DRAFT: 10/2/2002        CIVILIZATION: A GLOBAL JOURNEY

By Majid Tehranian

University of Hawaii at Manoa

Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research

 

Paper for Presentation at the First Annual International Symposium on

Seyyed Nourod-din Shah Nematollah Vali 

October 11-12, 2002

  San Jose State University (SJSU), San Jose, California, USA

 

 “In each … civilization, mankind… is trying to rise above mere humanity—above primitive humanity—that is—toward some higher kind of spiritual life… civilization, as we know it, is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor.” 

Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975), 1948

“We turn the dirt into gold with alchemy.

We heal every pain with a glance.”

-- Shah Nematollah Vali (1329-1431)

 

ABSTRACT

Civilization has been often employed as an ideology to assert ethnocentric prejudices that promote myths of racial or cultural superiority.  This essay argues that in reality there is only a single Majestic Tree of Global Civilization to which all nations have contributed by their scientific, technological, and cultural feeders.  As in a relay marathon, the torch of global civilization has been handed from nation to nation for the last seven million years of human life on earth.  The spiritual unity of all sentient beings in the universe is the foundation stone of global civilization and its secret of survival. 

 

Introduction

            Civilization is a murky concept.  Among the more concrete variables that determine the behavior of actors on the global scene, the concept of civilization entails many ambiguities.  Those who define it primarily in geopolitical terms see a clash of civilizations (Huntington 1996). Others who consider it mostly in normative terms call for negotiation of global ethics (Kung 1991).  Those who find it to be a more complex phenomenon encompassing both evolving structural foundations and cultural variations witness the birth pangs of a global civilization (Tehranian and Chappell 2002).  The new global civilization incorporates a unity of core values borrowed from all traditions of civility allowing for a diversity of cosmologies and cultures.  Diversity of cultures clearly responds to the differences in physical and social environments.  The emerging unity of core values is laying the foundation for a truly global civilization. 

Despite the current conceptual confusions, civilization has been playing an increasingly fashionable role as the moral justification for international actions.  Political actors have been unabashedly pursuing their material interests, yet they have justified them more and more in terms of fuzzy civilizational goals.  Osama Ben Laden justified his complicity in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States in the name of a hypothesized Islamic civilization.  Since Ronald Reagan, U. S. Presidents have justified their foreign policies as defense of Western civilization and “our way of life”.   In its bloody war against the Chechnyan independence movement, Russia also has invoked civilizational values.  State and non-state terrorists are thus increasingly resorting to civilizational rationalizations.  Transnational corporations (TNCs) lust for profits, yet they do it in the name of civilizational progress.  Even scholars have lately succumbed to the temptation to argue that a clash of civilizations is shaping our own post-cold war era.  Collateral damages in people, pestilence, and pollution are often dismissed as the price we have to pay for civilizational advance.  In this foggy discourse, the realities of naked material interests driving the global actors are generally mystified.   The clash of collective egos, dogmas, and aggressive politics are too easily taken for a clash of cultures and civilizations. 

            As a young man growing up in Iran during the postwar years, I learned to be profoundly skeptical of the term “civilization.”  It conjured up contradictory emotions.   I had learned at school that Iran was heir to a great civilization.  Our textbooks were glittered with the glories of the Achaemenids, Sasanids, and Safavids[1].  HoweverBesides, my Marxist high school teacher used to sardonically remind us in verse, “Those who boast because of their ancestors resemble the dogs content with a bone.”    In the meantime, messages from the West cast a dark shadow of doubt on Iran’s modern status in the world.  In the name of Western civilizational values, the British government showed thorough contempt for Iran’s right to nationalize its petroleum industry (1951-1953).  For their part, the Iranians indignantly resented the British haughtiness and American complicity.  Signs on the British clubs in Abadan[2] had for years read, “Dogs and Persians are not allowed!”   Anglo-American companies boycotted the nationalized oil.  In 1953, the U. S. Central Agency (CIA) launched a coup to replace a democratically elected government with the Shah’s dictatorship (Roosevelt 1979, relevant published CIA documents).

Iranian views of Great Powers (Russia, Britain, and the United States) focused on their manifest malevolence.  All misfortunes, including natural disasters, were often attributed to the cunning plans of the British Intelligence Service. When the Americans largely replaced the British as the dominant power in Iran, the conspiracy theories centered on the CIA.  Later in the 1980s, some royalists viewed the Islamic Revolution as an Anglo-American plot!   The overthrown Shah (Pahlavi 1980) suspected that those two powers could not tolerate the rise of a Great Civilization under His Majesty’s leadership. 

