We are at a turning point in human history. Human culture had evolved in a comfortable period beginning 12,000 year ago known as the Holocene period. All our culture was built on the assumption that the Holocene will continue, with its relatively mild global climate. But we have already left the Holocene and have entered a new geological age fashioned not by nature but by our own actions. This new landscape, the Anthropocene, may be less kindly towards us. Much that is familiar to us today will have to shift and change.
The Paradox of hidden Human History
The Western culture, from early down through the end of the Middle Ages [the Early Middle Ages (711-1000), the High Middle Ages (1000–1300), and the Late Middle Ages (1300–1492] was under the dominant influence of Al-Andalusia (the Islamic Spain) and the broader Islamic civilizational narrative. But narratives are never static – they always evolve, changing as the river of history shifts its course. Historically, the most important intellectual and cultural evolution of the West, like the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment of the early 18th century and the artistic, literary and intellectual movement originating in the second half of the 18th century (Romanticism), could not have been possible without Europe’s connection with Islamic thought and culture, and its impact on Europe through Spain, southern France and southern Italy. “It is highly unlikely that, but for the Muslims (Arabs), modern European civilization would ever have arisen at all” according to Sir Thomas Arnold and Alfred Guillaume – in “The Legacy of Islam” 1997. The distinguished historian, Robert Briffault, in “The Making of Humanity” writes, “It was under the influence of the Arabian and Moorish revival of culture, and not in the 15th century, that the real Renaissance took place in Spain and Italy that was the cradle of the rebirth of Europe.”
The Renaissance marked a new beginning in European civilization, where new thought and culture came into being. The impact of Islamic civilization on Europe laid the foundations for a modern civilization in the West. The question arises as to how the great change in Europe came about. Did modern European Civilization really rise from nothing? It was founded on a major artistic and cultural rebirth, science, philosophy, intellectual and literary currents from the eighth to the fifteenth Muslim centuries in Spain and the East. Islamic origins and its culture have had worthy purpose, and we must open up to the world some fair understanding of the richness of Islamic civilization. The details of the works of Muslim writers, scientists and artists had been lost to general perception in the Western history, yet the accomplishments of Islamic society, from the seventh century on, have flowed into and enriched the Judeo-Christian world. In fact, the three traditions — Christian, Jewish, and Islamic — are inextricably interlinked. The Islamic world gave rise to some of the earliest libraries, universities and hospitals and, at its best, has encouraged ideas of civic tolerance, compassion and empathy that permits the development of the talents and potentials of all humans, whatever their denominational orientation.
The eventual discovery of far West Americas at the very end of fifteenth century actually reconnected the Middle ages of Europe and the East to the beginnings of renaissance in the sixteenth century. In 1492, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue and we had been led to believe, as if Europe had conquered the world. However, what we’ve all totally forgotten (or ignored) was the fact that there were other world powers before the British Empire, before the United States. There were the predominant Chinese and Islamic Civilizations (Arabian, Muslim Spain, Mughal Indian, Persian, Ottoman, Euro-Asian and South East Asian including Indonesia and Malaysia, and most of Africa) that lasted far longer and had more influence world-wide than anything Europe or the world had ever produced.
Tamerlane was the last world-conqueror, although inheritor of Genghis Khan, whose empire ranged from Iran to China to Moscow. After Tamerlane’s death in 1405, his empire fell apart and the modern world in Europe as we know it began to form. Princes under Kazan Tatar and other Khanates in the then Russia or Muscovy began to take control of khanates’ territories and started to become Czarist Russia. Ivan the Terrible took the city of Kazan in 1552; while China’s accelerated cultural progress had begun to stagnate. Also, Europe’s sea-worthy nations had begun to extract wealth from their overseas conquests. “AFTER TAMERLANE” 2008, a book by John Darwin, one of the most preeminent historians, has fabulously balanced a wide-ranging revelation of world history of the past six hundred years. John Darwin is indeed a true star in this context. He has revealed the seeds of the modern world; and also makes us understand what fawned today’s world events. The East was Centuries ahead of the West by almost every measure. As Europe foundered in the dark depths of the Middle Ages, while China, the Middle East, Muslim Spain, Euro-Asia , South and East Asia flourished, with lively traditions of scholarship, invention, and trade. The Muslim world as a whole was at the forefront of civilization, preserving and further building on Greek and Roman knowledge producing path breaking works in multiple fields as diverse as mathematics, physics, medicine, anthropology, and psychology.
From 16th Century, Europe started to introduce new art, new politics, new ideas of banking and finance, new philosophy that helped crystallize this new narrative that was rooted in the science and philosophy of the medieval wide-world Islamic civilization , based in centers of learning ranging from Central Asia, South Asia, Middle East to Spain. The Muslims had preserved the knowledge they acquired and advanced from earlier ancient empires (including ancient Greeks, Romans and contributions from Mesopotamia, Sassanid Persia, India and China) and conveyed it to Europe.
Al-Khalili has looked at the important part played by the “translation movement”, which saw much of the wisdom of the earlier civilizations of the Greeks, Romans, Persians and Indians translated into Arabic over a period of 200 years. He sees this not just as a separate process that led to a subsequent “golden age of science”, but as an integral and early part of the Islamic golden age itself.1 The multiplicity of people of faiths who lived harmoniously and collaborated on projects of translation and learning was a hallmark of the Muslim golden age’s tolerance and pluralism.
This cross-fertilization of world of ideas and the bringing together for the first time of a wide range of different scientific traditions from around the world meant that “the scholars of Baghdad and Spain had at their disposal a far broader world-view than anyone before them”. The rediscovery of classical texts and contact with earlier civilizations through Muslim scholars (Baghdad to Cordoba, or Damascus to Cairo, Samarkand to New Delhi and Baghdad) led to the birth of European renaissance. A great flowering of human achievement was unleashed. While many historians focus on the Muslim’s material gains in medieval times, they frequently miss out on the Islam’s real purpose and contributions of tolerance, compassion, empathy, global community building and peacemaking. Michael Morgan on page, 136 of “Lost History” says: “By the ninth and tenth centuries, the Jewish intellectual communities and economies of Muslim Spain, in cities like Cordoba, Seville, and Toledo, are at their peak. Not only have Jews risen to hold the second highest political position in the realm, under Hasdai ibn Shaprut working for Caliph Abd Al-Rahman III; they are also producing their own rich literature, music, philosophy, and scientific thought, sometimes independently, sometimes in collaboration with those of other faiths.”
The remarkable innovations of Muslim thinkers such as Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen in some writings) and Abbas Ibn Firnas are startling for their times. In A.D. 875 in Córdoba, at the farthest extent of the Arab Empire in present-day Spain, Ibn Firnas successfully experimented with a wood, silk, and he investigated the mechanics of flight constructing a pair of wings out of feathers on a wooden frame and made the first attempt at flight that was airborne for many minutes and thus anticipating Leonardo da Vinci by some six hundred years. He also constructed a famous planetarium that not only was mechanized – the planets actually revolved – but it simulated such celestial phenomena as thunder and lightning. Ibn Firnas had further experimented in mechanics, time, and, astronomy but, like much of the scientific exploration of the early Muslims; such “intellectual heresy” was often lost to hidden history (Lost History: The Enduring Legacy of Muslim Scientists, Thinkers, and Artists, Michael Morgan 2007). The list of Islamic Spain’s and broader golden age Muslim civilizational contributions to the West, in fact, is endless still and cannot be all covered in this brief writing. In addition to Islamic Spain’s contributions in mathematics, economy, medicine, botany, geography, history, and philosophy, al-Andalusia also developed and applied important technological innovations: the windmill and new techniques in the crafts of metalworking, weaving, and buildings.
Ibn al-Haytham, however, was one who published over 400 books of his works that would eventually be translated into Latin in the thirteenth century. These translations would become readily available to scholars in Italy. For al-Haytham, the world could not be understood philosophically, but it could be measured. Remarkably, he nearly determined the thickness of the earth’s atmosphere and almost articulated the physical concept of gravity. Moreover, he identified the linear quality of light and built an object very much like a camera obscura (the pinhole camera) to help demonstrate it. He correctly described vision occurring when light rays enter the eye and stimulated the optic nerve, the fact that light travels in straight rays, and his famous book Kitab al-Manazir (The Book of Optics) had minor errors. Most importantly, Ibn al-Haytham performed research to arrive at important conclusions. He established and used the scientific method as we know it today, and that is why Western historians called him the first scientist who gave striking examples with diagrams and pictures demonstrating his experiments. It would be more than five centuries before the likes of da Vinci, Galileo, and Newton would replicate and then build upon al-Haytham’s foundational works (Michael Morgan 2007). Renaissance revisionist historians, on the heels of European fear of the Arab Empire, easily rewrote the Renaissance without acknowledging the golden age of Islamic science, culture, and thought (Morgan 2007). Yet, their indelible impression cannot be overlooked despite the fact that centuries have been particularly harsh on Muslim and Hebrew published materials from the Iberian Peninsula of which many had disappeared in the course of medieval conquests, forced conversions and expulsions of Muslims and Jews from Al-Andalusia . (Michael Morgan 2007).
Centuries before European continuing evolution of culture and Renaissance (early, high, and late Middle Ages) men such as da Vinci experimented with light, optics, or even aeronautics, Muslim thinkers across the extensive Muslim-world had developed the foundations of technology that in some instances unfortunately wouldn’t be explored or fulfilled again until the twentieth century. Muslim thinking and innovation throughout the era was, in many ways, a strong foundation of the Renaissance in Europe, via cultural, ambassadorial, and commercial routes across the continents and beginning with Spain and Italy. Spain and Italy were particularly receptive to such thinking as they entered into the period of classical revival that looked to the knowledge of the Roman and the Greeks for inspiration. The Renaissance throughout Europe would closely resemble Spain and Italy both, as they would ultimately prove to be in the ideal geographical position to welcome the imported Muslim culture.
Modernism, Science, and human nature
The idea of progress, a new way of thinking, associated with the rise of modernism in Europe, derived from a series of historical developments beginning at least as far back as the High Middle Ages (1000AD-1300 AD). Modernism is both a philosophy and a way of life. It is a multi-faceted reality, connected with profound changes in technology, habitation, economy, politics, and culture that has altered all aspects of human life especially over the last few hundred years.
The philosophy of modernism and secular progress arose further as a consequence of a series of revolutions in thought and social organization, beginning with the Renaissance (1500 AD) , and proceeding through the Age of Exploration and Colonization (1500 – 1800 AD), the Scientific Revolution (1600 – 1700 AD), the Age of Enlightenment (1650 – 1800 AD), the emergence of capitalism and nation states, and culminating in the 1st and 2nd Industrial Revolutions (1750 –1900 AD).Contrary to the “Eurocentric” descriptions of the emergence of modernity, it was a global phenomenon to begin with, involving the contributions of nations and cultures from around the world. Modernism first blossomed in Western Europe, but its origins were global nevertheless and its consequent effects have been also global.
In the centuries preceding the rise of modernity, networks of commercial and information exchange evolved and spread across the Eastern Hemisphere, from China, to India, to the Islamic Empire (including Islamic Spain), Africa, and Europe. The increasing rate of innovation came with increased sharing, cross fertilization of ideas with the East, and in general, a building up of economic and informational reciprocities. Also, due to a widening sphere of markets across the continents. The start of European modernity in the High and late Middle Ages (1000 AD to 1300/1300-1400 AD) was most certainly triggered by Islamic global civilization and its 800 year history in Spain. At the beginning of this period, in addition to the Muslim World, the other important centers of new ideas and inventions were China, India, rather than Europe. It was during Europe’s dark Ages that a transformation in thinking began, connected with the Golden Age of Islam, rise of individual freedom and the rediscovery of Aristotle through Islamic civilization, which would catapult Europe ahead of the East, a few centuries later.
