Transcript Navigating the Asian Future: from Asian Thoughts
Navigating the Asian Future: from “Asian Thoughts”
Susantha Goonatilake Royal Asiatic Society Sri Lanka
Today: The Shift to Asia
Three hundred years ago, the dominant powers in the world were in Asia.
Thereafter, the West became dominant.
Today a process is under way whereby Asia will once again be the dominant player in the world.
This will have deep repercussions in academia, culture and knowledge.
The figures are impressive.
If the 19th C was British, the 20th the American, the 21st is shaping to be Asian. Already GDP of China is number two in the world. China would become the largest economy by 2038 and by 2040 India No. 3. Purchasing power parity (PPP) estimates has already placed China as number one. And Asia as a whole, from East Asia through Southeast Asia to South Asia will be lifted up in the coming years.
Contrast: 2-3% growth rate in 19th C Britain, first industrial nation.
Smaller countries:
Singapore using niche advantages reached nearly a 15% growth in 2010. And possibly indicative of her economic futures to come, Sri Lanka after over 35 years of a war partly induced by an Indian proxy invasion had in the last two peace years very high performances at its stock exchange possibly the highest in the world.
Major impact on geopolitics of culture
These economic changes will have a major impact on the geopolitics of culture including geopolitics of knowledge. This presentation explores this aspect.
But the ability of the West to manage its relative decline is central to issues of culture.
"End of History"
The high point of the US was the fall of the Soviet Union and its aftermath as exemplified by the book "End of History" by Fukuyama. Echoing more serious "end of history" theses such as those of Hegel and Marx it was triumphalist propaganda at a brief moment. Fukuyama wrote before the full rise of Asia was apparent and before the full backlash from the rest of the world on the US of the Neocons and Theocons onslaught echoing the US Bible Belt had begun.
Waging war for "democracy”
Ignoring dictatorships of its own ME client states the US set in motion the Neocon agenda to wage war for "democracy” in non-client states. It was helped by a new post-Cold War phenomenon, the adoption of "A New Policy Agenda” whereby Western funds poured into pseudo-political organisations, unrepresentative NGOs on the laudable agenda of democracy and human rights (delivered by unelected appendages of Western funds and often their embassies) .
US over extended
The military cost has been heavy. With less than 5% of the world’s population the military expenditure of the US is now nearly 50% of all other countries put together The US has over extended herself financially and militarily in two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. With an internal financial meltdown, debt laden America was being kept afloat by borrowing from Asia.
There is talk of the Euro unravelling and with it the partial break up of the pan European dream.
Latin America
In Latin America the rise of new nationalist governments has eroded the once supremacy of the US. To tame North Korea, the West has to virtually beg of the Chinese. Once overlords of Asia, Europe and the US are making realistic calculations to keep with changes and are now sending political and economic delegations kowtowing to Asian political and business leaders.
US financial hegemony challenged
The US financial hegemony that consolidated the Bretton Woods agreement after World War II, through the IMF and World Bank is being challenged. The G8 has been replaced by the G 20 and new acronyms reflecting the ongoing geopolitical changes such as Chinamerica and Chindia have emerged.
Soft power
The US and the West is in decline in relative terms and in spite of a preponderant military is unable to adequately undertake wars and keep the empire going. It however has soft power as an adjunct ally.
Soft power includes culture and it is this that we shall explore further
.
West’s soft power to be rethought foundationally
Soft power slogans such as "land of the free" in the US national anthem or "Give me Liberty, or give me Death!" of Patrick Henry part of what has been called American "exceptionalisum". hide ugly realities.
One American "freedom“ is the "right to bear arms" as enshrined in the Second Amendment to the Constitution.
“Right to bear arms"
This “freedom” came from the bandit gun culture of early American settlers in their genocidal program to grab others’ lands. Today sorry remnants of the genocide of the First Americans have been herded into settlements and denied self respect as reflected in pervasive drunkenness. USA freedoms, rights and democracy were for most of its existence limited only to white settlers, actually to WASPS.
Soft power: propaganda and reality
Only in the early 1960s was the invisible ceiling for other whites broken when the Catholic John Kennedy became president overcoming much anti Catholic sentiment. And only in the late 60s were Afro Americans even granted the formal right to vote. There have since been advances in the US but even here one has to shift the propaganda from reality. Revealing is the comparison between the US and China designated as a land of the unfree.