In conspiracy theories the periphery nations often find a convenient moral justification for the degradation of powerlessness. In parallel, the shame of weakness often seeks its refuge in grandiosity, aggression, depression, or a combination.  Witness Saddam Hussein.  The colonizers’ greed and arrogance finds its match in the anger and defiance of the colonized.   The two sides use all the arsenals in their possession.   The imperial arsenals confront the anti-imperial guerrillas.  The systematic state terrorism of the imperialists faces the anti-colonials’ hit and run terror tactics.   The venom of a cold war often matches the intensity of the hot war.   The ideological outcome has recently been expressing itself in a hypothesized civilizational war.  Islamic medievalism is castigated in the name of progressive Western values.  Western materialism and greed is denounced in the name of Islamic demands for equality and justice.

 

Is civilization on trial?

            In the last few decades, a variety of “fundamentalisms” have captured the political imagination of some political actors.  Militant movements, ranging from market[3] to Islamic, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist “fundamentalists”, have taken center stage in some societies (Marty & Appleby 1991, 1992, 1993).  I employ quotation marks around “fundamentalism” because in traditions that have no Holy Books on which to rely for a literal understanding, fundamentalism is a misnomer.  However, secular or religious dogmas often gain currency in demagogic politics.  What unify such worldviews are literal beliefs in some dogmas.  When combined with fervent zeal, the beliefs turn into a mass movement to establish religious or secular utopias on earth.

In recent decades, the clash of fundamentalisms has indeed put human civilization on trial (Ali 2002).  The term “civilization” has been often employed in international discourse to camouflage the dogmas.  Due to geographic proximity and economic interdependence, the Western-Islamic ideological confrontation has shown a particular intensity.  Another type of confrontation was the order of the day during the Cold War (1947-1989).  In the 1960s, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev dramatically boasted that communism will “bury” the capitalist world by its superior civilization.  In the 1980s, U. S. President Ronald Reagan spoke of the defeat of the communist “Evil Empire” as a moral imperative facing the civilized West.  Starting with the Bandung conference of the non-aligned nations in 1955, the ideological struggle took a three-way war of words among the Sino-Soviet, Western, and non-aligned blocs.  Following the revolution of 1979 in Iran, in defense of an Islamic civilization, Ayatollah Khomeini cursed both Soviet and American camps by casting them as the little and Great Satan.    All rhetoric was cast in the name of civilization.

The terrorist attack on the United States on September 11, 2001 was the culmination of two centuries of mutual recrimination between Western imperialists and Islamic militants (Said 1978, 1994, 1997).  Following the Second World War, The United States has led the imperialists cum globalists against a variety of nativist movements ranging from religious to nationalist, ethnic, and labor revolts.  In defense of “civilization,” the level of rhetoric has significantly shot up after 9/11.  In the name of an Islamic Jihad, Osama Ben Laden has called for attacks on Americans throughout the world.  U. S. President George W. Bush has declared a crusade in which an “Axis of Evil,” consisting of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, must be baptized by bombs.[4] 

            The discourse on civilization has not been very civilized.  Dubious defenders of civilization have urgently called our attention to this troublesome concept.  Some scholars have plausibly argued that due to the decline of nation-states and empires, civilization presents a category of analysis more relevant to the post-Cold War conditions (Huntington 1993).   Despite the claims of decline, however, nationalism and imperialism continue to show vibrancy.  The ethnic groups that are denied statehood, such as the Palestinians, Uighurs, Chechnyans, Kurds, and Tibetans, continue to struggle for recognition.  Following 9/11, American nationalism has been understandably revived.  Transnational corporations (TNC) have assumed a more powerful role in state and inter-state affairs, including political meddling in the affairs of large and small countries. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs), such as the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, have managed to bring reluctant states to take some small steps toward disarmament.  Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Trade Organization (WTO) have made and unmade governments by their policies. 

            In contrast to these material forces, the ideational role of norms and values in international politics is at best ambiguous.  To understand this role, we must achieve some level of clarity about normative concepts such as civilization.  Arnold Toynbee’s seven-volume Study of History provides a good starting for understanding the complexity of the subject.  But his Civilization on Trial  (1948) can better remind us of the parallels between the immediate postwar era and our own turbulent times.  