Talking of European experience, a series of revolutions mentioned above, and toppling of not only the mighty kings but also the whole enervating feudal structures. This in itself was a tremendously liberating and energizing exercise . The mind boggling developments in science that followed, with its unconditional faith in objective reality and our complete dependency on general and rationally knowable laws, led to the birth of modernity and current technological civilization. It is the first civilization in the history of the human race spanning the entire globe and firmly binds together all human societies, submitting them to a common global destiny. It was science that enabled man, for the first time, to see Earth from space with his own eyes; that is, to see it as another star in the sky.
Soon after its rise, modernity was followed by radical individualism, mechanized industry and capitalist economy, based entirely on radical materialistic philosophy of life. Man, a mere extension of the animal had been allowed to amass wealth, this being the incentive to work. Profit was his aim, he seemed to live for it and die for it. It has been like a bottomless pit, for after all humans have the potential to live for greater things. Matter was to be a base to stand on, not the aim of life. So the race has been ongoing, ending in the imperialism, subjugation of one nation over the other. Formerly, it was a visible “political” imperialism and colonialism; lately it has been an invisible “economic” imperialism called globalism. The whole system, its basis and its incentives remain exploitative, cruel and ruthless. The current global monetary system is dysfunctional to a point that it is approaching a breakdown. The present crisis is the biggest since the 1930s. According to IMF there are 145 banking crises, 208 monetary crashes and 72 sovereign debt crises in the last four decades (1970 – 2010), crises that have repeatedly affected over three-quarters of the 187 IMF member countries. These crises surely exacerbate each other. A banking crisis is leading to sovereign debt problem, a sovereign debt problem to a monetary crisis in Eurozone; and a monetary crisis to a banking problem globally. Corrupt Global markets have become destabilized and dangerously volatile lacking effective regulation, over leveraged financing, exponential increases in speculation and hyper-speed transactions. While governments have kept borrowing from the financial system to bail out banks. They have not brought any meaningful regulations, reform or touched the monetary structure itself. How long this financial chaos has to go on, before systemic problems are addressed with systemic and permanent solutions?
The above brief relates to the world out of order at beginning of the 21st century, or heading to the transformation, of science as the basis of the postmodern conception of the world. However, the relationship to the world that the modern science fostered and shaped appears today to be exhausting its potential in important aspects of human life. It has increasingly become apparent, strangely enough, the relationship is something amiss. It fails to connect with the most intrinsic nature of reality and with natural human experiences. It is now more of a source of disintegration and doubt than a source of integration and meaning.
The modern science described only the superficiality of things, one dimension of reality. And the more dogmatically science treated it as the only dimension, as the very essence of reality, the more misleading it became. Today, for instance, we may know immeasurably more about the universe than our forefathers ever did, and yet, it increasingly seems they knew something more essential about it than we do today, something that escapes us. The same thing is true of nature and of us. And thus today we find ourselves in a paradoxical situation. We enjoy all the achievements of technological civilization that have made our physical existence on the planet easier and comfortable in many important ways. Yet, we do not know exactly what to do with ourselves, and where to turn. The world of our experiences seems chaotic, disconnected, and confusing. There appear to be no integrating forces, no unified meaning, and no true inner understanding of phenomena in our experience of the world. Experts can explain anything in the objective world to us, yet we understand our own lives less and less. In short, while we are in early postmodern era, where everything is possible and yet nothing is certain.
When nothing is certain, this state of affairs has its social and political consequences. The singular, global and planetary civilization to which we all belong confronts us with tremendous challenges. We stand helpless before them because our civilization has been essentially globalizing only in partial aspects of human life. Our inner self, however, continues to have a life of its own. And the fewer answers the era of rational knowledge provides to the basic questions of human Being, the more deeply it would seem that people, behind its back as it were, cling to the ancient certainties of their traditions, families and their tribal cultures. Because of this, individual cultures, increasingly lumped together by contemporary civilization, are realizing with urgency their own inner autonomy and their inner differences.
Cultural conflicts have been on the rise and are understandably more dangerous today than at any other time in human history. The era of rationalism has been catastrophic to all of us. We have had greater control over the forces of nature, chemical, biological, and atomic, and the technological magnification of the power of individual cultures, while the urgency for our mutual interdependency has become nevertheless undeniable. We have been unable to control our materialistic instincts and emotional forces within ourselves, such as prejudice, fanaticism, intolerance, hatred, and greed, the probability of our being successful in creating a positive future together is generally considered low. Doom is felt to be hanging over us, causing some to intensify their “eat, drink, and be merry” approach in isolation from less fortunate others, and causing others to sink into cynicism and apathy. The abyss between rational and the spiritual, the external and the internal, the objective and the subjective, the technical and the moral, the universal and the unique, constantly grows deeper. We have the problem figuring out the key to ensure the survival of our clearly multicultural civilization. How can universally respected and accepted ideas of empathy, compassion, tolerance, peaceful coexistence be set up, and on what set of principles are they to be established?
Such questions have been highlighted with added urgency and events since the second half of the twentieth century: the collapse of colonial hegemony, the fall of communism, ongoing wars and presently failing capitalism. The artificial world order of the past decades has certainly been collapsing, and a new, just order has not yet emerged. The central objective since the beginning of this century, then, is the creation of a new model of coexistence among the various cultures, peoples, races, and religious spheres within a singular interconnected civilization of love, tolerance and empathy. This task is all the more urgent because the threats to contemporary humanity brought about by one-dimensional development of civilization are growing more serious all the time. There are present elements of the global crisis that need urgent attention to safeguard humanity and our planet and these include our financial instability, Climate change, Nuclear weapons and population growth among other.
Many believe this task can be accomplished through technical means and through the intervention of new organizational, political, and diplomatic instruments. Yes, it is clearly necessary to reinvent organizational structures appropriate to the present multicultural and complex age. But such efforts are doomed to failure if they do not grow out of something deeper, out of generally held universal and moral values. For example, the abolition of nuclear weapons, not just as a lofty goal and noble objective, is certainly and most urgently for human survival but we have yet to find a permanent solution. Peace-making will become possible only after the threat of nuclear war is lifted from over our heads. A Convention on existing Nuclear Weapons permanent abolition, prohibiting permanently the future production as well as the use of any or all nuclear weapons in all circumstances is urgently needed. In a democratic global village, such a Convention must be constructed by awakening the global public to the threat of maintaining vast arsenals of weapons that could destroy all life on the planet. Such an awakening is already taking place as in 21 countries, including the five major nuclear powers; polls have revealed that 76 % of people have supported negotiation for a convention permanently banning all nuclear weapons. However, the powerful military-industrial complexes around the world go on trading on the fear created among the masses of the world. Impartial negotiations on the issue have been almost impossible, and it has been very difficult to bring about the consensus needed to initiate global democratic measures that could eliminate the nuclear threats hanging over our heads.
Having lost the sense of universal moral values, the standard of right and wrong became subject to the majority vote. What may be right today could become wrong tomorrow just because 51 votes were reduced to 49. In other words it is one man who decides the fate of a whole people, and this is supposed to be Modern democracy. For example, the value that all human beings, irrespective of any consideration, race, sex, country or language, are equal and honorable can be overturned by a majority vote, is a possibility that is frightening. This is a universal (Quranic and scriptural) permanent value, and even if not a single vote is in its favor it remains that truth and a fact in human existence. No doubt the freedom of expression in spoken and written words, the sense of equality in participation through elections and the institution of debate and exchange of views are laudable ongoing accomplishments, all the more so since they were acquired through trial and error. But the essence of genuine democracy is still missed out. The evil lies at the root of “Power”; whether it lies in the “king’s will” or the “general will”. Power is not a human characteristic; no one has the right to exercise power over others, not even 51 over 49. It all ends up in tyranny. Thus Iqbal2 concludes that power lays in the (scriptural/Quranic) permanent and universal values the source of which is divine. Power is divinity, the source of universal creation and universal laws, concrete or abstract.
Referring here to respect for the unique human being and his or her liberties and inalienable rights and to the principle that all authority genuinely must derive from the masses of people. We are, in short, referring to the fundamental ideas of post-modern popular, participatory and spiritual democracy for the future. In a participatory democracy it is the common people who are to lead, and in a global democracy it is the entire world’s common people who must lead. The global masses are becoming more and more awakened; and they are preparing. They are divesting themselves of dictatorships, hierarchies, and elitisms everywhere; they are raising their voice and forming networks and alliances throughout the globe. They know that the world is reaching a watershed, and that the next several years are going to be decisive to deconstruct the old and launch the new.
It may sound provocative, but we feel more and more strongly that many apparently constructive ideas may not be enough and that we must go farther and deeper. The point being that the solutions offered are still, as it were, all modern, derived from the climate of the Enlightenment and from a view of man and his relation to the world that has been characteristic of the Euro-American sphere for the last several centuries. Today, however, we are in a different place and facing different challenges, ones to which only classical and modern solutions will not suffice or bring about satisfactory outcomes. After all, the very principle of inalienable human rights, conferred on man by the Creator, grew out of the typically modern notion that man – as a being capable of knowing nature and the world – was the pinnacle of creation and the lord of the universe. The existence of a higher authority than man himself thus simply began to get in the way of human aspirations. The Creator was far beyond the grasp of modern science. The modern anthropocentrism inevitably meant that He who endowed man with his inalienable rights began to disappear from the scene. The Western and the Anthropocentric Worldview that has evolved over the past several centuries and in contradiction to the Biospheric Worldview (balancing of human-nature relationship) is urgently needed in todays’ evolving post-modern age.
Human being as the Chain of Beings, the scala naturae, literally means the spiral Ladder of human Nature goes back to Islamic and classical Greek culture. It was also initially figured prominently in the Renaissance of the high and late Middle Ages when Muslims introduced it in Spain and Aristotle himself was reintroduced into the West via Muslim scholarship.3 Aristotle too not unlike Muslims believed (as did Plato) that Nature was ordered and beautiful with all creatures given their place in a proper hierarchy. In this hierarchical order there was not only ‘fixity of species’, but also a continuity of species that did not allow for gaps or lost species.
The place of humans and all observable life in this particular scheme of things was based upon degree of ‘perfection’ and evolution which, according to Muslims and Aristotle, was determined by the ‘powers of the soul’. Thus, plants existed for the sake of animals, and animals and plants for the sake of humans. According to Bowler, this metaphor clearly indicates that human beings are created to be the standard against which all other animals were to be measured.4
Over time the view of the human-Nature relationship represented by the scala naturae changed drastically with modernity. After the Scientific Revolution the notion of its divine origin was gradually abandoned as different sciences began to answer questions about Nature without relying upon revelations and their interpretations. The same happened with the notion of the fixity of species after Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection became widely accepted.
