The Inevitability and Desirability of Globalization
Host: Walter Anderson

The Role of Belief Systems

(Participant) Dear Walt--so happy to have you leading us on this topic. As I am familiar with your books, I can appreciate the fundamental knowledge you bring to this discussion.

So far I understand that you and others want to talk about the processes that are gradually whittling away the power of national boundaries and constructing mutual outcomes across national lines. But I am appalled by Bush's determination to act like a bully and get what he wants without any apparent thought of the consequences. And I have another fear as well: the power of religion.

As I see it, the most distressing behaviors of human beings have been the result of belief systems, most with magical implications. How do we take the blinders off the Christian right? How do we deal with Islam which preaches that the way to heaven is through assassinating infidels? How do we get our own selves to let go of the hopes for "spiritual" rescue by praying to nonexistent gods? How do we get people to look at the outcomes of their prayers--which is nothing except self-deception?

I know you can't deal with much of this, but can you consider, say, the impact of Islamic beliefs on the tentatively developing sense of a united world.

(Walter Anderson) First thing I have to say is that nothing is standing still, everything is changing to some degree or another. There's a lot going on within what we might loosely call the Islamic world--although speaking of it as a single entity at all is pushing things a bit. There are several big schisms within that world--the Sunni-Shia one, the various nationalisms, and the gap between the militant fundamentalists (who are also reactionary anti-globalists) and those variously described as moderate, secular or internationalist who want to be a part of the global community and create a new kind of Islamic modernity. The events of 9/11 pushed movement in both directions--gave a new excitement and sense of community to the militants and a new urgency to the movement toward redefining Islamic civilization. Both of these groups, by the way, are really global movements, even though one is trying to head in the opposite direction. But you're familiar with my thoughts about what I call "the irony of globalization"--antiglobalist movements that are forces of globalization in spite of themselves.

(Walter Anderson) I forgot to reply to your question about the Christian right. I'm afraid a lot of those people are going to die with their blinkers on. I don't know how to change them. But time is not on their side.

(Walter Anderson) Another piece of globalization, one we haven't talked about much, is what's happening with religions. We still tend to think of the world's major religions as separate and distinct entities with links to a certain geographic area, but in many ways they're not. People move around, often convert to other religions or just leave them. Anybody who wants to can convert to any other religion. Then there's syncretism, people putting together pieces of different rituals and traditions in their own way. We see this in the US with the growing number of Christians who also practice Buddhist meditation. And the Dalai Lama emerging as the sort of all-purpose global holy man. Fundamentalists don't like this, of course.

(Participant) From all the preceding messages, it is clear that globalization is a word for many concepts. At least, it appears that globalization refers to movement, to change, toward some differences in the way we think and do. I don't seem to remember any major moments in the past when the actual changes that occurred reflected more than a passing relation to the expectations about them. This of course doesn't mean that we shouldn't talk about our expectations. But is seems to me we need to hang on hard to uncertainty. What I especially like about Walt Anderson's definitions and interpretations is that they don't claim any particular certainty except change.

Of course if this view is correct, it makes figuring out what to do a lot more experimental. As I have said before, I think the major problem associated with making use of our knowledge when making plans is the terrible problem of faith. I have yet to meet a person committed to some basic faith who doesn't in the long run refuse to acknowledge what is in front of him when it conflicts with his belief system. And yet I don't know how to avoid unconsciously being trapped by some kind of faith. I wish I did.

(Participant) Hallock, your pointing out how overwhelmingly faith limits our thinking leads me to mention how so many other factors also limit our thinking--professionalism, commodification, gender and racial identity, personal commitments, media distortions, belief systems from politics to vegetarianism, unconscious motivation, lack of education and knowledge, poor memory, all combine to prevent or distort our thinking. The list could go on. It is amazing that we can have an intelligent discussion at all.

Our job in the ILF is to find our way through that jungle, and in that process, I agree that Walt is a big help. As are you.

(Participant) I think that one of the most overlooked aspects of religious belief is that it provides those who have it with something they consider worthwhile. It really doesn't matter if there is, objectively, a god or not. Billions of people find the belief of value to themselves. What we might call "problems" seem to arise from intolerance of the particulars of others' dogma or tenets. And yet, this is as much a part of the human process as anything else. Defining one's group by saying it is "not that specific other", competing for membership, building up one's self image by denigrating another, etc. etc., are all hallmarks of enclaves which religions certainly are.

I doubt that globalization is a process likely to significantly change the dynamics of the religious process. This whole trip with religions is ancient and undoubtedly serves a purpose for the species. If globalization is, in fact, the process it appears to be, I suspect that a certain amount of acceptance and tolerance for the process of religion (the "good" and the "bad") is going to be required.

When we are caught up in a process there are limited options. Fight it or adapt to it. When the process includes (as all processes do) a period of significant change it seems wise to ride through the changes, adapting as well as we can.

What causes the most grief for a group of people is the insistence by some that there is a one way, a right way or a best way, yet friction and conflict are also part of the human process.

(Walter Anderson) Dick is quite right in that there are many kinds of mindsets just as rigid--and unaware of their rigidity--as those of religious true believers.

