DIALOGUE OR MONOLOGUE OF CIVILIZATIONS? (RATIONAL PARADIGMS AND IRRATIONAL CHALLENGES)
Published on November 20, 2012 Written by WPF Dialogue of Civilizations
Davit Mosinyan Davit Mosinyan A Paper by Davit Mosinyan, Associate
Professor, Armenian State University of Economics, delivered at the
10th Rhodes Forum
Peace and safety have become the most important normative criteria
for life in the contemporary world. If one tries to mention some
universal human values, probably, first of all, he would remember
these two. After the Cold War mankind has concentrated large portions
of intellectual potential and practical efforts for realizations of
these two values. As a result, some terms, including “dialogue”,
have become buzzwords. By the way, taking into consideration the
social-historical fact that the times of the dialogue between two kings
or two leaders have already passed, in geopolitical sense nowadays
“dialogue” is interpreted as “dialogue of civilizations”. Despite the
way how understand the term “civilization” (though in case of the
dialogue of civilizations it seems the huntingtonean understanding
is supposed), a question arises: when can one assert that dialogue
has already taken place?
>From the falsificationist point of view (i.e. when our goal is the
dialogue, and the clash of civilizations is in the focus of attention)
technical productivity of research may be increase: for instance,
one can argue that the wars in Iraq, Kosovo, the Armenian-Azerbaijani
war are not dialogues, correspondingly, between the USA and Iraq,
Serbia and Albania, Armenia and Azerbaijan. For the problems,
concerning the dialogue among civilizations, are not puzzles,
which need rational solutions: they are rather questions connected
closely with the destiny of humankind. Meanwhile much more effort is
necessary to adopt the verificationist point of view, because here
one is obliged to answer at least the following two questions: 1)
How to distinguish the dialogue from its imitations? 2) What does
constitute the normative basis for the dialogue of civilizations?
Professor Hans Kochler has in detail presented necessary
conditions and principles of dialogue: equality of civilisational
(cultural) ‘lifeworlds’, awareness of the ‘dialectics of cultural
self-comprehension’, acknowledgement of meta-norms of dialogue,
ability to transcend the hermeneutical circle of civilisational
self-affirmation, etc. . But there is one more significant aspect
of the issue: how to distinguish the dialogue from a complex
of monologues (from a dualogue)? The first main indication of an
established dialogue is the understanding, which, by the way, being
an existential property, each time manifests itself differently. The
civilization always carries some definite sense. By the way, some
finiteness, a definite level of organization is peculiar civilization
(though, indeed, the development of civilization is possible). From
this point of view, each civilization is a verbalization of a certain
sense. It means that the civilization in its unalloyed state is an
original monologue, which may meet another monologue-civilization. In
fact, if the dialogue is realized, then the sense of the one side
is distorted and stops to exist in its previous form. For instance,
as Huntington notes, the modernization (which is the same thing as
westernization in this case) in Turkey since Mustafa Kemal is an
example of the dialogue with Europe, as a result of which Turkey
stopped to exist in its previous condition. By the way, Orhan Pamuk
has criticized the authorities of that state for such a strategy.
This criticism impels to remember an old anti-socialist joke, as
Wallerstein illustrates:
Orator: Comes the revolution, everyone will eat strawberries and cream.
Worker in audience: But I don’t like strawberries and cream.
Orator: Comes the revolution, you will have to like strawberries
and cream.
Of course, it doesn’t mean a rejection of the idea of dialogue.
Nowadays we have no other way for co-existence besides the dialogue.
But we should take into account the mechanisms of organization of
the dialogue.
According to Habermas, “the issue is no longer whether ‘justice among
nations’ is possible at all, but whether law is the right medium for
realizing that kind of justice”. International law is not established
once and for all. It may change under the influence of superpower
and yield to some moral arguments. A danger of the endless monologue
arises in the case of domination of such rules of game.
Another scenario of the dialogue of civilizations, which is presented
by Huntington, is the following: the civilizations become much closer
or fight each other mainly on religious grounds. According to one
of the rational previsions by Huntington, Russia and Georgia will
gradually become closer, because they are parts of the same Orthodox
civilization. However, in spite of this important factor, as we see,
these two nations still can’t find common language for dialogue.
Probably, one can invent some ad hoc theory to explain this
‘irrational’ fact. It is possible to apply to ad hoc theories for a
long time, but our life does not get better from this.
Civilization is a multilevel phenomenon. Some irrational facts always
slip out from the rational conceptions of dialogues of civilizations,
as well as from that of life. From a certain point of view, the
‘dialogue of civilizations’ is an absolute and abstract concept, for
what we mean, when we speak about: political, economical, cultural,
or social dialogue? For instance, Japan is in dialogue with Europe
on the economical level so far (which is perhaps the most primitive
level), but it is very closed and autonomous in the cultural respect.
One of the irrational challenges of our days is intensification
of socio-cultural life, which is connected with the development of
mass communicative means and promotion of the internet. Professor
Kochler bases his analysis of new social media and internet on
Gustav Le Bon’s idea of ‘psychology of crowd’ (see, Hans Kochler,
“The New Social Media and The Changing Nature of Communication:
Anthropological and Political Implications”, 2012, pp. 6-7).
Internet is like a crowd, as each person there has opportunity to
participate in the ‘dialogue’ with his own rules of game. Despite
the political efforts of the Republic of Armenia and the Republic
of Azerbaijan for peace, one can find mutual insults of Armenians
and Azerbaijani in the commentaries to the YouTube videos about
Nagorno-Karabakh. In this case, internet is an original area for
mutual aggression.
There are various means for regulation of ‘internet behavior’.
Thus, Iran has limited its internet-space; Singapore executes
censorship on the internet by law, etc. Without disputing these
approaches, however, it is necessary to mention that thus they
refrained from a real universal dialogue. Being impersonal,
dialogue on the internet is the most global, the most sincere
and at the same time the most chaotic. The problem is that it is
impossible to control the world wide internet by law. Besides, with
the extension of opportunities for social virtual communication, the
forms of expression of human subconscious have also multiplied. So the
artificially created picture of convergence of the civilizations (what
was the case, for example, with the Soviet Union) becomes meaningless.
Those relations of civilizations are stronger, which are expressed
not only on horizontal level (here and now, for instance, political
relations), but also on that of perpendicular, i.e. over the time.
And in time the most resistant are cultural relations, which influence
both on individuals, and on the crowd. Philosophical principles lie at
the core of our identity of any kind. In this sense, it is difficult
to distinguish civilizations which are fertilized by each other in
philosophical sense. Remembering Nietzsche’s note on fertilizing and
fertilized nations, we can observe the following: Russia and Germany
belong to the different civilizations; in addition to it, because of
the World War II hostile feelings arose between them. But now these
two countries have reached quite serious level of dialogue. And this
is partially due to the philosophical relations, existing between
Hegel and Solovyov, Schelling and Berdyaev, Goethe and Tolstoy, etc.,
relations which one still may deep into. The same may be said also
about Germany and Armenia.
Internet is a space where horizontal and perpendicular levels of
culture meet. Due to the internet, humankind has become a real subject
of communication; as to national collectivity, it has become a fact,
as the will of population now can manifest itself just via pressing the
button ‘Like’, etc. It means that cultural and socio-cultural relations
can become a sustained basis for the organization of dialogue on the
state level.