Towards a Fourth Civilisation: The Dawning of the Informatic Age

Majid Tehranian is professor of international communication at the University of Hawaii and director of the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research. His article is based on a paper presented at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance Conference in Tehran, 9–11 January 2001.

 

Civilisation is a race between education and catastrophe
                                                             —H. G. Wells

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
                                                      —T. S. Eliot

 

Why use such terms as “civilisation” and “civilised” in a world in which they have often been abused to insinuate the superiority of one group of humanity over others? Why have a dialogue among civilisations that have incompatible interests and perspectives? Why focus on this theme when seeking to develop a new peace agenda for the new millennium? In an age of globalisation and clash of cultures, how can we manage and balance human rights and responsibilities, individual freedoms and social obligations, national sovereignty and international interdependency? What value, if any, does national sovereignty have as an organising principle in relation to regional and global forces? Are globalisation of culture and the dominant consumerist global culture in conflict or harmony? Can spiritual and temporal authorities work together in a world dominated by commodity and identity fetishism? Finally, how can we build a peaceful global civilisation that is inclusive, unifying, diverse and democratic?

 

 I will not try to answer all these perplexing questions. I am posing them as issues to be addressed rigorously. The aim of this article is to propose a historical framework for understanding the challenges in our passage to a new global civilisation, which may be called informatic to contrast it with the previous nomadic, agrarian and industrial civilisations. I hope, therefore, to provoke a searching dialogue on the path we should take in the twenty-first century to achieve a more just, humane and peaceful world.

Globalisation and Fragmentation

In anticipation of the G8 Summit in Okinawa in July 2000, thirty peace scholars from all over the world met in Naha, Okinawa’s capital city, on 11–13 February 2000 to prepare a new peace agenda for the new millennium. Their efforts resulted in the Okinawa Declaration, which called for the elimination of all weapons of mass destruction, the closing of global gaps in wealth, income and information, and the opening of a dialogue on global ethics. Considering the serious differences that emerged among the participants on issues such as nuclear proliferation and independence for certain national liberation movements, this consensus document was an impressive achievement.

 

The conference focused on an exchange of ideas among members of different civilisations. We were also anticipating 2001, the United Nations Year of Dialogue among Civilisations. The meeting brought together peace and policy scholars from eight civilisations: indigenous, Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian, Judaic, Christian, Islamic and secular humanist. Globalisation is clearly generating new cultural and political conflicts that cannot be resolved except through dialogue. Following Okinawa, similar conferences are planned for Moscow in 2001, Beijing in 2002, Tehran in 2003, Hyderabad in 2004, and elsewhere in future years. While the Okinawa meeting focused on the normative encounters between science, religion and civilisation, the Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and Hyderabad meetings will concentrate respectively on Eurasian, North–South, East–West and global cyber relations. The results of each conference are to be published in a book series sponsored by the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research.

 

Why Okinawa, Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, Hyderabad and North America? Globalisation has fragmented the world into new factions that may be called the Davos, Seattle, Moscow, Beijing, New Delhi, African, Latin American and Okinawa factions.

 

The Davos faction represents a global establishment of some one thousand corporate and state leaders who meet annually in the Swiss resort to chart the course of globalisation. Davos conferences mainly articulate the interests and views of the one thousand largest transnational corporations and of the thirty rich nations which make up the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

 

The Seattle faction consists of a coalition of labour unionists, environmentalists and human rights activists in the advanced countries who, in December 1999, protested against the World Trade Organisation meeting in Seattle. Globalisation has dislocated the economic and social positions of this constituency by transferring jobs from high-wage to low-wage countries that do not have stringent labour and environmental regulations.

 

The Moscow faction is composed of those countries that through their own failures or because of discrimination are being excluded from the globalisation bandwagon. This faction might include Russia, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Libya and Cuba.

 

The Beijing faction consists of those countries that have more or less successfully jumped on the bandwagon in the hope of benefiting from the fruits of globalisation. They include the big and small dragons of East Asia as well as the Latin American countries that have enjoyed remarkable rates of economic growth.

 

New Delhi symbolises the divided loyalties of India and other older civilisations, torn between their own traditions of civility (Mahatma Gandhi) and their desire to seek a place in the sun by acquiring weapons of mass destruction.

