I would define myself as a pro-Western progressive. I am more and more dismayed at progressives who are anti-Western and who naively align themselves with any anti-Western cause.
This does not mean that I am not highly critical of conservative Western forces, particularly of Corporatism and right-wing Christianity.
The reason I am pro-Western is because, despite ‘all’ its many faults the Western system affords the best possibility for people to achieve their highest potential. Despite all the moral conservatism of the US, gays, lesbians, naturists, pagans, and a whole range of sub-cultures are able to find some expression and tolerance. How many naturist groups are there in Islamic countries?
This is why I make no apology in supporting Israel in its conflict with Hezbollah. Hezbollah is a fanatical, intolerant, fundamentalist movement. I hope it is destroyed as all fascism ought to be destroyed. This does not mean that I am not critical of Israel and its militaristic culture. But it must be remembered that Israeli society is politically diverse. There are Israeli naturists and an openly gay mayor. Israeli gay Arabs can find a freedom they could never dream of under Hamas.
I do not believe cultures or ideologies have rights. I do not believe in social holons. Societies are complexes of individuals and the prime directive only applies to individuals. I therefore judge each society/ideology/culture on how well it allows its members to reach their highest potential.
I am therefore extremely wary of undermining Western culture because I fear its collapse and what might replace it. It could be improved, but it is the best we’ve got.
The reason I am pro-Western is because, despite ‘all’ its many faults the Western system affords the best possibility for people to achieve their highest potential. Despite all the moral conservatism of the US, gays, lesbians, naturists, pagans, and a whole range of sub-cultures are able to find some expression and tolerance.
My sentiments exactly!
Ray do you remember when G.W. Bush was giving a talk in Parliament in Canberra, and the very next day President Hu of China was going to give a talk? I thought, this will be interesting! And exactly as I expected, 4000 or so turned out to protest Bush and America, the only protesters for Hu were a few people from a Tibetan freedom group.
I am no neocon, but I find the expression useful idiot appropriate in this context.
Ray:
You may not believe in social holons, but they exist nonetheless, and like individual holons, are motivated to survive. The West has the rules that it does because it can generally play by those rules and survive. For example, we can have rules of war that emphasize not directing hostilities to non-combatants–indeed, that define a large proportion of the populace as non-combatants–because those rules happen to favor large states that can devote billions of dollars to the latest technology in weapons, and select a relatively small proportion of the total population to fight the war. These rules are clearly stacked against smaller, popular movements, which can’t afford such weaponry, and which don’t have enough members to select out of them a relatively small warrior class.
Likewise, we can have relatively open and diverse societies, for the most part, because that openness does not threaten their survival. People can say and to a large extent do almost anything, because most words and actions are no threat to the fabric of American society. That fabric is to a large extent economic, and as long as most people consume, consume, consume, and American economic wealth grows, grows, grows, the society will be preserved.
But these liberties are only allowed to the extent that the don’t threaten survival of the social holon. When they do, these liberties are very definitely expendable. Thus Bush is now bitterly complaining about a judge’s decision that his warrantless wiretapping of American citizens’ calls is unconstitutional. It’s hard for me to imagine a more traditonal right of Americans than to have conversations with people of their choosing without the government’s listening in. Isn’t that sort of what free speech is all about? Bush’s argument, of course, is that we are up against a fanatical enemy and to win this war, we have to suspend some freedoms.
It doesn’t take a genius to see where this argument goes. Any degree of repression and fascism is not only permissible, but necessary, if an outside threat seems to dictate it. I’m not saying we’re headed to a fascist state, I’m only saying that because the bottom line is always survival of the social holon, there is no force or ethic or law that can guarantee that we won’t end up there–not through some coup or extra-legal movement, but simply by playing by “American rules”. All our openness and freedoms come with a disclaimer: these are allowed as long as America is not seriously threatened from the outside. The Declaration of Independence be damned, there are no inalienable rights, there are only rights that are permitted as long as their exercise doesn’t threaten the survival of society.
Now I’m as realist as the next person. I know that politics involves compromises and sacrifices. The ultimate form of realism would say, well, if America is really threatened with survival, what choice does it have? Better survival in some form, even one drastically curtailing traditional liberties, than to be annihalated, no? Certainly that is the argument Bush and the right want us to adopt.
