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V.
Critique: section-by-section consideration of his points, with
attention to his underlying paradigm, a biological model of
civilizations (an assumption that they begin, grow, flower, decline, and
disappear).
(Page 2)
VI.
Conclusions: An alternative paradigm, based on stage theory. Progress as desirable change; desirable directions of growth. The need
for more research and information about human and institutional growth:
how to foster it, enhance it, measure it. Applications to the
long-term population and environmental crisis threatening the world.
VII.
References.
I.
INTRODUCTION
It has been obvious for some time that many of the social and
political issues besetting the modern world do not respond
satisfactorily to the application of conventional analysis. The failure
of the Great Society program and the uneven results of Third World
development efforts have brought intervention into disrepute. Something
is missing from the paradigm we use in seeking to understand and deal
with social problems.
The
search for better paradigms is widespread among scholars. Ever since
Thomas S. Kuhn made us aware of the importance of the paradigm to
science, people have sought to put forward better models in which to
consider phenomena. [Kuhn, 1962, 1970] This is particularly true of
the social sciences, and, of these, of international relations. The end
of the Cold War made apparent the need for a new way to view relations
among states. Samuel Huntington, with specific reference to Kuhn, has
set forth his own candidate for the paradigm of the decade in the field
of global politics in The Clash of
Civilizations and the Remaking of the Modern World. [Huntington,
1996]. It is a major contribution and has inspired vigorous debate
among analysts of global relationships. A review of the book and some of
its critics may be found in my recent unpublished paper.
I have chosen Huntington’s work as the focus of my efforts to
determine what is missing from existing paradigms because 1) he sets the
book up in paradigmatic terms, 2) it is in a field with which I have
some experience, and 3) the subject is sufficiently narrow as to be
manageable.
II. HYPOTHESIS
I think the element missing from Huntington’s paradigm is a
sense of “progress” in the development of modern individuals and of
modern societies. Progress among individuals can be conceived of using
the human development theories of Piaget [Piaget, 1977], Kohlberg
[Kohlberg, 1984], Loevinger [Loevinger, 1976], Kegan [Kegan,
1985], and others. Progress in societies can be conceived of in
economic terms (measures of per capita income) or political terms
(measures of participation). Progress
in organizations, subsets of societies, can be conceived of in terms of
management theory (such as Torbert’s stages of organizational
development).
These dimensions of progress are reinforced by the continuing
advance of technology. Human development is recognized by most
psychologists to be a product of innate individual characteristics and
the environment in which the individual matures and functions.
Technology plays a major role in shaping the environment in which most
people spend their lives, at work and at play. The requirements of
modern technology and modern society place greater cognitive demands on
average individuals than has been the case in any previous historical
era [Kegan, 1995]. Similarly, the effective use of modern technology,
and the advancing capabilities of its users, demand ever greater
devolution of authority in organizations. Successful behavior in modern
organizations also requires greater affective control by the individual,
another dimension of development, than has ever been the case before [Goleman,
1995]. Modern technology, advanced levels of human cognitive and
affective abilities, and modern organizations demand a less
authoritarian style of governance than at any previous historical time.
Hence the rise of democracies (in the West) and the continuing demands
for less governmental intervention in the economic and social lives of
people.
A number of caveats must be made before attempting to apply the
hypothesis to Huntington’s thesis:
·
This notion of progress does not imply the inevitability of a
desirable outcome. In practice, much of the world is making progress at
a historically unique rate of speed, but overpopulation and
environmental deterioration can still result in disaster. On the other
hand, global pollution and excessive fertility can probably only be
contained by continued progress, the process through which people become
able to voluntarily reduce their fertility and care for their habitats.
Traditional systems of land use, food production, manufacturing,
education, and human organization are simply no longer adequate to serve
population levels achieved virtually everywhere as the result of modern
medicine. Furthermore, people functioning at a level common to
traditional society will not succeed to anything beyond menial
employment in the modern world.
·
The situation is
complicated by differential rates of change within societies, at both
the individual and organizational levels. That is, every society has
some people functioning at very advanced levels, and some people
functioning at rather basic levels. The proportion of people at top,
bottom, and intervening levels, changes as part of the development
process.
·
Recognition of a hierarchy of levels of human development, and of
differential rates of change among societies, may be anathema to some of
our cherished beliefs, especially for advocates of multiculturalism.
Others may suspect racist motives, because the nations leading in social
progress are predominantly white, and those trailing furthest behind are
predominantly black. Yet, the fact that every society contains people of
the highest level of human development, and nearly every society has in
recent years increased the proportion of its population in the middle
and upper levels of human development, provides clear evidence of the
universality of human potential in all races and cultures. Some cultures
are more adept at creating opportunities and rewards for advanced human
development than others, often because of the tenacity of traditional
power relationships in those slower to change. (It seems obvious that
the US took the lead over Europe in modernization during the inter-war
period because of an absence of stifling social structures inhibiting
the mobility of the most able. Books like Le
Defie Americaine helped
break down class barriers in Europe in the 1960s).
