West must see itself as a world-centric civilization

Andy Smith Says: August 20th, 2006 at 9:17 am 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...

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 you”. 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.

Anand Rangarajan Says: August 20th, 2006 at 9:58 am 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.

Tusar N. Mohapatra Says: August 22nd, 2006 at 1:58 am 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.”