 

In the globalisation process, black Africa has so far largely been the forgotten continent. According to the UNDP Human Development Report of 1999, the black African countries stand at the bottom of a list of 174 countries with respect to their human development index (life expectancy, educational participation and level of national income or GDP). They have also consistently lost ground.

 

In contrast, Latin America has largely benefited from globalisation by attracting foreign trade and investment. To integrate further into the global market, some countries such as Argentina are even considering “dollarisation”, or the replacement of their national currencies with the US dollar.

 

Finally, as an island that suffered during the Second World War and has been militarised ever since, Okinawa symbolises those parts of humanity that are enduring the residual harm of a violent world order. Korea, Vietnam, Congo, Central America, the Persian Gulf, Somalia, Rwanda–Burundi, Bosnia and Kosovo provide the latest examples.

 

Clearly, these factions are not mutually exclusive. Countries can and do change political and economic position in the world dis/order. Globalisation has introduced a new dynamic in the processes of economic development, in which less developed countries can catch up (e.g., Singapore, South Korea and Ireland) and more developed countries may fall behind (e.g., Portugal, Spain, Czechoslovakia and Argentina). In this process, cultural values and civilisational endowments seem to play a critical role.

Conflicting Values

Like other conceptual categories such as culture, ethnicity or nationality, “civilisation” is admittedly fuzzy, but I have found it to be a useful metaphor for approaching the current normative conflicts in the world. Each civilisation possesses a more or less coherent cosmology based on a long tradition of material and ideational creativity. Each civilisation also evinces unique theories of being (ontology), knowledge (epistemology) and practice (praxiology). Embedded in the Judaic, Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian and many other living or past civilisations are roadmaps for the human search for truth, beauty and goodness. The golden rule, shared by many traditions of civility, is a good example: “Do unto others that which you would have them do unto you.”

 

We may also speak of a modern, secular, humanist, scientific and technological civilisation that has both integrated and fragmented the world for the past five centuries. All traditional civilisations have come under the impact of modern civilisation and are facing their own crisis in reconciling their traditional values with new technological imperatives. In this process, a new global civilisation is being negotiated among competing worldviews. Conflicts of values—for example, individualism versus collectivism, equality versus hierarchy, private enterprise versus social responsibility, order versus revolution—continue to trouble the international community. In order to preserve diversity in unity, a global civilisation must seek a dynamic balance among these conflicting values. It must also be based on the contributions of all past human civilisations.

 

Human beings are bound to meaning. In the face of complexity, uncertainty and mystery, we invent myths and meanings. Myths bridge the gap between our knowledge and the intolerable unknowns, such as the origin of the universe, life after death and our moral duties in life. Without myths, life seems to be meaningless. Life without meaning often leads ultimately to suicide. We construct our myths to guide our lives and our myths in turn direct our actions. Myths frame our freedoms and choices in life. If we believe in predestination, our choices will be at best limited. If we believe in the primacy of human willpower, our freedom of choice will be expanded, sometimes to wilfulness.

 

However, myths are Janus-faced divinities. For instance, the myth of reincarnation in Hinduism was for centuries employed to justify the caste system. But the same myth links all life forms in an eternal cycle. It has therefore served as a basis for regarding all life forms as sacred and inviolable. Nietzsche’s myth of the superman in a godless world created a new humanist meaning out of the presumed meaningless of the universe. But under Nazism, it also served as a convenient ideology for justifying amorality and untold atrocities.

 

Civilisation presents a myth embedded in certain normative and historical preconditions. The concept suggests that we are capable of living life within a given tradition and as citizens with civility, civil liberties and progressively higher levels of science, technology and welfare. Traditions of civility are embedded in the great religious and humanist worldviews. A contrary myth is the Hobbesian vision of human bestiality. Life in the state of nature, Hobbes held, is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. He believed that human civilisation is a thin layer covering a volcano of human aggression ready to explode at any moment. Thus, Hobbes advocated that in the interest of security, individuals must surrender their sovereignty to a Leviathan who can impose order on society. That notion justified absolutist monarchies. In contrast, Jean Jacques Rousseau and his romanticist followers began with the assumption of human goodness and therefore saw little need for governmental restraint. Freud, in his classic work, Civilisation and Its Discontents, bridged the two views. Civilisation, according to Freud, consists of a normative superego that tames the anti-social appetites of the ego while repressing and sublimating the id, the seat of immense human desires and aggression. The choice between these views is for us to make. Each choice will have its own consequences for the type of polity and society we construct.

