than just another pop-group. From their
appearance in Liverpool and their first concerts in Scotland in 1963,
Germany and Britain the Beatles transformed their music into a world
cultural and social phenomenon. The entire youth of the 1960's and 1970's
took John Lennon, Paul Macartney, George Harrison and Ringo Star to their
hearts.
In 1964 and 1956 the Beatles conquered Europe, North American,
Australia and New Zealand. In 1966, much to surprise of the sceptics, they
took Japan and the Philippines by storm. Their concerts in Tokyo and at the
national stadium in Manilla were no less successful than their concerts in
Europe and America. The sensation was undisputed. It was a new global
phenomenon for which there were no borders or, perhaps, which destroyed the
existing cultural barriers and prejudices. Beatles' records went all around
the world and their songs were sung in Africa, Asia and in Latin America.
The Beatles were a phenomenon of special cultural value. For the first
time a pop-group had achieved such universal global fame. This is, however,
not to underestimate other such famous performers such as Elvis Presley or
Edith Piaf or Caruso. Although each of them was a part of the cultural
treasury of the 20th century, the Beatles phenomenon was an expression of
and the beginning of something entirely new.
The undoubted reason for their success was the talent of the musicians
from Liverpool. However, if they had been born 30 years earlier with even
greater talent they would have not achieved such colossal success. The
Beatles appeared at the moment when the electronic media had just begun a
global revolution. This was not only a matter of electric guitars but the
new means of information transfer and the speed and methods of disseminating
new cultural images. The Beatles were the first swallows of the new era and
heralds of our current civilisation. The process of the globalisation of
world culture began with the Beatles. New musical styles began to appear
within a given country, in a particular town or bar but as a result of the
electronic media they became international and lose their local and national
significance.
The language of music is a language equally understandable in all the
corners of the world. It was logical to expect music to be the main and most
natural channel for the dissemination of universal cultural symbols and
images and that music would be the starting point for the process of
globalisation of culture.
Moreover, together with the dissemination of cultural images created
within one individual state the 1960's were also a time of the intensive
intermixing of cultural styles and the search for points of intersection
between formerly autonomous national and cultural traditions. The Beatles
looked to the cultures of India and Japan for some of their motifs. In the
1970's many African and Latin American musicians gained significant
popularity.
Generally speaking, in culture as in economics there were two types of
phenomena which could no longer be defined as purely national either in
terms of their significance nor in terms of their specific legacy of
cultural traditions. Some symbols appeared in a local context and then
gained global recognition. Other appeared as a result of cultural
intermixing and the creation of cultural models and styles which organically
combined or synthesised individual national cultures.
What national and cultural style is expressed today by the music of
Michael Jackson? The Anglo-Saxon cultural tradition? Hardly. The culture of
black America? Yes, to a certain extent. As he grew more independent and
more creative, his music became more primal separated from local concepts
and traditional criteria of beauty and aesthetics. Michael Jackson's style
and his songs have been influenced by a number of cultures. However, his
primal attraction and personal musical energy are products of a time which
does not recognise national borders and which forms global cultural and
aesthetic standards of beauty and values.
In previous centuries cultural influences were imposed mainly by
coercion and they tended to effect only individual parts of the world. Today
modern global communications and the global media do not only disseminate
the best manifestations of global culture but also require the creative
artists to observe the new cultural criteria and requirements of the new
world art. Anyone who wishes to achieve world fame must be allowed access to
the hearts and souls of people in the different parts of the world. The
Beatles and Michael Jackson, Madonna and Queen as well as many other
musicians have created works of music and artistic influences which owe
their success to a hitherto unknown musical style and to the unique
combination of dynamism and expressivity which knows no national boundaries.
There have been similar phenomena in the other art forms. Television
and video, and advertising have begun to penetrate the whole of world
culture. First of all they penetrate a local culture and then in conjunction
with other less culturally specific products form a part of global culture.
I recently listened to an interview given by the world famous designer
Lacroix in which he was describing his attempts to combine influences from
different cultures, "Intermixing -- this is the essence of things". This is
the essence of the new and it is a logical consequence of the opening-up of
the world and the influence of global communications. The intermixing of
cultural traditions is an expression of the same synthesis which is now
apparent in global economics.
