 29th May 07 - Dr Zeki Ergas ~ STWR memberThe quote below (from Musil’s masterpiece, The Man Without Qualities) condenses, in one short paragraph composed of five sentences, the core of the argument in my previous essay The Political Economy of Love and the Eradication of Extreme Poverty in the World.[2] Musil’s quote begins with the sentence: ‘The problem of civilisation cannot be resolved other than with the heart.’ (All translations that follow in this paragraph are mine).
The ‘heart’ in this first sentence of Musil’s quote, and the ‘love’ in the title of my essay mentioned above, are synonyms and interchangeable: Musil could have written ‘The problem of civilisation cannot be resolved other than with love’, and I could have chosen a different title of ‘The Political Economy of the Heart and the Eradication of Extreme Poverty in the World’. The fourth sentence of Musil’s quote is: ‘All that reason has obtained has been to have sunk the greatness of the past into liberalism.’ This deserves some detailed commentary.
Le problème de la civilisation ne peut être résolu qu’avec le cœur. Par l’entrée en scène d’une personnalité nouvelle. Par la vision intérieure et la volonté pure. Tout ce que la raison a obtenu fut de faire sombrer la grandeur du passé dans le libéralisme. Mais peut-être ne voyons-nous pas suffisamment loin, peut-être nos mesures sont-elles trop courtes ; chaque instant peut devenir un tournant dans l’histoire du monde.
Robert Musil, L’Homme Sans Qualités [1]
‘Reason’ is the key word here, but prior to ‘tackling’ that word, it would be appropriate and instructive to know what Musil means by ‘the greatness of the past’ and ‘liberalism’. Musil wrote The Man Without Qualities (on which he worked more than twenty years) in the 1920s and ‘30s. His subject was the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, during which monarchy and aristocracy as the dominant forms of political organisation were on their way out, to be replaced, after the First World War, by national republics dominated by the bourgeoisie which had been the driving force of the Industrial Revolution. So, ‘the greatness of the past’ in Musil’s classical work refers to monarchy and aristocracy, and ‘liberalism’ is the chosen doctrine of the bourgeoisie. Musil’s essential message in this quote is that ‘Reason’ alone, without the ‘Heart’, is not enough to build a world that would be viable, i.e., sustainable.
Today we are past Musil’s ‘liberalism’ that was dominant in the first half of the 20th century; it has been replaced by ‘neo-liberalism’, a doctrine associated with the defining global phenomenon of our times known as ‘globalisation’. Putting these two Siamese twins together, we get ‘neo-liberal globalisation’, whose negative consequences have spawned a powerful resistance and opposition movement run by civil society, and referred to as ‘alter-mondialism’.
At this point we are ready to comment on the second and the third sentences of Musil’s quote: ‘By the appearance on the stage of a new personality,’ And ‘By the internal vision and the pure willpower (of that personality).’ In these two sentences Musil is predicting that, when the time comes, such a ‘personality’ will appear on the world stage (in the Shakespearean sense of the word), to lead a revolution that will replace, in the political economy of the world, the essential principle of the Reason by that of the Heart. When is that likely to happen? The answer to that question is, possibly, to be found in the second half of the fifth and last sentence of Musil’s quote: ‘But perhaps we do not see far enough, perhaps our measures fall too short; every instant (or moment) can be a turning point in the history of the world.’ The first half of that sentence describes the present situation: the powers that be of our present world are indeed short-sighted, and their ‘measures fall too short’. The second half, however, is about the future: a ‘personality (with) ‘internal vision and the pure willpower’ can appear on the world stage any time to lead the indispensable revolution.
In fact, that ‘personality (with) ‘internal vision and the pure willpower’ existed in the distant past. He was the Biblical prophet who, in those ancient times, was not afraid of denouncing, and even of berating, the king when the latter committed crimes or did something wrong. And the king paid attention. Kings are no more in our contemporary world, at least not kings with real powers. They have been replaced by Presidents and Prime Ministers, and nabobs or tycoons who own large multinational corporations. These politicians and businessmen are largely responsible for the ‘mess’ that the world finds itself in at the beginning of this new millennium. Conceptually speaking, what is wrong in our contemporary world can be reduced to a loss of the ethical and spiritual dimensions. This is a world in which the Golden Calf largely rules, threatening the long-term survival of the planet.
