Worldview is a belief system, a descriptive model of the world, an
explanation on questions like what we should do, where we are heading, how we
should attain our goals almost always determining our behavior to external
forces. It can be at an individual level or the larger self of our
individuality i.e. the national level. If we agree with the modern concept of
state-nation, then it is how the worldview of each nation-state determine how
it will interact with other, this is what many would call geopolitics. Ignoring
the early tribal organizations, the statecraft really came into existence when
empires (like the early Gupta empire in ancient India) started forming in human
civilization, which subsequently morphed into various forms (including American
imperialism of 20th century) at the influence of various ideas, subsequently
evolving to the modern civilization, as we know today. Broadly speaking we have
the
- The idea of civilized empire.
- Islamic view of the world.
- Vedic view of the world.
- Christian view of the world which subsequently led to the concept of Westphalian sovereignty
- Communism.
- Globalization and Internationalism.
If we distinguish between the organization structures attempting
the implementation of the above philosophies from the thoughts themselves, then
what we get is the concept behind those viewpoints. Then again, that said,
sometimes and many a times structures (like the senate-emperor structure of the
Roman empire or Chandragupta’s empire as a sole sovereign) themselves influence
the philosophies.
The idea of Civilized World:
When China rose to height of their power they came to believe (which
lasted to the beginning of the 20th century till its last emperor)
that the center of the earth is themselves i.e. the emperor. Every other
country has a lower culture and has a lot to learn from them and should pay
some tributes as a gesture for their humbleness and lessons learnt from an
advance civilization. Similar was the thought of the Persian Emperor or the
Roman emperors at the height of their power. As the 4th Century BCE
Indian thinker Chanakya aptly put it, that an emperor’s empires lay in the
center of the chakra and every other ones exists in concentric circles around
it. Many emperors ( except strangely though not from India) , often always the
derived his legitimacy from the ultimate sovereign God, like the King of Japan
claimed as a descendant of God, Calligula the Roman Emperor declare d himself
as living God, the Persian Emperor Cyrus claimed himself as a son of God.
Islamic View of the world: Islam share many tenets of
Christianity, the notion of the existence of an infinite, personal God who
created a finite, material world and that reality is both material and
spiritual. Time is linear and the universe as we know it had a beginning and
will have an end. In spite of all those, Islam is a very good example of an
aggressive political-religion with regard to cultural transformation as it will not assimilate into other cultures, rather it tries change them through force. Its stated
long-term goal is to be the globally dominant religion. Peace to a Muslim
becomes a reality when Islam rules the world, until then, there will be a
continual global jihad . There is neither
neutrality nor compromising with other cultures. Islam is a powerful religion,
because as well as being a religion, it is a political ideology with its own legal system.
Vedic view of the world: It acknowledges a cyclical view of the
world with stages of birth-growth-maturity-entropy-annihilation and then again
rebirth cycle. Only the spiritual dimension exists. All else is illusion, maya.
Spiritual reality, Brahman,
is eternal, impersonal, and unknowable. It is possible to say that everything
is a part of God, or that God is in everything and everyone. Man is one with
ultimate reality. Thus man is spiritual, eternal, and impersonal. Man’s belief
that he is an individual is illusion. Truth is an experience of unity with
"the oneness" of the universe. Truth is beyond all rational
description. It is in this view that the
existence of State as an extension of Man is a maya, its existence is temporary and will get destroyed. No culture
is superior and eternal, everyone gets destroyed in this constant cycle of
rebirth, history has little meaning. Then why should a state/culture thrive at
all ? It exists in the world for a purpose, the purpose of enabling
self-empowerment of its citizens. There can be multiple States and all these
states can take different paths towards same common goal i.e self-empowerment
of its citizens. The ultimate is that, there is no State in the world (or only
one State) , free from constant recycling , and all mankind is self-empowered
freely self-organizing themselves. ( at best a dream.)
Christian view of the world which subsequently led to the
concept of Westphalian sovereignty:
Here the concept of time is linear. An
infinite, personal God exists. He created a finite, material world. Reality is
both material and spiritual. The universe as we know it had a beginning and will
have an end. For Christians, government happens to be one of the institutions
specifically established by God in order to facilitate the accomplishment of
his purposes in the world (the other primary institutions being family and
church). As such, there truly is a Christian way to look at politics, and
Christians need to be engaged in a way that facilitates the work of God in the
world through the political process. Orderliness is required in society if it
is to function in ways which allow for the accomplishment of God’s purposes.
The urge to bring orderliness in a liner concept of time and after walking
through the violent Middle ages arose the concept of Westphalia balance system.
Here all the nations, whether small or big gets their sovereignty recognized
and an equal seat at the table. All of them will need to exist, the smaller
nations, checking the power of bigger nations by acting as a buffer to other
bigger nations. In this way this balance, is a dance to eternity. The ultimate
sovereign is God and not Nation.