It was his death from AIDS which elevated Freddy Mercury to a status
perhaps greater than he was in life. However, Queen's music was not purely
English or European but a more universal music of the future world as an
integrated community. Who does the music of Jean Michel Jarre belong to? It
has nothing in common with the powerful tradition of the chanson. The music
of Jean Michel Jarre is a product of the electronic society not only in
terms of technology but in terms of its historical significance and the
beginning of the new age. The main result of this process is the formation
of a universal spiritual and cultural content of the world. This is above
all manifested in the appearance of a growing number of cultural products
which have no national borders and limits. Music was the first of these but
now similar processes are taking place in the cinema, fashion and art
resulting in the appearance of millions of new bonds between the people of
the whole world.
I live in a country with rich and ancient cultural traditions. I am
saddened by the destruction of traditional culture which has been taking
place since 1992. However, I am encouraged by certain new and important
phenomena -- the combination of the global culture with national traditions
on the one hand and the adaptation of national traditions to global trends.
Few people would recognise the Bulgarian folk instrument, the Caval. There
are similar looking wind instruments in other countries of the world, but
the Bulgarian Caval in terms of its construction and sound is unique.
Theodosi Spasov has used it to win many significant international awards and
has conquered the hearts of many people. His performances have little in
common with the traditions of the Bulgarian Caval. His improvisations are
filled with the spirit of the new and his compositions are a symbol of
modern musical philosophy. For this reason he is understandable anywhere.
There is no chronological distinction between his art and that of the
greatest modern composers.
This is only one example. Many others could be drawn from the various
areas of art. Most significantly even the smallest of world cultures can
produce global culture. All they need to do is to find the link between
their own identity and the universal global cultural processes. Between
1984--1995 the famous Bulgarian folk-singer Stefka Subotinova recorded a
number of Bulgarian folk songs with a modern arrangement which achieved
enormous popularity. Other famous Bulgarian pop singers such as Lili Ivanova
and Georgi Hristov also combine Bulgarian and global cultural elements.
There are similar processes at work all over the world.
The most important conclusion which I draw here is that after the
1960's together with the appearance and the spread of new global
communications and the media there also began a new process of the
globalisation of world culture or in other words, the creation of a culture
with a supra-national character. This culture created global criteria and
values, overcame national, cultural and religious prejudices and is
undoubtedly an element of the coming Fourth Civilisation which the 21st
century will bring us. This culture is creating the future. It is a bridge
to it and a bridge to the unification of new generations from all over the
world.
This new culture became possible as a result of the mass influence and
cultural mixing born by the world media. Satellite television made possible
the removal of borders without tanks and violence without the dissemination
of militant ideology and doctrines. The world is united with new
communication networks -- a process which will clearly continue with growing
intensity into the coming century. This is the greatest guarantee for the
continued globalisation of world culture. A shining example of this is the
creation of television networks which cover the entire globe. It can be
easily predicted that such global television networks will continue to
penetrate all the corners of the earth. Part of them will carry information,
some of them will broadcast art, while other will show sports. However, they
will all be the most powerful integrational factor in the world.
While the collapse of the Eastern European totalitarian systems was a
political revolution, the first part of the collapse of the Third
Civilisation, the new communications will be the material manifestation of
the new age. Microchips, computers and satellite televisions spell death for
bureaucracy, partocracy and the restrictions of human rights. The Beatles,
Freddy Mercury, Jean Michel Jarre and Theodosi Spasov are all directly
linked. They are but different manifestations of one and the same global
phenomenon, the globalisation of art and new cultural dimensions which will
combine the strongest national traditions with a new, hitherto unknown
global culture which will belong to no one single nation.
Will national traditions and cultures disappear? Will cultural
differences not become a reason for the new division of the world? Is not
global culture a covert form of media dictatorship? These questions will be
answered later.
2. THE TRAVELLING PEOPLES
Until only fifty years the majority of people travelled only to the
neighbouring town or village and foreign travel was a privilege of only a
select few. Each subsequent generation bears within itself the spirit of the
global world. Today millions and billions of people travel around the world.
Travel has become a bridge over which the peoples of the world can get to
know one another and exchange their cultures.