What bothers me, though, is that this realism is not applied to other societies. We don’t seem to understand that much of the Muslim world feels under siege, has felt that way for a long time, and is fighting for survival in exactly the same way we do–by making use of whatever they have to fight. With possibly a few crazed exceptions, Islamic fundamentalists are not trying to kill and destroy simply for that sake. They are fighting for what they perceive as the survival of their way of life.
According to the doctrine of “there is no moral equivalence”, which you have stated you adhere to, America and Israel are a priori considered to be the good guys, and therefore pretty much anything they want to do is allowed. Is it right that Israel have nuclear weapons and not Iran? According to you, yes, because we are the good guys and they are the bad guys. (Apparently immediately post 9/11, Iran signaled to the U.S. it wanted to help create a nuclear-free mid East. The proposal was dismissed out of hand). Can Israel, in apparent violation of the cease-fire, commit more military strikes deep in Lebanon? Yes, because the rationale is it has to stop Iran and Syria from sending arms to Hezbollah. The fact that America gives Israel $3 billion or whatever worth of arms every year, openly, doesn’t count, because again, we are the good guys. Israel is allowed to have all the arms it wants, Hezbollah is not. And you wonder why so much of the rest of the world is losing respect for America?
I’m not writing all this as an anti-Western diatribe. As a strong believer in the hierarchical view, I do think Western society is more advanced in many respects than Islam society. I say in many respects, because as Mark Edwards would warn us, there are so many different lines or streams or facets of development that it is dangerous, if not actually impossible, to make absolute comparisons. We can identify certain aspects of a society, and argue cogently if never with perfect certainty that these are more advanced, more desirable, than the equivalent arrangements in some other society. Mark probably doesn’t even like this, but it’s a fait accompli. Everyone in effect does this whenever he/she takes a political position.
I share with you your admiration of Israeli society. The fact that some of the strongest critics of the Lebanon war come from within that society speaks volumes about how open that society is. It’s one thing for Americans to speak out against American ventures abroad, when, even post 9/11, we are relatively safe on our home soil. It’s remarkable that Israelis can when they are surrounded by avowed enemies.
The real problem, as I see it, is superficially, the same problem that Bush sees. We want other people to adopt our system of government, or something like it. But when Bush says that, what he means is regime overthrow, followed by an attempt to impose democracy (an oxymoron if ever there was one). What I mean is extending our rules of fair play beyond our society to the world. So, for example, when Hamas wins a democratic election, we don’t try to destabilize the victors–a policy we have put in play again and again and again, in Iran in the 1950s (arguably a root cause of Islamic terror today, certainly a root cause of all our problems with the regime there now), with Chile, with Guatemala, with Nicaragua, with Panama, etc., etc. This policy has almost always failed in the long term, as it deserves to, because it conflicts with our own stated, and within our borders to some extent practiced, political philosophy.
Likewise, when Hezbollah kidnaps a couple of Israeli soldiers, we don’t protest, unfair, because Israel has certainly kidnapped its share of enemy soldiers, not to mention other individuals with questionable connections to the military. When Hezbollah fires rockets at Israeli cities, killing citizens indiscriminately, we don’t protest, unfair, because this action followed Israeli air attacks on Lebanon cities. (You argue that many Lebanese “civilians” in fact aided and abetted Hezbollah. You think voting, tax-paying Israeli citizens are not aiding and abetting the IDF?). When Syria and Iran ship arms to Hezbollah, we don’t protest, unfair, because America ships far more arms to Israel. These are acts of war, and though we want to stop war and with it acts like these, as long as war continues, acts like these will, too, and they are fair within our own avowed rules.
There are something like one billion Muslims in the world, and their numbers are growing faster than the populations of the West. I think it is totally unrealilstic, even forgetting arguments based on fair play, to regard them as an implacable enemy that must be squashed. Of course, only a fraction of this number is hard core fundamentalists, but virtually everything we are doing in the mid East is helping this number grow. We do have to come to terms with them, and I think by persuasion, not by force. It’s impossible to practice persuasion by being hypocritical about our own rules.
There is always the argument that Israel’s enemies, particularly Iran, have said they want to destroy it, whereas Israel has never said it wants to destroy any Islamic society. But to “defend” itself Israel has had to impose a degree of dominance that in effect does destroy some societies or portions of them.
(I have to leave this computer now, so I can’t finish).
(continued)
Likewise, to obtain the energy and other resources that make our societies relatively free and open we have to take them from other parts of the world, making people there poorer and less healthy.
