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Global Intercultural Dialogue (2) - A democracy of ideas is also necessary
Germà PELAYO
Sunday, November 10, 2002 5:52 PM
ºººAbstract: From a perspective of dialogue among cultures, for the global
democracy: A North - South dialogue where South, always mistreated and
forgotten, invent in preference (but without imposing) the concepts and values
for our global spaceººº
Anxiety of universalism in the North, fear of colonialism in the South
There are two phenomena at global scale that have already been reflected in this
forum but perhaps without to mention their fundaments.
On one hand, in the countries of the first world, the historical experience of
the nationalist and imperialistic conflicts of the modern age and of the XIX
century, then the two world wars, the cold war, and the history of the left
struggles to change the enormous social inequalities, including the Soviet
imperial experience. All this is at the origin of the attitude of different
sectors of the Western society, to look for elements of possible solutions both
to the inequalities for to the usually conflictive character of the
nation-states. These search have carry them to consider very positively a
flexible whole of values and concepts as citizenship, human rights,
universalism, equality, etc. Despite that we were far away enough from an
appropriate practice of them.
On the other hand, the expansionism of Western modernity during the last five
centuries around almost the whole world, and the barbaric way in what it has
been carried out. A truth that the manuals of history in Western schools use to
omit or minimize. Exterminations, exploitation, massive slavery, economic,
social and political disorganization, physical and cultural humiliation, culture
being reduced to just folklore, neo-colonization, re-building of societies
according to drainage of resources towards Occident, as without that Occident
would have never been as developed as it is.
Outside of Western countries there is, in consequence, a rejection, intuitive or
meditated, of this mentioned whole of ideas or concepts. As these are words
originated in the Western tradition, so only for this reason their use cause
fear and is not usual that non Western people accept them for their own
discourse. The idea of universalism, for example, is felt like a new way of
domination. Instead this, in regards to the needing of a human globalization,
the idea of dialogue of cultures is better valued.
The matter is that Western hopes, as much as non Western fears, both are the
direct or indirect result of long historical processes, experiences and cultural
reflections transmitted along the generations, deep integrated in societies,
and, when looking it from a perspective of democratic equilibrium, both must be
kept in mind when formulating visions for the future of our planet.
South must accept global space, North must accept that South build the global
values
What can be done? First, in my opinion, to put the dialogue among these two
perspectives in the middle and deepest place of the building for a better world.
If such a dialogue could exist, my point of view for it, would be that both
sides should concede in some way to best coexist. For example, the non
Westerners could accept that in building a humanized globalization, that is the
next logical and ethical step of a modernity begun by Westerners, global common
values should be developed. They should also accept that, as being global
majorities, they should have a proportionally bigger weight to the one that they
have nowadays, concerning the responsibility of to invent and build such values.
They should overcome their fear for to enter in a space that is the consequence
of Western expansion, the global space. They should make an effort, to learn, to
invent, to have their own voice, to be hardly implicate.
The Westerners, for all these same reasons, they should allow to the other to
occupy their place in that space, that is to say, without necessarily to shut up
all the time, to give preference to the others, that formerly they mistreated
and forgotten, in the formulation of those common values. To put aside sometime
their discourses about universalism, individual rights, equality, etc., and let
the others build and put on the table their own visions of what the world should
be, sometimes by re-appropriating Western ideas, and also surely being inspired
by the best aspects of their own traditions.
Through this, perhaps maybe we will reach in having some common *universal*
values, democratically formulated, and accepted by all of us, for being the
result of a dialogue in *equality* of conditions. Some will see their hopes
being accomplished, and some will feel like at home, better, in our planetary
common house.
I don't want to discuss about that *first of all* we must to solve the economic
inequality instead of to beat about the bush, or *first of all* we must do this
or *first of all* we must do that. What we must do first of all is something
that we really were able to do, and then, work for a second thing. Everything is
necessary to be changed. The *democracy of ideas* that I am proposing, it is
also a human need, and it could constitute its own *community of ideas*. Each
change should be parallel and complementarily of others, a small economic
improvement rebounds in a cultural one, this one helps in changing attitudes,
which after will provoke a political transformation and through this another
economic improvement and so.
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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