T
he globalisation of world culture has lead to a particular form of
cosmopolitanism which has flourished as a result of new technologies and
communication. Cosmopolitanism, however, is not characteristic of all
countries and peoples nor is there any direct link between cosmopolitanism
and the level of technological and economic progress which a given country
has achieved. Switzerland is one of the most advanced countries in the
world. However, they are more conservative than cosmopolitan. They
acknowledge and service the cosmopolitanism of others without accepting it
for themselves. Everything depends from an historical point of view on the
development of a given nation, its openness to the world and at the same
time its ability to preserve its integrity. Many peoples exiled from their
native lands over the centuries have dissolved into foreign ethnic groups or
have been simple either enslaved or annihilated. Therefore the decisive
factors are not only national openness and mobility but also loyalty to one
roots.
Those nations in history which were the first to master new forms of
communication were able to spread their culture to other states. I like to
refer to these nations as the "travelling nations". In this process they
achieved significant historical advantages and became leaders in the
processes of integration. The modern world is now dependent on those
"travelling nations". Joel Kotkin calls them the "global tribes". For Kotkin
these global tribes combine a strong feeling of loyalty to their family
roots, observe the principles of national fidelity and despite being spread
all over the world identify with one specific geographical area. According
to my analyses these global nations are not only a continuation of an
historical tradition but are, above all, a powerful integrating element of
the modern world. In the same way that the ancient Greeks spread their
culture to Scythia and Rome, today the global nations are amongst the most
effective bridges for the dissemination of capital, technology and culture.
Each of these peoples left their native land and later established positions
of strength in dozens of other countries and created an invisible network of
families, relatives or national ties or channels for the dissemination of
economic and cultural values. A typical feature of these "travelling
nations" is their facility to become naturalised successfully in different
countries amongst varying ethnic groups at the same time preserving their
national roots and traditions. There are several reasons for this: the
absence of a homeland state; colonisation of cultivable lands; migration as
a result of wars and natural catastrophes; political, ideological and
religious conflicts. These are the most common reasons which instill the
spirit of the pioneer and traveller.
The Jewish people are a typical example of this. The modern world
economy and world corporations were founded by Jews. Expelled as a result of
persecution and the lack of their own homeland, as early as the 18th century
the Jewish people began their own processes of economic integration. At the
time when everything functioned within narrow national borders, the Jews
exploited the differences between national manufacturing conditions and
today it is no accident that their representatives are amongst the richest
people in the world. The religious prohibition against Christians lending
money with interest allowed them to master the secrets of banking. The lack
of their own state institutions and land made them into the best traders in
the world. Perhaps their greatest strength was the close network of
connections and their efforts to preserve the traditions of the old Jewish
families.
Today the Jews, the oldest travellers, are not alone. One might go so
far as to say that their trans-national monopoly has been taken from them.
There is another group of peoples who are keenly following the achievements
of world communications and are gradually catching up with, and in certain
cases overtaking, the achievements of the Jews. The British, the Armenians,
the Chinese, the Indians and more recently the Americans and Japanese are
gradually becoming global nations or in other words, people who are links in
a complex chain spanning the world with millions and millions of other
links.
Many of these global peoples have specialised themselves in significant
parts of world manufacturing and trade. For example the Jews from generation
to generation have expanded their influence in the entertainment industry,
the world of finance and the diamond trade. The Japanese are the world
leaders in precise engineering, in the production of high powered computers
and computer technology. The Indians are amongst the world leaders in
software, the British in banking and communications, the Americans in
telecommunications, aerospace engineering and the Chinese in textile
manufacture etc..
Perhaps, the most important factor is while preserving their relative
specialisation and making their own contributions to the global cultural
treasury, these travelling nations have helped greatly in the removal of
borders between the nations of the world. Thanks to them the world today is
closely integrated and the intermixing of their cultures has reached
tremendous levels. The global world would be impossible without these
"travelling peoples".
