Civilization: A Pathway to Peace?

MAJID TEHRANIAN

University of Hawaii at Manoa

ABSTRACT The concept of ‘civilization’ has been employed in contradictory ways—as an

ideological tool, as an analytical category and in reference to a long historical journey. In light

of its ideological abuses, is ‘civilization’ as an analytical category capable of salvation? This

paper takes a fresh look at an old problem. If ‘civilization’ is still a useful category of analysis,

are such partitions as the East and the West valid in the context of an emerging global

civilization? If not, how can we reconceptualize the common journey toward a more civilized

world order? The paper argues that human civilization is an imaginary fuelled by changing

technologies, mythologies and communication carriers. The transitions from nomadic to

agrarian, commercial, industrial and informatic civilizations may be considered as higher orders

of differentiation, complexity and integration. If so viewed, the journey appears as a single but

uneven and self-contradictory movement. In our own epoch, the global reach of informatic

technologies necessitates an integrating myth such as the Gaia Hypothesis, viewing the Planet

Earth as a single living organism transcending all boundaries. That myth would teach us to

value human unity in diversity. However, the current pathologies of commodity and identity

fetishism, expressed in state and opposition terrorism, are obstructing peaceful globalization.

‘We are the finest race in the world, and the more of the world we inhabit, the better it is for thehuman race’ Cecil John Rhodes (1853-1902), quoted by Bentley and Ziegler (2003, p. 933)

‘Today backward and deprived, we face an economic and military giant with the moral and spiritual scru-ples of a flea. It is not a pleasant encounter.’ Sadeq al-Mahdi, Prime Minister of Sudan (1966–1967)

‘Civilization as we know it, is a movement not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor’. ArnoldToynbee (1889–1975), 1948

The Problem

In the post-Cold War international discourse, two concepts have found great currency: globali-

zation and civilization. Both concepts have been often employed in the singular rather than

Globalizations

September 2004, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 82–101

Correspondence Address: Majid Tehranian, Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research, University of Hawaii at

Manoa, 2500 Campus Road, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA. Email: majid@hawaii.edu

1474-7731 Print=1474-774X Online=04=010082–20 # 2004 Majid TehranianDOI: 10.1080/1474773042000252174

plural.1 However, both concepts may be better understood in the plural. The two concepts gen-

erally refer to the material and cultural achievements by humanity through international

exchanges in science, technology and culture. In successive trials and errors at war or peace

throughout human history, technological and cultural exchanges have advanced human civiliza-

tion (Bentley, 1993; Frank and Gills, 1993).

Five major types of globalization can be easily discerned in written history, including (1)

nomadic conquests of sedentary population exemplified by the Aryan, Arab, Mongol, Teutonic

and Turkik tribes, (2) agrarian empires such as the Sumerian, Egyptian, Chinese, Indian, Persian,

Greek and Roman, (3) commercial trade routes such as those of the Silk, Incense and Spice

Roads, (4) European, Russian, American and Japanese industrial empires, and (5) the current

round of an expanding informatic empire, encompassing nearly all parts of the world through

its global market and communication networks. In the current round, globalization also has

come to mean the promotion of a neoliberal economic and political agenda2 promoted by an

ideology of civilization.

Civilization has a longer history of discourse. Felipe Fernandez-Armesto (2002, p. 12) has

gone through this history with gusty commentary. It is difficult to disagree with him that ‘Like

most terms calculated to evoke approval, such as “democracy”, “equality”, “freedom”, and

“peace”, the word “civilization” has been much abused.’ However, it is necessary to make a dis-

tinction between its ideological abuses by politicians to legitimate certain hegemonic policies, its

use by noted historians to designate certain types of society, and its more general use as a

common human journey. I use the term differently from most other commentators to designate

a normative aspiration to achieve a society in which rule of law and other methods of non-violent

dispute management are dominant. From this perspective, civilization is an unfinished journey.

Ideological discourses often see the world in self-righteous black and white terms. They

employ dichotomous categories in order to mobilize resources for the ensuing struggles. ‘Civi-

lization’ has been often employed as an ideological weapon to legitimate most globalization pol-

icies in the past and present. By making dichotomous distinctions between the so-called

‘civilized’ and ‘barbarian’, a presumed Axis of Virtue against an ‘Axis of Evil’,3 hegemonic

ambitions have tried to gain moral legitimacy. In the current round, opposition to the dominant

globalization policies has similarly employed ‘civilization’ as its ideological weapon of choice.

Witness the frequent use of ‘civilization’ in speeches by President George W. Bush as well as by

Osama Ben Laden.

The challenge is to understand the complex patterns of an emerging world civilization, par-

ticularly its globalizing and civilizing forces. Employing normative concepts without falling

prey to their ideological abuses is part of that challenge. Some may argue that ‘civilization’ is

analytically beyond salvation. However, the option to abandon normative concepts is not a rea-

listic one. Human societies are normative social constructions. In competition or in concert,

norms such as salvation, order, freedom, equality, solidarity, justice or civilization frame the

unwritten, and sometimes written, constitutions of society. Without such normative glues,

human societies would fall apart. Norms and values are in turn symbolically revealed in foun-

dation myths.

As the Biblical myth of creation reveals, once Adam and Eve ate the Apple from the Tree of

Knowledge, they were permanently thrown out of their conditions of ignorance and bliss in para-

dise. They attained the status of free agents who must choose, enjoy or suffer the consequences

of their choices. First, they became aware of their nakedness, i.e. they gained consciousness.

Second, they were faced with the struggles of living, such as labor in child bearing and toil in

the sweat of their brow. Third, they gained the freedom to choose between good and evil.

Civilization: A Pathway to Peace? 83

According to this Abrahamic foundation myth, the human condition entails struggle, learning

and freedom. Modern natural science also seems to confirm this finding. We seem to be hard-

wired for struggle, love, learning and creativity (Lewis et al., 2000). But we are also genetically

programmed for identity, territoriality and aggression (Ardrey, 1966).

In the Biblical myth of creation, God created man in his own image. That myth posits a pro-

found truth about consciousness in the human condition. The Gospel according to St. John

starkly states, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word

was God.’ If we interpret ‘the Word’ as communicative competence in its broadest possible

terms or, better yet, consciousness or enlightenment, we can better understand the profound

meaning of the statement. As Seyyed Hossein Nasr (2003, p. 14) aptly put it

Consciousness, for traditional civilizations, for religions and traditional philosophies, is not only astate. It is a substance and not a process. It is something that is, like Being itself, which at itshighest level of reality is at once luminous and numinous. Consciousness at its elevated levels isat once knowing and knowing that it knows, knowledgeable of its own knowledge. It is at oncethe source of all sentience, of all experience, and beyond all experience of the knowledge that some-thing is being experienced. That is why even the more skeptical philosophers have had a great deal oftrouble negating it, even those who have been skeptics from a religious point of view.