 

Myths cannot be empirically validated. They are axiomatic leaps of faith providing axial principles for human societies. They embody our hopes, our fears, our norms and the trajectory of dreams devoutly to be realised. History presents considerable evidence for both myths of human civility and human bestiality. Myths have been employed in history to justify actions that contradict the normative foundations on which they are based. In the name of God and civilisation, many atrocities have been committed in the past and present. Does that mean that we should completely abandon the concepts? Such normative terms have become cultural reifications. Whether we like them or not, they are going to be employed in public discourse. In the politics of discourse, the choices are clear-cut. We can continue to employ such normative concepts uncritically, or subject them to critical examination, or abandon them altogether.

 

We need to engage critically in the politics of discourse in order to rescue and revitalise traditional concepts such as civilisation, dialogue, democracy, peace, freedom, global citizenship and human rights and responsibilities. That choice places the burden of proof on us. Myths without a generous dose of reality fall flat and lose potency. Myths live, decay and die. They are always socially constructed to determine the parameters of human action. We constantly negotiate them in public discourse. For example, in the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy energised American society by revitalising an old myth. Kennedy’s myth of the “New Frontier” drew its strength from the significance of the frontier in the formation of American national identity. In Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini mobilised a revolutionary movement by invoking the Islamic messianic myths.

 

The myth of civilisation has been historically employed as a criterion for normative actions that uphold civility, civil liberties and progress towards human welfare and happiness. In The Civilizing Process, Norbert Elias carefully demonstrated how notions of “civilised” behaviour have followed in the path of the increasing division of labour, functional differentiation, interdependency, complexity and state formation.¹ As we are becoming increasingly interdependent in a global economy, we have no choice but to become more civilised by establishing rules of conduct that outlaw violence and regulate the management of conflict.

 

But in a multi-civilisational world, how do we define a civilisation? By geography, belief systems, technological achievement, or perhaps a combination of all three? Samuel P. Huntington has defined civilisations in terms of geopolitics.² The Okinawa conference implicitly defined civilisation in terms of cosmologies, individuating indigenous, Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian, Judaic, Christian, Islamic and humanist civilisations. However, we can also talk in terms of nomadic, agrarian, industrial and informatic civilisations, and their distinctly different technologies and artefacts. For the past two centuries, industrial civilisation with its scientific–technological–humanist discourse has dominated the world. Various religious traditions have responded to this challenge in different ways. A resurgence of religious movements in our own era suggests that earlier Marxian and Freudian predictions of the demise of religious belief were slightly exaggerated. The challenge now is how to reconcile science and technology with perennial human spiritual longings.

Civilisational Types

Table 1 illustrates the distribution of the three traditional dimensions of human civilisation—nomadic, agrarian and industrial—across the eight major civilisations identified by the Okinawa conference. A cursory look at the table shows that all three dimensions are essential to a holistic understanding of civilisational dynamics. No one can claim a monopoly of civilisation. Although nomadism can today be found only in isolated parts of the world, hunting, gathering and orality (as opposed to the written word) have dominated 99 per cent of human history. The nomads invented some of the most important contributions to human civilisation, including fire, the wheel and the domestication of animals. Since the invention of agriculture some ten thousand years ago, human settlements have created brilliant cities and cultures in all parts of the world based on different belief systems. The torch of civilisation has been passed on from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt to Persia, Greece, Rome, China, India, the Islamic world, modern Europe, the Americas and Oceania. Civilisational interactions, even in war, have resulted in civilisational progress. Relatively isolated civilisations such as those of the Mayans and Incas shone brilliantly, but their progress was hampered by lack of interaction with other civilisations. On a Toynbean view civilisations, like other organisms, are born, live, decay and die. But they can also be resurrected, as has been witnessed in the rebirth of Christianity after the Reformation and the current renaissance of Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian, Jewish, Islamic and indigenous civilisations.