The preservation of national cultural traditions and tolerance to other
cultures has allowed them to become some of the leading architects of the
new world. At the opposite extreme those who are isolated and intolerant to
other cultures have no chance. They will either remain at the tail-end of
world progress or they will incite conflicts which will have serious
consequences for themselves. The totalitarian regimes were typical examples
of this. Totalitarianism can flourish only in isolation. The Russians,
Czechs, Bulgarians and Poles were isolated from progress and the new
technological revolution which embraced the world in the 1960's. Today they
are having to redouble their efforts to make up for lost time.
On the other hand, there is the example of the eternal Jews. They have
occupied key positions in the economic, cultural and political life of
France, Russia, the United States and the Republic of South Africa. Members
of the same families can be found in London, Paris, New York, Capetown and
even Hong Kong. It is these families and clans which have been the major
channels for the explosion in world trade over the past 30--40 years.
Another similar example is that of the Indians who apart from operating
within their own country exert strong influences in London, Los Angeles,
Chicago or Lagos. If you visit Nairobi the capital of Kenya, you will be
amazed to see how many Indians there are in the financial and commercial
sectors. As a result of their powerful navy and great colonial empire in the
19th century, the British have very strong global positions. The influence
of the British financial networks is particulary strong in Sidney,
Singapore, Toronto or San Francisco.
The majority of the travelling nations became established in the 19th
century and the first half of the 20th. They opened the way for the
globalisation of the world. They not only gave birth to this process they
were also its children. Today the "old travellers" are accompanied by new
"travelling nations" who are more dynamic and will perhaps make up for what
they missed out on.
One of the newest travelling nations are the Japanese. They have the
biggest banks in the world, the most progressive world technologies and
their own "settlements" within all the world economic and cultural centres.
I would say that from the 1960's onwards the Japanese have spread all over
the world. Some people consider that this is a planned invasion with a view
to conquering new economic influence and living space. Others say the
opposite, that the Japanese economy is like a balloon which if it is to
avoid bursting needs first to be deflated.
I do not believe that from an historical point of view any one given
nation can dominate the rest and by the same token I do not believe that
international Japanese invasion has reached its apogee. The Chinese and the
Indians will have a hard job to try and take their place. At least until the
beginning of the next century the Japanese global diaspora will continue to
exert a strong influence on the formation and development of the whole
world. The strong Japanese influence on the American economy, their
penetration into European economic structures and their strong overtures to
Latin America and some African countries demonstrate that the Japanese will
continue to be one of the leading travelling nations. Only one example is
sufficient. Each year the Japanese economy invests huge amounts of free
capital into real estate in the USA and Europe. According to some analysts
almost 40% of the property in the centre of Los Angeles in Japanese. The
same can be said of the huge skyscrapers in New York. There are thousands of
Japanese enterprises in the USA some of which occupy leading positions in
technology. One of the most prestigious world resorts, the Hawaiian islands
are owned to a large extent by the Japanese. If you walk along the coastal
boulevard at Waikiki beach you are more likely to hear Japanese than any
other language and you will see that the majority of the marvellous hotels
by the beach are Japanese. What the Japanese were unable to achieve with
their attacks and their bombs against Pearl Harbour they have achieved by
hard work, money and consistency. Today only a few kilometres from the place
where in December 1941 Japanese bombers inflicted their most serious blow
against the American Pacific Fleet there is a chain of luxury Japanese
hotels.
The Japanese have two amazing features. They have a tremendous ability
to adapt and to achieve progress quietly and consistently. Take a look at
the streets of any of the world's large cultural, financial or tourist
centre. Practically everywhere you will see Japanese tourists taking
photographs, taking notes and they are always in little groups. They are
soaking everything up. They will later analyze the information they have
taken away with them and then they will come back, this time with
investments and specific ideas for entering the market, quietly, slowly and
unnoticed.