The Purpose

This essay engages in a politics of discourse imposed by our historical circumstances. It begins

with a focus on the current conceptual quagmire. It offers seven propositions on the interactions

among three major historical forces, including technologies, mythologies and communication

carriers. By globalization, I simply mean an intensification of human interactions across territo-

rial boundaries. By civilization, I mean the unfinished journey that humanity has undertaken to

tame its aggressive impulses in order to achieve a peaceful management of conflicts through dia-

logue, negotiation, law, diplomacy, mediation, arbitration and Satyagraha. By technology,

I mean the hardware and software know-how of solving human problems. By mythology,

I mean the narratives that try to explain the unexplainable (Campbell, 1997).4 By communi-

cations, I am referring to those carriers of human messages that we commonly know as

verbal and non-verbal signs, transportation and the media.

The Argument

The essay argues that technologies, mythologies and communications are the perennial forces that

have shaped global history in the past and will probably continue to do so in the future. Civiliza-

tion clearly begins with the ingenious human uses of natural environment. Available natural

resources, their discovery through science and technology, and the ensuing struggles to control

them are the perennial saga of human history. But technology by itself cannot sustain human

societies. It takes shared foundation myths to build human societies. Human civilization has

been built through scientific, technological and cultural exchanges, achieved by means of expand-

ing global communication. Civilization may be thus viewed as a normative social construction to

manage human problems, drawing on technologies, mythologies, and communications.

Human civilization has evolved toward greater differentiation, complexity and integration

(Figure 1). Technological developments impose greater differentiation in social structures and

functions. Greater differentiation brings about more complexity and contradiction. Complexity

and contradiction necessitate higher orders of social integration. Social integration, in turn, calls

84 M. Tehranian

for new foundation myths relevant to the new material and cultural conditions. As technological

advances and cultural lags bring about greater complexity and contradiction between the old and

new paradigms, the crises of transition inevitably surface. In this respect, the movement of

human civilization is fundamentally no different from the revolutionary processes in scientific

progress (Kuhn, 1962). The revolutions from nomadic to agrarian, commercial, industrial and

informatic civilizations have been accompanied by great cultural transformations. However,

each revolutionary change has been followed by a long period of normalization of the values

of the new civilization’s modes of production, legitimation and communication.

Figure 1. Modes of globalization and civilization: technological, institutional, and cosmological perspectives

Civilization: A Pathway to Peace? 85

The Conceptual Quagmire

The Manichean dichotomies between civilized versus barbarian, or more generally ‘us’

versus ‘them’, seem to be a propensity of the human mind.5 Ideology as a modern discourse

and tool of political struggle often resorts to such dichotomies. In the modern world, with the

mass media playing a critical role, such dichotomies have become a common currency. State

and commercial media alike often engage in dichotomizing political struggles, demonizing

the perceived enemy, and dramatizing their own narratives to capture, manipulate and

entertain their audiences. For the commercial media, this strategy also maximizes audiences

and profits.

The exploding scholarly literature on globalization has been trapped in this ideological quag-

mire. In a moment of enthusiasm, for example, Francis Fukuyama (1989) declared that the twen-

tieth century has witnessed the triumph of liberal capitalism over communism and fascism. The

rest of human history, he argued, will be spent on the boring details of implementing the capi-

talist democratic regimes.6 A more pessimistic voice was aired by Samuel Huntington (1993a, b,

1996) during the 1990s. The wars in the Persian Gulf, Somalia and former Yugoslavia suggested

no easy victories. In his Clash of Civilizations, Huntington argued that the wars of the future will

be conflicts among civilizations, most notably between the West and the rest. He also singled out

an Islamic–Confucian alliance as the West’s main enemy. In a more critical vein, Benjamin

Barber (1995) identified the central problem of globalization as the ensuing conflict between

capitalist consumerism and tribalist militancy. However, by employing the metaphors of

McWorld vs. Jihad, he regionalized a global problem. The New York Times columnist

Thomas Friedman (2000) used the metaphor of The Lexus and the Olive Tree. That metaphor

may be more relevant to upwardly mobile upper middle classes rather than Barber’s lower

middle classes!

As Robert Cox (1997, p. 251) aptly put it, conceptual dualisms reveal a ‘culture of content-

ment’ challenging a culture of discontent. The ardent globalizers and the reluctant globalized

approach the same problems from different perspectives based on contradictory interests.

Those interests and perspectives are the dialectically interacting aspects of the same historical

dilemma.7 The dominant and dissenting views reflect different constructions of reality. From

the center perspective, the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US seemed to bear

out Huntington’s dark prophecy and Barber’s fearsome forebodings. It was ironic that 2001

was also declared by the United Nations General Assembly as the Year of Dialogue among

Civilizations. The terrorist attacks demonstrated that we live in a truly globalized world.

History’s greatest superpower was no longer protected by the two vast Atlantic and Pacific

Oceans.

The language of violence subsequently assumed a prominent position in international dis-

course. The US invasions of Afghanistan in 2002 and Iraq in 2003 were the expressions of

a dual project: (a) to stem oppositional terrorism in its bud, and (b) to establish a New

American Century (NAC). In 1997, the Project for a NAC had been initiated by the

future leaders of the Bush Administration. It was to promote ‘a few fundamental prop-

ositions: that American leadership is good both for America and for the world; that such lea-

dership requires military strength, diplomatic energy and commitment to moral principle; and

that too few political leaders today are making the case for global leadership’.8 The NAC

project pooled two American historical traditions into one ideological basket. The Bushists

have argued that, to promote democracy in the world, the US must be ready to employ

pre-emptive strikes.9

86 M. Tehranian

Seven Propositions in Search of Civilization

Proposition 1. There is one single human civilization, but there are numerous cultures

We may speak of many civilizations in human history, some dead, others living. But human civi-

lization also may be viewed as a grand old tree with many branches, flowers and fruits. The different

branches, flowers and fruits each have their own shapes, colors, aromas and tastes. But they are all

nurtured by the same earth, water, air and human ingenuity. There is a clear unity in diversity.

Although isolated for centuries from their Eurasian varieties, the American civilizations (including

the Native Americans, Aztecs, Incas and Mayas) also were based on technological advances and

mythological foundations. Cultivation of edible crops, domestication of animals, development of

media of communication and exchange, and the myth of sacrifice as a foundation for political

unity seem to be common to all human civilizations (Diamond, 1999).