 

 

   

 

Historians agree that human civilisation made a great leap forward with human settlement and the invention of agriculture. The plough and other agricultural tools created the agrarian civilisations. Writing as a method of recording knowledge prolonged and diversified agricultural societies and civilisations. The steam engine and other innovations in manufacturing launched the industrial age. Print as the first mass-producing industry formed a model for other industries to follow. It also democratised knowledge and empowered the individual vis-à-vis religious and political authorities.

 

This view may be termed soft rather than hard technological determinism. As Leonardo da Vinci’s versatile genius demonstrated, an inventor can be way ahead of his time. Technological inventions alone do not determine history, but when their time has come they can transform social, economic, political and cultural life. That is currently happening with the worldwide impact of information technologies. Consequently, Table 1 also indicates that we are on the edge of a new global civilisation that can be characterised as informatic. James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis,³ which posits that the earth functions as a single organism that defines and maintains the conditions necessary for its survival, provides the cosmological and ecological foundation of this new global civilisation. The earth’s living matter—its oceans, air, plants and animals—forms a complex biological super-system evolving over the vast expanse of geological time.

 

A kindred holistic vision is expressed by the term “noosphere”, introduced by the French philosopher and palaeontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), who viewed humankind as being on a social and mental evolutionary journey towards spiritual unity.⁴ “Noosphere”, derived from the Greek word for mind (noos), was Teilhard’s coinage for what he believed to be an emerging and organised layer of consciousness around the earth. The noosphere is a planetary, thinking network of self-awareness, information and communication. This concept has obvious affinities with the Internet and has caused Teilhard to be seen as a sort of patron saint of the World Wide Web.

Social Evolution

Table 2 identifies the boundaries of the four overlapping civilisation-types at conflict in the present world circumstances. A few caveats are in order. The dates in the table represent significant historical watersheds about which any historian can reasonably quibble. The table is organised around four phases and four modes, including production, legitimation, regulation and communication. These categories are heuristic devices and should not be considered as distinct stages of history or separate domains of action. History is conjunctural rather than linear or neatly divided into stages or categories of action as represented in academic disciplines and departments. Different social systems overlap or live side by side in many countries today.

 

 

TABLE 2
Civilisations: Historical Transitions and Conjunctures

 

  

 

Abbreviations: TNC (transnational corporation); TMC (transnational media corporation); IGO (intergovernmental organisation); NGO (non-governmental organisation); AGO (alternative governmental organisation); UNPO (unrepresented nations and peoples organisation).

 

 

 

Nomadism is clearly the earliest human way of life, regrettably labelled “primitive” by some anthropologists. In fact, nomadism to this day represents one of the most complex human adaptations to harsh environments, in which movement from lowlands to highlands maximises the use of scarce natural resources. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica Online,

 

Throughout 99 percent of the time that Homo sapiens has been on Earth, or until about 8,000 years ago, all peoples were foragers of wild food. There were great differences among them; some specialised in hunting big game, fishing, and shellfish gathering, while others were almost completely dependent on the gathering of wild plants. Broadly speaking, however, they probably shared many features of social and political organisation, as well as of religions and other ideologies (in form though not in specific content). The hunting–gathering societies declined with the growth of agricultural societies, which either drove them from their territories or assimilated or converted them.⁵

 

In the agrarian phase, the mode of production was primarily herding and agriculture. The agricultural revolution of some ten thousand years ago brought about societies that were technologically superior to the preceding hunter–gatherer cultures. Agrarian civilisations first developed in the major world river basins, such as the Fertile Crescent, the Nile Valley, the Indus, Danube and Yellow Rivers and Transoxiana. When successful, agrarian societies gave birth to a succession of multinational, agrarian empires. These empires were the first examples of global systems stretching over vast territories, peoples, languages, religions and cultures. Whereas the earlier attempts at domination often culminated in massacres of the enemy or its forced conversion to the religion and culture of the dominant group, the new multinational agrarian empires followed a policy of toleration. This perhaps began with the Persian Achaemenid Empire (550–330 bce). When Cyrus the Great conquered Babylonia in 538 bce and released the captive Jews to return to Jerusalem to build their temple, he was inaugurating a new policy of religious and cultural tolerance for the peoples of his empire.