The other new global travellers who can be seen everywhere are the
Chinese. According to some statistics, the Chinese who live outside the
border of China control the larger part of the hard currency reserves of the
world. There are "Chinatowns" in Los Angeles and San Francisco, Toronto and
New York. They are becoming more and more influential and add their own
colour and new cultural phenomena to the countries in which they live. There
is a growing Chinese influence in Japan and Australia. Clearly the reform
government of China is trying to emulate the experience of Japan to create
conditions for new world domination on the basis of traditional Chinese
domination. If the current rate of Chinese economic growth persists to the
end of the century and the hard currency reserves of the Chinese living
outside China continue to increase then within 10--15 years they will become
the most dynamic "travelling nation" in the global world. With new
simplified procedures, an ethnic economy, strong national links, extreme
hard work and consistency -- these are the characteristics which guarantee
great chances of success for the Chinese. The Indians and the South Koreans
whose economic elite are becoming more and more self-confident will also
direct their attention to a similar global approach. It can be expected that
the Asian economies will not only experience an ardent renaissance but that
their development will have a colossal global effect. The example of South
Korea and a number of smaller Asian states is indicative that it is not
necessarily only the larger peoples which become "travellers" and take on a
global significance. Perhaps their example will be infectious.
The collapse of the bi-polar model and the destruction of the Berlin
Wall gave the Eastern Europeans a chance to discover the advantages of the
open world. Very soon after 1990--1991 the Slavs and in particular the
Russians began to re-settle all over the world. Although it is too early to
make any sort of conclusion, the Russians seem to be turning into one of the
new "travelling nations". The large export of capital (according to the
Russian official figures -- over 40 billion dollars between 1991--1994) and
the creation of a Russian suburb in New York, the purchase of real estate in
London, Paris and Madrid, these are all features of the new, long-term
Russian presence in the global world.
When I speak of the "travelling nations" I am not emphasising the
leaders of this group. I mean the general trend towards the re-settlement of
people, people travelling for the purposes of business or leisure. People
are no longer restricted to their own states as they once were. They do not
only travel to neighbouring countries. Younger generations are losing their
feelings of loyalty to the country in which they were born and are more
capable of living anywhere where there is a chance of good work and decent
living conditions. For the past 20 years the number of people travelling by
air has constantly been on the increase. The forecasts for the year 2010 are
particularly significant.
Table 12
The number of people travelling on international airlines
(millions)
Year
Passengers
1986
318
2000
485
2005
624
2010
789
Source: The World in 1995. L.,1995.
As can be seen from table 12, for the next 15 years the number of those
travelling on international airlines will double. If we also add the number
of people travelling by other means of transport we will see that more than
one third of the world's population travels to different parts of the world.
Most of the travellers are from the industrialised countries and there is a
logical trend arising, the greater the material progress of a given nation
the more they are inclined to travel.
The "travelling nations" are uniting the world in an inimitable manner.
Their families and ethnic and cultural connections, their national
affiliations unite countries and continents, frequently in spite of official
government policies. They are the bearers of globalisation and it is no
accident that they produce the vast majority of the representatives of
global culture.
Only those nations which can adapt to the conditions of new world
communications will be able to survive and to dominate the world
intellectually and economically. The Jews, the British, the Americans, the
Japanese and Chinese are the leading nations in the processes of
globalisation. They are immediately followed by the Indians and Armenians
who in their own way and in different scales have attempted to establish
their own networks. The Armenians are fewer in number but very closely knit
while the Indians are motivated by their desire to catch up with the rest of
the world. It should, however, be noted that very soon the benefits which
can be gained by "travelling" will be discovered by others. There is a great
likelihood that the Russians, Brazilians, Mexicans, Nigerians and South
Koreans will follow in the footsteps of the other "travelling nations".
Some people say that the time of ethnic groups has arrived, I
personally believe that now is the turn of the "travellers".
3. MAN WITHOUT ETHNIC ORIGIN OR THE REBELLION OF ETHNICITY
No-one can say how many people of mixed blood live on the earth. No-one
can say how many mixed marriages there are, but one fact is certain -- that
they are on the increase. There are hundreds of millions of people who by
blood or by spirit do not belong to one nation or group of people. They are
simply citizens of the world or a part of the New Civilisation.
T
he demographic statistics of the UN show that about one third of the
modern world population is of mixed ethnic origin. This may include the
majority of the population of multinational countries, the children of mixed
international marriages and so on. I am convinced that all the figures which
have been collated in relation to this question are relative simply because
of the different types of methodology used and the lack of precise
statistics. There is one significant element: the more globalised the world
becomes the more people will become the bearers of multicultural traditions.
This is another demographic aspect of globalisation and global culture.