I do think (and have argued in several books including a new one that will be inflicted on the world later this year)that the process we are calling globalization does involve deep epistemological changes that affect the nature of religious belief itself--not for everybody all at once, of course. A friend of mine, a physicist named David Peat, has written a book titled From Certainty to Uncertainty that has to do with this.

Hallock, your comment reminds me of a story about Bishop Wilberforce, the English clergyman who was T. H. Huxley's antagonist in the debates about evolution. The Bishop was later killed in a riding accident, thrown from his horse and his head hit a rock. Huxley, obviously not the forgiving sort, said it was the fist time the bishop's brains ever came into contact with reality.

I've prepared a couple of comments to mark my belated entry into this Conference. But before I insert them, I'm moved to comment on what's just been said about religion.

In an environment of continuous, sometimes explosive, change, people who hold fast to an unchanging faith are bound to annoy lots of other people--not only people with differing unchanging faiths but also people who think that other people having faiths is part of the problem.

(Participant) Even the claim that the only certainty is change (Hallock's characterization of Walt's stance, in 1:38) is a kind of faith that's bound to jar those who are betting on, or at least hoping for, some universal ethic rooted in moral precepts.

A universal ethic can't be said to be inconceivable. One of our ILF Fellows, Rush Kidder, is a skilful mix-master of global ethics. He showed in his "Shared Values for a Troubled World," published in 1994, that a kind of code of global ethics can be derived from interviewing two dozen wise people of very different religious faiths, ethnic and national origins, and political credos. The content of each of its major headings--love, truthfulness, fairness, freedom, unity, tolerance, responsibility, and respect for life--is of course debatable and much debated.

The troubles that "organized religion" has often brought to humanity have much more to do, I think, with the "organized" than with the "religion." The "organized" efforts through the centuries to exclude, to convert, and to dominate have mostly, if not always, been at the service of baser goals than spirituality.

That's why, though sired by an Episcopal priest, I now respond to religious inquiries by claiming a faith in "unorganized spirituality." I find that helps me think more clearly about myself--and about the many divisive issues featured in current public and international affairs. But I'm not trying to organize a movement along these lines; that might be a road to perdition.

(Walter Anderson) I find that as I grow older I grow simultaneously more religious (in my own peculiar understanding of that word) and less comfortable not only with organized religions but also the more loosely-coupled ones. I even stopped going to services at the Berkeley Unitarian Church, the one that Huston Smith memorably described as the place where the ten commandments are taken to be the ten suggestions.

The big challenge we face now, as Harlan suggests, is to live openly with our own beliefs (or non-beliefs) in a way that doesn't unduly crowd others, at the same time that the forces of globalization keep putting us all more and more in one another's faces.

(Participant) Well, Hallock, as I am certain you would agree, such Christians as Ashcroft and Bush, and even the Pope, do think about the consequences of their actions and doctrines. They just think differently than many of us do. The consequences of some of their doctrines (those regarding "free speech," for example) scare the hell out of me. This is probably not the forum for a continuation of a discussion on the implications of "applied Christianity," but perhaps another time, another forum.

Going in another direction, do you think we might agree that "globalization," whatever else it may be, is a process which is--to a significant degree--influenced by the actions of a relatively few number of people? that those people are guided by personal values (our values tell us what is right and what is wrong) and personal beliefs (they tell us what is true and what is false). These values and beliefs may or may not reflect the mission statements of the various organizations these individuals "manage," but they are of enormous consequence in the both the manifest and latent functions of those organizations (e.g. BMW) which are involved in globalization. Given that, isn't it important to learn what we can of those values and beliefs and, in specific situations, to attempt to influence (change) them?

(Participant) Globalization seems to me, over the past millennia, to have seen a reduction in the number of different kinds of government systems. Chieftains, fiefdoms, vassal states, feudal states, empires, city states, etc. The number seems to have been dwindling such that currently the world is mostly comprised of democracies, dictatorships, tribal governments, a few semi-colonial governments and client states.

I think that over the next 20 years dictatorships will decline significantly (we've seen evidence of that in the past 20 years in South America). The mid-east and the African nations are likely to find it more and more difficult to participate in a global society if they maintain dictatorial governments. Client states are also likely to decrease (as we've seen with Cuba for example) as the ability or desire of any single nation to support another based upon pure ideological similarities will become too costly. I'm not sure what word best describes the government of China (oligarchy?), but I have the sense that such a form will remain for some time--it seems possible that some of former members of the USSR may well reinvent themselves along such lines in the near future. Variations of democracy will probably gain new members.

To my mind globalization is most evident as a reduction in the diversity of social institutions - as in differing religious bodies. Paganism, Shintoism, ancestor worship, human sacrifice, etc., have all virtually disappeared from the human stage in the past 1,000 years. The Muslim world seems to be at a critical nexus. I don't know that it can exist comfortably within a democracy. It seems possible that the Muslim states will seek some sort of unity under an oligarchic form of a government. It seems quite possible that oligarchy and democracy may well become the 2 most common forms of government in the world.

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