Whether we speak of one singular human civilization or its many branches, history shows that

every new civilization has borrowed heavily from the past to build up its own achievements. The

invention of fire, wheel, compass, print, automobile, satellites and computers have been contrib-

uted by different nations. Comparable with the great technological breakthroughs in history, new

moral heights also have been envisioned by many peoples and traditions. No nation or combi-

nation of nations can claim a monopoly of civilization. Hammurabi (1792–1750 BCE) offered us

the first legal code. Moses gave us the Ten Commandments (thirteenth century BCE). Cyrus (fifth

century BCE) liberated the Jews and established a policy of cultural tolerance in his empire.

Buddha (563–483 BCE) and Jesus (first century CE) advocated a world ruled by love and com-

passion. Lao-tze (604 BCE) and Confucius (551–479 BCE) laid the moral and legal foundations

for the Chinese civilization. In accordance with Buddhist Dharma (principles of right life),

Emperor Ashoka (ruled 265–238 BCE) of the Mauryan dynasty in India renounced all violence.

Mahatma Gandhi struggled for Indian independence by non-violent means. In his campaign for

civil rights, Martin Luther King followed non-violent resistance strategies. The Universal

Declaration of Human Rights (1945) combined the wisdom of European civilizations with

those inherited from others to establish a new and higher standard of ethical conduct by

states. The list can go on and on.

All civilizations are, to employ Benedict Anderson’s felicitous phrase (1983), ‘imaginaries’.

Since all civilizations in history have borrowed heavily from others, it would be inaccurate to

speak of them as disconnected imaginaries. Jared Diamond (1999) has argued that the Eurasian

East–West Axis allowed material and cultural exchanges greater than those in the North–South

axis of the Americas. But the propensity to travel, conquer, and exchange has been a perennial

force in history on the East–West as well as North–South axes. Native Americans, for instance,

are believed to have come mainly from Asia via Alaska (Diamond, 1999, pp. 36ff.). In Eurasian

history, the mythologies, sciences and technologies of the ancient Sumerian, Egyptian, Persian,

Greek and Roman civilizations were passed on to modern Europe via the medieval Islamic civi-

lization. The same can be said of the Japanese and Korean civilizations that heavily borrowed

from China.

Proposition 2. Civilization may be considered as the increasing technological, mythological

and communicative capacity of human societies to manage human problems

In the Mediterranean world, civilization has been traditionally identified with city dwelling. In

the European languages as well as Arabic and Persian (madaniyya, tammadon), the word for

civilization suggests city life. Civitas, civility, civil and citizen are its derivations. By contrast,

Civilization: A Pathway to Peace? 87

in East Asian languages, the term for civilization (Wen Ming in Chinese; Bun Mei in Japanese)

suggests learning and enlightenment. The urban bias of the Mediterranean is historically under-

standable. To arrive at a global understanding, we need to emphasize what is common to all his-

torical experiences. Ecological diversity and technological change provide the most solid

footing for such an understanding. All human civilizations are founded on certain institutional

arrangements, including the organization of family, tribes, states and businesses. Moreover, all

civilizations are based on certain cosmologies or mythologies, focusing their attention on per-

ennial truths and changing historical challenges. The Biblical myths relate to nomadic and agrar-

ian societies, while the myths of Nationalism or Globalism concern industrial and informatic

civilization. As a result of uneven developments in the world, we are currently witnessing a

clash of mythologies. The myth of Divine sovereignty is encountering the myth of popular

sovereignty. The two myths have been reconciled in the doctrine of separation of church and

state, to wit ‘Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and give to God that what is God’s’. In theocratic

regimes, however, the issue remains unresolved.

As Joseph Campbell (1997) has argued, certain archetypical myths keep repeating themselves

under various guises in different cultures. The myth of sacrifice, for instance, runs through the

so-called ‘primitive’ as well as ‘advanced’ cultures. To pacify the angry Gods who presumably

caused natural catastrophes, many societies engaged in a variety of sacrificial rites. To satisfy the

male gods, in some societies, they even sacrificed their virgins. As an expression of his faith in

Yahweh in the story of Abraham, the myth of sacrifice is embedded in his willingness to sacrifice

his son Isaac.10 However, Angel Gabriel brought him a lamb to sacrifice instead. Millions of

Muslims today sacrifice a lamb on the last day of their pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca as a memorial

to that day. In the Christian mythology, Jesus offered himself as ‘the Lamb of God’ to be sacri-

ficed to redeem humanity from its sinfulness. In the modern nationalist states, young men and

women are called upon on times of war to sacrifice their lives at the altar of another God,

namely the State.

Myths are neither true nor false. They are relevant or irrelevant to changing historical circum-

stances, functional or dysfunctional in the management of certain social systems. The practice of

human sacrifices to appease gods took place in many ancient societies, but modern discoveries of

the causes of natural disasters have rendered that kind of myth highly irrelevant and dysfunc-

tional. Proposed by James Lovelock (1988), the Gaia Hypothesis, for instance, may be con-

sidered an appropriate myth for our own times. As a biologist, Lovelock has found

considerable evidence to suggest that the Planet Earth could be considered a living organism.

It breathes in and out, it can thrive in health or fall sick to pollutant toxins, it sustains life but

it also can kill, it is responding to the human impact on its environment (such as global

warming), and it may be considered to have a finite life. This intriguing hypothesis cannot be

proved or disproved beyond doubt. But it can constitute a mythological belief or scientific pos-

tulate on the basis of which environmental policies are formulated to achieve greater

sustainability.

Proposition 3. Human civilization has been driven by four major forces in history, including

ecologies, technologies, mythologies and communications

Jared Diamond (1999) has shown how diverse ecologies have led to differences among human

settlements and their respective advances in the military, economic and social fields. He also has

demonstrated how technological advances by certain nations have led to domination of other

nations. If we look carefully at human civilization as a whole, three other critical factors

88 M. Tehranian

stand out. Modes of production, legitimation and communication are driven by technological

innovations to homogenize the world. However, ecologies and mythologies are unique to par-

ticular times and spaces and can perhaps best explain the diversities in human civilization.

Technologies such as the invention of fire, wheel, compass, gunpowder, animal domesti-

cation, steam engine, assembly line or nuclear fission have always privileged those first

acquiring them. The desire to dominate and exploit seems to be a recurrent phenomenon in

history. Such desires are often supported by technologies, mythologies and communication car-

riers at hand. Technologies and mythologies of domination, however, have to be relevant to par-

ticular projects. The myth of racial purity and superiority, for instance, served the purpose of

Western and Japanese colonialism. The myths of civilization and democracy are currently fuel-

ling the American imperial ambitions.11

To be diffused worldwide, technologies and mythologies depend on communication carriers

(Denemark, 2000; McNeil, 1998; Fernandez-Armesto, 2002). From messenger pigeons to postal

systems, mass media and the Internet, the communication media have served such a function.