Today democracy is fast becoming a means used and manipulated by the wealthy to consolidate and perpetuate their privileges, and the end is increasingly beginning to look like plutocracy. It is possible that the historians of the future will see the rise of the billionaires as the most distinctive social phenomenon of the first half of the 21st century. The modern ‘prophet’ will have to be someone who strongly denounces that sorry state of affairs. He or she will trust his intuitive intelligence and listen to his or her ‘heart’. The modern ‘prophet’ will be inspired by his or her love of humanity, which is the same as love of God. Today’s economic and political leaders of the world cannot claim that their policies have been, or are, motivated by the love of humanity or the love of God. That is very serious because, I believe, there is a good chance that we are all going to be judged at some point, either by our own tribunal of the conscience, or by an even higher tribunal. One way or the other, it is best that we all do what we have to do in order to build a world run by the principle of the heart, or of love, because there isn’t much time left, and the consequences of further delay could be disastrous.
TWO ESSENTIAL GOALS: THE ERADICATION OF EXTREME POVERTY AND SUSTAINABLE GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT:
I will argue in this section that:
A. Extreme poverty is genocide by omission.[3]
B. Neo-liberal globalisation is responsible for the serious degradation of the planet’s eco-system.[4]
C. There is a serious risk of a global war.
A. Extreme poverty is genocide by omission.
The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted in 1948, defines the crime of genocide (by commission) as follows:
(It is) ‘any of the following acts committed with the intent of destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such (a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) imposing measures to prevent births within the group; (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.’
So that is genocide by commission which is defined by the deliberate action, and the intent, to destroy large groups of people. It is, in other words, what people do which causes the death of hundreds of thousands, and even of millions, of human beings. The perpetrators of genocide by commission are obviously guilty of a terrible crime against humanity. The ultimate genocide by commission is, by common acknowledgement, the Holocaust (or the Shoa) which killed six million Jews – and, probably, four million of ‘undesirables’ such as Gypsies, sick and ‘inferior’ people, and Communists. Other such genocides by commission include the Cambodian genocide by Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, the Rwanda genocide, and, possibly, the Armenian genocide.
A genocide by omission is not defined by a deliberate action, or clear intent, to destroy large groups of people. It occurs when a large group of people – in this case several million of men, women and children – die every year unnecessarily because those who could stop it, the economic and political leaders of the rich and powerful countries who have at their disposal the means to do so, have chosen, and still choose, not to do it. That is why these presidents and prime ministers and these owners (or big stockholders) of large multinational corporations are, I believe, guilty of genocide by omission, which is also a major crime against humanity. But ordinary citizens in the rich and powerful countries are responsible too, because they have ‘democratically’ elected their political leaders and accepted their economic leaders. So, at some level in the rich and powerful countries, everyone is responsible. Genocide by omission is, truly, a stain on humanity’s brow, and it cannot be allowed to continue.
B. Neo-liberal globalisation is responsible for the serious degradation of the planet’s eco-system.
The Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997. Its implementation began five years later, in 2002, and it will end in 2012. It is clear that by that date very little will have been achieved in terms of the struggle against global warming that is menacing human life on the planet. Recently several reports appeared -- the Stern Report, and several IPCC (Intergovernmental Panels on Climate Change) reports -- which, to say the least, all point to a very dangerous situation. The current level of CO2-e (carbon dioxide equivalent) in the atmosphere is 430 ppm (parts per million), and rising at more than 2 ppm a year. For life on the planet not to deteriorate significantly, CO2-e in the atmosphere must remain at between 450 ppm and 550 ppm. For this to happen, the IPCC Report says, ‘We need to decrease CO2 emissions by 70 per cent by 2050.’ The Report also warns that, if things are allowed to continue without radical change, ‘there is a 90 per cent chance that the world’s temperature will rise between 2 and 4.5 degrees Centigrade by 2100. (And) after a rise of 3 degrees-C, there is a serious risk that the melting of snow and ice at the Arctic and Antarctic poles may lead to 4 to 6 metres rise of the sea and ocean levels, causing the flooding of low-lying lands where hundreds of millions of people are living.’[5]