In times of historical transition, the role of foundational myths and core values embedded in civilizational conflicts becomes critical.  Both Cold War and post-Cold War periods represent such epochs.  They have been marked both by bitter disappointments and fervent utopian hopes.  The end of WWII was marked by the hopes for a new world order characterized by Great Power cooperation to maintain collective security through the United Nations Security Council.  Those hopes were dashed by a balance of terror between two superpowers armed to the teeth by nuclear weapons.  Similarly, the end of the Cold War promised freedom from the dark nuclear shadow overhanging the earth.  It also gave rise to great hopes for peace dividends resulting from disarmament and supposed to be channeled toward global prosperity.  Within a decade, however, the Gulf War, ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia, genocide in Rwanda-Burundi, and the relentless confrontation between the Israelis and Palestinians tore those dreams into tatters.   The terrorist acts of 9/11 and their aftermath are casting on the world the specter of a global civil war without physical or moral boundaries.

 

Is civilization a good idea?

When someone asked Mahatma Gandhi what do you think of Western Civilization, he promptly replied, “It would be a good idea!”   The same irony can be thrust upon any other civilization, whether Eastern or Western.  No civilization has ever lived up to its own ideals.  Having traveled along the ancient Silk, Spice, and Incense Roads[5], I am increasingly doubtful of distinctions between Eastern and Western Civilizations.  It is more historically realistic to think of civilization in the singular rather than plural.  All other civilizations may be considered branches of an awesome Tree of Global Civilization.  Put more simply, there are many cultures but only one global civilization.  And global civilization is a good ideal to strive for.   If and when civilization’s costs and benefits are more equitably shared, we may even approach that ideal!  

The spread of civilization has taken place through the processes of globalization.  

Globalization is not a new phenomenon.  From above globalization has been often driven by military conquests and hegemonic projects.  World conquerors such as Cyrus, Alexander, Chenguiz Khan, Napoleon, and the European, American, and Japanese imperialists have led the globalization process from the top.   Religious and political revolts such as the Christian underground movement in the Roman Empire, the Islamic overrun of the Persian and Byzantine Empires, and the modern revolutionary movements have led a process of globalization from the bottom.   Today, globalization forces from non-governmental organizations are playing the same subversive role vis-à-vis globalization by the TNCs, Great Powers, and the Bretton Wood institutions[6].

Cultural exchange has been going on for untold centuries.  We can find few cultures in the world that have not borrowed from others.  The first globalization took place along the ancient Spice, Incense, and Silk Roads.  The second globalization occurred when Columbus “discovered” the New World.  The European colonization of Africa, Asia, and Americas forcibly brought East and West into intimate contact.  The third globalization is now in progress through global communication and markets.  It has led to the rise of a new global Network Civilization (see chapters 2 and 7). 

Discerning students of history cannot fail but to note an overwhelming fact.  We may loosely speak of Western, Chinese, or Islamic civilizations, but in reality there is only one civilization to which we all belong.   In every major city, we can now witness its mixed blessings, including Coca Cola, Pizza parlors, Sushi bars, Sony, IBM, CNN, and BBC.  All these products are clearly gifts of the industrial world to the rest.   But who invented fire?  Probably the Africans.  The wheel?  Probably the Central Asian nomads. Decimal numbers?  The Indians and Arabs.  Writing? The Egyptians, Sumerians, and Greeks.  Postal system?  The Persians.  Gunpowder, paper money, silk, and compass?   The Chinese.  Printing?  The Chinese, Koreans, and Germans.  I can go on and on.

Like a torch in a relay marathon, civilization has been passed on from hand to hand.  Paleontologists tell us that the African hunters and gatherers led the way.  The latest ancestor of homo sapiens has been found in Chad in a skeleton dating back seven million years. The agriculturalists of major river basins followed.  The traders of the Silk and Spice Roads then accumulated huge fortunes in such commercial cities as Xian, Samarkand, Bokhara, Isfahan, Baghdad, Aleppo, Athens, Venice, and Rome.  With the introduction of manufacturing and rise of industrial societies, the turn of Western Europe came.    Industrial civilization was subsequently exported to the New World.   Ever since the rise of informatics, the United States has been on the forefront.