Camels, horses, automobiles, trains and planes also have served the same function. The

growing global communication networks are proliferating old and new technologies and mythol-

ogies. For centuries, the Chinese attempted to keep the production of silk a secret. In an act of

piety during the thirteenth century, two Nestorian Christian priests traveled from Beijing to Con-

stantinople, the Byzantine Imperial Court, and revealed the secret of silk production to the Eur-

opeans. Atomic weapons are currently in the exclusive possession of several countries. As a

young Swedish scientist has demonstrated, knowledge of production of atomic weapons can

be easily obtained in any good library. If libraries are not adequate, the black markets

for weapons of mass destruction have proved their efficacy. Witness Pakistan’s complicity in

selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.12 Following the massive air attacks

on the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, smaller countries have a great incentive to

develop nuclear weapons in the belief that they would provide deterrence against similar inva-

sions. A proliferation regime that privileges some states with nuclear weapons while denying

others is thus founded on delusion.

Proposition 4. Human civilization has gone through five major, overlapping technological

transformations, including nomadic, agrarian, commercial, industrial and informatic

Stage theories of history such as those of Marx and Engels (1848), Rostow (1960) or Bell (1973)

have one flaw in common. They more or less assume a universal and progressive evolution from

lower to higher levels of social and economic development. Cyclical views of history such as those

of Ibn Khaldun (1958), Toynbee (1962), or Sarkar (Galtung and Inayatullah, 1997, Chap. 2.18)

have another common flaw. They assume a universal repetition of similar cyclical patterns.

Much can be learned from the great scholars who have tackled universal history. But histori-

cal evidence and current world conditions do not justify inevitable universal progress or cyclical

patterns. In the postwar period, certain countries (notably in West Asia and Africa) have been

economically destroyed. In contrast, in some parts of the world, we have witnessed rapid econo-

mic progress. In still others, civil wars or political instability have produced economic stagnation

or regression, and increases in poverty (UNDP, 2003).

Layering of history, however, seems to be universally the case. An Israeli archeologist once

showed me 27 layers of human settlement in one of the archeological sites near Jerusalem. A

layering of global history thus seems closer to empirical realities than stages or cycles.

Table 1 presents such a view. However, a few caveats are in order. First, the table provides a

Civilization: A Pathway to Peace? 89

global view of long stretches of time and space. It should be taken seriously but not too

seriously! In other words, it should be considered heuristic rather than definitive. Second,

the dates should be considered suggestive. They mark historical watersheds that can be legiti-

mately debated. Third, because we witness today the presence of all five layers of human civi-

lization, all dates continue into the present. Fourth, the emergence of leading sectors such as

agriculture or commerce or manufacturing occurs in sequential historical epochs. Fifth, the

table provides a matrix of civilization layers and globalization processes, including modes of

production (economy and technology), legitimation (mythology and ideology), and communi-

cation (culture and its carriers).

Proposition 5. Each historical layer can be characterized by its leading modes of production,

legitimation, and communication

The transitions in the mode of production from hunting and gathering to agriculture, commerce,

manufacturing and informatics are rather well known. Each transition has involved major trans-

formations in the economy, polity and culture. The following account cannot be but a bird’s-eye

view of a complex history.

Changing modes of production. The nomadic layer in human civilization constituted

some 99% of the history of Homo sapiens. The major river basins pioneered the transition to

Table 1. Overlapping modes of civilization, globalization and empires: technological,

institutional and cosmological perspectives

Modes of imperial

civilizations:

globalization

processes

Nomadic

civilization

and empires

(7 million

years ago to

present)

Agrarian

civilization

and empires

(8000 BCE–

present)

Commercial

civilization

and empires

(500 BCE–

present)

Industrial

civilization and

empires

(1750–present)

Informatic

civilization and

empires (1971–

present)

Mode of production:

economy and

technology

Hunting,

gathering,

herding

Agriculture,

mining

Trade,

money,

banking

Manufacturing,

services

Information and

knowledge

industries

Mode of

legitimation: state

and mythology

Shamanistic Metaphysical Material Empirical Ecological

Mode of

communication:

culture and carriers

Orality Literacy Print Mass media Digital

Technology Ancestral Religious Imperial Secular Cosmopolitan

Identity Nomadic Territorial Mobile National Global

Community Chiefdom Temple Universities Mass

organizations

Networks

Institutions

leadership

Chief and

shamans

Kings and

prophets

Emperors

and

priesthoods

PMs,

presidents and

ideologues

CEOs and

technologues,

communologues

jestologues

90 M. Tehranian

agriculture only some 10 000 years ago. Agricultural surpluses made commerce possible and

desirable. Without political security, however, commerce could not have flourished. The

advent of multinational agrarian empires created common currencies, customs, laws and com-

merce. Whenever the Eurasian landmass was ruled by three contiguous imperial systems

in the East, West and Center, international trade flourished. The discovery of the New World

in the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries by the Europeans inaugurated a new mode of production

which we may call industrial. It also radically changed the trade routes from land to ocean. Mon-

etization of the European economies through import of gold and silver from the New World

facilitated the rise of consumer markets and manufacturing. The technological inventions of

the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries led to an Industrial Revolution in England. Mainly

owing to changing trade routes and lack of access to the riches of the New World, some

Asian countries such as China that were equal if not ahead of Europe at the time were left

behind. The Industrial Revolution spread to other European countries and North America.

The role of European colonialism in this historical process was twofold. By facilitating

access to cheap labor (including slavery), raw materials and consumer markets, colonial dom-

ination augmented European industrial growth but, by spreading the European ideas of liberty

and equality, colonialism also dug its own grave. However, the global transition from industrial

to post-industrial, informatic societies has been as uneven as the spread of industrial system.

Changing modes of legitimation. Agricultural surpluses changed the modes of legitimation.

They led to the rise of multinational, agrarian empires. Such empires differentiated between

the temporal and spiritual authorities, undertook wars of conquest, established relative security

over vast expanses of territory, and thus encouraged technological and cultural exchange among

different peoples under their rule. They also facilitated the rise of Universalist religions such as

Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. These Universalist religions facili-

tated commerce and provided legitimation doctrines for the ensuring commercial empires

such as the Byzantium, Abbasid, Tang, Safavid and Ottoman. Under the industrial order,

secular humanism and its Enlightenment philosophy emerged as a dominant Universalist

mode of legitimation. Under the banner of ‘the white man’s burden’, it provided a doctrine of

legitimacy for the European and American empires. An emerging informatic empire is based

more on social class than ethnicity. To advance its cause, it employs the democratic doctrines

of legitimacy. By privileging liberty, equality and solidarity as their respective axial principles,

liberal, social and communitarian democratic doctrines provide contradictory policy perspec-

tives. Hence, the myth of democracy is both powerful and contentious.