While the "travelling nations" stimulate the processes of opening-up, the
children of international marriages are the truest expression of the new
civilisation. It is not important where a person is born and what passport
he possesses. Even if a person is defined as an American, although he is of
Italian-Irish or Russian descent or even if he is Tatar-Ukrainian, this is
not the most important. What is most important is that there is an
increasing number of people in the world who on the basis of their
behaviour, their lifestyle and their value systems demonstrate the
characteristics of the multicultural society and the intermixing of
different traditions and customs.
There is a growing number of people all over the world who are becoming
aware of their global belonging and regard their specific citizenship as a
relative and distant concept. The daily life of these people bears little
resemblance to that of their mothers and their fathers. They may have come
from India, Egypt, Zimbabwe or Thailand but they dress like Europeans, live
in apartments with simple modern furniture and eat international cuisine.
Their ethnic origins might be expressed only through certain national
dishes, items used to furnish their homes or the celebration of certain
national feast days.
With the intermixing of trade and communications and national cultures,
man himself is changing. Little by little day by day he is becoming a
citizen of the world. Born of a European mother and a Latin American father
he might wake up in an apartment in New York, watch the world news on the
BBC and go to work in a Japanese company. He might lunch in a Chinese
restaurant and then go to Russia on business. This Mr.X might have a house
which is furnished with items "made in the world", he might have a Polish
wife and his children might be learning Italian. There are innumerable
examples of this. They are the signs of an emerging, unclassified phenomenon
-- the appearance of a universal human culture and common global awareness.
The main centres of this intermixing used to be in university cities,
tourist areas or companies with employees from many countries of the world.
Today these processes of drastic change are taking place all over the world.
There are certain exceptions, where the women of a certain country are not
allowed to marry foreigners or to have children by them. The Palestinians,
for example, do this for reasons of national survival. When the Jordanians
require the children of mixed marriages to take Jordanian citizenship this
is mainly for religious reasons.
The ethnic and the cultural intermixing of the world is a slow and
evolutionary process. It can be seen in cultural adaptation, the use of one
and the same language and the intermixing of lifestyles and cuisine etc..
Let us take for example language learning. As can be seen from table 13, at
the moment there are 12 major languages in the world. In total there are
between 4000 and 10,000 spoken languages and between 20--50,000 dialects.
There is an undisputed trend towards the gradual disappearance of a large
number of dialects and languages. The process of cultural intermixing also
is taking place in languages. On the one hand this is a sign of the trend
towards the use of a single or small number of languages as a global
lingua-franca. To a great extent this is the role of English. On the other
hand there are a large group of local languages which thanks to the
electronic media will survive and will play a significant role in the
survival of the culture of certain nations. At the moment more than 1
billion people in the world use English as an international language. This
is due to the fact that the English speaking group is the second largest
group of people in the world (table 13) as well as the fact that it has been
the English-speaking countries which have provided the main stimuli for
progress and that the world media broadcast in English. English is
undoubtedly the major language in North America, one of the major languages
in Europe and is used widely in Japan, India and Latin America as an
international language.
Globalisation will require sooner or later one of the world languages
to become a global language. It is very likely that this English will fulfil
this role. This is because the most active processes of globalisation during
the last 50 years have come about as a result of the domination of the USA
in the world economy. It is possible, however, that in the processes of
economic polycentralisation English will lose part of its domination to
French or German or one of the eastern languages such as Chinese or
Japanese.
Whatever the outcome I believe that the future of culture and language
lies in a combination of global language and culture, national cultures and
languages and the unsustainable cultures and languages of the smaller
nations. There are notably over 2 billion people in the world, mainly in the
poorer countries who do not speak any of the 12 major languages of the
world.
Table 13
The major languages of the world.
Chinese More than 1 billion China, Taiwan, Singapore
English 300-400 million people United Kingdom, USA, Canada, Ireland,
India, Nigeria, Australis, South Africa
(official language of 87 nations and
territories)
Hindi 250-300 million North Africa, Trinidad, South Africa,
Mauritius
Arabic 165 million North Africa, Near East
Russian 250-300 million Republics of the Former Soviet Union
Malay 180 million Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei
Bengali 150 million Bangladesh, India
Spanish 180-520 million Official language of 20 nations and
territories in Europe and America
French 100-150 million Official language in 37 countries and
territories in Europe, Africa, America
and Oceania
Japanese 125 million Japan, minorities in USA and Brasil
German 150 million Germany, Switzerland, Luxemburg,
Lichtenstein, Austria and Belgium
Urdu 50-90 million Pakistan.