 

The civilizing process[7]

Human civilization has thus developed from its nomadic phase (99% of human history) to the agrarian, commercial, industrial, and informatic stages.  Two facts of history stand out in this process: Domination and Resistance.  Those peoples who have
led the way technologically and economically also have dominated the world militarily.  In empire after empire, those who have fallen behind have resisted the dominant.  It is foolishly human for those who are temporarily ahead to claim some kind of moral superiority.   But technological, economic, and military advance do not automatically confer moral superiority.

The Golden Rule may be reasonably considered a good universal litmus test in moral achievement: “In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you.”  This is a paramount Judaic-Christian ethical imperative that has perennially resonated in the Greek, Confucian, Buddhist, and Islamic philosophies.    On that test, most of our civilization is failing today.    On that test, civilized persons must have a capacity to empathize with “the other.”   Those who inflict violence must feel the pain and suffering of their victims and ask themselves if the moral cause they espouse justifies such extremity.  On that test, moral causes embedded in ideological and normative concepts such as liberalism, nationalism, communism, democracy, and freedom cannot pass easily. 

Only self-defense may pass that test.  But in self-defense, we have a range of options from violent to non-violent means.  Non-violence is natural.  Violence is a deviance.   If it were the reverse, we would not have over six billion people living in the world today (Paige 2002).   Self-interest primarily dictates human cooperation and co-existence.  Self-defense in the present global technological and economic environment is a legitimate but complex moral choice.  Do we have the moral right to unleash nuclear, biological, chemical, or suicide bombing on non-combatants?  Military jargon identifies such damages to people and property as “collateral damage.”    More accurately, such damages reveal a cultural lag between our rapidly advancing technologies of warfare and our old-fashioned rules of conduct in military confrontations.  Our moral, political, and legal rules have clearly not kept up with the accelerating ferocity of technologies of warfare.  

Civilization demands rules of conduct commensurate with the level of complexity of each historical epoch.  The new high-tech technologies of mass violence cross all past physical and moral boundaries.  They require new rules of conduct going well beyond national flags and boundaries.   For that if no other reason, civilization must be considered a global journey not a destination. Like democracy, it is an unfinished global project.  We are deluding ourselves if we claim to have arrived at a civilized or democratic state.  Civilization and democracy are ideals worth striving for.   No nation has yet completely banished violence from its social life.   A democratic government of the people, by the people, and for the people has not yet been achieved anywhere in the world.   Some countries may have advanced ahead of others in this journey.  But since weapons of mass destruction and terrorism know no boundaries, the civilized and democratic rules of conduct cannot be drawn up by one state and imposed on others.  They must be negotiated globally through the global institutions we have currently at our disposal. 

We have made significant strides on that road, but at heavy cost.  It took World War I to establish the League of Nations.  It took another world war to establish the United Nations.  Do we have to have a third global war to recognize the need for the rule of international law?   Albert Einstein once wisely observed that he does not know with what weapons WWIII will be fought but he knows that WWIV will be fought with sticks and arrows. 

The beginnings of a World Constitution can be found in the UN Charter.  It is not perfect and needs to be democratized (Camilleri, Malhotra, and Tehranian 2000; Aksu and Camilleri 2002).  We also have a global Bill of Rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its ancillary documents.  The rule of international law is far from ideal, but we have the World Court and now the International Criminal Court.  An emerging global society also has contributed to the World Constitution by such documents as the Earth Charter (www.earthcharter.org) or the Universal Declaration of World Citizens (www.toda.org).    The monument of a global civilization is being built brick by brick, tear by tear. 

 

The purpose of this volume

This volume focuses on the long journey.   It thereby analyzes the impact of globalization on international relations. It argues that we are currently witnessing the birth pangs of a global civilization.  If the new civilization were to survive, it would have to be grounded on the common humanist norms of all past civilizations.  Aldous Huxley has identified that continuing tradition of civility as perennial philosophy (Huxley 1944).   But the birth pangs of a global civilization are currently hostage to the conflicts between centers and peripheries of power.   Stemming from two power polarities, Globalism and Tribalism are the two most potent ideologies that threaten the birth of a humane global civilization.  I use “Tribalism” in this context as a metaphor and not in its literal sense.  As a metaphor, Tribalism suggests the rise of a variety of religious, nationalist, ethnic, and sectarian causes that demand total and often totalitarian devotion to a single identity, group, and often-charismatic leader.  Globalist and Tribalist ideologies are energized by two dominant pathologies of the modern world: commodity and identity fetishism. Only genuine dialogue among the different branches of a single global civilization can rescue the world from a protracted global civil war of terrorism and counter-terrorism waged by the Globalist cum Imperialist and Tribalist forces.  To reverse the current trends, however, the dialogue must be focused on the most urgent needs of our own era, including a war on weapons of mass destruction, poverty and ignorance, and for sustainable and equitable world development, as well as democratic governance.