 

Tolerance was and continues to be a pragmatic imperial policy. So long as the subject populations would obey the law and pay their taxes, the empire stood to gain by allowing them to practise their own religions and cultures. But religion became both the source of legitimation of empires as well as resistance to them. The Egyptian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Chinese and Indian imperial civilisations each had their own dominant religious belief system that legitimised the power of the Pharaohs, Shahanshahs, Emperors and Caesars. On the other hand, the three great Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) owed their origins to resistance movements against domination, oppression and exploitation. Christianity and Islam subsequently became imperial ideologies over vast territories in such empires as the Byzantine (395–1453), Abbasid (750–1258) and Ottoman (thirteenth to twentieth centuries).

 

It was also during the agrarian phase of history that writing was invented some eight thousand years ago in Egypt (hieroglyphics), Mesopotamia (cuneiform), China and Japan (mandarin and kenji characters), and among the Maya in Central America and the Incas (quipu) in South America. The transition from hunting and gathering to agricultural settlements produced sufficient surplus of food beyond mere subsistence to allow the rise of feudal lords and a leisure class of scholars and scribes. Ancient writing was first carved on stones and clay tablets, but with the invention of transportable media such as paper, it became possible to produce documents, books and libraries that transmitted messages and knowledge across time and space. The processes of globalisation were thus accelerated, and empires could now assume continental proportions. The religious and secular twin bureaucracies of church and state were empowered by writing as a method of recording, transmitting and enforcing commands.

 

As the next major technological revolution in communication, print revolutionised the reach of empires and civilisations. Although movable type had been invented in China and Korea before Gutenberg, it was the invention of mechanical lettered printing in the fifteenth century that led to a series of stunning developments in Europe. These developments culminated in the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century and the industrial empires of the modern world. The rise of vernacular languages (English, French, Spanish, etc.), modern nationalism, nation-states and universities all owed their existence to printing. Print democratised knowledge and undermined the authority of the Roman Catholic Church and of monarchies. It also fostered the European Renaissance, Protestant Reformation and the scientific and political revolutions of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Thus, along with the revolution in transportation, printing enabled the European voyages of exploration soon to become colonial projects in the New and Old Worlds.

 

The year 1750 may be considered an appropriate date to signify the transition from agrarian to industrial empires and civilisations. It marks the beginning of the hundred years in British history known as the Industrial Revolution. But the preconditions for an industrial society had already been laid by a number of factors. These included the discovery of the New World, the export of gold from South America to Europe, the consequent moneying of the European economy, the expansion of world trade through transoceanic shipping and the seventeenth-century scientific revolution.

 

When Columbus sailed from Spain to the New World in 1492, the history of the world changed dramatically. That year also saw the expulsion of the Muslims from Spain, starting a reverse process of colonisation of the East by the West. Thereafter, the torch of civilisation was gradually passed from Muslims to Christians. The subsequent European, American, Russian and Japanese empires emerged from the transformation of agrarian into industrial societies. With the rise of secular nation-states, political legitimation also shifted from the divine right of kings and religious laws to popular sovereignty and secular laws. In the meantime, print technology had empowered a secular priesthood of scholars, bureaucrats and soldiers nurtured on a linear, rational, scientific and technological culture. The rise of a public sphere of discourse, in which the literate population could be informed of issues through books, pamphlets and newspapers, encouraged more democratic participation. Another product of print was the institution of parliamentary democracy. In one European country after another, elections and parliaments imposed some measure of accountability on governments.

 

Nevertheless, the industrial empires sowed the seeds of their own destruction through the spread of science, technology and political ideas via the modern mass media. Print, photography, film, telegraphy, telephone, radio and television were double-edged swords. On the one hand, they propagated the political ideologies of imperialism embedded in such slogans as the “White Man’s Burden”, “Manifest Destiny” and “Asia for the Asians”. On the other, they undermined the colonial regimes by spreading the political ideas of liberalism, nationalism and communism. While liberalism and communism provided globalist ideologies, nationalism largely fuelled localist resistance against imperial hegemony. It was the combination of these political forces that exploded into the open during the twentieth century in Asia, Africa and Latin America. It led to a variety of national liberation movements employing all of the modern media of communication.

