*Why the World Still Needs Philosophy * By Nalin Ranasinghe This new century has the potential to be either the worst or the best of times for humanity. The worst of times because there is no end in sight to the struggle between a dehumanizing global economy and the irrational forces (sexism, racism, and superstition) threatened by its hegemony. Unlike any other time in history, ours has sufficient stupidity, power and hatred to destroy the conditions for the possibility of life on this planet before they may be preserved anywhere else; the destructive powers at our disposal far exceed our present capacity to express love or altruism. Yet, it could very easily be the best of times because we finally have technological resources sufficient to provide a good life for the entire population of the earth.
Sadly, the tremendous powers at our disposal are presently used only to alienate human beings from themselves, each other, and their natural environment. As we blindly seek satisfaction through frenzied material accumulation, we create a situation where our possessions own us and render us incapable of meaningful human interaction. While the desires of human beings are at least potentially finite, most of us, with varying degrees of comprehension, allow our lives to run by insatiable institutions. These artificial entities have no motive other than profit and unlimited accumulation; they have enormous power and lack any internal sense of responsibility whatsoever. Most perverse of all, their coming-into-being has not been unintentional; they exist because they allow us to be thoughtless and selfish taking responsibility for our actions. As such, these gigantic corporations are the perfect instruments by which banality may be sown and evil reaped-by remote control. Here in America, most young corporate executives would claim to be quite unaware of the fullest implications of their actions. Pressed further as to why they follow soul-numbing business careers, they would point to the huge loans and debts incurred through many years of expensive higher education. The sad fact that the high cost of an education all but ensures that graduates will not be able to practice the noble ideals that they were exposed to, cannot but make one somewhat suspicious that this state of affairs is not overly lamented by the powers that be. Even many parents would be pleased that high indebtedness could deter their children from pursuing 'irresponsible' lifestyles not in their best economic interests. This vulgar pragmatism has even penetrated the academy itself. Today, most successful faculty members and administrators would be the first to confess to being, at the end of the day, merely harassed consumers. They teach whatever it is that they 'profess' for the sake of the money, not so that they may make the world a better place. Seeking to conceal their desperate desire to gain material success at any cost, many speak sentimentally of providing for their beloved children's material future in an increasingly insecure world. I am surely foolishly naïve to suggest that, instead of participating in the rape and impoverishment of the fragmented culture and polluted world that they would leave their children, it would be far better if they were to leave behind for future generations an example of committed idealism and virtue. An education must be more than an apprenticeship at an ivy-covered gentleman's club (with suitably high tuition to hold its initiates hostage to ugly necessity) where young corporate Geishas are discreetly initiated into cynicism and introduced to the highest bidders for their services. A Latin diploma is but an assurance that its bearer will use beautiful words to serve and justify ugly ends; there is also an implied guarantee to potential employees that graduates have the ideal qualifications for work in the cutthroat workaholic economy: broken spirits, high indebtedness, and insatiable desires. When educational institutions shamelessly market learning as a means of accumulating wealth, it is time for those of us who care about the future of humanity to give serious thought to how genuine education may be preserved and renewed. We must first observe that although many starve for want of the resources so mindlessly squandered by their betters, the favored few are really not that much happier either. Excessive wealth leads to self-hatred, paranoia, addiction, alienation, sadism, and stupid arrogance in both men and countries. Having grown up in the Third World, I have never found anything romantic about poverty, being all too aware of the corrosive effects of powerlessness and hunger. But I do find ironic justice in the paradox that the wealthy are even more susceptible to addiction than the poor. However even this situation can harm the developing world even more than the developed world. Not content with culturally impoverishing their own countries through their greed, insatiable western corporations and tycoons will increasingly look to corrupt the rest of the world by disseminating alienating lifestyles and offering worthless but expensive trinkets in exchange for precious raw materials. Third World 'yuppies' are most dangerous of all because after using up precious foreign exchange to study in the west, they return to spread spending habits of addictive consumerism amongst their own people. Instead of mindlessly aping corrupt and decadent western lifestyles, students from poor countries should instead seek to thoughtfully combine the best that west and east have to offer. Nearly a hundred years ago, Rudyard Kipling famously observed "East is east and west is west and never the two shall meet." Today, we see that he was only partially correct. The worst aspects of east and west, cynicism and materialism have been seamlessly welded together by globalization. While millions of over-priced Big Macs are consumed in every third world capital, 'yoga for yuppies' is taught at every trendy western university. We must somehow hope that the discarded better aspects of the two cultures, western innovation and eastern community values, may someday be combined. Otherwise, instead of successfully crossing that famous 'bridge into the 21st century' the east will find itself repeating the very practices of the 20th century that have brought the west to moral and spiritual bankruptcy. If there is to be any real social progress in the future, holistic eastern approaches towards medicine