Globalization has been always focused on the control of natural resources through conquest,

domination or trade. In this round, however, the encounter between secular and religious

doctrines of legitimacy has created a global, cultural civil war within and among nations.

Witness particularly the US, India, China, Israel and the Islamic world. In an increasingly ato-

mized world, the fetish of identity has focused on consumer commodities, for those with access

to material goods, and cultural identity for those without. Jihad vs MacWorld (Barber, 1995) is

not the peculiarity of Islamic and American worldviews. It is a more general phenomenon

reflecting the great material and cultural chasms that informatic imperialism is creating in the

world.

Changing modes of communication. Facilitated by improvements in transportation and

communication, technological and cultural exchanges have accelerated throughout history.

Through such technologies as domesticated animals (donkeys, horses and camels), the wheel,

Civilization: A Pathway to Peace? 91

carriages, ships, compass, writing, print, electronic media, satellites, computers and the Internet,

the world has become a global village. However, this village shows none of the cohesion and

intimacy of the traditional villages. There are some 10 billion pages on the World Wide Web

available to all those with computer and modem access. However, the divisions in their perspec-

tives demonstrate a materially and culturally divided world which is groping for order within

anachronistic political institutions. Technological advances in the global military, economic

and communication sectors have left the cultural and political sectors far behind. Hit–Kill

ratios, for instance, have steadily advanced in the last three centuries, but since the 1648

Peace of Westphalia, the nation-state system has dominated the world political order. Techno-

logical leads and cultural lags have created an ever-widening and alarming chasm.

In contrast, the democratizing impact of expanding markets, communication networks and

cultural exchanges cannot be ignored. In the rising environmentalist, civil society and ecumeni-

cal movements, we have witnessed antidotes to the prevailing hegemony. Awareness of the

global problems of pollution in congested cities, the ozone layer, and over-exploited forests,

rivers and oceans has affected the international discourse. Non-governmental organizations

such as the Greenpeace, Amnesty International and the Anti-Landmine movement have had

some measurable impact. Transborder communication networks have limited the ability of gov-

ernments to mislead the public.

Proposition 6. The current world conflicts stem from material and cultural gaps represented

by two global pathologies, namely commodity and identity fetishism

All historical transitions from one civilization layer to another have created zones of complexity

and contradiction. The modes of production, legitimation and communication of the old and

new inevitably collide. As a result of their collision, the established ‘truths’ of the old order

are challenged by ‘the truths’ of the new system. Such contradictions are the stuff of historical

transitions. As the pace of technological and economic change increases, we can expect the

expansion of zones of complexity and contradiction.13

Two examples of such zones may contribute to an understanding of the enormity of ensuing

social conflicts. The transition from an industrial to an informatic civilization in the US provides

an apt historical example. That transition may be generally dated to the postwar period (1945–

present). The mode of production under industrial civilization was best symbolized by the homo-

genizing influences of the assembly line and high mass consumption. The latter depended on an

acquisitive society promoted by commercial advertising. The pathology of such a society could

be identified as commodity fetishism, a tendency to evaluate the worth of an individual by the

commodities he or she consumes. The house, automobile, clothes and perfumes consumed

thus tend to define personal identities in high-consumption societies. In his theory of the

leisure class and conspicuous consumption, Thorstein Veblen (2001) had anticipated this patho-

logy. ‘To keep up with the Joneses’ became the prevailing social attitude in postwar American

society. The frugality of the earlier periods of industrialization and its heroes (e.g. John

D. Rockefeller) gave way to the rise of the new heroes of capitalism such as Donald Trump,

with his displays of glamour, consumption and television.

The Flower Revolution of the 1960s may be considered a reaction against the exacting

demands of an industrial civilization. Since it was led by a postwar affluent younger generation,

Peter Berger (1977) called it ‘the soft revolution’. The celebration of nature, sexuality, peace

and participatory democracy were part of a cultural revolution against the exacting indus-

trial demands for domination of nature and society based on competitiveness, elitism and

92 M. Tehranian

imperialism. Since the 1960s, American society has been torn between the two competing cul-

tural values of industrial and informatic civilizations. Increasing mobility and atomization has

resulted in a passionate search for identity focused on gender, ethnicity, and religion. Social

movements such as the feminist, gay, lesbian and Christian fundamentalism have become the

hallmark of American cultural conflicts. But so long as the economy can provide jobs, consu-

merism is the unifying social factor. Loss of jobs caused by the flight of American industries

to low-cost locations is producing class conflict, while loss or denial of social status is creating

identity anxiety and conflict. Commodity and identity fetishism in American society has thus

become the two dialectical sides of the same social coin.

Another example may focus on Iran. Under the monarchical regimes (1953–1979), Iran came

directly under American political, economic and cultural influence. With increasing oil reven-

ues, the country entered a period of rapid economic growth and widening disparities in

wealth, income and ways of life. The economic gaps increasingly sharpened the cultural

chasm between the secular and religious societies. The country was deeply divided into two

nations. Some 5% of the population seemed to have adopted secular values promoted by easy

access to consumer goods. The other 95% reacted to the conspicuous consumption of the

urban elite by resorting to their traditional identity as Shi’a Muslims. The social and cultural con-

flicts between commodity and identity fetishism generated the Islamic Revolution of 1979

(Tehranian, 1980). Since the revolution, the country has continued to be deeply torn between

the value systems of an industrializing and acquisitive society and the traditional agrarian

values of modesty, abstinence, and frugality. Put directly into the hands of the state and its cle-

rical-merchant rulers, oil revenues in Iran have widened the gaps and exacerbated the social con-

flicts. The conflict between the Iranian so-called conservatives and reformers may be viewed as a

conflict between tradition and modernity focusing on two contradictory doctrines of legitimacy.

The conservative clerics emphasize velayat-i-faqih, the doctrine of guardianship of the (Shi’a)

jurists (Tehranian, 1992). The reformers accuse them of akhundshahi, or clerical monarchy,

while calling for popular sovereignty.