III.
ATTRIBUTES OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
Of the three interacting forces of modernization – human
development, organizational development, and technological development
– human development is least understood. I suspect this is because of
the complexity of the species, the difficulty of studying ourselves, and
the ideological and religious barriers we construct to help us deny what
we do, or could, know about ourselves. Another factor could be the
disarray of the field. It seems as if each psychologist feels compelled
to create his or her own scale of human development, his or her own
definition of the process. For people in other fields, academic or not,
it may appear that human development can safely be subsumed under the
label of child development and relegated to mothers, nannies and
teachers.
Fortunately, it is not necessary to go through the tedious
process of comparing the stages of Piaget, Loevinger, Kohlberg, and
others, in order to come up with a unified theory. Ken Wilber, a
remarkable synthesizer, has done it for us [Wilber, 1995]. Wilber’s
work has two other dimensions that simplify the task of considering
international relationships from the perspective of a science of the
individual:
·
Wilber uses a quadrant diagram to illustrate the four aspects of
human consciousness. Two of these apply to the individual, and two to
the collective. Two apply to external phenomena and two to internal.
Hence, one has external/collective including families, tribes, villages,
nations, economies and institutions; interior/collective, or culture;
interior/individual, which is the home of human psychological or
spiritual development; and external/individual, or behavior and the
physiological structures that evolve in step with the development of
other dimensions. This diagram is useful as a constant reminder that
activity in any of the quadrants has an impact on, and must be
considered in the context of, the other three. It admirably links the
individual perspective with the collective in a way that few
intellectual constructs do.
·
Wilber also sees the evolution of consciousness in parallel with
the evolution of society. The institutions of society evolve in
accordance with the modal levels of development of the people of a
society. According to Wilber, “the individual and social are not two
different coins, one being of a higher currency than the other, but
rather the heads and tails of the same coin.” Individually, each of us progresses through the
Piaget-defined sequence to whatever level we attain. On average, over
time, as the modal level of people in a society increases, their
institutions also rise to a higher level in terms of participation of
their members and scope of their capabilities. (Wilber does not deal
with the role of technology in the transformation of individuals and
institutions, but I believe it is technological change that makes
possible/necessary the evolution of individuals and society.) The notion
that not only do individuals mature through stages in a fixed sequence,
but that societies have evolved through parallel sequences, seems
obvious upon reflection, but it is rarely found in the literature.
The principal stages of consciousness of interest to us are the magic, the mythic, and the
rational. In Piagetian terms, these stages would be called
pre-operational, concrete operational, and formal operational. Parallels
may also be found in the stages of moral development of Lawrence
Kohlberg and the stages of ego development of Jane Loevinger.
These
are not all of the stages of human development identified by Wilber and
others. Post-conventional stages seem to most interest many theorists
today. Wilber recognizes, however, that the main challenge facing the
world is not achieving the post-conventional levels, but getting most of
the world to the rational stage. That is the stage at which problems,
such as of environment and fertility, can be tackled. He makes the
telling point that the issue is not between cultures, but within
cultures. In every culture there are people striving to develop from
egocentric to socio-centric to world-centric; to orient their beliefs
from magic to mythic to rational. (In essence, this paper could end
right here, because this is the main answer to Huntington. The coming
world struggle is not as likely to be between civilizations, as it is to
be between groups at different levels of human development, and hence
with different value systems and world views, within civilizations, e.g.
anti-abortionists and militias versus the conventional, late mythic
views of our modal population.)
Several characteristics of stage theories generally need to be
identified before we proceed to discuss the stages of most interest to
us:
·
Individuals develop through an invariable sequence of stages. One
cannot skip a stage in the course of development;
·
People level off at different stages; that is, not everyone
reaches stage three, and some people go beyond stage three;
·
Stage transitions are products of both heredity and environment,
with some environments, e.g. formal schooling, being more conducive to
change than others;
·
Each stage transcends but includes its predecessor;
·
Each successive stage has greater differentiation, variety,
complexity, consciousness and organization than the earlier stage;
·
The circle of empathy or sphere of one’s identity broadens with
each successive stage;
·
People can be at more than one stage at a time; e.g. a person may
function 50% at one stage and 25% below and 25% above the main stage
depending upon sphere of activity;
·
Barring catastrophe, people do not regress from one stage to
another; and
·
Stage levels transcend cultural boundaries, although the
behavioral expression of each stage may vary with cultural traditions.
The three selected stages are not the full range of human
development, but they are the levels at which most individuals level
off. Before these levels is a sensorimotor stage, generally lasting from
infancy to age two, and beyond formal operations are several
post-conventional stages generally involving altered states of
consciousness. We are
concerned only with these three individual and associated group levels
of development because these levels contain the motivations and
behaviors that affect the conduct of international relationships.