Communism: A 19th -20th century concept
broke through the religious understanding of the world and brought in fresh
understanding of the world through the glasses of economics. It is a
revolutionary socialist movement to create a classless, moneyless and stateless
social order structured upon common ownership of the means of production, as
well as a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the
establishment of this social order. Marxist theory holds that pure communism or
full communism is a specific stage of historical development that inevitably
emerges from the development of the productive forces that leads to a
superabundance of material wealth. This allows for distribution based on need
and social relations based on freely associated individuals. While Lenin added
to Marxism the notion of a vanguard party to lead the proletarian revolution
and to secure all political power after the revolution for the working class,
for the development of universal class consciousness and worker participation,
in a transitional stage between capitalism and socialism. However the goal
remained the same, as Trotsky believed, to bring about a stateless social order
around the world, ruled by the workers. It remained a utopian dream , probably
the first attempt in the human history to bring about all humanity together in
a stateless society.
Globalization and Internationalism: After the colonial era (which was a totally
unstable world order based on exploitation and somewhat a bad copy of early
Empire System) the Westphalian System of balance of power dominated the world.
The western countries, moving away from being colonial masters ( as maintaining
a colony was no longer economically viable) transmuted into what we call today
as western liberal democracy and adapted this Westphalian System to keep
themselves in a stable state and maintain a balance of power amongst
themselves. The new countries, in Asia ( and to some extent Africa) , rising
out of the colonial experience looked at these mature western democracy, and
themselves adapted to a similar Westphalian System of balance of power. State
sovereignty is the principle of international law that each nation-state has
sovereignty over its territory and domestic affairs, to the exclusion of all
external powers, on the principle of non-interference in another country's
domestic affairs, and that each state (no matter how large or small) is equal
in international law. As European influence spread across the globe, these principles
became central to international law and to the prevailing world order until the
economic necessity of the globalization came about . Globalization is an
economic force which promised to expand and develop new markets for the goods
developed by the western countries. It came into being as every consumer in the
western countries had everything they needed ( a step towards capitalist
contradictions) i.e. the markets got saturated. Thus to create new markets, the
companies had to push money towards other less developed economies i.e. via
shifting jobs subsequently jump starting their economies. It is for this reason
many Asian economies rose into the world order. It led to international
integration ( economically : trade groups like WTO,NAFTA) , and, arguably, the
erosion of Westphalian sovereignty. The European Union's concept of shared
sovereignty is also somewhat contrary to historical views of Westphalian
sovereignty, as it provides for external agents to influence and interfere in
the internal affairs of its member countries.
So what's next?
In
the long chronology of human history , if we ignore occasional dictators like
Hitler, Stalin, Aurangzeb and others power maniacs, we need to think why
humanity in general did, did what they did. Why did they absorb certain world
view or religion? To better themselves. While as a concept we know that there
are only two ways to rule a State, first to distribute power i.e democracy (an
idea spawned in early Greece), second concentrate power in the hands of a benevolent
dictator. Democracy was tried at a mass( i.e. a country’s citizen directly
electing a popular leader) level in modern democracies and limited way for the
certain sections of society like the Roman senate and even when the communist
politburo elected their leaders via voting. The other, benevolent dictatorship
concept has been instituted indirectly
with the concept of a republic and
directly via earlier emperors like Ashoka, Akbar and even today, via Saudi
kings and so on. The issue is not that
of organizational formation but what should be the final form of humanity.
Should there be multiple nation state completely sovereign following the cycle
of rebirth (like erstwhile soviet union, rebirth of Serbia or death of Hapsburg
empire) or should there be multiple nation states co-existing, partially
surrendering their sovereignty but keeping its own unique ethnicity (as in
European Union or India Union) governed by a larger federal state ? Lastly will
it be like a one nation in the world where whole humanity, each with its unique
individuality is living under common governance.
I do
believe that all human beings are linked together by certain universal values
like tolerance, freedom of expression and an instinct to survive at any cost.
In order to survive we need diversity, multiple cultures bring multiple ideas
pertaining to that reality interpreted through their language and cultural
paradigm. Human beings are nodes in its cultural reality, a product of social
setting constructed by the immediate surroundings that can be a State (which we
call nation). All
moral values are relative. Each person or culture develops their own moral
values. The important question is not "Is it right?" but "What
will it do for me? Thus the bottom-line is that a multiple cultural reality
needs to exists simultaneously ( it can be in the form of a Nation State or any
other group of people renamed as whatever). The study of history teaches that in
the past; men always thought they were right, and that led to wars,
persecutions, slavery, xenophobia, racism and chauvinism. The point is that
nobody is right or wrong, it is true if you believe it and that goes for
anything. Thus the cycle of birth-death-rebirth of nation states will end
merging into the universal reality of tolerance , openness and acceptance of
all culture co-existing and governed by a universal large federal state or self-organizing
and merging themselves into a common state or total humanity sharing power in
very decentralized way with self-realization of each individual as the greater
motto.