On a global scale, the growing economic and cultural gaps within and among nations are

breeding an international and intercultural civil war without physical and moral boundaries. Glo-

balization forces are resulting in fragmentation and intense competition among ethnic, religious

and status groups (Chua, 2003). Once the traditional restraints on exercise of power are wea-

kened, the competition can erupt into bloody massacres of one group by the other. The genocide

of Tutsis by Hutus in Rwanda-Burundi, the Shi’a and Kurdish population by the Sunnis in

Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and the Chinese minorities in Indonesia provide the most recent

examples.

Globalization also creates the insecurities of distant proximity (Rosenau, 2003). The 9/11

terrorist attacks on the US, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Israeli–Palestinian

conflict can be better understood in this light. The presence of a global oil industry has system-

atically brought the Persian Gulf region into the vortex of globalization and proximity to the US

domestic politics. With over 60% of the world oil reserves and exports, local conflicts in the

Persian Gulf have inevitably become globalized. In the meantime, global forces have created

a wedge between the sectors of the population who benefit from the oil wealth and those who

do not. The terrorist attacks on the US were the culmination of several decades of convergence

of global and local forces.

Global forces thus tend to have a fragmenting impact on the social structures of developed

as well as developing countries. Deepening material and cultural divisions among communities

that are neighbors in urban America or in Israel/Palestine are resulting in gated communities

Civilization: A Pathway to Peace? 93

of the rich and the poor. Building a wall around the West Bank to cordon off the Palestinians

from Israelis serves essentially the same function as building gated communities in affluent

urban neighborhoods to protect them against threats from outside. Caught in the same territorial

space but with different cultural identities and styles of life, the confrontation between Israelis

and Palestinians has degenerated into an endless blood feud. This confrontation assumes greater

intensity when it concerns land rights between the lower strata of Israeli and Palestinian popu-

lation, namely the West Bank Jewish settlers and the Palestinian Jihad and Hamas organizations.

Similarly, at the global level, as physical distances diminish by the international communication

networks, cultural and political differences are magnified into security threats. As a security

measure, the initial response is to build physical and symbolic walls, to impose stringent visa

requirements and to enlarge surveillance.

Gated communities and the Berlin and Jerusalem Walls physically separate communities, but

they also antagonize and strengthen the will to destroy them in a next phase of struggle. Since

international disparities in wealth and income are often replicated domestically, these walls

cannot ultimately contain the two fetishisms of commodity and identity.

Proposition 7. A new global civilization and citizenship is beginning to respond to the

challenges of constructing a more peaceful, ecologically balanced, democratic and just world

Since the cultural revolution of the 1960s, a major paradigmatic shift has been taking place in the

dominant worldviews of industrial civilization. The fundamental assumptions of the Enlighten-

ment Project have been increasingly brought into question, among them the naı̈ve faith in (1) the

justice of the marketplace, (2) the infinite perfectibility of humankind, (3) the inevitability of

historical progress, (4) the moral legitimacy of human domination and exploitation of nature,

(5) the civilizing mission of the so-called advanced nations, and (6) the universal truth of empiri-

cal science. The anti-war, national liberation, environmentalist, feminist, phenomenology and

theology of liberation, and postmodernist movements each have contributed in their own

unique ways to undermine the dominance of the Enlightenment worldviews.

Meanwhile, informatic civilization has been emerging from the womb of industrial societies

(Tehranian, 1990, Chap. 2). It has been labeled Post-Industrial (Bell, 1973), Information (Porat,

1977), Knowledge (Machlup,1980), Postmodern (Harvey, 1990) and Network (Castells, 1996–

2000) Society. As in the Jain legend about the elephant and the blind men touching and describ-

ing different parts of a single creature, each of the above labels captures a different aspect of a

complex and evolving social system.

It is fairly clear, however, that the new modes of production depend on informatic technol-

ogies and significantly differ from the past industrial forms in several respects. First and fore-

most, the application of informatic technologies has made automation and robotics

increasingly possible. For example, in computer-assisted design and computer-assisted manu-

facturing (CAD–CAM), most industries have become increasingly automated. Second, the elec-

tronic transfer of news, data and images has led to new business organizations which have been

called multinational, transnational or global corporations. The global reach of some 1000 global

corporations annually reported by the Fortune Magazine has made it possible for them to spread

their manufacturing facilities around the world in order to minimize risks and maximize profits.

Lower labor, rent, tax and regulation costs have lured the global corporation from the old indus-

trial centers in North America and Western Europe to the industrializing countries in East Asia

and Latin America. Third, this kind of flexible accumulation (Harvey, 1990) has distributed the

production of the different parts of a single product among diverse locations while allowing for

94 M. Tehranian

‘just in time’ assembly to meet changing market demands. Finally, with the automation and

robotization of manufacturing and a consequent decline of demand for physical labor, the

national economies of the informatic world have shifted from agriculture and manufacturing

to services. For the US, this shift started in the late 1950s (Porat, 1977). The long-term trend

for all countries has been to shift from primary (agriculture and mining) to secondary (manufac-

turing) and tertiary (services) production. In industrial countries, agriculture contributes about

1–3%, manufacturing about 20–30% and services about 70–80% of Gross Domestic

Product. For middle and high income countries, the World Bank data show that the structures

of employment have significantly shifted from agriculture and industry to services (World

Bank, 2003, p. 48).

The most visible changes can be witnessed in the global and national communications

systems. Informatization has facilitated several other changes, including (1) convergence of tele-

communication and computers, (2) miniaturization of personal communication devices, (3)

rapid expansion of the wireless and (4) application of information storage, processing and retrie-

val in nearly all industries and services. Internet and News networks such as the CNN, BBC, Sky

TV and recently Aljazeera have provided more news and information accompanied by greater

international anxiety and stereotyping.14 Improving transportation facilities have made greater

international migration possible. Diasporic and cosmopolitan identities have been on the rise

among a population of global nomads, including immigrants as well as TNC, NGO and IGO per-

sonnel. In contrast to the priesthoods of the agrarian and commercial eras, and the ideologues of

the industrial epoch, a new class of technologues has emerged to lead the informatic revolution.

Figures such as Steve Job, Bill Gates and the teeming hardware and software engineers around

the world engaged in the informatic industries and services may be considered the new com-

munications elite.

In politics, however, two other types of figures have been privileged by the rise of informatic

civilization. For want of better terminology, we may call them communologues and jestologues

(Tehranian, 1990, p. 67). Communologues such as Ayatollah Khomeini, Zapatista leader Com-

mandant Marcos (Ronfedt et al., 1998), and Osama Ben Laden (Ronfedt and Arquilla, 2001) are

political leaders who have dipped into the rich mythological resources of particular nations to

frame their respective messages. When the power of the new communications technologies

are combined with the old mythologies of marginalized population, they can produce significant

social movements such as the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the Taliban in Afghanistan, the

Al-Qaedeh in the Islamic world, or the Zapatista Movement in Mexico (Gills, 2000).