and society must play a crucial role in solving the problems of mistrust and loneliness that plague the western world. Another important lesson the west could learn from the east is that concerning the difference between pleasure and happiness. Pleasure is a way of using the body to evade the obligations that go with being a human being. By contrast, happiness consists in being, knowing and liking oneself as a social being existing in harmony with the rest of the world. It should be clear to any observer of popular culture that neither material accumulation nor sensual indulgence can generate genuine happiness. Unlike the pleasure seeker, who ceaselessly seeks to devise new and increasingly perverse ways of escaping himself, the virtuous person can look within and without and know that he is at peace with himself and the world. Only such a person is capable of friendship: either with himself or with others. Furthermore, only he is in a position to use property properly and freely; by contrast, an insecure hedonist will always be possessed by that which he seems to own. While human happiness requires a certain amount of property, an educated person's wealth is measured by moderation rather than by excess: his property will be his equipment, rather than the measure of his value as a human being. Accordingly, we must look towards a situation where material sufficiency and the human values of trust and community are not mutually exclusive commodities. Not unlike Plato's Republic, wherein every individual was unhappy but the state was happy, today we are educated to compulsively sacrifice our personal integrity, leisure, and relationships for the sake of finding satisfaction from the performance of the economy and the stock market. We condemn countries like Nazi Germany and the USSR, where the citizens mindlessly cheered on their evil empires, but do we not blindly follow the progress of today's cutthroat capitalist economy in much the same spirit? Unlike previous points in human history, when individual flourishing could only be secured through slavery and exploitation, our interconnected world is such that true happiness and security may only be enjoyed in a context where all will have the opportunity of participating in a 'global commonwealth' of peace and abundance. Once a sensible family planning program is introduced worldwide, any child born into the 21st century can be guaranteed a fair chance to have his or her material and cultural needs provided for. There is no doubt that the human race collectively possesses sufficient technical resources for it to make this promise of a 'new deal' to its newest members. Sadly, today's "New World Order" is far more oriented towards protecting the property rights of corporations and millionaires than it is committed to preserving the fundamental rights of all the planet's inhabitants. This state of affairs cannot be tolerated any longer. It is possible that massive demonstrations of peaceful civil disobedience, on a global scale, will be necessary to signal to the powers-that-be that people come first. Laws and institutions are means rather than ends. They cannot be tools by which human beings are mechanized (made 'machine friendly') and placed at the disposal of capital. While the 20th century has mastered the technical/scientific problem of supply, we find that it is the task of the 21st century to address what are ultimately humanistic questions pertaining to the origins of demand and desire. Otherwise, the increasingly vicious battle between the exploited many and the greedy few must threaten the future of civilization itself. Religious fundamentalists awaiting the end of the world, as well as paranoid individuals so isolated that they attach little value to their own lives, cannot be expected to be too careful in using means of mass destruction that will become ever more potent and available in the time to come. As the 'military-industrial complex' shamelessly presses for the introduction of increasingly murderous and expensive weaponry, and as the climate of mutual distrust and rabid commercial opportunism causes these weapons to proliferate throughout the world, the stakes and dangers increase exponentially. Today, people seem less able to transcend their own desires and frustrations to think globally than ever before. Is there any way out? It is in this context that I claim that genuine philosophy has a vitally important role in preserving and fostering the conditions for human flourishing. Today, most academic philosophers pride themselves on their cleverness in creating and solving abstract puzzles that are of no interest to any beyond a few dozen colleagues. Yet, in doing so they remain smugly ignorant of the true nature of what they 'profess' to teach. The best and simplest definition of the subject matter of philosophy is the art of self -knowledge. Without an adequate appreciation of what Plato called "Poros" and "Penia", that maddening combination of abundant potentiality and infinite craving that human nature consists of, even the wealthiest among us will be forever incapable of love or happiness. Philosophy is the art that helps us to understand and embrace our humanity in all of its infinite complexity. After all, that was how the great masters of both the eastern and western traditions understood this discipline. In the absence of adequate self-knowledge, technological progress only makes it possible for us to project our ignorant self-hatred farther and wider. This self-knowledge is also crucial to the moderation that our troubled times demand. Through philosophy, we may affirm values that no longer alienate us from each other, but instead express a shared solidarity and abiding responsibility towards our planet, our rich multicultural heritage and our future. Today, most human associations are held together by fear, suspicion, and chronic general insecurity. These values may be good for the stock market and world economy but today, as the eternally adolescent baby-boomers grow old enough to fear death, we're starting to recognize the staggering human cost of this approach. The aging boomers are beginning to recognize the extent of the damage they have inflicted, in absentia, on themselves. They have to learn how to come home to themselves and each other. They must somehow penetrate the iron curtain that has been built around their souls. As the poet W. H. Auden put it, we must learn how to love another