The Fourth Civilisation

The Fourth Civilisation is a post–Second World War phenomenon. It has been acknowledged under a variety of labels, including “post-industrial society”, “information age”, “microchip civilisation”, “digital age”, “third wave”, “risk” or “knowledge” or “network” society. Each label has its own distinct pedigree and value. I have chosen the label “informatic”, derived from the French term informatique. It suggests the increasing convergence of computer and telecommunication industries. Made possible by the invention of the microchip in 1971, the digitalisation of communication networks is providing a new technological foundation for civilisation, significantly different from the earlier agrarian and industrial civilisational bases.⁶

 

What has been the impact of the information revolution on the global economy, polity and culture? On the political front, a three-way ideological struggle characterised the Cold War years of 1945–89. The world was divided into three camps, each with its own worldview and international strategy. Liberalism was led by the Western powers, communism was charged by the Sino-Soviet bloc and nationalism was primarily employed by the Third World. The end of the Cold War in 1989 and the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 ushered in a new and distinctively different era of globalisation. The fall of the Soviet Union itself was in part due to the failure of the Soviet economy to make breakthroughs toward an informatic economy and polity. In several ways, informatic civilisation is a project different from the commercial or industrial capitalism of earlier eras. It is characterised by an economic system that is global rather than national or continental in scope, bringing the entire world under its impact. For that reason, the new capitalism may be called “pan-capitalism”. Its hegemonic form may be labelled “informatic imperialism”.

 

1. Pan-capitalism is global in scope. Capitalism has always been an international system. However, with the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the opening up of eastern Europe and China to trade and foreign investment in the 1980s and 1990s, a new form of global capitalism has emerged. Some thirty-seven thousand transnational corporations (TNCs) and transnational media corporations (TMCs) manage the new global market. The top one thousand global TNCs dominate the markets. Their loyalty is primarily to their stockholders, who are spread around the world. Regardless of their national origin, TNCs are multinational in their sources of capital, investment and employment. To survive, they need to have a global strategy transcending national boundaries and loyalties. They frequently come into conflict with national governments but need to co-operate with them, or more often co-opt them. TNCs frequently use their power to locate wherever taxes, wages, rents and government regulation are lowest and profits highest. Whereas national sovereignty is territorially defined, corporate sovereignty is global.

 

2. Pan-capitalism fosters informatic imperialism. The economic power of pan-capitalism depends on a global transportation, telecommunication and information system that has allowed TNCs to centralise their strategic decision-making while decentralising their operations. Moreover, the power of TNCs rests on the control of major world industries through command of research and development, patents, licences and copyright. The present intellectual property regime imposed by TRIPS (trade-related intellectual property services) puts severe constraints on the worldwide dissemination of information and knowledge. Informatic imperialism differs from industrial imperialism in that it is deterritorialised. TNCs can pack up and go wherever political stability and comparative economic advantage allow them to generate the highest profits. A product’s parts may be produced in half a dozen different countries. But the parts are often assembled at an offshore location where corporations enjoy the greatest freedom from taxes and regulation. Services such as software engineering and data processing are exported to such low-cost havens as Hyderabad (otherwise known as Cyberabad) and Bangalore. Although governments still retain considerable power of resistance by virtue of their sovereign rights over particular state territories, TNCs in combination with the major industrial countries (notably the thirty rich OECD members) can impose their will on smaller and medium-sized states. Over 50 per cent of the largest economic units in the world are, in fact, TNCs.

 

3. Pan-capitalism breeds lop-sided development. The pan-capital regime has clearly fostered rapid economic growth in the post-war years. It has done so by transfers of capital, science, technology and management skills from the more to the less developed areas of the world, from the northeast to the western and southern United States, and from Europe and the United States to east Asia. In a process of creative destruction, pan-capitalism has also caused lop-sided development. Left to their own devices, market forces tend to privilege the centre against the periphery, oligopolist against competitive markets, the rich against the poor and the information haves against the have-nots. UN Human Development Reports have best documented these inequalities during the 1990s. World income distribution is heavily concentrated at the top. The richest one-fifth of the world population is receiving 82.7 per cent of world income while the poorest one-fifth receives only 1.4 per cent.