Soft power myths: most imprisoned
In the US, one fourth of every Afro American youth is in prison. One in 11 Americans would in their lifetime spent some time in prison and at any given time one in 100 US citizens are behind bars.
More than 2 1/2 million Americans are in prison the highest prison population in the world. More significant, the US has 25% of the prison population of the world although it has only 5% of the global population.
More prisoners in free US than in China
These figures are larger than the prison population of China with four times the total population of the US.
These dichotomies between myth and reality about democracy and freedom has a long lineage, in fact going back to the time of the Greeks the presumed fountainhead of Western democracy.
Civilisational fountainhead exposed
Only a few "citizens" had democracy in Greece while the bulk had none such. Contrast with some Indian republics during the time of the Buddha, whose organization forms were transferred into the Buddha’s own order of monks - the Sangha - where decisions are made by a vote. The Greek myth as civilisational fountain head has been exposed by Martin Bernal as an invention of the early 19th-century to support the European imperialist project.
The Soft Shift to Asia:
The Asian economic shift is occurring with a global re-division of work. It replaces the earlier relocation of brawn work towards cheaper Asian countries (such as garment industries) There is a new relocation of brainpower, and a shift in science and technology and academia towards the Asian cultural region
The Soft Shift to Asia:
This shift of science and technology to Asia is occurring amidst a shift in less measurable cultural spheres. The earlier hegemonic blanket of Eurocentricism is being lifted. Thus some of the best novelists in English, the primary carrier of globalization, are today Asians. Designers from Hong Kong, Japan and now Malaysians set Western clothing fashions.
The global culture, it is a changing.
The changes are not just in the passing fad and the superficial. For well over 100 years at a more abstract level there had been inflows of Non Western philosophical ideas into the West. Thus South Asian influences, predominantly Buddhism, were noted by Dale as having had an impact on the American philosophers William James, Charles Moore, Santayana, Emerson and Irving Babbitt.
Psychology
In another discipline psychology, there have been major inflows in recent decades of Buddhist and Hindu ideas and practice. The scientific validity of some of these practices has been recorded in standard Western academic publications. Thus Buddhist mindfulness training finds an increasingly important place in such fields as cognitive therapy.
Higher practices in Buddhism and Hinduism
And in significant parts of the West meditation and yoga (actually the higher practices in Buddhism and Hinduism) have gone mainstream with millions of followers.
And on a more trivial note, today in Britain, once the land of the uneatable, the truly national dish is South Asian curry.
Fashionable
In the last decade it has become partly fashionable among sections of the Western glitterati to define themselves as Buddhist.
India has considered Buddhism as part of its soft power and so has China which pursuing this has held global conferences on Buddhism.
Border crossings in the social sciences
The broad question is, with the shift to Asia, can Asian perspectives on culture and knowledge emerge that would be as powerful as some of the Western ones.
A notable attempt to do this occurred when the first wave of Asian countries from East Asia began to reach high economic growth rates.
An attempt to incorporate Asian conceptual elements
Reminiscent of Max Weber evoking a Protestant Ethic for the rise of the West; a cultural factor was now invoked, a Confucian Ethic was invented for these predominantly East Asian countries.
It was said that Confucian values of group solidarity and hard work had been the major contributing factor to the sudden upsurge of East Asian economies.
Confucianism or authoritarian regimes?
But Confucianism had been there for 2,500 years without an industrial breakthrough.
Further, during the periods of their initial growth in the 1960s and 1970s these East Asian countries had very repressive and/or authoritarian regimes where labour dissent was not tolerated.
Confucian ethic untenable
Soon, the East Asian countries were joined by another set, namely those of the ASEAN region such as Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia and later South Asia who have populations with cultural traditions different from the Confucian one.
The Confucian ethic was as untenable as the original Weberian perspectives.
Max Weber
Weber used cultural factors to explain the rise of Europe and for the lagging behind of Asia
His views of Protestantism and in turn, those of other religions constitute an important part of his total system of social theory. In his sociology of religion, Buddhism also finds an important place.
Significant errors of a basic kind of Weber’s Buddhism
Most of Weber’s sources of Buddhism, are from the Sinhalese sources which were translated to European languages in the late 19 th and early 20 th century. But as I show in the paper there are significant empirical errors of a very basic kind of Weber’s knowledge of Buddhism making his grand pronouncements untenable.
Buddhism a common cultural overlay
Before European influence in recent centuries, Buddhism was a common cultural overlay across most of Asia. Buddhism has developed approaches in epistemology guidelines for observation and coming to conclusions.