The major civilizational shift, in the self-understanding of the human as being the most integral part of the whole of Nature, predominant among Renaissance scholars and Muslim scholars’, to the Western view of absolute human lordship status (in Islam achieving complete human being status and vicegerence through the evolving and perfecting process and ego taming) of the human and its ascendancy and dominance over the rest of creation is further evidence of how the anthropocentric metaphors Nature as machine, storehouse, …shaped the human-Nature relationship in the West. This shift to an absolute human-centered consciousness where “man is the absolute measure of all things” paradoxically happened at a time when the geocentric model of the Earth was refuted in favor of the heliocentric model, first proposed by Copernicus in 1543.5 By making themselves the measure of all things and attempting to humanize Nature rather than to manage with Nature, human beings, according to Marshall, have denaturalized themselves.6
Another cultural manifestation of anthropocentric view became evident in the treatment of women. These metaphors reinforce the patriarchal nature of Western societies and by extension the legitimization of (male) elites alone to govern. Eco-feminists argue that the control of Nature as a characteristic of Western civilization interacted dialectically with and reinforced the subjugation of women because women were believed to be closer to Nature.7 Similarly, social ecologists argued that the domination of humans by humans leads to the domination of Nature by humans.
In the past, many argued, it was thought necessary to conquer and control Nature in order to transcend scarcity. But the very concept of dominating Nature first emerged from man’s domination of woman in patriarchal society and of man’s domination of man in hierarchical society. Human beings and Nature have thus become the common victims of oppression and exploitation.8
A final cultural manifestation that is emerging slowly but surely from the biosphere Worldview is a type of Earth spirituality that posits the well-being of all life as a central point of thinking and behavior. In contrast to a spirituality of a powerful male deity in the three monotheistic religions of the Western world9, a spirituality that is associated with the biosphere metaphors emphasizes ecological sensibility, an integrated social and Earth ethical system, and an Earth friendly life style. It is a spirituality that enhances and enlivens all aspects of life, as it strives to develop a sensitive awareness of interconnectedness of all beings. Evolutionary biologist Ursula Goodenough calls such spirituality “religious naturalism” and opines: “Once we have our feelings about Nature in place, then I believe that we can also find important ways to call ourselves Jews, or Muslims, or Taoists, or Hopi, or Hindus, or Christians, or Buddhists. Or some of each.”10 It is a spirituality that is manifested in the Earth Charter Initiative which is supported by millions of people and hundreds of non-governmental organizations on all continents. It is this Earth Charter’s integrated ethical system that can function as a (or the) major guiding principle of a reordered post September 11 world.11
“Every age has its own unique view of nature, its own interpretation of what the world is all about. Knowing a civilization’s concept of Nature is tantamount to knowing how a civilization thinks and acts.”12
Post Modernity
Even if the origins of modern thought, renaissance and science are rooted deeply in the East-West collaboration (From centuries before) in the life of humanity, it was the discovery of Americas by Columbus in 1492,when a new age Western world had begun and can thus be dated .Modern era endgame also began from America that is said to have occurred in the year 1969, when America’s first man landed on the moon. From this historical moment, a post-modern era in the life of humanity can also be dated in the Western context.
We’re nearing an endgame for the modern age in the developed nations around the globe while the developing nations are still attempting to catch up with modernity. Even if this endgame had begun in the year 1969, other subsequent events like fall of communism, September 11 and most recent economic melt-down are all accelerators of the same endgame. There are good reasons to suggest that the modern age is indeed approaching its end. Today, many things indicate that we are going through a transitional period, as it seems, something is on the way out and something new (painfully) is being born. Many things have been crumbling, decaying, and exhausting on our planet, while something new, still indistinct, is arising from the rubbles.
The era of modernism, undergoing a fundamental shift, is certainly a precedent, as in the Hellenistic period, when from the ruins of the classical world the Middle Ages were gradually born. It happened during the Renaissance, which opened the way to the modern era. The distinguishing features of such historical turning points are a mixing and blending of cultures, knowledge, and a plurality or parallelism of intellectual and spiritual worlds. These are periods when consistent value systems start collapsing, when cultures even distant in time and space are discovered or rediscovered. These are periods when there is a tendency to quote, to imitate, and to amplify, rather than to state with authority. New meaning is gradually born from the encounter, or the intersection, of many different elements.
This state of mind (conscious awareness) or of the human world is called postmodernity. In the East, a symbol of that consciousness is an Arab Bedouin mounted on a camel and clad in traditional robes under which he is wearing jeans, with an IPhone in his hands and an ad for Coca-Cola on the camel’s back. We are not ridiculing this, nor are we shedding an intellectual cover-up over the commercial expansion of the West that toxicates alien cultures. We are seeing it today rather as a typical expression of this evolving post-modern multicultural era, a signal that an amalgamation of cultures is bound to and is taking place. We see it as proof that new renaissance is happening, it is a rebirth that we are in a phase when one age is succeeding another, when everything is possible, because our civilization does not have its own unified style, its own spirit, and its own aesthetic as yet.
The Transcendent Ideas, the idea of human rights and freedoms must be an integral part of any meaningful and just world order. Yet, we think it must be anchored in a different place, and in a different way, than has been the case so far. If it is to be more than just a slogan mocked by half the world, it cannot be expressed in the language of a departing era, and it must not be mere froth floating on the subsiding waters of faith in a purely scientific relationship to the world. Paradoxical inspiration for the renewal of this lost integrity can once again be found in science, in a science that is new – let us say postmodern science – a science producing ideas that in a certain sense allows it to transcend its own limitations. We will give two examples here:
The first is the Anthropic Cosmological Principle. Its authors and adherents have pointed out that from the countless possible courses of its evolution the universe took the only one that enabled life to emerge. This is not yet proof that the aim of the universe has always been that it should be eventually seen through our own eyes. But how else can this be explained? We think the Anthropic Cosmological Principle brings to us an idea perhaps as old as humanity itself; that we are not at all just an accidental anomaly, the microscopic caprice of a tiny particle whirling in the endless depth of the universe. Instead, we are mysteriously connected to the entire universe; we are mirrored in it, just as the entire evolution of the universe is mirrored in us.
Until recently, it might have seemed that we were an unhappy bit of mildew on a heavenly body whirling in space among many that have no mildew on them at all. This was something that classical modern science could explain. Yet, the moment it begins to appear that we are deeply connected to the entire universe, science reaches the outer limits of its powers. Because it is founded on the search for universal laws, it cannot deal with singularity, that is, with uniqueness. The universe is a unique event and a unique story, and so far we are the unique point of that story. But unique events and stories are the domain of poetry, not of science. With the formulation of the Anthropic Cosmological Principle, science has found itself on the border between formula and story, between science and soul. In that, however, science has paradoxically returned, in a roundabout way, to man, and offers him – in new clothing – his lost integrity. It does so by anchoring him once more in the cosmos.
The second example is the Greek Hypothesis about our planet Earth as” Anima Mundi” and soul of the universe considered by secular science as a dead machine. The” Anima Mundi “[Fig-2] idea brings together a proof that the dense network of mutual interactions between the organic and inorganic portions of the earth form a single system, a kind of mega-organism, a living planet – Our Planet is recognizable as an archetype of the Mother Earth in all faiths , and we are parts of a greater whole (Tawhid) . If we endanger her, she will dispense with us in the interest of a higher value – that is, life itself. The Quran reads, “God has been fully aware of you since He initiated you from the earth, and while you were embryos in your mothers’ bellies [53:32]”. Our Planet as the Soul of the World can and should be recovered and reunited with scientific understanding of our post-modernist age and future transcendent age to come.
Toward Self-Transcendence
What makes the Anthropic Cosmological Principle and the integrated whole (Tawhidic worldview) so inspiring? One simple thing reminds us, in modern language, of what we have long known, of what we have long forgotten and perhaps what has always been dormant within us as archetypes. That is, the awareness of our being anchored in the earth and the universe, the awareness that we are not here alone nor for ourselves alone, but that we are an integral part of higher, seen and unseen entities against whom it is not advisable to blaspheme. This forgotten awareness is encoded in all religions. All cultures anticipate it in various forms. It is one of the things that forms the basis of man’s understanding of himself, of his place in the world, and ultimately of the world as such. A modern philosopher once said: “Only a God can save us now.”
Yes, the only real hope for us humans today is a renewal of our certainty that we are rooted in the earth and, at the same time, in the cosmos. This awareness endows us with the capacity for self-transcendence. Politicians at international forums may reiterate a thousand times that the basis of the new world order must be universal respects for human rights, but it will mean nothing as long as this imperative does not derive from the respect of the miracle of Being, the miracle of the universe, the miracle of nature, the miracle of our own existence. Only someone who submits to the authority of the universal order and of creation, who values the right to be a part of it and a participant in it, can genuinely value himself and his neighbors, and thus honor their rights as well.
It logically follows that, in today’s multicultural world, the truly reliable path to coexistence, to peaceful coexistence and creative cooperation, must start from what is at the root of all cultures and what lies infinitely deeper in human heart and mind than political opinion, convictions, antipathies, or sympathies – it must be rooted in self-transcendence: Transcendence as a hand reached out to those close to us, to foreigners, to the human community, to all living creatures, to nature, to the universe. Transcendence as a deeply and joyously experienced needs to be in harmony even with what we ourselves are not, what we do not understand, what seems distant from us in time and space, but with which we are nevertheless linked because, together with us, all this constitutes a single world. Transcendence as the only real alternative to extinction. The Declaration of Independence states that the Creator gave man the right to liberty. It seems man can realize that liberty only if he does not forget the One who endowed him with it.
What is our dominant cultural story today?
It is a tale of capitalism. It comes down to economic actors seeking profit and pleasures as the goal of life. This story is propounded in ads that promise fulfillment through consumerism. Yet the story eliminates much of what is purposely important to our real lives: it shuts down possibilities beyond the material plane. By shutting down so much, this story brings a powerful shadow of extremes in all aspects of human life. Our dominant story is sounding stale. The financial crisis makes most of us less inclined to trust unregulated markets as the answer to all our problems, just as Renaissance thinkers were less inclined to trust medieval beliefs. Moving to a deeper level, the financial crisis is a symptom of far deeper crises – both environmental and cultural. It is emerging from our adherence to the cultural story we now have. Domination of nature follows from the story of the dominance of capitalism, individualism and egoism we have played out for so long. Our tale of failing capitalism has brought us to the threshold of fiscal chaos, cultural and environmental (planetary) chaos. We are entering a period of creative destruction from which a new story can and must emerge once again.
This recent spectacular modernism’s endgame story, separated only 18 months apart became apparent when global economy started collapsing in July 2008. An earthquake tore asunder the industrial age built on and propelled by nonrenewable fossil fuels energy and failure of the financial markets two months later was merely an aftershock. The fossil fuel energies that make up today’s industrial way of life are sun-setting and the industrial infrastructure is now on life support.
In December 2009, world leaders from about 200 nation states gathered in Copenhagen to address the question of how to handle the accumulated entropy (disorder) of the fossil fuel based industrial revolution-the spent Coâ‚‚ that is heating up our planet and careening the earth into a catastrophic shift in climate. After years of preparations, the negotiations broke down and the world leaders were unable to reach a formal accord and resolution.
