The Global Community: An Alternative

By Philip P. Joseph

The Global Community an alternative is a reflection of author's encounters of the past and the present. He is of the view that the greed and unresponsive designs of the owners of capital are taking the globe to a precipice of an avoidable disaster. His alternative is not a violent revolution or mass uprising, but an intelligent and judicial circumventing in the form of the creation of a global community. He gives the contours of such an alternative and hopes that the youth who are most important stake holders will develop and practice it at various levels. The aim of book is to make the reader aware that two of the major factors expected to nurture and preserve life, peace and happiness namely religion and science are being hijacked by the forces of greed and unresponsive designs. Three important phenomenon of the present times economic inequality, climate changes and nuclear wars are taking us to the precipice of an avoidable disaster. This book is attempting to reach the conscience of youth and students, who have already shown signs of massive response to each of these issues.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098372712

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© 2021 Philip P. Joseph All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN 978-1-09837-270-5 eBook 978-1-09837-271-2

Contents

Preface

Part One - The Reflective Past

Chapter 1 - Introduction

Chapter 2 - God and Religion

God’s Role in Human Life and the Organization of Religions

Hinduism

Buddhism

Christianity

Islam

Impact of Religion and Social Organizations on Human History

Too Many Promises, Little Actualization

Chapter 3 - Science and Society

Potential for Greater Well-Being

Globalization of Under-Development

The Nuclear Arms Race

Anthropology and Evolution

Technology and Alienation

Internet and Automation

Climate Change

Misuse of Science – Destitution and Famines

Widening Economic and Social Inequalities

Part Two - The Global Community

Chapter 4 - The Alternative

The Global Community

The First Step

The Second Step

The Third Step

The Fourth Step

The Fifth Step

Governance of the Global Community

Should We Replace the Existing Governing Systems?

How Should We Evolve an Alternative Value System?

How to Replace or Supplement Economic and Social Services?

Settlement of Disputes

Methodology of Transition

Chapter 5 - The Inevitability of the Global Community

Assign an Appropriate Role for Religion and Science

An Exalted World of Creativity

Virtual and Beyond

Summary and Conclusion

Postscript

Bibliography

Preface

As an academic and social activist, I am fascinated and disturbed by the turn of events in our planet. On one side, science and technology have discovered theories and applications unimagined by not only our predecessors in earlier decades but even by us a few years before. The explosion of knowledge and information have transformed the world already into a virtual entity of communications and networking. Popular articles appearing all over the world predict that within a few years, artificial intelligence and global connectivity will make life different from what we are experiencing today.

On the other side, we are witnessing unprecedented polarization between the rich and the poor. Even though there were disparities between the rich and the poor in earlier times, the poor and marginalized had greater access to common property resources. The deprivation and alienation of large majority of people in the world, arising from the privatization and accumulation of economic resources, do not seem to bother the ruling class of nations. The owners and controllers of economic assets, money, and the finance and political-industrial complexes consider these to be manifestations of their efficiency and wisdom. An equally explosive situation is the stockpiling of nuclear weapons. Big nation-states, which were in the vanguard of many initiatives, are sitting on top of nuclear and biological weapons of mass destruction. Smaller nations are also spending exorbitantly to gain nuclear capability because they believe nuclear-powered big nations will flex their muscles and rob them of their sovereignty. From what we read and see in everyday global discourses, with rulers of nations behaving irrationally, a nuclear holocaust seems very likely.

A third phenomenon is the changes experienced in the world environment. The quality of air, water, and the natural habitat are being eroded by the so-called technology of growth. The fossil fuel-generated energy which led the industrial revolution of the twentieth century released enormous amounts of carbon dioxide and toxic materials. Climate changes and the degradation of the earth’s ecology threaten to liquidate life and still the overwhelming majority of people controlling the modes of production, exchange, and lifestyles show very little concern. This is evident from the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Climate treaty and the scorn poured on scientific warnings by President Trump and the business lobbies of the U.S.