Are there elements within Buddhist epistemology which can give insights into social sciences as it locates itself in a confident Asia?
Much unusable cultural furniture
There is also outside these philosophical aspects of Buddhism, much cultural furniture - elements outside the observational realm such as gods and goddesses Yet outside such untenable cultural furniture, the observational and Buddhism’s philosophical essence could stand on its own.
"me" radically deconstructed
Unique among philosophies, Buddhism denies the existence of a self or soul. Through observation, the existence of a permanent abiding "me" is radically deconstructed in Buddhism.
Buddhist observation breaks down the component, physical and mental factors that constitute the psychophysical personality.
Only a stream of becoming
Mental phenomena and the external environment are both in a perpetual state of becoming, changing from moment to moment, there is no individual, only a stream, a stream of becoming.
These conclusions are obtained by observation of both the world outside as well as the internal world of mental phenomena.
Humans: change and process
Humans are in Buddhism a process, a collection of swiftly changing mental and physical processes. A conventional empirical self is recognized as only a momentary crystallization of a process which interacts with the world outside. The world, including the environment of other humans in which the individual lives, is itself changing and is in a state of flux.
Buddhist epistemology: Change central
A foundational social sciences using Buddhist epistemology would have a platform of a changing observer to track, examine and come to conclusions about a continuously changing social field.
Changing social field
This social field would consist of continuously changing individuals, continuously changing groups and continuously changing classes.
The detailed outcomes of such a changed epistemological position cannot be discussed here.
The sociological project could be reexamined
From such a foundational change ingrained epistemological approach the whole of the sociological project could be reexamined.
It would differ from the convention of dividing the world into a subject which cognises a social object from a fixed subjective platform which then comes to conclusions on the social world. It would not imply as absolute, a subject-object relationship.
Radical Reordering of the Epistemological
The Buddhist relationship between one self and the social other could be compared with the
Ich
and
Du
(I and thou) relationship of Martin Buber which had been proposed for sociological thought.
Buber's central thesis was that social life was a dialogical existence, a relationship between pairs such as “I and thou”.
“I” and ever-changing thous
In a Buddhist formulation the dialogue of existence is between a flowing and ever changing “I” and a flowing and ever changing thou or more correctly with sets of flowing and ever-changing thous.
Changed epistemology changed the natural sciences
Such changed epistemological positions have given rise to far reaching changes in the natural sciences. A most notable example is the case of Einstein’s use of Mach’s position in epistemology (which incidentally had echoes with Buddhist positions) which changed the direction of physics and gave rise to relativity.
Radical Reordering of the Epistemological
Just like modern physics taking a Machian epistemological position changed physics and gave rise to a new way of looking at the dynamics of the material world, a similar foundational approach using Buddhist epistemology would change the perspectives on the dynamics of the social world.
An application
Exploring the effect of such a change would require much detailed reexamination of the changing social world from a changing observational platform
In the applied field such a Buddhist epistemological position could help solve some of the challenging ethical problems in the emerging technological future.
Radically Reconstructing the Body, Mind and Environment
Recent developments from gene therapy, stem cells to cloning and in the future, artificial genes and artificial chromosomes and humans augmented non-biologically through say artificial intelligence implants challenge some of the basic assumptions about the human. We are, or will soon be, constructing and reconstructing the human body and brain/mind, from new developments in nano technology, biotechnology and information technology
Social theory for new technologies
In this new world there are new ethical challenges not met before.
These problems are raised because these technologies change dramatically parts of the body and the mind.
The essential nature of the human is being intruded upon by these technologies.
Deep questions
Deep questions are raised by these coming developments. They intrude on ethics.
The ethics on which these issues have been hitherto discussed are Western ones, Hindu Buddhist ideas for example have not influenced this debate .
[Except for a preliminary conference in Delhi in 2009 organised by me through the Anthropology Survey of India and Shanti Niketan]
Urgent challenges
Many such challenges rest on what it is to be a person in the very body and mind that is being changed and the nature of the self
Some recent approaches to the living world and the environment have utilized cultural elements from major non-Western philosophies as well as those of simpler belief systems eg Ecofeminism.
Continuous Change Is Central To The Emerging Human
Continuous change of the self and the person is the condition of the emerging human or as some say “post human”
A major cultural approach that has continuous change as its core is Buddhist philosophy.