Few have more eloquently identified the civilizing force of compassion than Mahatma Gandhi  (1996, 242-243):

“We must either let the Law of Love rule us through and through or not at all. Love among us based on hatred of others breaks down under the slightest pressure. The fact is such love is never real love. It is an armed peace. And so it will be in this great movement in the West against war. War will only be stopped when the conscience of mankind has become sufficiently elevated to recognize the undisputed supremacy of the Law of Love in all the walks of life. Some say this will never come to pass. I shall retain the faith till the end of my earthly existence that this shall come to pass  . . .

“…Non-violence is a weapon of the strong. With the weak, it might easily be hypocrisy. Fear and love are contradictory terms. Love is reckless in giving away, oblivious as to what it gets in return. Love wrestles with the world as with itself and ultimately gains a mastery over all other feelings. My daily experience, as of those who are working with me, is that every problem would lend itself to solution if we were determined to make the law of truth and non-violence the law of life. For truth and non-violence are, to me, faces of the same coin.

“Whether mankind will consciously follow the law of love I do not know. But that need not perturb us. The law will work, just as the law of gravitation will work whether we accept it or no. And just as a scientist will work wonders out of various applications of the laws of nature, even so a man who applies the law of love with scientific precision can work greater wonders. For the force of non-violence is
infinitely more wonderful and subtle than the force of nature, like for instance electricity.

“The person who discovered for us the law of love was a far greater scientist than any of our modern scientists. Only our explorations have not gone far enough and so it is not possible for everyone to see all its workings. Such, at any rate, is the hallucination, if it is one, under which I am laboring. The more I work at this law, the more I feel the delight in life, the delight in the scheme of this universe. It gives me a peace and a meaning of the mysteries of nature that I have no power to describe.”

Methodological Caveats

            Social scientists are deeply immersed in that which they study.  Like fish in water, they do not realize the immensity of the ocean.   They are positioned in particular social classes and political, ethnic, generational, and gender groups that limit and bias their understanding.  As scholars they must and often do detach themselves from their interest groups to study society dispassionately.   But the work of their greatest minds such as Ibn Khaldun, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Sigmund Freud are at best grand failures in objectivity.  Their grand failures have opened new vistas for human understanding and imposed novel biases and constraints on that understanding.

In the face of the inevitable limits on human understanding imposed by our time, space, and social positions, the most useful strategy for an author is to expose his own biases for himself and others to see.   To hide behind the myth of objectivity serves neither science nor policy.   My own biases, dear reader, are fairly transparent.   I have lived in three different continents (Asia, Europe, and North America) and during three historical eras, including World War II, the Cold War, and the new era of Globalism and Tribalism.  I have also experienced exile in a period of history in which diasporas have become the fate of an increasing number of people (The Economist, September 28, 2002).   Due to forced or voluntary migration, there are millions of Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis, Africans, Turks, and Iranians scattered around the world.   Such displaced persons have had the choice either to assimilate in their host cultures, retreat into an ethnic ghetto, or construct a new synthetic culture and civilization transcending their past and new cultural realities.  For persons in diaspora, the rise of a new global civilization is an existential reality.  The diasporic cosmopolitan identity thus responds not only to a subjective need but also to the objective circumstances of what has come to be vaguely known as “globalization.” 

The values that underlie such a nascent global civilization are often contradictory.  They have visibly entailed both commodity as well identity fetishism, market as well as religious fundamentalism.  For the purposes of this volume, however, I would characterize a civilized global order as follows:

·        Respect for the Planet Earth and all its sentient beings.

·        Respect for human rights and responsibilities, including life, liberty, equality, community, diversity, and pursuit of happiness.

·        Respect for the common heritage of humankind.

·        Support for all scientific, cultural, and artistic creativity.

·        Maximization of peaceful conflict resolution through adjudication, arbitration, negotiation, mediation, and satyagraha (i. e. active resistance against injustice).

·        Minimization of manifest, latent, and structural violence.

·        Construction of just and democratic governance at all levels from local to global.