The global spread of television as a source of news and entertainment has also had another

interesting political consequence. It has reduced the importance of traditional political parties

and privileged those leaders who can use the medium for direct appeals to the electorate.

Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger in the US, Shintaro Ishihara in Japan, and

Joseph Estrada and Fernando Poe Jr in the Philippines provide the best-known examples of

actors who have made a successful transition from the world of entertainment to politics. We

may call such figures jestologues, because they intuitively understand that the new mediated

politics is primarily about entertaining your audience without alienating particular sets of

voters. Politics as bread, circus and roots has found a new meaning in the Informatic Age.

The emergence of communologues and jestologues as communication leaders in media-

intensive societies may have long-term consequences. It seems to encourage extremism. Alex

De Tocqueville’s (1956) warning about ‘tyranny of majorities’ seems to have taken a new

turn. With the decline of voluntary associations (Putnam, 2000) to act as a balancer, mass

audiences seem to be easily manipulated into believing the prevailing ideological propaganda.

Civilization: A Pathway to Peace? 95

In media-intensive societies, the fundamental assumptions of liberal democracy seem to have

become increasingly irrelevant to popular sovereignty. Manipulation of voter anxieties by poli-

tical advertising financed by special interests has left little room for the classical liberal view of

deliberate debate on public policies (Habermas, 1991). Voluntary associations and the public

sphere of discourse are increasingly shifting from the mass media to the interactive Internet

channels.

Informatic civilization is thus creating unprecedented challenges and opportunities. It is

laying the technological foundations for a truly global civilization. It is also forcing different

cultures and mythologies into direct contact, confrontation and dialogue. In the failing states

of Sub-Saharan Africa, war-torn countries (former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq), and all

other transitional societies, it has created zones of complexity, contradiction and chaos. Can

the world build international peace, security and order out of chaos, war and human suffering?

That question may be addressed by focusing on problems and prospects for more democratic

global governance.

The foundations of modern global governance were laid by the Peace of Westphalia (1648),

the Concert of Europe (1812–1914), the League of Nations (1918–1941), and the United

Nations (1945–present). It took the Thirty Years’ War between the Protestants and Catholics

to establish the Peace of Westphalia, recognizing freedom of religion and the existing boundaries

among the emerging secular European nation-states. It took the Napoleonic Wars to achieve a

precarious Concert of Europe focusing on the maintenance of the European status quo. World

War I led to the establishment of the League of Nations. But the failure of the US to join the

League significantly reduced its credibility and effectiveness. The League thus could not act

in the cases of German, Italian and Japanese aggression. World War II revived the League’s prin-

ciple of collective security, which was embodied in the United Nations Charter. However, the

onset of the Cold War in 1947 and the division of the world into the three conflicting camps

of capitalist, communist and non-aligned nations hampered the United Nations. The wars in

Korea, Vietnam, Africa and the Middle East reflected an unstable and divided world order.

The end of the Cold War in 1989, the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the effective

entry of China into the world markets in the 1990s placed the US in the position of a single

superpower. Since the 1990s, the US has fluctuated between three stark choices: (1) neo-

isolationism—to withdraw, as the Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush advocated

in 2000, from police actions and nation-building while focusing on the pursuit of its own nar-

rower economic and political interests; (2) multilateralism—to strengthen the multilateral insti-

tutions of global governance such as the United Nations or NATO in pursuit of its multilateral

objectives; (3) unilateralism—to act unilaterally to impose its will particularly in the zones of

contradiction and chaos such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Israel–Palestine and North Korea.

The terrorist acts of 9/11 led the Bush Administration to take the latter course. That policy,

however, has proved counterproductive. First, in an interdependent world, it lacks legitimacy.

Second, the resources of a single state, even if a superpower, are inadequate for the challenges

of state and nation building in countries that are in throes of a major historical transition to the

modern world. Third, the twenty-first-century conditions are radically different from those of the

nineteenth-century, when Britain could rule a vast empire with relatively docile populations.

The new informatic civilization has awakened millions of people around the world to their

basic human needs, including the rights of self-determination. Unilateral policies in such

context represent a historical regression.

In contrast, the current institutions of global governance are profoundly out of sync with the

technological and economic changes in the world (Aksu and Camilleri, 2002). The Charter of the

96 M. Tehranian

United Nations was approved in 1945. In the meantime, the composition of the Security Council

and the right of veto has lost much of its legitimacy. Important factors have changed the power

configuration of the world, including the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the decline of the UK,

France and Russia, the economic rise of Germany and Japan, the emergence of the European

Union, and the rise of heavily populated countries such as China, India, Brazil and Southeast

Asia. Although difficult to achieve, a revision of the UN Charter to take account of the new rea-

lities is called for.

Informatic civilization is creating a new global consciousness. That consciousness is based on

an increasing awareness of the world’s ecological and economic interdependence, cultural

clashes and the need for dialogue and democracy. Technological advances have shown their

Janus face. On the one hand, they have opened up new possibilities in mass production,

global communication, space, medicine, education, agriculture and services. On the other

hand, they have widened the economic and cultural gaps between the rich and poor within

and among nations. The technologies of violence have dramatically increased the levels of

kill by hits. The global institutions of governance have lagged far behind the technological

and economic transformations.

Conclusion

Instead of focusing on the trees, this essay has taken up the challenge of taking a snapshot of the

forest. If its analysis is anywhere close to the empirical realities of an increasingly complex and

contradictory world, the following concluding reflections may be worthy of consideration:

(1) If by ‘civilization’ we understand the human journey toward a more peaceful and just world,

the term continues to have relevance in any normative discussion of public policies.

Throughout history, however, civilization also has been employed as an ideological tool

to legitimate hegemonic rule by creating a wedge between ‘us’ and ‘them’. The challenge

is therefore to reclaim ‘civilization’ as global unity in diversity, the rule of law, and pacific

resolution of conflicts.

(2) Globalization has historically played a critical role in advancing human civilization through

technological and cultural exchange. However, it also has come about by nomadic, agrarian,

commercial, industrial and informatic empires. In the current round of globalization, a Pan-

capital Empire is employing the neoliberal doctrines of market competition and supremacy

to legitimate its global control of natural resources (Tehranian, 1999). Markets are clearly

necessary for the efficient allocation of resources, but they are not sufficient for the

welfare of human societies.