Central Buddhist position
Both the human person, including his body and mind, as well as the environment he operates in, are not given or sacred in Buddhism but constructed and changing.
This approach has direct relevance to a future where both the human and his/her environment are constructed and reconstructed
Disclaimer
In using Buddhist philosophy here, one need not accept all the unprovable cultural aspects of Buddhism such as gods and goddesses just as one does not have to believe all Christian mythology to use the philosophical counterpart of a Creator, namely a First Cause.
“Religion”, “Philosophy”, “Science”: S Asian and West
In discussions on bioethics, the fields of science, philosophy and religion intermingle.
But “religion”, “philosophy”, and “science” have different connotations from a South Asian - say Buddhist - perspective and a Eurocentric one.
Hence an explanatory aside is needed
South Asian and Judeo Christian systems differ
South Asian belief systems possess a heavy overlay of philosophy as foundation.
Western religions, Christianity, Judaism or Islam (the “Abrahamaic” family of religions) are firstly revealed systems, to be by a higher power, ‘God’.
Philosophy comes later.
Judeo Christian systems & ethics
The ethical system is “revealed” and to be “God’s word” (for example the Ten Commandments).
There are also seeming “secular” ethics
To look at Buddhist ethics one has to go to its core philosophy.
Buddhism’s core philosophy of the individual
“Anicca”
and “
Anathma”
Meaning
“Impermanence and change”,
and
“No abiding soul or self ”
These are not “mystical” but realistic and matter of fact statements
In Buddhism …
There is nothing durable or of static being.
The continuity of life is not through an abiding permanent structure, an 'I'. Buddhism is unique in the philosophies of the world that it denies the existence of a self or a soul. A belief in a permanent abiding 'me' is radically deconstructed in Buddhism
Buddhist deconstruction of self
Buddhism breaks down physical and mental factors of the person into changing components
"there is no materiality whatever ..... no feeling ... no perception .... no formations ... no consciousness whatever that is permanent, everlasting, eternal, not inseparable from the idea of change” – the Buddha
Buddhist deconstruction of self [contd]
"When neither self nor anything pertaining to self can truly and really be found, this speculative view [of] a permanent, abiding, ever-lasting, unchanging [self] is wholly and completely foolish" - the Buddha
A disciple of the Buddha elaborated further that what one calls 'I AM ' is: "neither matter, sensation, perception, mental formations nor consciousness"
Buddhist deconstruction of self [contd]
Physical elements change, as do mental phenomena.
All are in a state of perpetual becoming. All phenomena are but fleeting strings and chains of events.
As the constituents of an individual change, s/he does not remain the same for two constituent moments
Buddhist deconstruction of self [contd]
There is no individual, only a changing stream: “Life is a stream (
sota
), an unbroken succession of aggregates. There is no temporal or spatial break or pause in this life continuity. This continuity is not through a soul, but through a stream of becoming”.
Buddhist deconstruction of self [contd]
This analysis is partly arrived at from observing the innermost subjectively felt inside a person. One of the objectives of Buddhist mental exercises, 'meditation' is to observe, experience and describe for oneself this lack of self and of permanence from within one's own streams of thoughts and mental phenomena. From within our own innermost subjectivity, the problem of identity and of an abiding "I" is shown to be a false one
Buddhist Deconstruction and New Technologies
From such a perspective, the questions raised by new technologies on identity are seen differently. The existential angst of being a hybrid, of having genes of plants and animals inside one is seen differently. The problem of one's 'self' being spread over several artifacts now loses its potential terror. The threat of being a cyborg, of Frankenstein's creature; the concerns of a Jeremy Rifkin the fundamentalist critic of biotechnology is seen differently.
Buddhist Deconstruction and New Technologies
Living things, complained Rifkin “are no longer perceived as carrots and peas, foxes and hens. …. All living things are drained of their aliveness and turned into abstract messages. ……... There is no longer any question of sacredness ….. How could there be when there are no longer any recognizable boundaries to respect”.
Buddhist Deconstruction and New Technologies
Further, Rifkin continued “as bioengineering technology winds its way through the many passageways of life, stripping one living thing after another of its identity, replacing the original creations with technologically designed replicas, the world gradually becomes a lonelier place” . Buddhism stripped this seeming sacredness of identity over two and a half millennia ago.
Buddhist Approach to New Technologies?
