generalspeaking

Right of Self-Determination

The world appears to have swerved from its erstwhile, much-heralded universal contemplation of itself as a modern inter-related and world community of communities to the sudden realization of rejection as national traditions and cultural heritage reassert their social hegemony, tribal affiliations, religious adherence, the ancient animosities of one group to another. Revealing the post-war, new-age global village to have been but a hopeful conceit of a wishful pluralist global society.

The world is now witnessing a new, multiple-decades-emerging split between nations, within nations, and among cultures, religions, ideologies and societies. Boundaries set up to delineate national embrace of disparate and traditionally suspicious ethnic groups with their tribal histories and blood-line ties have witnessed a reinsurgence of separateness, a struggle to become themselves, the primacy of tribal and cultural entitlement renascent.

The frail ideal of a universal social network of the brotherhood of man is an idea, a global ideal, unreflective of human presence, incapable of surmounting the very reality that genetic endowment, tribal affiliation, historical antecedents have instructed humankind to observe and obey - other than to encourage the liberated among us to accept the notion of universal equality. An equality not recognized, however, in closed societies.

Nations have returned to the past of strong-man power politics encompassing ethnic and tribal strongholds. Hope for internationalism has taken a slow but unerring course toward a dim, dark backseat to the growing reality of tribal resurgency, on both the micro- and the macro-scale. From Congo and Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan, Iran and Syria, Russia and Venezuela, a welcome to the future of de-civilizing power structures.

Where once a hopeful cadre of world leaders set boundaries in a hopeful, but hapless bid to halt the violent struggles between opposing ethnic, tribal and religious groups to head off the brick wall of ethnic nationalism, the grim reality of the current world of Realpolitik has returned us to the future, led by the very human phenomenon of ever-emerging strongmen heralding the collapse of the ideal of the spread of liberal democracy and its liberating freedoms.

The creeping menace of growing world destabilization in democracies which have received, in the past decades, growing hordes of emigrants from those parts of the world where ethnic, tribal and heritage-acculturated minorities have fled growing brutality and authoritarian rule and minority exploitation to find comfortable advantage and havens for themselves have led to further disruptions.

Having welcomed minority groups from various ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds into their midst, liberal democracies, once hopeful of spreading their political, cultural and economic freedoms in a globally liberating purpose of advancing nations other than their own into modernity, now find themselves internally embattled and pressed to the limit to contain opposition to their dearly held values.

Immigrant enclaves flex their own specific cultural mores and religious values as universal norms, insisting that their host countries adapt; not they to the moral values and the societal norms and cultural underpinnings of the host countries. After all, it is the liberal democracies of the world that insist on ethnic and cultural and religious groups' right to self-determination, to celebrating diversity, to going the extra mile toward absorbing these qualitative differences.

The globally felt euphoria with the unified determination to insist that there would be no more world wars, there would arise among peoples of the world a greater understanding between one another, a self-imposed and ethically liberating enthusiasm to welcome and tolerate differences, out of which stew would come a new world order, a Utopian functionality of diversity and universality of recognition of equality has been effectively squelched.

Humans are, alas, incapable of setting aside ancient grudges. Nations will never be the first to set aside their need to arm themselves, for to unilaterally disarm is to become vulnerable to predation, exploitation and occupation. Our inborn suspicions of one another can never, it would appear, become sufficiently allayed, buoyed on a shared perception of goodwill toward one another, that we are prepared to peaceful openness with the assurance of having such overtures companionably met.

There will never be union and comfort and peace between disparate societies, cultures, politics, religions; it is not in the nature of humankind. Multilateralism, the dream of solving the ills of the world by sacrifice and human compassion will remain a Utopian dream. The dissolution of great unions between countries and within countries has amply demonstrated our failings, our inability to trust and value one another.

This bleak assessment is borne out by the misery of ongoing vicious wars taking countless innocent lives in a process by which the human animal expresses the most vile emotions with which we are imbued. While those whose humble and sincere and noble aspirations toward achieving a better world, set those ambitions aside, and do their best to ameliorate the misery that humankind visits upon itself.

National, ethnic and tribal thrust toward heritage, the heritage of anger and revenge, of never forgetting nor forgiving ancient oppressions and perceptions of abuse from aggressors or neighbours struggling to achieve their own prosperity and civic advancement over those of others, remains the single most dangerous affliction that mankind has brought upon itself.

It is the memory, even the fables instilled through verbal documentation embellished by time and by aggravated compulsion to restore 'honour' and pride in a universal atmosphere that continues to compel societal groups toward violence in the belief that honour and pride will be restored through the use of violence and blood-letting. Hatred expunges the humanity residing deep in every human psyche.

There is no miraculous spiritual intervention that might propel humankind toward a healing process, a transition toward our own humanness, allowing us to accept that others, those whom we call strangers and whom we designate as our enemies, share our frailties, our aspirations and our common human heritage, deserving of respect and kindness.

Labels: Societal Failures, Traditions, World Crises

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, January 28, 2009