You say, “I am therefore extremely wary of undermining Western culture because I fear its collapse and what might replace it.” The question is, can Western culture exist without a much larger “underclass” of undeveloped countries to nourish it? The jury is very much out on that question. And if it is not possible, and Western societies must constantly defend itself enemy societies, how much of our culture will actually survive such wars when we routinely justify suspension of our own principles for the sake of survival?
Hi Andy,
There’s a lot to reply, much of which I agree with. However I understand the arguments in support of social holons and reject them. Any society is not a single ’social holon’ but a complex of competing and co-operating cliques run by individuals. Individual freedom is challenged by those groups who feel threatened. Fundamentalist groups attack gay rights, Corporate elites attack environmental, consumer and reform groups, etc. It is not the ’social holon’ defending itself.
To continue…I dispute that social holons exist. In fact I think the idea is a fantasy based on a misunderstanding of what societies are and how they function. Societies are not static, they change considerably over time. If you compared 1800’s America to 1900’s and 2000’s you’d notice considerable change. A society is a complex ecology of co-operating and competing elites, factions, groups and sub-cultures. Both change and resistance to change occurs as these groups seek to pursue their self-interest. There is no social ‘agency’ and no definable ‘interior’. The interior is an illusion of a complex intersubjective space that is constructed both consciously and unconsciously. A society is constructed by its members, not by some self-agentic process.
Now to make a correction. I most definitely do not subscribe to the good guy bad guy scenario. I do not think the US or Israel should have nuclear weapons because they are good. They quite clearly are often not good. Furthermore, I don’t think anyone should have nuclear weapons. I don’t think the US or Israel should, so I’m not going to say Iran should either. In fact I’m all for disarmament and controls on the arms trade.
I believe that any side in a conflict contains shades of grey and are both victim and perpetrator at the same time. No-one gets a clean slate. US and Israeli policy has created and exacerbated Arab resentment. And, parallel to this, Arab policy has created and exacerbated US and Israeli hostility toward them. From the 1920’s there have been influential forces in the Arab world intent on destroying Jewish ambitions in the region. In fact, it seems that Arab militants began the cycle of violence by attacking Jewish settlers. In can be readily argued that an aggressive Jewish response escalated the conflict. Since then it has been a cycle of action and reaction. The Arabs have a right to defend themselves and so do the Israelis. The way out of this tit for tat response is to somehow transcend the basic conflict. Israel cannot trust Arabs until they are sure the overwhelming majority accept its existance. Until they can be sure of this they must be suspicious of Arabs in general. In my view this is the bottom line issue. As long as there is an Arab/Muslim view that Jews should not have an independent state then Israel must always be suspicious.
Now in regard to Israeli citizens aiding and abetting the IDF, absolutely true. But there is a crucial difference. The IDF uses uniforms and identifies itself. It lauches its rockets from military vehicles. Hezbollah does not always use a uniform and it hides its missiles in civilian areas and fires them from civilian vehicles. Hezbollah knows the difference between the IDF and a civilian, the IDF does not and cannot know the difference between Hezbollah and a citizen.
But I’m not going to cry about that or complain about insurgents using guerilla tactics. What I will complain about is them turning around and complaining that the IDF kills civilians when they know full well their tactics put civilians in harm’s way. My point is this – if we expect the West to fight using a high moral standard then we should also apply that standard to the West’s enemies. If we are going to excuse guerilla warfare because of a perceived power imbalance then we are dealing with a rather crude moral equivilence. So, it’s okay for urban guerillas to kill civilians but not okay for standard armies to kill civilians? It’s okay for jihadists to torture captives but not okay for Western armies to torture captives?
If you were to apply the standards of a just war to both sides equally and fairly then Hezbollah turns out to be the aggressor and the war criminal, not the victim. Similarly if you were to apply the principles of Islamic justice to both sides equally and fairly Israel would be seen as fully justified and even restrained in its response. (But here we run into a problem, under Islamic law Muslims are treated differently to ‘infidels’. Islam has a built in system of discrimination; infidels are scum and non-Muslims defined as ‘people of the book’ are always second-class citizens. The law is not applied equally and fairly).
You say: “The question is, can Western culture exist without a much larger “underclass†of undeveloped countries to nourish it?” But the world economy is interconnected and if the West’s economy were to collapse tomorrow then that would have a dramatic impact on undeveloped countries. Western technological progress has meant progress for all countries. My argument would be that the West has been far too miserly in allowing that technology and wealth to trickle down. It could have done, and should do, much more. It also depends on how you define ‘Western culture’. I agree fully that the West’s material abundance is based on the exploitation of other countries. I believe there is compelling moral argument based on the prime directive for economic reform and economic justice. But Western culture is much more than the economy. I’m thinking specifically of those modernist ideas that promote diversity and tolerance, the founding principles of an open and progressive society.