Neither the world’s political nor business leaders had anticipated an economic debacle of 2008, nor have they been able to put together a constructive plan for economic recovery as yet. They are generally inept at addressing the issue of climate change, despite the fact that the scientific community has warned that the situation has posed the greatest threat to our species in human history, that we are running out of time, and that we may even be facing a serious threat of our own eventual survival on the planet leading to extinction. The problem even runs deeper than the issue of finding new ways to regulate the market or imposing legally binding global greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. The real crisis lies in our comprehension and assumptions about human nature that also dictates the behavior of world leaders’ assumptions that were brought forth using 18th century Enlightenment ideas to address 21st century challenges. We see how these old ideas about human nature and the meaning of life continue to cloak public policy. The Enlightenment view is that human beings are rational, detached agents that pursue their own self-interests and also their own nation state interests reflecting that same view. How are we going to address the needs of 7 billion people and heal our biosphere if we really are dispassionate, disinterested agents pursuing our own self-interest and instints?
A lot of interesting new discoveries in evolutionary biology, neuroscience, early child development (ECD) to Human development (HD), anthropology and more suggest that human nature is not what Enlightenment philosophers had suggested. For instance, the discovery of mirror neurons suggests that we are not wired for autonomy or utility but for empathic distress; we humans are certainly a social species.
Where will we find this new story? Not just waiting in the wings. But a new story – a new narrative of plurality of our evolving culture and consciousness – is urgently needed to help guide us into new, innovative and exciting times .The emergence of new set of civic values and culture is as significant historically as the emergence of modernity was during the enlightenment that began with scientific revolution. The emphasis on reason and objectivity came with modernity and that led to a new philosophy. A new philosophy called subversive philosophy by the traditionalists because it urged people to question the prevailing authority and to think anew for themselves. This so-called subversive philosophy offered a new and emergent form of governmental system—— -called modern democracy. The political movement for democracy also became primary catalyst for emergence of modernity and to this day modernity and democracy continue to co-create each other… The rallying point for modernist creed was “liberty, equality, fraternity”. When modernist mindedness reaches a critical mass in in a nation, the people demand democracy. On the contrary, in situations where democracy is imposed externally or internally on a pre-modern population, the government frequently becomes dysfunctional, collapsing into corruption and stagnation. Moreover, democracy for post-modern age must undergo commensurate evolution to post-modern democratic views (Green), integral democratic views (Yellow) and transcend views (Turquoise). [Fig-3] as shown below. Included are value components from the other and prior evolving stages (1-6) of democratic evolving structures (holonic). Holonic replaces the partial, dualistic and alienating thinking of right/wrong, good/evil at subsistence levels. It endeavors to satisfy the evolving needs of individuals and society.
The effects of complex global anarchy have stealthily invaded the modern world, the East and the West, the developing and the developed worlds and the correction of these effects is no simple matter. The leaders of today plan for the future based entirely on their knowledge of the past which is wrong (Carl Woes). The politics worldwide today is unequal to the task as politicians utilize short term tactics – rather than address the hugely complex causes. Multiple thinkers over the ages have pointed out that simple solutions to complex problems are always wrong – the law of unintended consequences.
The philosophy of spiral development of cultures and consciousness – [Fig-4] and historical cultural consciousness evolution will teach us how the modernist world-view is now being transcended and evolving into the next, higher and more complex world-views like post-modern consciousness , integral consciousness and post-integral consciousness ( neo-tribal and transcendent) World-views to come. Thus requiring holistic methods to be used for solving the ever evolving complexity and problems of present day post-modern global issues. In post -modern era post-modernity and spiritual democracy are to co-create each other.
Stage/Wave 1: Archaic-Instinctual “me” (Basic Survival Clan), and Eat when hungry, consciousness barely awakened, pre-social, pre-moral, pre-logical, trust vs. mistrust; oral communication. Seen in infant, senility, survival situations (1% of adult population). Primitive hunter-gatherer societies.
Stage/Wave 2: Tribal “we” Tribal consciousness (Collective Survival),and mutual reciprocity and kinship ,chiefs, elders , ancestors ( 10 % population)
Stage/Wave 3: Egocentric, warrior consciousness, Power Gods,” me” (Immediate wants),and to victors belong the spoils, terrible twos, rebellious youth, frontier mentality, rugged individual types, heroes (20% pop; 5% power) .seen in feudal kingdoms and empires.
Stage/Wave 4: Righteous with traditional consciousness, truth force “we” (Stable Authority, one right way and absolutist-religious), and the just earn the rewards, seen in fundamentalists, patriots, moral majority, codes of chivalry & honor (40% pop; 30% power). Seen in puritan America, Confucian China, and Dickensian England, Islamic, Jewish, Hindu and Christian fundamentalists.
Stage/Wave 5: Competitive success-driven “me”, modernist consciousness (materialism-business success), and seen in liberal self-interest to prosper, Scientism, rationalism, individualism, materialism, cosmetics & fashion industries (30 % population 50% power). Emerged from 18th century enlightenment, the cold war ,Wall Street, colonialism, corporate states, industrial revolution and capitalism.
Stage/Wave 6: Pluralistic-holistic “we” with human bond and post-modern consciousness ( facilitate global harmony and ECD to HD,) ,and all should benefit equally .Seen in diversity, emerging universal ethical morality, politically correct and human rights movements, collective communities, humanistic psychology (10 % population; 15 % Power). Started Emerging about 1969, emphasis on cultural/ interfaith/intellectual dialogues and relationships, global social movements towards global civilization of love, tolerance and empathy. Refreshes spirituality, shares the earth’s resources and opportunities equally among all. Engages in peace making and decision making through reconciliation and consensus.
Stage/Wave 7: Integral consciousness; Interdependent us (Sustainable World), and wisdom through broad integrative context. Universal ethical morality, autonomic integrated self, world centric, differences integrated into one interdependent natural flow order. Systematic-integrative, flexible; unity in diversity. Flexibility, spontaneity and functionality have highest priority .Magnificence of existence is valued over material possessions. Considers chaos and change as natural. Emerged in early half of 20th century and is seen in cutting edge thinkers (1 % population 5% power), in visionaries, and leaders of thought.
Stage/Wave 8: Post-integral consciousness, holistic , Spiritualistic global-universal system thinking ” we” (Collective Renewal), multiple levels of interaction interwoven together, combines feeling with knowledge , the world is a single/dynamic organism with its own collective mind ,self is both distinct and blended part of a larger compassionate whole, everything connects to everything else in ecological alignment ,Energy and information permeate the earth’s total environment. Holistic, intuitive thinking and cooperative actions are to be expected. Emerged in 1970 and not seen in society.
Social and Cultural Cradle
We can in this scientific age see how human consciousness, which is wired for social engagement, touch, love and empathy, changes over history. Obviously and as pointed out, human consciousness has evolved historically—a Paleolithic hunter/gatherer is wired differently than a medieval serf or a pre-modern human. Our belief is that when energy and communications revolutions converge they create new socio-cultural and economic eras and change consciousness dramatically by shifting our temporal and spatial boundaries, causing empathy to expand and mature.
For instance, wherever there were hydraulic agricultural societies based on large-scale irrigation systems, humans independently created writing. That’s fascinating to us. Writing added to oral human communication and made it possible to manage a complex energy regime. It also changed consciousness—transforming the mythological consciousness of oral cultures of hunter/gatherers into a theological one through a process that kept evolving. The range of oral communication was limited—where you could not extend empathy beyond kinship and blood ties. With script (writing) they could empathize further with associational ties, they could broaden their frame of reference.
In the 19th century the printing press communication revolution converged with new energies; coal and steam. That led to the introduction of public schools and mass literacy across the world including Europe and America. Theological consciousness became ideological consciousness. Further shift occurred in the 20th century with the Second Industrial Revolution, the electronics revolution, which gave rise to further psychological and social consciousness.
Each convergence point of energy and communication technology changed our human and cultural consciousness, extended our social networks and in turn expanded our social interactions and our empathy.
Our human development has been integrative to the evolution of the whole of human culture. Pursuing the realization of non-separation between the self and the world is crucial to the unfoldment of this ongoing humanizing process. Evolutionary paradigms describe the spiral of basic beliefs. Increasing levels of connection leading towards transcending systemic order and governance. It’s the conundrum of history that these higher and ever evolving complex cultures use and will use greater energy flow-through allowing us to bring more people together, but they also create more entropy (disorder) in the process. If we are going to ward off the extremisms in general, extreme dangers posed by climate change, we need to find ways to increase empathy while decreasing entropy (dysfunction) in all aspects of human life and endeavor. The question is, how do we do that? How do we break the paradox?
For the long hall, we need ECD to HD through Soul centric better Parenting, wholesome education from Preschool Children to youth in an Egocentric World to begin with. Parenting globally has been in chaos and education is a total mess. Our educational model world-wide is based on Enlightenment ideas and progressive ideas of the 20th century—if human nature is autonomous, calculating and self-interested and if the market is the way we fulfill those interests, our education reflects exactly that. We are taught that knowledge is a personal asset to achieve one’s own aims in the world—knowledge is power. If you share your knowledge, that’s cheating in the anthropocentric context. In the human development and true self realm; true knowledge (knowing, loving and willing through the body, mind and soul) is natural sharing.
Modernist education limits us to a more vocational idea of what life is all about. We all become little drones. And as we go through education that grows narrower and narrower. But what’s rightly happening with the internet today is that the youth is growing up seeing and believing that information is something you must share, and not hoard. Such thinking is certainly a collaborative exercise, not an autonomous one, and spaces it to be distributive. That’s completely alien to the Enlightenment ideas we grew up with.
We have been natural fans of interdisciplinary and collaborative teaching and learning. If we’re studying evolutionary biology, let a philosopher come in and talk about the way our concept of nature has changed over history. Allow young people to have so many frames of reference so they can be more open and integrative in their thinking and learning. If we are a social animal and we live by our stories, then our stories are only made richer with more points of view. Sharing knowledge by some is indeed considered cheating, yet collaboration has been shown to improve critical thinking if it’s done in a disciplined and constructive manner. Being practicing physicians for decades, we have recognized that if we brought all of our interns to a patient’s bedside at the same time, the collaborative response got to a diagnosis quicker and earlier resolution of a health problem than if only one intern was there.
Education has to be completely transformed to reflect the new era of distributed knowledge. There are deep and serious discussions going on at major educational institutions in the US that want to put together a team of experts to begin rethinking this. Holistic/integrative education, then, is in a pedagogical revolution as Gulen’s practical model also indicates. It boldly challenges many of the assumptions we hold about parenting, early education, teaching and learning, about the school, about the role of parents, the educator, about the need for networking management and standards are bound to change. Holistic education seeks to liberate students from the authoritarian system of behavior management that in the modern world we have come to call “education.” But ultimately holistic education is far more than radical pedagogy: It is an epistemological revolution as well. It demands that we take a hard look at the foundations of the emerging global radical capitalist culture — the “technological fundamentalism,” the worship of money, the assumption that the world is merely made of lifeless matter that is ours to manipulate and consume. This new paradigm, this new epistemology we call holonic, challenges our addiction to violence, exploitation, and greed. When we embrace wholeness, when we recognize that the cosmos is the ultimate source of meaning in our lives, then we will redesign not only educational institutions, but social, political, and economic institutions, dedicated to the nourishment and fulfillment of all human beings and the preservation of the eco-socio-biosphere. To establish this profound connection to the world is to experience an incorruptible reverence for life. We still don’t know how to grade people in a collaborative model. But if we’re moving from Homo sapiens to Homo empathicus, we have to rethink all of this. We need also to rethink the scientific method.
