Globalization guru John Boli identifies several broad trends of globalization (considered to be a economic and cultural phenomenon):
- The continuing success of the nation-state as the planet’s preeminent political form.
- Cultural relativism and cultural authenticity.
- Regionalism.
- Consumerism as adaptive interpretation (of previous points).
- Creolization.
Buddhist studies scholar Christopher Queen identifies three characteristics that Buddhism shares with globalization:
- Cultural hybridity.
- Psychological alienation as a result of (perceived) cultural oppression.
- Civic and political engagement.
Pulling from these two lists, it seems to me that the context for 21st century character formation has these characteristics:
- Cultural hybridity. We live in a pluralistic world, whether we embrace it or not. Pulling our identities together from diverse locations, we are both attracted and repelled by this trend.
- Commodification as identity formation. We shop to define ourselves. The activity produces alienation, which only feeds the cycle more.
- Civic alienation. Even though the nation-state continues to survive the pressures of globalization, in the US at least, most citizens are not engaged, don’t believe their engagement would make a difference, and perhaps do not even know how to engage. (My hope is that the likes of Howard Dean can end the trend in the US.) Yet global civil society grows by the day.
- Over-professionalization of vocation. The professions seem to have lost their mooring in serving the common good (see previous point). Education for the professions has become entirely too self-centered while paradoxically become less self-fulfilling.
Today in news: Rich white liberals assuage social guilt by redecorating house with minimalistic Pottery Barn designs and growing own vegetables with help of Restoration Hardware. Sparse lifestyle recommended by same for working class Americans.
Does anyone know someone who practices “voluntary simplicity” who isn’t at least upper-middle class, white, and liberal? I thought not. The last “simplicate” I met bragged about the $10 tomatoes he had just pulled out of his garden. Translation: “I’m so rich I can waste time and money on growing $10 tomatoes, and I feel morally superior for doing it!”
Obviously, I’m no stranger to liberal white guilt. But the problem isn’t solved by “playing” at a working class lifestyle. That’s just insulting to people who have to work–and by that I mean “sweat”–for a living. As someone who was raised by service workers (before that was considered a trendy “growth sector”), this just rubs me the wrong way. If you’re rich and troubled by it, the solution is simple: sell everything you own and give it to the poor. Short of that, do what you need to do, but don’t tell me about it. No one likes to hear rich people brag.
(Now that my rant is concluded and judging by Dave Pollard’s review of Radical Simplicity, it sounds like Jim Merkel might have just beat Luke’s rich young ruler. More power to him.)
For intelligent engagement with the nation’s op-ed pages, check out Ipecac, a reverse peristalsis for consumers of culture. (I had to look it up too.) But no RSS feed?
Henry Nelson Wieman says that the greatest good for us as individuals is “the most complete satisfaction of the individual that is possible when the individual is viewed in the wholeness of his being.”
Wholeness, you say? We find ourselves taken back to the question of the torn soul as self. Elsewhere he writes on the same subject:
A united self does not mean a self free from all conflicts. It does mean a self free of conflicts which cannot be treated in such a way as to promote creative transformation. The united self is not a static or completed condition but the very opposite. It cannot be achieved or approximated except by commitment to creativity. Only by learning from others in depth and others learning from oneself in depth, thus releasing the wholeness of individuality in each, can man be unified and this unity be satisfied. But this involves continuous creative transformation with inner conflicts continuously undergoing transformation.
Almost rises to the level of wisdom literature (at least for me).
I know that Wieman doesn’t have my notion of the torn soul in mind when he talks about the disintegrated self. (A man of his times–the early- to mid-20th century–he thought Freud had on-upped Saul/Paul in describing the divided self.) But what would it mean to apply Wieman’s notion of the whole self to my notions of the torn soul as self?
Click to continue reading “Wholeness and the torn soul”
The Happy Tutor explains right wing political philosophy and the purpose of right wing philanthropy. One-upping John Locke, he muses, “What we owe the poor is the least they will accept in lieu of cutting our throats. We call that the social contract.”
Ann Florini argues that a new form of social capital is being created: global social capital. Enabled by new forms of information technology, what Jim Moore calls the “second superpower” is pushing a corporate and government “transparency movement” into high gear. Think freedom of information, but applied to corporations. In other words, they can’t control what they can’t see, but what they can’t see can see them all too clearly. What that will amount to is protest and reform movements that know their enemy, perhaps even better than he knows himself.
That’s a losing strategy for mammon. Time will tell if they pick up on it and start using the second superpower’s own tricks. I suspect that most governments and corporations are too busy to bother, although they probably aren’t too dumb to change. If anything, mammon knows how to survive, and right now it’s doing more than that–it’s thriving. The trick will be for the second superpower (1) to build enough social capital to at least hold its own on a global scale and (2) to convince mammon that it can still thrive if it plays well with others. There are some encouraging signs.
Yesterday I presented this to our young adult Sunday School class. We just completed a ten-week study on building your own theology.
I believe in community.
I believe that community transforms us, makes us better than what we are.
I believe that god is in all and all is in god, that god is a lure toward the good in our lives, teasing us toward wholeness. Yet Trickster comes and likes to mess things up, sometimes to teach us lessons, but often not.
I believe the universe is good and is the source of our life and where we return. It deserves our respect and care.
I believe that the good is that which moves us toward greater wholeness, both individually and corporately. I believe we can participate in what god is doing in the world. This happens when we take on another’s perspective as our own, when we reflect on our self, or when we act on another’s behalf.
I believe human evil is real and active in the world. Evil insinuates itself into systems, patterns and, sometimes, persons. Evil must be resisted through acts of good, but it cannot finally be overcome by human effort alone.
I hope that in the end all will be reconciled (including memory and the past).