Hi Alan,
I remember it very well. At the time I was a member of the Greens and if you recall the Greens protested both Bush and Hu (not that they always get it right either).
Hi Andy,
It’s also important I think, to understand that just as Muslim actions are caused by their history the West’s actions are caused by their history. Britain gets lambasted for its imperialism, yet England was subject to the expansionist ambitions of others, the Romans, the Vikings, the Saxons, the Normans, etc, etc. Centuries of their history conditioned them. They were also in competition with other European powers (at one time the court language of England was French), where winning was strategically important. So where does the cycle begin, where does the blame lie? Probably with some obscure group in the Levant who decided conquest was a good idea and we’ve been suffering the repercussions ever since – personally I blame the Hittites
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I just don’t see the ME as a victim of Western imperialism. At one point a large Islamic navy was moored off Venice poised to attack. Leonardo Da Vinci invented an early diving suit as part of a tactic to sink the invading fleet. The siege was called off only because of another conflict elsewhere in the Ottoman empire. For a couple of centuries Europe was being chipped away at by aggressive Muslim forces. Slave raids were conducted as far north as Iceland; one whole Irish seaside village was enslaved by Muslim slavers from Morocco.
There is no good/bad, black/white here, just an endless cycle of conquest, defeat, conquest, etc. But there has been ‘progress’ and improvement.
Ray: “I dispute that social holons exist. In fact I think the idea is a fantasy based on a misunderstanding of what societies are and how they function. Societies are not static, they change considerably over time. If you compared 1800’s America to 1900’s and 2000’s you’d notice considerable change. A society is a complex ecology of co-operating and competing elites, factions, groups and sub-cultures. Both change and resistance to change occurs as these groups seek to pursue their self-interest. There is no social ‘agency’ and no definable ‘interior’. The interior is an illusion of a complex intersubjective space that is constructed both consciously and unconsciously. A society is constructed by its members, not by some self-agentic process.â€Â
Much of this could be said about individual holons, as well. If you compared Andy Smith in the 1960s with Smith in the 1980s or today, you’d also notice considerable change. Nor are individuals particularly unified. A little later today I’m going to go out for a hard bike ride. Do you think that every cell or group of cells in my body wants to do this? You think there won’t be any complaining, any arguing over whether “I†should do it? Do you think anything that a human being does is without inner argument? If you do, I would say you don’t know yourself very well. We are very divided beings, this is what the spiritual quest is all about.
That said, I agree that social holons do not have the degree of unity that individual holons do. When we consider human societies, there is another difference that almost everyone misses: these societies are not completely evolved. If you look at the evolution of lower forms of life, there is little doubt that before there were cells, there were “complex ecolog[ies] of co-operating and competing†molecules “pursu[ing] their self-interest.†Multicellular holons went through a similar phase before organisms evolved. The history of evolution reveals a constant interplay between diversity and unity, (and I have discussed a little about why this must be in my article on non-dual development at Visser’s site.)
Human societies are at a similar point in their evolution to where cells were before there were organisms, or molecules prior to cells. It remains to be seen whether they will develop further and become more unified, but certainly the precedent has been set..
Even with these qualifications, modern Western societies are fairly highly evolved. The fact that there are competing subgroups does not mean that societies can’t act as a unit. There may be tremendous disagreement about America’s foreign policy, but we went over to Iraq and have stayed there. There is great disagreement about our economic system, but it continues to follow some fairly well-defined principles. Nations and societies are capable of presenting a fairly unified face to the world. One reason it doesn’t easily appear that way to us as individuals is because we don’t exist at the social holon level. We are one individual holon connected to many others. Our situation makes us intensely aware of conflict and diversity, just as an individual cell in the brain, to the extent it has some awareness, must be far more aware of its differences wrt other cells than any unity of purpose of the entire organism. Every time an organism acts, no matter how purposefully, an enormous number of conflicts within itself must be addressed and resolved.
