must allow progress to be made in the light of diverse conceptions of social, economic and political organization, and must reduce social and economic gaps to levels where they are no longer intolerably unjust to the poor.
• A world community that satisfies the need for life, progress and justice is one that is sustainable, developing, and equitable. Sustainability, development, and equity are useful and universal guidelines for the aspirations of all peoples.
• What sustainability is with respect to life, development is in regard to progress.
• For how long can 3%, 4% or 5% rate of economic growth be maintained? And is that the apex of social desirability? Instead of looking at development as something that is achieved by a continuous growth of the national economy as reflected in gross economic indicators, we should look upon it as a progressive realization of the ideals and values of the majority in society.
• The enormous gaps, whereby the richest 10% of the world population earns three dozen times more than the poorest 10%, can and must be reduced. The Third World’s sense of justice is outraged today not because the 75% of the world’s population living there do not receive precisely the same amount of goods and services as those living elsewhere, but because Third World people receive less than their fair share (measured against their basic needs, social merits and even their performance) whereas the citizens of the industrialized countries often live indulgently and wastefully.
• A world society that is sustainable, developing and equitable does not spend the resource capital of future generations, does not suppress motivation for social and economic growth, and does not violate the sense of justice of the vast majority of its people. But it can be a highly diverse society in which different cultures, ideologies, values and ideas flourish side by side, and to mutual benefit.

 

Groundrules for the interrelationships of nations and peoples

• The achievement of a sustainable, developing and reasonably equitable global society calls for new and intense forms of international cooperation. Mid-century concepts such as coexistence are no longer adequate. Whether practised by the superpowers, or by the super-powerful economic and military blocs, coexistence implies no more than mutual toleration of each other’s presence.
• We not only need gropund rules to orient our aspirations for achieving our respective ideals, we also need ground rules of international cooperation to assure implementation; we may dream separately but we must act together, not uniformly but in concert.
• We may have to replace antiquated notions such as coexistence with more adequate concepts, such as mutually beneficial cooperative existence through interdependence – or, to coin a more manageable term, interexistence.
• Through the concept of interexistence, collaborative interactions can develop to move the human species far beyond the limiting logic of exclusion. Collaboration can transform a ‘zero-sum game’ of separated individuals into a ‘plus-sum game’ of partners.
• The new ground rule for the interrelations of nations and peoples is interexistence. It can be stated simply: Only those long-range policies which bring positive-sum results  are to be implemented.
• In some games the gain of one player balances the loss of others. The sum of the gains and losses equals zero, hence such games are called zero-sum games. When all players may win – these are the positive-sum games.
• The international balance of power gives rise to a game which is at best zero-sum, but the situation could be transformed into a positive-sum game with the establishment of a system of world security through disarmament and mutually agreed upon peacekeeping.
• No nation would risk being damaged or wiped out, and all could spend the major part of the huge sums which now go to defence and military projects on concrete human benefit.
• While in the old order the economic gains of the rich and powerful states and corporations entailed the exploitation of the weaker and poorer partners, in a new order real advantages can accrue to all parties. These can be confereed by achieving stable prices for vital commodities and fuels, a more equitable international division of labor with better access to science and technology by the poor, by reforming the international monetary system to serve the needs of all societies, and by assuring equal access to the global commons for all states and regions.
• If the nations and peoples of this world mustered the vision and the will not merely to coexist but to interexist, they could assure a humane future for the entire world community. Do we play a ‘game’ in which my gain is your loss, or do we create new rules which enable all of us to gain?
• Agreement on mutually accepted ground rules would not prescribe the visions and ideals of any people, nor proscribe the freedom to achieve such ideals in practice, but allow the creativity of cultures and the ingenuity of peoples full play. It could led to a world that is diverse yet harmonious, progressive yet sustainable, free yet disciplined.

 

Chapter 6: Beyond Today’s Limits. The Evolutionary Prospect

Appendix: A Long Way to Grow. A Bird’s-eye View of the Current Goals of the World’s Peoples

Notes