(3) Human civilization has been fuelled by the prevailing technologies, mythologies and com-

munication carriers of each age. If we consider technological change as a decisive engine of

change, human civilization has evolved from nomadic into agrarian, commercial, industrial

and informatic societies. While scientific and technological advances have accelerated, the

cultural lag in mythological narratives has often trapped human societies into anachronistic

laws and institutions. Technological globalization has thus advanced much more rapidly

than economic, political, or political globalization.

(4) Since technological advances have taken place unevenly, the world currently faces a double

jeopardy in technological and cultural leads and lags (Toffler, 1980). The increasing par-

tition of the world into premodern, modern and postmodern is producing some cultural

Civilization: A Pathway to Peace? 97

contradictions and clashes of its own. The most notable pathology of this transitional period

appears to be commodity and identity fetishism fueling state and opposition terrorism.

(5) The passage to a truly global civilization in which the development of each person is con-

sidered a condition for the development of all is a long cherished ideal. This ideal is perhaps

today the most relevant myth, or leap of faith, that the world needs for its survival and

welfare.

(6) The ideal of civilization at this critical period in human history may be best sustained by

democratizing local, national, regional and global governance institutions. However, in

the light of rapid technological changes that have taken place during the past 200 years,

the doctrines of liberal, social and communitarian democracy must be rethought and

revised to fit the specific local, national, regional and global conditions.

Acknowledgements

This paper summarizes the thesis of a forthcoming book, Civilization: A Universal Journey.

I should be grateful for any corrections of facts or interpretations. I am grateful to Jerry

Bentley and Barry Gills for their critical comments on earlier drafts.

Notes

1 Robert W. Cox (2002) extensively discusses the implications of the ‘s’ in civilizations. He traces the genealogy of

the concept of civilization to the Englightenment Movement and its zeal to spread the European rational–

scientific–technological civilization throughout the world. In due course, that worldview gave rise to Westen,

Russian and Japanese colonialism. De-colonization and globalization have brought us into contact with a

diversity of civilizations, each with their own claims to validity. Owing to rising global networks and problems,

we may be at another historical turning point, enabling us to speak of civilization in the singular: human

civilization. However, under the banner of globalization and civilization, that turn of events also has awakened

new hegemonic projects such as the Bush Doctrine. In this paper, I argue that it would be wiser to recognize

unity in diversity by acknowledging and respecting the differences.

2 In the literature of ‘globalization’, we can find many other plausible definitions. I have chosen the one that best

describes its contemporary economic and political agenda.

3 This is a reference to President George W. Bush’s address to the Joint Session of US Congress on 20 January

2002. Bush explicitly identified the Axis of Evil to consist of Iran, Iraq and North Korea, but he left the Axis

of Virtue rather implicit, presumably to consist of a ‘Coalition of the Willing’ that invaded Iraq in March

2003.

4 However, mythology is often understood as the antonym of reality. Mythologies are neither true nor false. They are

relevant or irrelevant, functional or dysfunctional, in the context of specific historical situations and tasks. Myths

are those narratives that explain the mysteries of nature, society and human destiny. Examples include the myths of

creation, origins of history and the purpose of human life. Such myths constitute an essential part of the human

condition. Science has uncovered many mysteries but it also has expanded the number of unknowns. In the face

of such uncertainties, mythologies perform important social functions such as (1) reducing human ontological

insecurities (Laing, 1969), (2) uniting societies around a common cause and (3) legitimating and challenging

power systems.

5 A nineteenth-century anthropologist Tylor, for instance, wrote that ‘Human life may be roughly classed into three

great stages, Savage. Barbaric, Civilized’, as quoted by Gould and Kolb (1964, p. 93).

6 Given the enormous diversity of capitalist democracies, it is not certain to what ‘capitalism’ Fukuyama is referring.

7 The elite consensus on ‘reality’ is increasingly tenuous. Witness the divergence between the American and the

European views on the nature of the terrorist threat; those differences are also visible among the Democratic

and Republicans in the US. Reflecting the increasing complexity and diversity of world society, the non-elite

greatly diverge in their interests and views. To some Europeans and Asians the new Bush Doctrine of

98 M. Tehranian

unilateralism, claiming the rights of pre-emptive strike, seemed arrogant and extremist. Any study of world order

must therefore take account of these complex varieties.

8 www.newamericancentury.org/

9 The Bush Doctrine seems to replicate the saga of Western films. It suggests that to promote law and order in a

civilized world, the US must be ready to shoot first.

10 In the Koran, it is Ishmael rather than Isaac who is to be sacrificed. The tribal rivalries between the Jews and Arabs

may be dated back to their common ancestor, Abraham. According to the Koran, when Abraham’s wife Sarah gave

birth to their son Isaac, she asked Abraham to banish his concubine Hagar and her son Ishmael. However, an angel

later appeared to Hagar with a message from God that they will have their own nation. The Biblical story provides a

slightly different myth: ‘The childless septuagenarian receives repeated promises and a covenant from God that his

seed will inherit the land and become a numerous nation. He not only has a son, Ishmael, by his wife’s maidservant

Hagar but has, at 100 years of age, by Sarah, a legitimate son, Isaac who is to be the heir of the promise. Yet

Abraham is ready to obey God’s command to sacrifice Isaac, a test of his faith, which he is not required to

consummate in the end because God substitutes a ram.’ ‘Abraham’, Encyclopædia Britannica from

Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service: khttp://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu ¼ 3413l[Accessed 21

February 2004].

11 Skeptics can always puncture a particular myth by deconstructing it. At a strategic level, opposition to the Bush

Doctrine can draw on American anti-colonial rather than imperial traditions. At a tactical level, the opposition

can puncture the myth by asking the American government to bring democracy first to its own electoral system

(e.g. in Florida or campaign financing). Nevertheless, the myth of democracy presents a powerfully relevant one

to the current imperial ambitions.

12 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3450317.stm

13 To cite a mundane example, my recent phone call to Microsoft to report problems with their Windows software led

me to Bangalore, India, where a courteous voice asked me to call Toshiba because the program had been bundled

with a Toshiba laptop computer. My call to Toshiba, in turn, led me to another courteous voice in Istanbul, Turkey,

by which I was informed to pay $25 in order to receive directions over the phone on how to deal with the problem.

When I found out, however, that there is no guarantee of a solution, I chose to hang up. In an informatic civilization,

my computer problem persists, while the TNCs outsource their functions to lower cost locations around the globe.

14 Dr Daniel Newbill, my wise physician, suggests that the media should make a habit of reporting a piece of ‘good

news’ for every ‘bad news’ about nation X that they transmit. That would perhaps give us a more realistic view of

the world than the current mediated distortions we receive. That may also produce greater international

understanding.

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