You might ask yourself, how is it that large societies often do things that no one individual within them seems to completely support? If there is no such thing as a social holon with its own purposes, its own aims for survival, why is it that virtually everything societies do is something almost no single individual within that society identifies with? Why do we daily have to obey all sorts of pain-in-the-ass laws, rules and regulations? And if individual lives and rights are the ultimate purpose, why is it that all societies make a trade-off between these lives and rights and those of a greater society? Why do soldiers go off to war, knowing they might be killed or maimed? You say, for some greater good. But what is that greater good? At a certain point, I think, it becomes naive not to identify the 800 lb. elephant in our midst. There is something much, much larger than any of us, to which we subordinate much of our lives, and that something is the social holon. Of course, we rationalize that we are better off living in societies, and so we are, but that is part of what allows social holons to survive. It is to the social holon’s great advantage to be composed of individual holons that enjoy, or think they enjoy, life better as members of the social holon. But that doesn’t mean that the social holon doesn’t exist, or that it doesn’t have its own evolving aims.
“I don’t think anyone should have nuclear weapons. I don’t think the US or Israel should, so I’m not going to say Iran should either. In fact I’m all for disarmament and controls on the arms trade.â€Â
Yet that proposal is a complete non-starter with America and Israel. Neither government will even consider the possibility.
“My point is this – if we expect the West to fight using a high moral standard then we should also apply that standard to the West’s enemies. If we are going to excuse guerilla warfare because of a perceived power imbalance then we are dealing with a rather crude moral equivilence. So, it’s okay for urban guerillas to kill civilians but not okay for standard armies to kill civilians? It’s okay for jihadists to torture captives but not okay for Western armies to torture captives?â€Â
It’s not OK to torture, obviously, but that doesn’t justify tit-for-tat. If the West wants to take the moral high ground, claiming it is morally superior to the Arab world, it should expect that its standards will not apply to that world. If our standards apply to our enemies, what is there to fight about?
“You say: “The question is, can Western culture exist without a much larger “underclass†of undeveloped countries to nourish it?†But the world economy is interconnected and if the West’s economy were to collapse tomorrow then that would have a dramatic impact on undeveloped countries. Western technological progress has meant progress for all countries.â€Â
One might have said, a few years ago, that if Saddam Hussein were to be removed from power, Iraq would collapse, and most of its citizens would be worse off. The fact that the rest of the world depends on us does not mean that it is a healthy dependency. Our progress has meant potential progress, nothing more, for a great deal of the world. I think people throughout much of the third world, particularly South and Central America, would say they are worse off, not better off, because of America. Before American corporations went into these countries, most of the people may have been fairly poor, but at least they had land, a living of some sort, and integrated communities. In many of those places now, they have none of that. Our rapacious desire for oil, wood, minerals, etc., has devastated many of these ecologies, and essentially made millions of people homeless. So I think the major challenge to the West is to demonstrate that it can raise living standards everywhere.
“But Western culture is much more than the economy. I’m thinking specifically of those modernist ideas that promote diversity and tolerance, the founding principles of an open and progressive society.â€Â
Yes, but again and again these principles have been abandoned when we get involved with other countries. Thus the very well known record of America’s support for dictators. America has been guided largely by a desire for stability, and too often, it sees repressive autocrats as greater stabilizing forces.
As a metaphor, I think of the world as a vast house, situated in a cold and inhospitable climate. People in a few rooms in the house have managed to heat those rooms to a comfortable temperature. Being comfortable, they can now address many other issues in their lives that they couldn’t address when they were fighting just to stay warm. Seeing this, people in all the other rooms either want to move to those warmer rooms, or get some of that heat for themselves. The dirty little secret, though, is that much of the heat for those few rooms has come from the other rooms, in the process making them colder. The challenge is whether the whole house can be heated, or can comfortable temperatures in a few rooms be sustained only at the expense of the rest of the rooms. As I said before, I really don’t know the answer to this question, and I don’t think anyone else does, either.
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“So where does the cycle begin, where does the blame lie?â€Â
Very true. We can always shift the blame to someone else, claim someone else “started itâ€Â, by going far enough back in history. That certainly applies to the midEast in spades. I still remember the late Israeli leader Menachem Begin (who was honest enough to describe his activities as terrorist prior to the establishment of the state of Israel) saying, just prior to meeting for the first time with President Carter: “I understand he knows the Bible by heart. Then he knows to whom this land by right belongs.â€Â
The essence of our differences, I think, is this. You have a concept of a Western civilization in conflict with another civilization. You think that it can and must distinguish itself from this other civilization, oppose its values to the values of the other civilization.. I think it may be too late for that. Like you, I think the West is further along in some developmental sense. But unlike you, I think that development has now proceeded so far that we can no longer play the game of “I’m better than youâ€Â. The next developmental step is for the West is to see itself as a world-centric civilization, one that does not and cannot identify with any particular society or culture. I don’t know if the West can take that step, but if it can’t, I think it will decline and eventually fall, because generally speaking, societies, like other holons, must continue to grow in some sense, or die.