If the scientific method reflects enlightenment thinking—-we have to be detached, rational and value-free; and we can’t be connected or use empathic imagination. But we’re seeing that we need both. If the scientific method is the way kids learn, how do they grow up to form an empathic connection to the world? There are scientists who are practicing a different kind of science, a not-too-close, not-too-far empathic engagement. Goethe understood this couple of hundred years ago—he disagreed with Francis Bacon’s approach. He argued that we understand nature by participating, not by standing back and observing with dispassionate neutrality. Especially in the ecological and climate sciences, we need to be engaged, interactive and interdisciplinary, because we’re dealing with systems thinking.
Empathic science is a good balance between the traditional scientific method on the one hand and something that wouldn’t be science at all on the other. Empathy requires that we are not being too close or too far away. We have to be close enough to feel the experiences biologically as if they are our own but far enough to use our cognitive abilities to rationally respond. We hope scholars will take these ideas much further. We are hoping that a younger generation can do that as well. While society needs to do a better job parenting, early child development /education (ECD), education of youth to HD.
We find it interesting that more and more people correlated the expansion of empathy throughout human history with a growing sense of selfhood. We would naively think that they would have an inverse relationship. Iqbal13 made tremendous contributions to understanding selfhood and Empathy that go hand-in-hand; if we know we’re self we can see ourselves in relation to the other better. People hear “empathy” and they think socialism or something—that’s completely missing the point. Transforming individuation and selfhood is critical to increasing empathy. We are wired for empathic distress. If we put a bunch of babies in a nursery and one starts crying, the others start crying but we don’t know why. Real empathy – empathic expression—doesn’t occur until children develop a sense of self and recognize themselves as being separate from others; when they can recognize themselves in a mirror, for instance by age two.
Market capitalism will have to be transformed into “distributed capitalism” democratization of economy. Just as the internet led to the democratization of information, the Third Industrial Revolution will lead to the democratization of energy. The required changes to infrastructure are going to create massive amounts of jobs and a whole new economy in the future. When we will have peer-to-peer sharing of energy across an intelligent grid system, we no longer will have the top-down, centralized economic system. Distributed energy requires distributed capitalism, and that relies on the opposite view of human nature than that of corrupt market capitalism.
Critical “pathways” linking (EarlyChild Development) ECD to (Human Development) HD
There are four pathways, the first pathway runs through education. Interventions during the early years of a child have multiple benefits for subsequent investments in the child’s education, ranging from enrollment in elementary school to increased possibilities of progressing to higher and better levels of education. Link between ECD and HD through the critical pathway of education is certainly and clearly established and well documented.
The second pathway is through health. Like education, investments in health /social obstetrics are an investment in human capital and have long-term and tremendous benefits in bio psychosocial and spiritual realms. New developments in health sciences research, particularly those addressing the link between child health and adult health also provides ample evidence of a link between ECD and HD. As additional research findings have become available, the pathway of health has become as significant to HD as with education. International organizations and governments may need to fundamentally rethink health care efforts worldwide and direct a much larger share of health care budgets to the health care of children, especially in their early years. The aim now being not only to address children’s immediate health problems, but also to reduce future health risks as children become adults and will thus be healthier, will live longer and with better quality of life.
The third pathway links the notion of improved social behavior with the formation of social and spiritual capital. This linkage even if speculative in the past, is better suggestive by many interesting research outcomes over the recent decades and includes moral, Ethical and spiritual Development from early childhood. The pathway of social and spiritual capital had been less clear in the past, but has certainly become better than just being suggestive. The link between social behavior as a child and as an adult is confirmed further through neuroscience and empathy research. Better yet with clearer understanding of empathy and mirror neurons is already well known. The current evidence indicates that social/spiritual pathway from ECD to HD is established as well as the pathways of education and health.
The development of social behaviors is certainly associated with the domain of human development. Though closely linked to cognitive, social, and psychological development, the primary tasks along this Pathway are self-monitoring and regulation. Children’s abilities to be aware of and manage thoughts, Emotions, and behaviors—such as anger, aggression, and self-destructive or antisocial behaviors—Influence their development along this pathway (Marans & Cohen, 1999). As in the social pathway, the Children’s ethical development is externally driven and based upon their desire to be loved and to have the approval of their parents. As children reach school age, they have internalized the standards set by their Parents and later, their teachers (Davies, 1999).During elementary school years and onward towards adolescence, children’s moral abilities expand and are refined as they learn to balance self-interest with social norms. By adolescence, however, challenging these norms and the opinions of adult authorities is often characteristic of development. (Davies, 1999; Solodow, 1999).
Spirituality and education are seldom linked in discussions about the role of parents and schools in our wider global society, the failure to include the spiritual development of children as an educational and child development goal does a great harm to our children and the whole child development. If the focus of education is on the development of the whole child (rather than just the rational intellect), then the spiritual dimension of our humanness must be included. It is a serious mistake to think that young children are not ready for spiritual growth and development or that they do not have spiritual experiences. The opposite is most likely true – childhood is the spiritual period par excellence (Dillon, 2000).14 Perhaps the strongest argument for making spirituality a part of our educational and child development programs relates to the fact that there is a spiritual dimension to being human and that human spirit yearns for wholeness. Our children from early on need more from parents and schools than lip service to spirituality; we need meaning. “If we are to accept the notion that spirituality…is an important dimension of the human quest for meaning and purpose, then it surely has a place in educational theory ,early child development and in the life of the school” (Purpel, 2000, p. 48.15
With respect to spiritual capital, question arises as to how can we smoothly combine the accumulation of material capital, human capital and social capital? How can intelligent people be motivated to develop good social relations with those different from themselves, if they do not believe it brings them benefits? What is the internal driving force for human behaviors in today’s highly competitive material conditions? How do we establish a base on which mutual trust and communication is built? In other words, what are the factors that strongly influence the accumulation of social capital? The answer comes from the concept of spiritual capital, which we believe the families and communities can be lacking now and what we should strive to accumulate quickly, steadily and consistently.
The word spiritual comes originally from the Latin spiritus, which means “that which gives life or vitality to a system” [16]. It serves as the spiritual base to enhance the meaning and beauty of life in the world. “Spiritual capital adds the dimension of our shared meanings and values and ultimate purposes. It addresses those concerns about which it means to be human and the ultimate meaning and purpose of human life.” (Zohar and Marshall, p 5) Neurologically, everything that bears on intelligence is routed through, or controlled by, the brain and its neural extensions into the body. One kind of neural organization enables rational, logical rule-bound thinking——our Intelligence Quotient (IQ). Another kind of neural organization allows associative, habit bound, pattern-recognizing emotive thinking—-our Emotional Quotient (EQ ), our capacity to tolerate ambiguity, uncertainty and complexity, our awareness of our own and other people’s feelings—-giving us a competitive edge. “It gives us empathy, com-passion, motivation and the ability to respond to pain or pleasure,” as Daniel Goleman, (Emotional Intelligence) Harvard psychology professor says.
In summary, spiritual capital reflects the core values, the person’s value systems and the internal driving force of human beings. Genuine social capital must include these spiritual and mental dimensions, adding the main purposes of building up lasting relationships among people of different background and cultures. Spiritual capital is built by using spiritual intelligence (SQ). SQ is an intelligence with which people have access to deep meaning, fundamental values, and a genuine sense of life purposes in their lives, and the role that this meaning, values, and purposes play in our lives, strategies and thinking processes. SQ makes people ask why we are doing, what we are doing and makes us seek some fundamentally better way of doing it.
SQ is no less important than IQ and EQ (emotional intelligence). It is a new paradigm-making and paradigm-breaking intelligence that is badly needed even in material capital realm. It allows people of different background to understand each other in friendly terms and to “play with the boundaries”. It allows people to think creatively and change the rules according to new situations. It allows people to think about all kinds of possibilities in life that enable us to create wonders. SQ has the ability to dissolve old way of thinking of putting too much emphasis on material capital, while neglecting important mental and spiritual part of human beings. SQ includes all the universal altruistic values and qualities.
In the fourth pathway, ECD is linked to HD by the potential of ECD programs to address inequality in society. And, ultimately, education, health, social/spiritual capital, and equality are linked to economic growth and, hence, to HD. All these linkages are discussed here very briefly, further details will require a separate writing in the future or one may refer to Van der Gaag’s article included in our references here.17
The pathway of equality from ECD to HD is undeniable and, as noted, is linked to the other three pathways. The finding that income equality (distributive economy) is related to the health of society is a recent and surprising one, which reinforces the importance of ECD and suggests far-reaching policy Implications. Education, health, social/spiritual capital, and equality are all tremendous contributors to economic and human growth and development. Together with economic growth, they constitute the mutually reinforcing elements of a comprehensive framework for HD, as depicted in figure -5 below. This framework could be expanded easily, for example, to include gender issues or poverty (as it relates to empathy and equality).
Well-executed and well-targeted ECD programs are initiators of HD. They stimulate improvements in education, health, social /spiritual capital, and equality that have both immediate and long-term benefits for the children participating in such programs. Investments in ECD programs are in many ways investments for the future of every nation and the entire human global family.
Parenting and educating our children for Wholeness
It would be helpful to clarify what we mean, and do not mean by education in the holistic context. We are referring specifically to the body of arguments, principles and practices that are promoted by the best of experts from around the world about early education of young children, mainly by parents but also in part by the teachers. The purpose of this education is to instil values, attitudes and behaviour in children, and prepare them for challenges and opportunities of life long.
In this context, According to Gulen[18] there are five top responsibilities for parents when it comes to child rearing: (1) Meeting of their physical needs; (2) Age-appropriate discipline or etiquette; (3) Moral education; faith and its practical education; (4) Justice among siblings; (5) Protection from evil and the harm that may come from ill-intentioned people.
We may very well start the discussion of child rearing and education not after birth, but even before a couple enters marriage. The institution of marriage as a preparation of the learning environment for the child .It is setting forth upbringing of a desirable generation as a lofty goal for the establishment of the marriage. Consequently, choosing of a spouse by considering long term educational goals. The emphasis on the mother as the first and foremost teacher for the child and the father as the second most important teacher. It is therefore recommended that the candidate spouse considers the educational outlook and qualities of their prospective partner as an important factor in deciding to get married.
Another most important suggestion that just as adults we are required to go through a training course to obtain a vehicle driving license, we must also go through a course for parenting and child education before we can get married. As child upbringing is no less important than the safety of people on the roads, proper education for such an important duty should not be at the mercy of young, inexperienced couples.
Rearing of children and educational practices are a means for the human species to evolve socially, emotionally, psychologically, morally and spiritually in order to surpass the current ecological and human social crises. A joint growth of adults and children, what can be called as a ‘conscious co-evolution,’ is also certainly required. As parents and teachers undergo unfoldment19 as a whole, better nurturance and aid they can give to the children. Recent discoveries in brain science and child development, however, are forcing us to rethink these long-held flawed notions about human nature. Biologists and cognitive neuroscientists have discovered mirror-neurons–called empathy neurons–that allow us human beings to feel and experience another’s situation as if it were one’s own. We are, it appears, the most social of animals seeking attachment, bonding, compassionate participation, and companionship with our fellow humans from the cradle to grave.