C. There is a serious risk of a global war.
Equally frightening is the fact that, with the rapid rise of the ‘emerging great powers’, there is simply not enough resources – natural resources, such as water and minerals, and energetic resources -- in our small planet to replicate in China, Russia, India and Brazil the standards of living that prevail in North America (not including Mexico) and Western Europe. Assuming that Americans will never accept a lowering of their standards of living (a reasonable assumption given the mentality that prevails in that country), they will be tempted, owing to their overwhelming military superiority, to go to war, probably at first against China.[6] In such a war, it would be difficult for the European Union, India and Russia, Japan, and other countries not to take sides. A global war would result with horrendous consequences for the human civilisation and the planet itself.
SOME CONCLUSIONS:
In the ongoing competition of Mind versus the Heart -- or Reason versus Love – Mind is still winning, but if the world and humanity are to survive this situation must change radically, and the Heart -- or Love -- must win.
For this to occur, several things must happen:
Extreme poverty must be eradicated. That can be achieved by a Global Marshall Plan [7] that would share the world’s resources more equitably and protect the environment. Such a Plan is currently being worked on and will, hopefully in the near future, start to be implemented. A well-conceived Global Marshall Plan would also reduce significantly two rapidly widening gaps: that between the rich and the poor countries, and that between the rich and the poor people. The billionaires control, through the multinational corporations, an ever-increasing chunk of the world economy. If it continues, the world will be like an ocean in which just a few thousand big fish have gobbled up all the other smaller fish. Who would wish to live in such a world?
The present system is largely defined by unlimited economic growth, and a war culture. These, if allowed to continue, will end up destroying the planet and, along with it, human civilisation. So the world must replace quantitative economic growth by qualitative economic growth, which means that the system must give up producing goods and services that are either largely useless or wasteful, including luxury goods and services that cater to the small minority of the extremely rich. The culture of war must be replaced by a culture of peace: the large majority of the world’s populations are sick and tired of war, they want a peaceful and harmonious world.
There are other big issues that will need to be tackled as well, among which are: grand corruption fuelled by the banking secrecy laws – offshore banking etc., and highly speculative financial activities carried out by private equity firms, hedge funds and traders, whose main purpose is, largely, to make those who are already rich even richer.
Perhaps ethics committees composed of wise men in the fields of philosophy, the arts and the sciences would be a good way to deal with the issues raised in the preceding two paragraphs. They could provide suggestions and recommendations that would have a high degree of credibility.
Zeki Ergas, a writer and scholar, is Secretary General of PEN International’s Swiss Romand Center (www.penromand.ch) and a member of that same organisation’s Writers for Peace Committee; he is also the founder and executive secretary of Millennium Solidarity Geneva Group, (www.millennium-solidarity.net)
NOTES:
1. One of the greatest novels of the 20th century, about 1,600 pages long – it was unfinished at the time of its author’s death after more than twenty years of work; he died in Geneva, poor and forgotten, in 1942) -- Musil’s The Man Without Qualities has been compared to Proust’s A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, to Joyce’s Ulysses, and to Mann’s Magical Mountain. The quote is from L’Homme Sans Qualités (Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1956), Tome I, p. 237 ; translated magnificently from the original German by Philippe Jaccottet.
2. See Zeki Ergas, The Political Economy of Love and the Eradication of Extreme Poverty in the World; this essay was posted at various websites, including www.stwr.net, www.globalmarshallplan.org, and www.peacejournalism.com
3. Also by Zeki Ergas, Is the Existence of Extreme Poverty in the World a Form of Genocide by Omission? Some Tentative Thoughts. Posted in the same websites as above.
4. IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Fourth Assessment Report (Paris: February 2007); and the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change (London: October 2006)
5. IPCC, op cit.
6. The lowering of the American standards of living could be caused by the collapse of the value of the dollar, due to a gigantic and finally unmanageable foreign debt, which continues to accumulate at the tune of more than $ 800 billion a year. If a growing number of oil and gas exporting countries started asking for Euros, the value of the dollar could collapse, triggering a world crisis.
7. For more information on the Global Marshall Plan see: www.globalmarshallplan.org Source: 2006 STWR (Share The World's Resources)
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