As a child, I had hoped that human beings would eventually see the light of reason one day or another. As will be narrated in the first chapter, I was depressed by many things. Still, I believed that the thoughts and actions of the enlightened would make meaningful changes. I found myself surrounded by believers of different religions. The mystical tradition of my country, India, makes an average human being bestow her or his trust on Providence, but the pilgrimages, the sacrifices made by people do not seem to save them from abject poverty and deprivation. The religions of which I intend to make a short survey in the proceeding chapters are, ultimately, rigid establishments and sometimes being used as accomplices to the forces that are taking the world to greater tragedies. One silver lining in this era of apathy in the religions and social institutions is the emergence of a technology that has immense possibilities to liberate the world from bondage and connect them as members of a global community. What I mean by this technology is a possible communication and proactive collective of people who may intentionally foster sharing of knowledge and information systems to achieve an inclusive social and economic order. This technology will also popularize production for sustenance and the sharing of resources. I am making a simple presentation of my model of the global community in the hope that the young people who are today well-versed in these possibilities will do something unprecedented. The proposed community of people would be connected on a global scale through information systems. The coming together of such a community of people would be motivated by a desire to have an alternative to the divisive and polarized socio cultural and economic establishments, one where it will not be necessary to know the antecedents of each member or their classes, religion or culture. The paramount objective of such a global community would be to put in place a just and peaceful social and economic order, motivated by the desire to create a just and peaceful world order. I will try to present a blueprint of this community in the last chapters of this book.

Part One

The Reflective Past

Chapter 1

Introduction

It is with a sense of diffidence that I start to recollect some of my experiences of life. I am not a person of any great achievements. What is there to boast about in a life that is not of a celebrity status, with but few happenings that may be noteworthy by some academic or creative standards? I have had so many brainwaves or thoughts during my life which I used to discard as imaginations. I am in my early seventies and some of the experiences are from my student days. The loneliness, the scenarios of poverty and destitution I saw became vivid in the narratives of the books and dramas I read and saw then. The beautiful countryside of Kerala, the Indian state where I grew up, should have been an enchanting one for a young person, but it was the grey and ugly things which influenced me more. It might well have been the general surrounding of poverty that made me despondent. I chose economics as my major in university and my study of its history, theories and systems built over last two centuries were very generative. I learned about old civilizations like Greek city-states, which had popular democratic institutions and self-sufficient city states but eventually degenerated into places of racial and religious divisions. The decline of Roman empire led to the formation of European nation-states. The overriding influence of religion in these nations and the political domination of the elites transformed Europe into a feudal hierarchy. The Manorial system in Europe divided the population into feudal lords, tenant cultivators and customary serfs. What ensued then was religious persecutions, land alienation, slavery and bonded labor.

The situation in Russia, the largest European nation, China and India were not different. The caste system in India made more than seventy-five percent of population subservient to the priestly class, known as Brahmins, and the warrior class, called Kshatriyas. In Russia, the monarchy sided with the oligarchs and the peasants suffered for centuries. In China, the opium wars and the feudal divisions reduced the enormous nation to racial struggles and regional enmities. My Ph.D. research led me to analyses of agrarian systems in various parts of the world, which allowed me to see that there were concerted efforts in most agrarian systems to consolidate land rights in the privileged class and make the toiling farm workers bonded laborers or customary slaves. My lectures to students in the university and seminars in academic conferences made me aware that there has been a systematic long-term design to concentrate economic and political power in the hands of a minority of elites all over the world. Even though I became part of many voluntary movements and non-governmental organizations for social and economic justice, my involvement did not go beyond being an armchair academic. But late in life and after some second thoughts, I felt many of my ruminations worthy of chronicling so that critics can make an objective evaluation. It is possible that those thoughts and happenings, unique to my environment, might have something for posterity.

My first encounter with the awareness that an individual is incapable to chart out his life was when I was student in a college in Kerala. There was a short story written by Leo Tolstoy for supplementary reading in a non-detailed study to be taught in a Pre-degree course of Kerala University in the 1964-66 curriculum. The English lecturer narrated the story. Here was a character lost in a deep wood, unable to find his way out. Sitting in a class of eighty students, I felt unseen; I became very lonely, and when I walked back home after the class, I was miserable. For days, weeks, distraught thoughts and feelings haunted me. Like the character, I felt lonely and desperate. I began to search for my life’s purpose. I felt that each member of society was a pawn in the design of an over-riding mechanism to control society and wealth. To me, the ever-needy, consumerist individual was a designed feature of that mechanism, and in order to secure the absolute obedience of mortals, this mechanism was characterized as divinity or a metaphysical power and worshipped. Had it been a just and equitable society, the mechanism would have been the epitome of justice and love, but that was not to be. The struggle of people for their everyday existence and the squalor which is part of poverty seemed to me