With violence, anti-social behavior, and aggression among young children escalating at a frightening rate, it is clear that we need to develop a new understanding of childhood development and early education .Many experts and educators who have worked for decades with children from all kinds of backgrounds, have discovered that the solution to violent and other anti-social behavior lies within each child’s innate sense of caring and compassion. They believe that infusing children with empathy constitutes nothing less than a new paradigm in our approach to child-raising and educating. Empathy is the ability to understand another person’s point of view and respect their feelings. Even the most troubled children can quell violent and aggressive behavior if they are loved and nurtured through conscious rearing. Through Roots of Empathy, educational experts and neuroscientists have created a rich, rewarding information and experiences that foster empathy within children from early on. Bringing babies and children together also creates a symbiotic loving/compassionate environment that reduces aggression in children while increasing tolerance, emotional intelligence and emotional literacy. An interactive experience for parents, teachers, and children, the Roots of Empathy programs aim to solve current and future problems in our society by teaching emotional literacy early to children. In “Roots of Empathy”[20], the innovative, inspired works based on groundbreaking research and success in actual classroom situations, Mary Gordon shared her vision of a nation of compassionate and caring children who will pass on their legacy of empathy to their own children.
There has to be a ‘common vision’ of human nature and human development up to the age twenty-one in all cultures. It is holistic and integrative. Although there are some differences, there are also similarities. Each culture describes interacting planes of existence from the physical being to the subtler life-force plane, then the higher mental plane and lastly the plane of the spirituality which is the true self within us all. Education should consider all these layers, not just the physical and intellectual layers of traditional education.[21]
The concept of wholesome education emphasizes methods which concentrate on viewing the child as a whole person. The objective is not about how to find a good job or make big money, but about how to develop into a complete human being. Every part of the individual – mind, body, emotion and spirit, should be developed at the same time and be integrated into the whole person.
Further, the idea of wholesome education is not only about how to make a smart person, but to make a genuinely good person and human being as well. It is not only about giving people knowledge, but also helping them to translate that knowledge into true wisdom. With integrated education, there is no division between school and society, study and human life, knowledge and goodness.
It now being generally recognized that appreciation of the relation of the whole to the part was central to understanding reality. Relatedness is basic. Nothing is in isolation anymore. All things depend upon on each other. Everything in the world is in one way or the other connected with every other thing. Everything is a part of the whole and that emphasizes the importance of wholeness and relationship. This is certainly applicable to education as well. The nature is alive which enables us to look at both of physical and biological sciences from a unique perspective. In this view, the children are alive. The body contains both the mental and physical attributes of unified experience. There is no separation of mind and body in this realm; the body includes the mental state. That mental state-the mind, perception, and reasoning-is our concern as parents and educators. Children and students do not present to us isolated minds or bodies but themselves as integrated human beings whose relations in the world are experiences of living organism on the living planet.
It urges us to turn away from Cartesian philosophy and, instead, to think of the whole in relation to the parts and the parts in relation to the whole. A child viewed from a process perspective is a student viewed holistically. Teachers do not confront a mind, or a body, or cognition, or affect, but, a totality; learners bring their whole being to the learning. To be brief, the idea of wholesome education is based on the fact Global society needs global education that should be based on the concept of integrated education.
One of the most important considerations is that we are presently living in a global society. The whole earth is becoming a small global village. Our schools globally are becoming obsolete by any standards for today’s globalizing world. Western schools were built on the needs of western civilization in the past three centuries; Eastern schools were built on the needs of Eastern civilizations’ previous several centuries. But today we are no longer a western civilization or Eastern civilizations – we are now heading towards a global civilization of love, tolerance and Empathy.
Therefore, communications among different cultures and races are more important than ever before. Our global school systems should teach our children to know understand and appreciate other cultures and each other. Unfortunately, in our schools children are more likely to be learning about a world that no longer exists. Knowledge is power; ignorance is oppression. We are oppressed if we don’t know, understand, and appreciate our neighbors around the world. We need this knowledge to understand why they act the way they do, what they believe in, and what they consider to be important. Clearly, simply studying cultures is not enough. Kids must appreciate those cultures. Teachers must become the translators of cultural differences. A child from any nation in the world may be in their classroom tomorrow, and different cultures are just down the street. We need to teach our children to celebrate diversity and the creative human spirit. This theory can be helpful to educators world-wide in their quest for educational reform.
In actuality, every country and culture has its own educational system. These individual systems met the needs of the single culture but are not enough for today’s global society. This is one of reasons why some American educators said, “We are the richest nation in the world, but yet we have a failing school system.” (American Schools Need Reform by Pamela Jordan Lee, http://www.sirrmax.com February 2, 2001).
The global society of today needs a new educational system; one based on the concept of wholesome education. The modernism and its educational system have caused a number of social problems. This is another important reason why we need educational reform and wholesome education. The modern educational systems – including both Western and Eastern systems – have failed in many ways and have caused many problems in our societies. Before moving to this, we would briefly like to discuss the concept of modern education. Modern education has its roots in seventeenth and eighteenth century science and has had a significant influence on Western society. Not only are we surrounded by technology developed from scientific research; we are also educated, persuaded, and required to adopt and utilize the methods of science to solve social, business, and personal problems. The notion that science and technology can solve all problems is well established in western and many Eastern cultures. Many people, including most educators from around the globe, believe that science and technology can solve all the world’s problems. Knowledge is power. The modern educational system is based on this belief and has focused giving students knowledge and equipping them to find jobs. Development of human creativity and spirituality along with translating knowledge into wisdom has been largely ignored. Thus the principal goal of education – making a whole person was lost and replaced by a system of job training. The students became passive receivers of knowledge.
Our inner change shifts our outer reality. As we change to what attracts our inner core, we start making better choices, day by day progressing toward whatever better life we imagine. Looking back after months or years, noticing how we’ve changed and our world has changed; we call this a miraculous accomplishment. Such practical steps are what we need now to create a sustainable globally integrated civilization of love, tolerance and empathy. We believe “civilization” is the story of humanity learning to accept responsibility for human free will. If we parents and educators raise and educate our children right and we live our lives sensibly, we’d need no high government to control our lowest impulses. If each one of us heeded our conscience and reason, we’d barely need any government at all in the future. The laws of nature — natural law should be governing us eventually. Gulen’s social global movement (thought and practice), in the universal, cross-cultural dialogue and educational context is raising a new renaissance generation that is gradually evolving towards a global civilization of love tolerance and empathy.22
Cultural Renaissance of our Youth’s Future
Besides parenting and issues with early education, Young people today live in an age where globalized society has brought with it homogenizing cultures, which had once regarded village life as the bearer of their particular and unique cultural heritage. These diverse forms of village culture, that are now rapidly becoming extinct, formed the basis of the knowledge, mores and wisdom of children. Each unique culture had developed over centuries, even millennia, appropriate processes, by way of initiation ceremonies, to mark the stages of gaining this knowledge. They highly valued the crucial passage from the protection and guidance of childhood to the freedom and responsibility of adulthood.
The rapidly marching monoculture of the 20th century did no such thing. This particular brand of culture that has grown up in the so-called Western world, underpinned by the technology of commodification, has not only claimed cultural superiority but also in a subtle yet pervasive manner the monoculture of the West has infiltrated and culturally colonized virtually all the remaining diverse cultures of the rest of the world, now often called ‘the rest’.
What has this to do with raising children? Or with young people views of the future? If we take this village metaphor further we see that in the globalized 21st century, village life everywhere is rapidly becoming just another suburb of Western cities in the likes of Paris, London and New York. In this context the adage above could be replaced with a broader statement such as:
‘It takes a healthy society to raise a healthy child’ and the village folks for centuries said that it takes a whole village to raise a healthy child.
If this is indeed true, we must then question the health of a global society where adolescents of the ‘most developed’ nations are suffering highest rates of depression, committing suicide and violent crimes at alarming rates, and where there is a general malaise, loss of meaning ,purpose and sense of hopelessness about the future.
This global and toxic culture, that the West continues to impose on the rest, has been recently described as a ‘toxic culture’ by the film director Peter Weir, after a publicized violent episode of school shootings in America. While the same culture remains currently the bearer of knowledge and mores; not only in the nations where it evolved, but also alarmingly in the villages whose age-old wisdom this toxic monoculture is continuing to replace.
Unfortunately it has taken so many suicides, teenage shootings and so much loss of hope among our youth for the leaders of the toxic monoculture nations (the US in particular) to even begin questioning as to what are we doing to our children? Since the advent of TV, and video game parlors, followed by computer games, our children have been constantly exposed to violent and toxic images of murder and other violence. Since the computer games (originally designed to train and desensitize soldiers before sending them off to the killing fields), have become a ‘culture’ and we have opened the Pandora’s Box we may not be able to ever shut.
In the face of all this chaos, it is no wonder that youth is globally seeing the ‘probable future’ as a litany of horrors and that many young people in the ‘developed’ and even developing world are feeling disempowered by the images of the future they are contemplating?
While there are many forces and complex changes occurring, in our view, there are five major reasons contributing to the social decay and breakdown of society ‘from as it was,’ in regard particularly to the impact on young people and the fears about the future of humanity as a whole. The 5 reasons are : 1.Planetary degradation (not Caring for One Another and the Earth),2. inequality ( in economic and political participation) , 3.Poverty ( not Insuring Food, Education, and Work for All) , 4.Lack of peace building (need to Build a World Where We All Get Along ) and 5. Knowing the purpose (To Care for One Another and the Earth).
Toward a Global Civilization of Love, Tolerance & Empathy
As a global society we urgently need new ways of listening, communicating, understanding and working with each other to reshape our common future, out of the ashes of traditional wisdom and modern sciences, for diverse cultures to create a singular global civilization of love, tolerance and empathy that is worthy of true human nature. There is in fact modernism that had injected and continues to inject egoism into us human beings; making us so insignificant that we became almost invisible as human society as a whole; stirring up the individual, material, and personal instincts in us that are in opposition to civility and society; distancing us from everything we held sacred, humane, and ethical—from love, caring, devotion, and self-giving. In the end, an inferior human being has been the outcome, one who lives only for egoistic instincts. A person who lives only for egoistic instinct, indeed, is inferior. All belief systems have tried to come to the rescue of such individuals; but the fatal blow of modernism against the personality and cosmic coherence of human being has made him captive of his individual instincts.
The Enlightenment thinkers–John Locke, Adam Smith, Marquis de Condorcet et al. took resentment with the Medieval Christian worldview that saw human nature as fallen and immoral that looked for salvation in the hereafter. These enlightenment thinkers preferred to cast their lot with the idea that human beings’ essential nature was rational, detached, autonomous, possessive and utilitarian arguing that individual salvation and progress lies in the unlimited material progress here on this planet.
The Enlightenment notions about human nature were reflected further in the newly designed nation-state whose raison d’être was to protect private property and stimulate market forces as well as act as a surrogate of the collective self-interest of the citizenry in the international arena. Not unlike individuals, nation-states individually were also considered to be autonomous agents embroiled in a relentless battle with other sovereign nations in the pursuit of material gains. While admitting the European Renaissance Spirit, many Renaissance Men, at the time were concerned about the course it had taken. Leading to bloody wars of Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the identity of Universal Christendom was lost and its place was taken by territorial (nationhood), language, race and traditions, euphemistically called territorial “culture”. Thus Europe was split into innumerable nationhood-states, so much so, there are now close to 200 “nation-states” in the world. This splintering of humanity, each nationality worships its own territorial culture as the best in the world, as if the rest were created by the devil. The slogan has been “my country, right or wrong”. The situation is pathetic and below human dignity. Despite the clarion call by many that the whole planet earth was beautiful and it was a single global home for all of humanity. If there were to be divisions among humankind, they were only on the basis of commitment to human universal values and empathy. This is the only area of activity where humans can make fundamental choices; the rest is passive and accidental by birth. It is a pity that being committed to moral values was considered being conservative and communal, while the worship of `nationhood’ was modernism!