Andy Smith said “The next developmental step is for the West is to see itself as a world-centric civilization, one that does not and cannot identify with any particular society or culture. I don’t know if the West can take that step, but if it can’t, I think it will decline and eventually fall, because generally speaking, societies, like other holons, must continue to grow in some sense, or die. ”
This may have already happened – i.e. the worldcentric step. Are large parts of India, Turkey, Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan, Phillippines and Malaysia to be defined as non-Western? I grew up in India and recall being very puzzled by the notion of “Western” when I came to the US. So, I don’t understand the need to stick with the Western label. Why not call it progressive Enlightenment civilization instead? That way, we don’t need to clarify if we mean the Western or Eastern notions of enlightenment – sorry, sorry, couldn’t resist
ray said:
August 19th, 2006 at 6:15 pm e
I remember it very well. At the time I was a member of the Greens and if you recall the Greens protested both Bush and Hu
Yep they were and still are one of the very few parties with true integrity! I was incredibly impressed!
The Democrats used to be good too (i was a member many many years back, when Janine Haines was leader of the party), but when Meg Lees made that deal with Howard over the GST that was the end of them.
(not that they always get it right either).
True. e.g. Bob Brown heckling Bush. What did that serve? Because of that he was banned from Parliament and couldn’t protest against Hu. Whereas if he would have just asked some pertinant questions of Bush, that would (imho) have had a much more constructive effect.
Hi Andy,
I’m not sure we disagree all that much (except on the issue of social holons – but then, I’m tiring of the whole holon thing anyway). So yes, the next step has to be toward worldcentric and there are signs this is happening. One of the drivers is the interconnectedness of the global economy, but this is standard globalization theory anyway.
Perhaps I should further clarify my remarks. Perhaps I should say ‘liberal democracy’ rather than just Western, Western is too broad a term. Liberal democracies allow greater freedom to satisfy the prime directive. In saying this I’m not suggesting things couldn’t be improved. I’m also a progressive, which suggests I think a number of things can and should be improved.
However, when I look at the alternatives I can’t see a political system that provides the same level of tolerance and freedom, not Islam, not China. And in my view there are a number of countries that do liberal democracy better than the US. I certainly don’t conflate the West to mean the US. The West also includes Europe and Scandinavia.
On an arts program I watched there was a good example of the freedom liberal democracies allow. It concerns the art of a recent Afghan refugee to Australia. Now, there has been considerable debate in Australia about how to handle refugees. Personally I think the current government’s stand is appalling and betrays several important ethical principles. Happily this artist, despite his trevails in getting refugee status, is now an Oz citizen. He fled Afghanistan because he had been arrested by the Taliban for painting portraits. Under a strict interpretation of sharia all representational art is considered blasphemy. He was going to be killed! – for painting portraits!
When I think of potential I think of all sorts of potential. How well does a society allow freedom of expression and freedom to explore potential? Can a child develop a talent, in sport, in music, in art, in whatever? Can ideas be freely exchanged? You know what I’m saying…I’m currently entranced by the French singer Camille Dalmais. On her website there is a photo of her naked, lying on the floor with her legs over her head, in a performance piece. I think the idea was to sing with a compacted lung, hence the pose. Her voice is quite extraordinary, but she could not express her art in many countries.
Do liberal democracies fail to live up to their own standards? Absolutely! But better to have high standards and fail than have bad standards and still fail. What system lives up to its own standards?
Years ago, Sri Aurobindo wrote about WORLD UNION in his works “The Human Cycle,” and “The Ideal of Human Unity,” and spoke about it in his Independence Day of India message. Fired by this “Third Dream” of Sri Aurobindo, WORLD UNION, a non-profit, non-political organisation was founded on November 26, 1958 “with a view to carrying forward a movement for human unity and world peace and progress on a spiritual foundation. For the ordinary humanitarian and religious outlook and motivation are inadequate to meet the demands of the New Age which is already in the process of manifesting under the inevitable programme of the evolutionary nature on earth.”