or die. I used to believe that love is stronger than hate, today I say that love must someday be made stronger than hate. I recognize that this hope will only be realized when our understanding of love becomes more enlightened. Our task is to become reacquainted with the true meaning of the word "love" in a time when it is just a four-letter word. Put bluntly, what passes for love today is nothing more or better than nearsighted, narcissistic sentimentality. "Love" is deliberately chosen as a convenient emotion that leads us to ignore the world and almost everyone outside one's family. Indeed, even so-called loved ones are killed off when they are shrink-wrapped and reified in a stifling cocoon of perfection. The sacred word 'love' has been hijacked and used to serve the unlimited lusts of the addict. True love has been driven into exile, and a hateful stunt-double been substituted in its stead. This so-called 'love' justifies flagrantly selfish behavior that is actually nothing less than barely hidden hatred of both the self and the other. In other words, our upside-down world seems to understand love to mean thanatos -the perverse desire to own living beings as dead objects- rather than eros. This accusation could be leveled with equal justice at the fundamentalist and the capitalist, since both would uproot and destroy the fragile life-world in the name of god or the market. Conversely, true love will lead us to view the whole world through farsighted and compassionate eyes. This love must help us to embrace the world, in all of its imperfection, for the sake of its boundless potentiality. Put poetically, the world is not perfect, and neither should it be; it exists for love. There is overwhelming evidence that, beneath their masks of precocious cynicism, the students of the 21st century are desperately looking for meaning and hope. They want to believe that words like "love", "justice" and "beauty" have a meaning that goes beyond the vulgarity of the corrupt world we have thrown them into. We cannot betray them by exposing them to our deadly second-hand cynicism. While they surely need gainful employment, our main task is to help them to learn how to learn. Trapped between the "Jihad" and the "Mcworld" they must learn how to read reality - instead of having the Bible or Koran imposed on them by fundamentalists or nihilistically enforcing their post-modern lusts on nature. In other words, they must acquire the courage to recognize, interpret and actualize the subtle texture and rich potentiality of the world. More than any set of soon-to-be outdated technical skills, this alone will enable them to survive and flourish in our swiftly changing world while conserving the conditions for the possibility of continued existence of the planet. A genuine education -one that gives expertise in a discipline within a humanistic framework that integrates the person and celebrates the unity of the world-must replace the banal job training boldly demanded by big business and shamelessly supplied by colleges. Such an education must also recognize, and deal accordingly with, the conflicting drives towards eros and thanatos that eternally dwell within human nature. It goes without saying that such a humanistic education will also value human rights over property rights. Only a pedagogic model that (a) addresses the needs for human self-knowledge and global justice and (b) shows the connection between these seemingly disparate concerns, can succeed in providing our unhappy species with a viable future. Global justice must be seen to be more than an unrealistic cause for liberals and sentimental idealists; humanity's current state demands that we stop devastating the planet and exploiting each other. But neither can justice be seen as a goal in itself, it must be superseded by the ascending ethical terms of education, trust, friendship, and love. Ethics as I have described it, as the foundation of philosophy, derives its authority from the experience of beholding human nature in all of its great potential. It is from this erotic origin that it indicates a spiritual horizon that gives its claims ultimate meaning and authority. Whatever they believe the highest values to be, it is time for all persons of good will to join together in the task of repairing, conserving, and celebrating this fragile world of ours. A properly educated person will not be neither a foolish optimist nor an insecure miser but a humanistic optimizer. Such a person will not believe that the status quo is necessary, divinely ordained and perfect. Neither will he feel that this planet is a meaningless place where might is right and everyone must look out for himself. Put differently, the world we find ourselves in is neither a divinely predetermined mechanism nor a godless chaos where everything is permitted; rather, it seems to possess just sufficient meaning to permit, and be justified by, the active exercise of human excellence. In religious language, God is best pleased when human beings join forces and use their intellectual and spiritual powers to continually interpret the lively flux of reality in the best of all possible ways for all. I have tried to show why philosophy must play an essential part in schooling a global citizenry for the future. Among other things, it must help us distinguish between true and false loves: to redeem eros from the thanatos that threatens to bring the human experiment to an abrupt and nasty conclusion. The wisdom that philosophy strives to embody is not a body of arid dogma but a thoughtful and gracious way of being-in-the-world. While only a few may major in philosophy, or go on to master its theoretical intricacies, all humans are entitled and obliged to know themselves and their place in the greater scheme of things. Joyfully renouncing the ignorant extremes of materialistic nihilism and paranoid fundamentalism, genuinely educated persons will be truly 'born again' when they, by thoughtful words and deeds, re-collect and realize a world charged with the glory of the human spirit. (The author is the Executive Editor of the magazine Diotima. His book, The Soul of Socrates, was published by Cornell University Press in June 2000.) -- Journal by The Lightbeamers, MD. http://journal.marisaduma.net Anthology of commentary articles. Documenting the blogosphere, design, urban cults, people, philosophy, psychology and pop culture viewed from the far southeast. Some rights reserved.