A gene does not make a sentient being. Only the stream of a being's existence, of an onwards flowing history constitutes the sentient human or the sentient cyborg. A person does not exist as a unique individual but as a constructed ever changing flow, an onwardly moving lineage. If to this lineage are added new elements, new parts, it is but in the very 'normal' nature of such streams. All such streams are constructed from constituents in an ever moving process. A person's
normal
existence is of such a constructed being.
Buddhist Approach to New Technologies?
The artificial introduction of elements say to the internal flow from new genes or artifacts to humans is but another manifestation of the normal construction of such flows.
From a realist's perspective, there is no difference.
Angst and Fear
But such a perspective makes one squeamish. Raises fright, alarm and even disgust. One would not mind, a set of false teeth, even an implanted one, a prosthesis for one's limbs say, a walking stick or for that matter even a motorized electronically controlled one. But messing up one's interiority, ones subjectivity, evokes an entirely different order of emotions. The aliens taking over minds, raises different feelings, of one's own consciousness being invaded. It is after all, putting doubt on one's own subjectively-felt oneness that is at stake.
Angst and Fear Normal
But in such instances, the Buddha himself had been very firm, rejecting the views of persons who take the thing called the 'mind' or 'consciousness' to be an unchanging substance.
In that case it was better he argued, for a person to take the physical body as an unchanging 'self', rather than thought, mind or consciousness, because the body was at least more solid in appearance than the mental, which are ephemeral and continually change and so are hardly candidate for permanency
Fear of flying?
But experiencing the intrusion of the new technologies that remake us biologically and culturally, in an internal sense is disturbing. It challenges our sense of self. "This idea that I may not be, I may not have, is frightening to the uninstructed" as the Buddha himself put it. And, as the belief in an abiding self is deep rooted in humans, the contrary position is 'against the current' as the Buddhist texts say on one other occasion
Facing constructed humanity
If then in the coming future, it is inevitable that we be constructed and reconstructed, from bio, nano, and information technology, what should be our epistemological, philosophical, ethical and subjectively felt guiding principles be.
If "we" would then be cyborgs and hybrids, what should the interiority of robots, of constructed hybrids be, as they navigate reality, and tunnel through time subjectively
Inside constructed humanity
The person is not a ‘what’, but a process. Being is only a snap shot in the process of becoming, lasting only the length of one thought. "Just as a chariot wheel in rolling, rolls only at one point of the tire, and in resting rests only at one point; in exactly the same way, the [internal] life of a living being lasts only for the period of one thought. As soon as that thought has ceased, the being is said to have ceased”.
Inside constructed humanity
There is no stable sub stratum to be considered the self. It just symbolizes a stream of physical and psychological phenomena that is perishing. This is the correct view to be internalized in the inevitable day of the cyborg. As the 5 th C Sri Lankan text Vissudhi Magga put it: There is no doer but the deed There is no experiencer but the experience.
Constituent parts roll on. This is the true and correct view
Constructed Humanity: Mind And Body
“The mental and material, both are here in fact, A human substance though cannot be found, Void it is, set up like a machine, A mass of conflict, like a bundle of grass and sticks.” - 5 th C AC
Vissudhi Magga
Constructed Humanity: “I” as Robot
5 th "As a puppet walks and stands through a combination of wood and strings, although it is empty, without life, without impulse, so this contraption of mental and material factors [the person], void, without soul, without free will can walk and stand, as if it had will and work of its own” C AC
Vissudhi Magga
Buddhist Constructed Humanity?
Those bio, nano and information technologists who are reconstructing humans may not know it, but they are foundationally Buddhists In both perspectives the body and mind are intertwined and changing. In both perspectives the body and mind are not mystical but constructed In both perspectives the body and mind are malleable in definable ways
There is a difference
Those who are making a new reconstructed humanity view their phenomena from the outside, as objects
Buddhists have analyzed partly subjectively, partly from within
May be we should examine constructed humans internally
That is internalize being a robot, a cyborg
Like asking “What is it to be a robot?”
The future
The future according to Buddhist epistemology is definitely not “human”. There was no such unique "human" entity in the first place. In the beginning we were, if you will, only empty souls, “robots”.
Welcome then to non-self actualization, to Nirvana (in the original technical Buddhist sense).
An exploratory exercise
The above was an exploratory exercise into fact, epistemology and the imagination, some might even say of the speculative. But it is no more speculative than the faulty constructions of Asia by a Marx and Weber. And as Asia comes to its own we need more exercises in epistemology and the imagination as guides to view the coming world.