The characteristics of each of these stages can be briefly
summarized as follows:
Magic
and magic-mythic. In child development, the preoperational
stage can be divided into two parts. The early preoperational, or magic,
stage occurs from 2-4 years of age. It is the time when a child believes
he or she is the center of the universe and is the instrument causing
things to happen, such as making the clouds move. The late
preoperational stage, or magic-mythic, occurs from 4-7 years of age. At
that time the child realizes that he or she does not directly cause
things to happen, but the omnipotent magic is transferred to other
subjects, such as daddy or God. It
is from the magic-mythic structure that most of the world’s classical
mythologies seem to spring.
This
stage is characterized by confused physical and personal causality. The
physical world appears to operate much the way people do. Few societies
can be found now which function at that level, but as recently as 1970,
the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman fit this category. People believed that
illness and infant mortality were caused by the evil eye and the djinn,
and the ruler took on god-like traits. All of that changed rapidly after
Sultan Qaboos, the current ruler, overthrew his uncle, Sultan bin Taimur,
in that year, and began modernizing the country, now called simply Oman.
Mythic
and Mythic/Rational (Concrete Operational)
At this stage, lasting roughly from ages 7 to 12, the child or adult (if
the child doesn’t attain the rational stage) is more sociocentric and
ethnocentric than before. He or she gains the ability to take the role
of the other. In relation to previous stages, the mythic represents a
greater autonomy, a higher and wider identity, and a greater
consciousness.
This
is the mind-set or worldview that encouraged empire. Wilber notes that
the Greeks and Romans, the Khans and Sargons, the Incas and the Aztecs,
imposed their own mythology on others through conquest, thus creating
empires. In the modern age, mythic stage behavior can be observed in the
militias and the anti-abortion terrorists. The intense identification
with one’s own group leads to the dehumanization of the other. Perhaps
Saddam’s behavior is an example of concrete operations at the state
level.
Formal
Operational. This
stage signals the emergence of a strong rational ego. At this stage, the
individual can think about an ecological system in which changes in one
aspect may lead to a whole system of changes in the balance between
other aspects of nature. The individual can also grasp the concept of
relativity. The rules and norms of a society can for the first time be
questioned, and a literal interpretation of religious texts gives way to
a regard for the principles underlying them. The
person becomes more reflective and introspective. It is a time when
young people seek their identities and begin to question their
upbringing, and authority in general.
At
this stage, people reach the moral level where they must assume
responsibility for their own, relatively autonomous, choices. In
political terms, the conception of individuals as autonomous agents
leads to equality under the law, freedom of expression, and democratic
systems.
For
the first time, the average person can achieve a global world-view,
biased certainly in favor of one’s own identity, at least in the early
part of the rational stage, but global nonetheless. One can think in
nonanthropocentric terms, realizing that our species has a place in the
spectrum of living things, but we are not the center of the universe.
Reaching the stage of formal operations or rationality does not mean
that individuals or states abjure war or imperialism. But they undertake
forceful measures after rationally calculating alternatives, not because
they believe it is the will of God or the manifest destiny.
Individuals don’t necessarily stop with the formal operational
stage of human development, although Piaget assumed that it did. In
recent years, many theorists have become increasingly interested in what
may lie beyond pure rationality. Wilber says that more advanced stages
find spirituality tempering rationality; the latter is not forsaken, but
is mitigated by the former.
This summary of the stages of human development most commonly
found among adults in today’s world is admittedly inadequate as an
introduction to the subject, but for those already familiar with human
development psychology, this may be sufficient to frame the discussion
of Huntington’s proposed paradigm in global politics.
IV. HUNTINGTON’S CASE
The book is conveniently divided into five sections elaborating
the main proposition. The remainder of this section is quoted directly
from Huntington’s introductory chapter:
The
central theme of this book is that culture and cultural identities,
which at the broadest level are civilization identities, are shaping the
patterns of cohesion, disintegration, and conflict in the post-Cold War
world.
Part
I
For the first time in history global politics is both multipolar
and multicivilizational; modernization is distinct from Westernization
and is producing neither a universal civilization in any meaningful
sense nor the Westernization of non-Western societies.
Part
II
The balance of power among civilizations is shifting: the West is
declining in relative influence; Asian civilizations are expanding their
economic, military, and political strength; Islam is exploding
demographically with destabilizing consequences for Muslim countries and
their neighbors; and non-Western civilizations generally are reaffirming
the value of their own cultures.
Part
III
A civilization-based world order is emerging: societies sharing
cultural affinities cooperate with each other; efforts to shift
societies from one civilization to another are unsuccessful; and
countries group themselves around the lead or core states of their
civilization.
Part
IV
The West’s universalist pretensions increasingly bring it into
conflict with other civilizations, most seriously with Islam and China;
at the local level fault line wars, largely between Muslims and
non-Muslims, generate “kin-country rallying,” the threat of broader
escalation, and hence efforts by core states to halt these wars.
Part
V
The survival of the West depends on Americans reaffirming their
Western identity and Westerners accepting their civilization as unique,
not universal, and uniting to renew and preserve it against challenges
from non-Western societies. Avoidance of a global war of civilizations
depends on world leaders accepting and cooperating to maintain the
multicivilizational character of global politics. (continued)
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