 

Organization of chapters

To understand the central problematic of the new global civilization, chapter 2 begins with a theory of civilization built on the shoulders of such giants as Herodutus (484-425 BC?), Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), Giopvanni Battista Vico (1688-1744), Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975), Fernand Braudel (1902-19850, and Norton Elias.  The theory, however, significantly departs from the previous views by unabashedly asserting the primacy of a singular tree of global civilization with many branches and numerous cultural fruits. 

Chapter 2 goes more deeply into the evolution of civilizations and empires, from nomadic to agrarian, commercial, industrial, and informatic systems.   It particularly analyzes the transition from national to global capitalism, labeled here Pancapitalism.  The chapter argues that each civilization has forged its own imperial system.  Technological and political hegemony has thus been a constant historical reality.  In our own era, colonial empires have increasing given to an informatic empire under a pancapitalist regime.   A new hegemonic form of control, informatic imperialism is primarily focused on control of knowledge industries rather than territories.  Control of the most advanced intellectual property rights in copyright, patents, and licenses is thus the main hegemonic drive.

Chapters 3-6 compare civilizations by focusing on their modes of production, legitimation, regulation, and communication.    In this fashion, the economic, political, social, and cultural aspects of civilizations are compared and contrasted over changing times and spaces.   Each chapter analyzes how a central social function in history has been served by different social systems.  It also shows how ethnocentric it is to consider particular forms of accumulation, legitimation, socialization, and communication as “civilized” or “primitive.”      

Chapter 7 concludes by focusing on the main features of our own global Network Civilization.   The world today is at the edge of a new civilization.   As Charles Dickens had observed in another age of transition[8], these are the best and worst of times.   Two virulent ideologies, Globalism and Tribalism, have entered into a warring engagement of uncertain outcome.  The Cold War between the capitalist West and the communist East was primarily a struggle between two competing ideologies of “progress” focused on territorial expansion.   The new Network War between Globalism and Tribalism is fundamentally a struggle between a North-South division that knows no boundaries.   The symbolic North encompasses Western Europe and North America but also the pockets of riches in oceans of poverty in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe.  The symbolic South comprises the less developed world but also the slums in Western Europe and North America.  The battlefields thus cut across national boundaries and are spread around the world in global competing networks.   The new war is de-territorialized, employing state and non-state terrorism as its weapon of choice as well as all the available channels of global communication as its propaganda pipelines.   The new war may be considered a war of haves against have-nots, the pre-modern and modernizing against the modern and postmodern worlds.

Relations between centers and peripheries are hostage to a democratization of civilization.  Democratic norms and institutions must be however developed in response to the local, national, and regional variations in resource endowments and cultural environments.  At the global level, reform of the institutions of global governance must redress the glaring imbalance between the centers and peripheries of power.  If such reforms do not effectively take place, the world would face a prolonged century of violence to the detriment security both at the centers and peripheries.  

In Dante’s Divine Comedy, Virgil takes the poet by the hand and guides him through hell and purgatory but stops at the gates of paradise.  No one else but Dante’s lifelong love, Beatrice, can take him through the gates.   Paradise in Divine Comedy is an apt metaphor for human civilization.  We cannot enter a civilized state unless we have faced our own civilization’s demons in the hellish life of avarice, pride, rage, and hatred.  That is the necessary minimum for reaching a plateau of knowledge in the purgatory.   The bliss of paradise is denied those who cannot go through the pain and suffering of self-critically looking at themselves in the mirror.   Only in paradise, love reigns supreme. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_____________________________________

 

Majid Tehranian is professor of international communication at the University of Hawaii and director of the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research.  A graduate of Dartmouth and Harvard, Tehranian’s publications include 20 books and more than 100 articles in over a dozen languages.  He also edits Peace & Policy as well as the Toda Institute Book Series. This essay presents a draft of chapter 1 of his forthcoming book, Civilization: A Global Journey.  Comments and criticisms would be most welcomed. Email: majid@hawaii.edu Website: www2.hawaii.edu/~majid

DRAFT: 10/1/2002

 

 

 

 

 

CIVILIZATION:

 

A GLOBAL JOURNEY

 

 

 

By Majid Tehranian

University of Hawaii at Manoa

Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research

 

 

 

 

 

Preface

 

1.      Introduction

 

2.      A Theory of Civilization

 

3.      Modes of Production

 

4.      Modes of Legitimation

 

5.      Modes of Socialization

 

6.      Modes of Communication

 

7.      Network Civilization

 

8.      Conclusion

 

References

Index