Source: the Universal Almanac 1996 ed. J.Wright, Kansas City, 1995.
It is still unclear which of them will preserve their languages and
which of them will fall under the influence of the stronger cultures.
Neither one extreme, the disappearance of ethnicities within a global
culture, nor the other, their isolation and conservation is capable of
answering the needs of humanity. It has already been mentioned that the
explosion of ethnic groups is more or less an attempt at self-defence and a
consequence of aggression against smaller cultures and nations. If
migration, mixed marriages and the world media stimulate the intermixing of
culture, then education and concern for the smaller cultures is a compulsory
precondition for the preservation of local traditions and universal harmony.
The Fourth Civilisation will be an era of global cultural phenomena but also
the preservation of all the smaller cultures which express the diversity of
the human species. This process cannot be stopped and there is little doubt
that there will be an increase in the number of people who will lose their
"pure" ethnicity but this will not lead inevitably to the destruction of
national traditions and features. There have been periods throughout the
history of humanity when the mixing of blood for many nations was considered
shameful. Many nations aspired to preserve the purity of their roots and
people through the purity of their blood. The formation of nations and
nation states coincided logically with this process.
The New Civilisation places the emphasis on the moral aspect of the
common human spirit, the search for the common elements between autonomous
cultures and peoples. Only in this way can the new dimensions of technical
and spiritual progress be combined with tolerance, mutual influence and
unification of difference cultures. The other alternative is isolationism
and conflicts between civilisations and religions. Whether the 21st century
will be a century of wars between cultures and civilisations as S.Huntington
seems to believe or a century which places the priority on the universal and
humanitarian elements of development -- this is a question of choice between
the past and the future.
4. GLOBAL AWARENESS
The 19th and the 20th centuries were a time of mass ideology. Global
awareness rejects the closed ideologies of confrontation. It is a reflection
of the common elements which unite the inhabitants of the earth but also of
the differences between us and our neighbours. Global awareness is the main
driving force of the Fourth Civilisation. It is the sense of the
compatibility and legitimisation of these differences.
H
umanity is constantly adapting itself to the common spiritual values of
integration. The integration of manufacturing and communications has lead to
a growing awareness of the common problems of people and the ways in which
they can be resolved.
Religions are a typical expression of this unified awareness. Sometimes
they are imposed through methods of conviction more frequently by violence
and coercion. Religious conflicts over the past 2 millennia have been
struggles between spiritual values and the different systems and structures
of human awareness. Homo Sapiens in his evolution from the apes inherited
and developed this common awareness. Over the centuries group ideologies
became more and more massive. General or mass awareness is reflected in the
common features and standards of life, in common gods and religions and in
common spiritual values.
The industrial age from the end of the 18th century saw a new period of
structuring of mass values. The unifying nature of existing dogmatic
religions was gradually replaced by unifying ideologies. Liberalism,
Marxism, Leninism, nationalism, fascism and Maoism are just some examples.
Certain ideologies reject religious awareness, others try to adapt it to
their value systems. Until the 19th century violence was the basic, albeit
limited, means for the solution of all conflicts between peoples, cultures
and ideologies. Mass ideologies gave rise to mass violence. The most radical
religious ideologies of the 20th century were undoubtedly communism and
fascism. Although they were essential different and had different economic
bases they both used violence as a key political method. Zbignew Brzezinski
was correct when he referred to such ideologies as "coercive utopias". Such
ideological religions allow for only one truth and exalt one system as the
true system. They share the same eternal ideas and the same laws of human
society. This is not only an expression of the primitivism of Utopia or
subjective illusions imposed through coercion but a definite stage in the
development of humanity. Ideological religions are an expression of the mass
awareness which is caused by violent and radical integration, by the
coercive persecution of the rural population and their transformation into
industrial workers, the exploitation of hired labour, the violent
colonisation of hundreds of nations and billions of people. Mass ideologies
are the result of violence but also carry its seeds.
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