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Intercultural global dialogue, some problems and concepts (1)
Germà PELAYO
Wednesday, November 06, 2002 7:04 PM
Dear friends,
You already know who I am, as technical moderator of the forum, in this
message however I'm changing my role for that of participant, in order to
give my personal opinion now, that things become really interesting. So, my
opinion here won't be more or less valid or important that those of anyone
of you.
I agree with many values and principles expressed up to now, but I also
differ with others. I believe that the best thing to do it is to talk about
all this through trying to introduce a forgotten perspective, (except for
brief comments in some introductions and in a contribution). This
perspective seems to me indispensable, it is intercultural global dialogue.
I won't give a defensive vision as use to do many culturalists, neither
critic, nor (I hope), superficial. What I want to do is to approach the
subject from a perspective of supposed opposite ideas or concepts (Western -
modern versus non Western - traditional thinking) that should to achieve a
consensus. You could believe this is a simplistic approach, regarding a
complex world, more complex that many of us use to conceive it, so, this
approach pretends only to be introduced like a game, for to get to the
point.
It happens that we search how to build a world democracy and an institution
that represents it, all this in the context of a social, economic,
culturally, etc. better world. Regarding the dialogue among cultures, the
challenge, from a dominant tough not majority Western perspective, is how to
accept traditions and paradigms that can be opposite to the Western
tradition of the democracy, but that they are not opposite to its last
meaning.
So first of all I will list these couples of concepts:
a) Universalism - pluralism: who can pronounce such unpronounceable words?
b) Laicism - Pancasila: the plurality of political attitudes before things
not well known
c) Rights - responsibilities:... they are the same thing!
d) Innovation - tradition: last objective is social cohesion
e) Coercion - (competition) - cooperation
f) Analysis - (transformation) - immersion
There are many other couples of supposed culturally opposite concepts that I
won't comment, because others have already made it, and / or I cannot
contribute with anything special about it:
g) individual growth - collective enrichment
h) identity - "alterity"
etc.
Finally, I have some other ideas about intercultural global dialogue, (apart
from others concerning the topics of the following months). These ideas have
not a place in this opposite system:
"Threshold": this is a proposal about a concentrate and common denominator
of interculturally agreed values, supported by a "c4" or "Cultural
Cartography of Conceptual Correspondences".
"Scalar cohesion level": a proposal of an evaluation tool for comparing
importance of each scale (from the person to the planet), that helps as a
counseling work for establishment of common minimums, and afterwards, this
allow diversification according to communities and cultures.
I will try to develop all this in 2 or 3 next messages. If I had not time, I
will place a document containing this thinking (in Spanish and only machine
translation to the other languages) in the "participants" section of our
website. (Remember, you can also request us to place your documents or links
there)
Best regards,
Germà
WP21 Alliance Forum on a World Parliament for the 21st Century
E-mail : world-parl@forums.alliance21.org
Fax 1 717 264 5036
Information, inscriptions, désinscriptions: germa@alliance21.org
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