With the nation-state came along the issue of radical “secularism”, again considered as a very modern idea. Surely, if it was basically getting rid of “heavenly linked priesthood” in churches, temples and mosques, it would be a splendid achievement, but what had happened was that the baby was thrown away with the bathtub. To divorce eternal and universal values from our public life, to indulge in Machiavellism and become the biggest of devils as Cavour, the Italian unifier said about himself, is no achievement indeed. The worse part of it was that human personality has been spilt into two (inner and outer); the two half’s of us humans moving in different, almost opposite directions. If this is not schizophrenia, what is it? Iqbal spoke about the “whole Man”[23] and the unity of life. His `mard-e-momin’ or a developed personality pulsates in unison, without any spilt into personal and public behavior.
The assumptions that provided the philosophical underpinnings for a geopolitical frame of reference accompanying the first and second industrial revolutions in the 19th and 20th centuries do not entirely apply to the 21st century post-modern times. The reawakening about true human nature came to the fore again in the aftermath of the global economic meltdown (of 2008) and in stormy and harsh confrontations in the meeting rooms and failure to resolve global issues in Copenhagen 2009, with potentially disastrous outcomes for the future of humanity, our civilization and our planet.
If human nature to this day is still to be based upon the Enlightenment philosophers’ belief, then we will be doomed. It would be impossible to figure out how we might create a Global civilization of love, tolerance and empathy and a sustainable global economy and restore our biosphere to wholesome health — a contradiction if each and every one of us is still, at the core of our biology, an autonomous agent and a self-centered and materialistic being.
What we see when we examine the rupture that contemporary human civilization has experienced—for whatever reason— it is that everything comes down to the problems of humanity as a whole. When humans are destructive, detrimental, hostile, and aggressive, they try to enslave nature and the order of society and humanity, in which they are a part.
It is clear as to where the standard of humanity has been knocked down, that is where Gulen inspired Hizmet Community finds its voice and the reconstructive thought and practice is applicable to reverse egoism and its impact on the individuals and the societies. A way to rescue our contemporary civilization from imminent destruction and to re-educate human beings on the basis of love, tolerance, empathy and community rebuilding.
Fethullah Gülen is an intellectual and one of the world’s most influential scholars. He is being considered “a contemporary Rumi” (Jalal al-Din Rumi, a great thinker, philosopher, poet and writer in human history and the best-known mystic in the West). Gulen thought has a lot in common with most prominent philosophers such as Kant, Mill, Confucius, Plato, and Sartre, whose ideals have historically and positively shaped societies in numerous ways. “[22] Gulen has over the past 4 decades created a global and social school of thought, practice and a way of being. It is a community and a paradigm of thought, practice, being and behavior. There actually is a great deal of emphasis on self-cultivation ( ego-taming ) and we find a sense of humanistic responsibility that is surpassing the self in this spiritual thought and practice———- by giving it all to humanity and expect nothing in return in the language of altruism, service, voluntary serving and self-giving. It encourages all human beings to take serious initiatives to build bridges between the Muslims and modernity/post-modernity, science, spirituality, and reason by promoting love, tolerance and empathy between all cultures. It also recognizes ever evolving participatory democracy as the only viable political system of governance and emphasis on diversity, equal access to human rights, freedom of belief for all, loyalty to the rule of law and the non-instrumentalization of religion in politics making this school of thought as one of the most promising calls for the future of relations between the West, the Muslims and the rest of the world.
Rumi Forum as an affiliate of Hizmet community, a think-tank and dialogue institute has over 40 counterparts in the United States, as well as other nations throughout Western and Eastern Europe, Russia, Southeast/central Asia, and Africa. The Hizmet community has its commitment to dialogue of civilizations through academia, interfaith dialogue and cooperation from the global intellectual thought, but this commitment has been renewed and given new impetus in the writings of Fethullah Gülen himself. Gulen thought is being applied to real life practice, where both the social foundations of communication, dialogue and tolerance have been laid down, and where efforts are made to respond to the need of contemporary cultures and communities world-wide through volunteers who also act as role models. Hizmet community has motivated millions to engage and invest in sustaining peace and improving community relations through nondenominational education and intercultural dialogues. These Dialogues are leading to new ways of thinking, new renaissance and a new golden generation ——- Aristotles and platoes are being born globally. There is an alternative to both the fundamentalist movements and those in the West who adhere to the “clash of civilizations” paradigm. Hizmet community has pioneered educational activities in over 130 countries, with over 1000 schools and 10 universities along with efforts to promote academic, intercultural and interfaith activities around the world. It is articulating this new ideal person, this renaissance person. Gülen says at times that he is writing this book or this message that is not for today’s readers, it is for the readers 25 years from now. He has written over 50 books and many have been translated into English and other languages. He’s very future oriented, and the idea is that there is a kind of humanity that is being built. This is a new humanity of people that whatever their identity is, they also have this capacity to be global. This is a renaissance person in a new way. This renaissance person is proficient in many different things, comfortable in multiple environments, not threatened by other people’s identity, not threatened by other people’s belief, comfortable, empowered, willing to work, and able to work. That’s the new humanity, and we see it in business, in education, in communication, we see it in many places.it is creating a whole new way of living and being. In this materialist world, this seems too good to be true but it most certainly is true in humanistic realm.
By definition, being humanistic means being engaged in the world of human beings. This is not an alienating, otherworldly movement focused on the eternal. It’s a movement focused on now, on building the world for now, for today. So, in that sense, yes it is a broadly humanistic vision which includes impact in the socio-political realm. That is not to say, though, that Hizmet community has some sort of sinister secret plan for political take over. We don’t see it as anything remotely like political ideology that has the ambition to take over politically. Instead, it is a school of thought creating a humanistic kind of community that is living and active in the world.
In this school of thought, humanity is the most valuable in the universe and the greatest mirror of Creator’s attributes. Every human being is equally endowed with potential and capacity to mirror divine nature and has the capability to be developed into an excellence that transcends the universe. Thereby, first, all humans are equal as a mirror of Creator’s attributes, irrespective of religion, race, wealth and social status. And second, since humans are created by the Creator’s own love, love is the most essential element in humanity. These concepts of equality, love, humanity and Empathy are the basis of humanism in this school of thought that serve as its foundational principles.
A foremost practical manifestation of Fethullah Gülen’s love-based humanism is certainly dialogue. To Fethullah Gülen, dialogue is an activity of forming a bond between two or more people. To form such a bond means to position human beings at the centre of dialogue. Therefore, dialogue in a true sense is a sublimation and pragmatic extension of humanism, which can be only accomplished by empathy, tolerance and love. Nowadays, more and more people in the world realize the need of dialogue for peaceful coexistence. Gulen school of thought and practice has been advocating love, empathy and tolerance-based dialogue for almost three decades now. Gulen has always said ‘we should engage in dialogue with everyone without any discrimination’. To us all, his teachings of dialogue are extremely important today since there are many people still who believe in the fundamentalisms and ‘clash of civilizations.’ In fact, Fethullah Gülen’s humanism rejects others as a dialectical antithesis——a ‘dialectical approach to humanity’ based on the Hegelian, Marxist and Huntington’s concepts. Instead he asserts that the distinction between the self and the other can only exist as an object of dialogue in a way of protecting and empowering one’s spiritual civility against his/her egoistic carnal self that gives rise to constant conflict with others. We may call this humanism ‘dialogic humanism,’ and define it as a system of thought and way of life that approaches humanity as a unit of ‘self and others’ and as an object of love, empathy and dialogue. An alternative and scientific consideration to the dialectical approach to humanity. Neuroscientists have proven otherwise and throughout this paper there is discussion on mirror neurons and empathy in human nature and hence homo-empathticus and creation of empathic new civilization.
Dr. Jill Carol’s “A Dialogue of Civilizations”[22] compares Gulen’s thought on issues of inherent human value and moral dignity, freedom, education, and humanistic responsibility with those above named Western thinkers. She sees very similar importance and very similar definitions for different civilizations and for the thinkers who influence formation of those civilizations. This makes us understand the meaning of the phrase “dialogue among civilizations”, and that is why Gulen has inspired over three generations of Muslim men and women to create a new world of dialogue ,coexistence and peace. Very timely work and contribution of Carol’s to remind us why we need a dialogue and why it is possible.
Many around the world think that the Gulen schools and other activities/projects of the people in the Hizmet community are already playing a crucial and very constructive role globally in promoting peaceful coexistence of people from different backgrounds. We think that the clashes of the uncivilized are still possible and have not been uncommon among so-called civilizations historically, even probable in the future, but not inevitable. The only way to avoid clashes is to create empathic and true civilization of tolerance, love and empathy and value each other simply because we are human, civil and social by nature. Also Jill demonstrated as to how ideas of philosophers of vastly different backgrounds resonate with each other. We are all human, and we can certainly find a lot of things we agree on. This is not to overlook our differences, but rather acknowledging and welcoming the differences as a reality of life. We need to learn with each other.
This is nothing short of a leap to global empathic consciousness and in less than a generation, it is bound to resurrect the global civilization of tolerance and love through HD, servant leadership, local and global distributive economy, participatory (distributive) politics and through revitalization of our biosphere.
ECD to HD underlying the Individual- collective stages of evolution in consciousness and culture (Fig-4), a pivotal turning point in human consciousness is bound to occur when new energy regime converges with new cultural evolution and communications revolution, creating new civilizational and economic postmodern era. The new communication revolution becomes the command and control mechanism for structuring, organizing and managing more complex civilization that the new energy and communication revolution is making possible. For example, in the early modern age, print communication became the means to organize and manage the technologies, organizations, and infrastructure of the coal, steam, and rail revolution. It would have been impossible to administer the first industrial revolution using oral or writing (script) communication.
The communication revolutions not only manage new, more complex energy regimes, but also change human consciousness in the process as seen historically. …Hunter /gatherer societies relied on oral communications and their consciousness was legendary construction that had only limited temporal and spatial reach. The great hydraulic agricultural civilizations were, for the most part, organized around script communication and steeped in theological consciousness, empathic sensitivity broadened from tribal blood ties to associational ties based on common religious affiliation. Jews came to empathize with Jews, Christians with Christians, Muslims with Muslims, etc. The first industrial revolution of the 19th century was managed by print communication and ushered in ideological consciousness, empathic sensibility extended to national borders, with Americans empathizing with Americans, Germans with Germans, Japanese with Japanese and so on. Electronic communication became the command and control mechanism for arranging the second industrial revolution in the 20th century and spawned psychological consciousness, individuals began to identify with like-minded others. By extending the central nervous system of each individual and the society as a whole, communication revolutions provided an ever more inclusive and level playing field for empathy to mature and consciousness to go on expanding and brought together more diverse people in increasingly more expansive and varied social networks.
In the 21st century, we have internet communication that is being globally shared and distributed. We are, today heading towards another historic and globalizing civilization of love, tolerance and empathy through convergence of internet communication and distributive energy –a third industrial revolution and global renaissance in the making –that must extend empathic sensibility, love and tolerance to the biosphere itself and all of life on Earth. The distributed Internet revolution is coming together with distributed renewable energies, making possible a sustainable, post-carbon economy that is to be globally connected and locally managed through glocalization. In the current century, hundreds of millions–and eventually billions–of human beings will transform their house-hold habitats into power plants to harvest renewable energies on site, store those energies in the form of hydrogen and share electricity, peer-to-peer, across local, regional, national and universal inter-grids that will act much like the Internet. The open source sharing of energy, like open source sharing of information, will give rise to collaborative energy spaces–not unlike the collaborative social spaces that currently exist on the Internet.