 

4. Pan-capitalism has a Janus face, hegemonic as well as democratic. Much of the history of imperialism is a history of military conquest and colonisation. However, through political struggles, capitalist development in the West has been followed by democratic institutions. In the post-colonial era also, capitalist penetration of traditional societies has created new educated middle classes that often demand political liberties. On the one hand, the pan-capital regime has tolerated, and sometimes actively supported or installed, military dictatorships (e.g., in Iran, the Philippines, Indonesia and Chile). In the post–Cold War phase, however, pan-capitalism has selectively championed the cause of human rights in Cuba, China, Iran and Iraq. The tension between hegemonic and democratic pan-capitalism is therefore real and will continue in the twenty-first century. The outcome is ultimately determined by indigenous democratic struggles if and when they can use the international contradictions of pan-capitalism to their own advantage.

Conclusion

If we accept the foregoing arguments, we may conclude that:

 

1. Civilisation is a myth containing significant traditions and institutions of civility worth keeping.

 

2. Each civilisation consists of certain cosmologies and technologies appropriate to its own ecology and is therefore a valuable means of human survival and progress.

 

3. Interactions among civilisations throughout history have facilitated the passing of the torch of human progress from some peoples and regions of the world to others.

 

4. A new global civilisation is in the making, driven by information technologies encompassing the entire earth and beyond.

 

5. The Fourth Civilisation calls for a new cosmology more in tune with the common destiny of humanity facing global problems that stubbornly demand global solutions.

 

6. Dialogue rather than a clash of cultures and civilisations is a more productive and peaceful way of resolving global problems.

 

7. In the work of several twentieth-century thinkers, we have the beginnings of the construction of a humane global civilisation that transcends divisions while uniting us for the tasks ahead. Lovelock’s proposed Gaia hypothesis provides a new cosmological basis for the unity of “Spaceship Earth”. Space travel has already produced such a vision of a common destiny for the inhabitants of this throbbing, blue, living planet in a vast space of lifelessness. At the same time, global problems are pressing hard for attention. These include the possibility of accidental or intentional use of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear winter, acid rain, global warming, global technological breakdowns, environmental depletion and pollution, and population explosion and ageing. Teilhard de Chardin’s notion of the “noosphere” has sensitised us to the need to share information, knowledge and wisdom as the foundations for a new global civilisation. Mahatma Gandhi’s satyagraha has taught us that “truth force” is universally shared and can become the bond that unites us against violence of any kindphysical, economic, political or cultural.

 

One last question: Can we learn from our past and present teachers to avoid the pitfalls ahead? Learning, too, has its varieties and limits: additive, regenerative and transformative. Much of the progress of human civilisation has been based on additive learning, i.e., the accumulation of what previous generations have passed on to us in their scientific and technological knowledge. Through its pains and sufferings, each generation has had to learn over again the moral lessons of previous generations. That is what I call regenerative learning. Occasionally, conditions demand spiritual breakthroughs as big as if not bigger than the major technological breakthroughs in history. That is transformative learning, a type of learning that our great spiritual leaders have imparted to us in the past. We are on the verge of a new civilisation that necessitates a new vision of our common destiny in the bosom of Gaia, aboard Spaceship Earth and engulfed by a noosphere of human consciousness and its limitations.

Endnotes

1. Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process (New York: Urizen Books, 1978).

 

2. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996).

 

3. James Lovelock, The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Earth (New York: Norton, 1988).

 

4. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (New York: Harper andRow, 1965).

 

5. “Primitive Culture”, Encyclopaedia Britannica Online [www.members.eb.com/bol/topic?idxref=314167].

 

6. See, for example, Katharine Tehranian and Majid Tehranian, eds., Restructuring for World Peace: On the Threshold of the Twenty-First Century (Cresskill, N.J.: Hampton Press, 1992). See also Majid Tehranian, Global Communication and World Politics: Domination, Development, and Discourse (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999).