When every family and business comes to take responsibility for its own small swath of the biosphere by harnessing renewable energy and sharing it with millions of others on smart power grids that stretch across continents, we become intimately interconnected at the most basic level of earthly existence by jointly stewarding the energy that bathes the planet and sustains all of life. The new distributed communication revolution not only will organize distributed renewable energies, but also will expand human consciousness even further. The information communication technologies (ICT) revolution is quickly extending the central nervous system of billions of human beings and connecting the human race across time and space, allowing love, tolerance and empathy to flourish on a global scale, for the first time ever in human history.
A compelling story illuminates our path here. In a talk given in December 2007, Bill Moyers called for a newer American story: “it is that the promise of America leaves no one out.’ But more than an American story, we need a new global story in the 21st century to take us where we want to go as a global human family. That story has to be about global renaissance by whatever name we choose to call the dream of thriving beings on a healthy planet. The story has to be that our generation saw and met the threat of planetary devastation and created an earth community of magnificently diverse cultures, peoples, and natural creatures that found ways to thrive and enjoy one another as members of the same earthly family. Awareness among people around the world that this is our finest hour, that we are fully committed and happy to be building a world that works for all. We need to reconstruct a narrative of together-ness rather than ‘us’ and ‘them’. The quality of all our lives and the sustainability of our civilization both depend critically on this global integration. People need to shrug off the chains of their institutionalized beliefs so that they can embrace all of humanity in a kinship. Hopefully at the same time we can learn how to take better care of our collective home. The overarching reason and unifying purpose being that billions of human beings on this planet be connected with ever expanding consciousness , distributed global communication networks and put to the task of helping us all participate in deeper communion with our common biosphere -that functions like an indivisible living organism and sustains all of our lives.
The biosphere is the narrow band that extends some forty miles from the ocean floor to outer space where living creatures and the Earth’s geochemical processes interact to sustain each other. We are learning that the biosphere functions like an indivisible living organism. It is the continuous symbiotic relationships between every living creature and the geochemical processes that ensure the survival of the planetary organism and the individual species that live within its biosphere envelope. If every human life, the species as a whole, and all other life-forms are entwined with one another and with the geochemistry of the planet in a rich and complex choreography that sustains life itself, then we are all dependent on and responsible for the health of the whole organism. Carrying out that responsibility means living out our individual lives in our neighborhoods and communities in ways that promote the general well-being of the larger biosphere within which we dwell. The global renaissance and Third Industrial Revolution offers just such an opportunity.
If we can harness our empathic sensibility to establish a new global ethic that recognizes and acts to harmonize the many relationships that make up the life-sustaining forces of our planet, we will have moved beyond the detached, self-interested and utilitarian philosophical assumptions that accompanied national markets and nation state governance and into a new era of biosphere consciousness. We must leave the old world of geopolitics behind and enter into a new world of biosphere politics, with new forms of governance emerging to accompany our new biosphere awareness. The global renaissance and Third Industrial Revolution and the new era of distributed capitalism will allow us to reconstruct a new approach to globalization, this time emphasizing universalization from the bottom up. Because renewable energies are more or less equally distributed around the world, every region is potentially and sufficiently endowed with the power it needs to be relatively self-sufficient and sustainable in its lifestyle, while at the same time interconnected via smart grids to other regions across countries and continents. The nation-state, which grew up alongside the First and Second Industrial Revolutions, and provided the regulatory mechanisms for managing an energy regimes whose reach was the geosphere, is certainly ill suited for a Third Industrial Revolution whose domain is the biosphere.That’s why Copenhagen failed. The world leaders weren’t thinking biosphere, they were thinking geopolitics. Everyone was looking out for their nation’s self-interest.
In biosphere politics, governing units are to change—there has to be a shift toward continentalization. The European Union is most probably the first regional governing institution of the Third Industrial Revolution era. The EU is already beginning to put in place the infrastructure for a Europe-wide energy regime, along with the codes, regulations, and standards to effectively operate as a seamless transport, communications, and energy grid that will stretch from the Irish Sea to the doorsteps of Russia by midcentury. Other Asian, African, and Latin American regional political unions will most likely be the premier governing institutions on their respective regions/continents hopefully by the middle of 21st century.
The global economy didn’t work in its first stage globalization. And that’s because the economics and the technology raced ahead of our changing consciousness. Furthermore, a global economy of post-modern era requires social trust with biosphere consciousness, not geopolitical consciousness. We’re never going to get genuine globalization until empathy extends to the whole species. We must rethink economic policies and make thermodynamics the basis of economic theory. The price of fossil fuel energy is embedded in every product we make. At the same time, the effects of climate change are already eroding economies in many parts of the world as extreme weather events destroy ecosystems and agricultural infrastructure. The Third Industrial Revolution will be driven in part by the need to mitigate the entropic (negative) impact of the first two industrial revolutions.
Some business people would say that we can’t be empathic in the market. But the market is a secondary institution—it’s an extension of global human culture. The real invisible hand of the market has to be social trust emanating from empathic engagements. The only way we all can have a distributive market is if we have a shared narrative. The market should not be a utilitarian frame of reference; it only exists by the social trust that allows people to engage in anonymous settings and believing that their engagements will be honored. When that social trust fails, markets collapse and that’s what has been happening in modernist mind-set. Distributed and renewable energies generated locally and regionally and shared openly–peer to peer–across vast contiguous land mass connected by intelligent utility networks and smart logistics and supply chains will favor a seamless network of governing institutions that will eventually span entire continents.
The Civilization of love, tolerance and empathy has been evolving. A younger generation is now fast extending its empathic embrace beyond religious affiliations and national identification to include the whole of humanity and the vast project of life that envelops the Earth. But our rush to universal empathic connectivity is running up against a rapidly accelerating entropic juggernaut in the form of climate change, cultural and social decay. Can we reach biosphere consciousness and global empathy in time to avert our planetary collapse? The transition to biosphere consciousness has already begun. All over the world, a younger generation is beginning to realize that one’s daily consumption of energy and other resources ultimately affects the lives of every other human being and every other creature that inhabits our planet.
In this new era of distributed energy, governing institutions will more resemble the workings of the ecosystems they manage. Just as habitats function within ecosystems, and ecosystems within the biosphere in a web of interrelationships, governing institutions will similarly function in a collaborative network of relationships with localities, nations, regions, and all embedded within the continents as a whole. This new complex political organism must operate like the biosphere it attends, synergistically and reciprocally. This is biosphere politics of the future.
The new biosphere politics transcends traditional right/left distinctions so characteristic of the geopolitics of the modern market economy (limits of laissez-faire being now called free market extremism or fundamentalism) and nation-state era. The new divide is generational and contrasts the traditional top-down model of structuring family life, education, commerce, and governance with a younger generation whose thinking is more relational and distributive, whose nature is more collaborative and cosmopolitan, and whose work and social spaces favor open-source commons –bottom-up model. For the Internet generation, “quality of life” becomes as important as individual/collective opportunity in fashioning a new dream for the 21st century.
An inner, spiritual, empathetic individual and collective approach in post- modern consciousness and context requires neither unrelenting materialistic industrial destruction of the planet nor a retreat into imagined primitivistic utopias. Post-modernity calls us to move up the ladder transforming ourselves and our world to gain a quality of life higher than any we have ever known in the past…The task before us now is to deepen our interconnectedness and free ourselves thoroughly from alienation. Then our unified consciousness can only improve each individual’s sense of inextricable interconnectedness with all others, and we will never be caught in the destructive rampage inevitably unleashed by past and present extremes.
The global renaissance is work in progress since its initiation in Europe. For it to be successful, and for the human race to avoid descending into new dark ages of possibly catastrophic consequences, it is necessary that we get past the idea that any one particular culture is intrinsically superior to any other, and recognize that we are all deeply and profoundly interconnected, such that the apparent wealth of any one group is deeply related to the poverty of another. This new era will need an ethic of global responsibility, which will not be possible without the development of the inner sciences, based not on any one cultural tradition, but on the collective wisdom of all of humanity. If human nature is Homo empathicus as it turns out, and as scientists are suggesting, as that’s indeed our true nature, then we can begin to recreate new institutions— better parenting styles, better education, business and financial distributive models—that reflect our core nature as humans. Then only we can see how this Third Industrial Revolution will happen successfully.
References
[1] Al-Khalili Jim, ”The House of Wisdom” Golden Age of Learning in the Arab-speaking World, Qantara.de- 02/09/2011.
[2] Iqbal, “Muslim Democracy” in The New Era, 1916, p.251, quoted in Iqbal, The Secrets of self (Asrar-i-Khudi), (tr. with an introduction by Renold A. Nicholson, Lahore: Sh. Mohammed Ashraf, Reprint, 1983, p. xxix.
[3] Most of the information about this metaphor is derived from Peter J. Bowler, The Environmental Sciences. (New York: Norton, 1992). The most important pages are 53-57, 157-9 and passim
[4] Bowler, see endnote 11
[5] Marshall, o.c. p. 163 and p. 180
[6] Marshall, op.cit. p.xii
[7] Ibidem, op.cit., p. 409
[8] Ibidem, op.cit., p. 426
[9] [Fox, 2000 #184; Armstrong, 1993 #239.
[10] Ursala Goodenough, The Sacred Depths of Nature. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
[11] See the web sites www.earthcharter.org and www.earthcharterusa.org.
[12] a- Jeremy Rifkin, Algeny: A New Word—A New World, (NewYork: Penguin Books, 1983)[12] b-Steve Mcdonald, Entheogenesis Australis (EGA) Journal 3 – 2011/2012 (December 2011).
[13] M.Iqbal, Asrar-I khudi (Lahore, 1915); R.A.Nicholson, The Secrets of the Self (London, 1920); A.J. Arberry, Notes on Iqbal’s “Asrar-I khudi” (Lahore, 1955).
[14] Dillon, J.J. (2000). The spiritual child: Appreciating children’s transformative effects on adults. Encounter, 13(4), 4-18.
[15] Purpel, D.E. (2000). Review essay. Encounter, 13(4), 45-54.
[16] Zohar, D. and Marshall, I. (2004), Spiritual Capital: Wealth we can live by, San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
[17] Jacques van der Gaag ( 2003), From Child Development to Human Development. www.ecdgroup.com/pdfs/van_der_gaag_paper_CHILDDEV-20_05_2003-18_13_22.pdf
[18] Aslandogan Y. Alp, Pedagogical Model of Gulen and Modern Theories of Learning, 04 May 2006, Gulen’s website[19] Clarken, R. (2004).
[19] Unfolding pattern of human development. Northern Michigan University. Retrieved December 2004 pp.1-80.
[20] Mary Gordon( 2005,2007 and 2009) Roots of Empathy; Changing the World Child by Child. http://www.rootsofempathy.org.
[21] Clare, W Graves( 1974). Human Nature Prepares for a Momentous Leap.The Futurist magazine.
[22] Carroll, J. (2007) A Dialogue of Civilizations. Gülen’s Islamic Ideals and Humanistic Discourse (NJ:The Light, Inc.).
[23] M. Iqbal, Rumuz-I bekhudi (Lahore, 1918); A.J. Arberry, The Mystery of Selflessness
