Forming a Global Community

By Joseph de Rivera

To address global problems such as pandemics, warming, economic inequality, mass migration, and widespread terrorism, Joseph de Rivera argues that we must form a global community. A community of eight billion humans is difficult to conceive. However, it can be imagined and created if we transform our understanding of who humans are and what 'com

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vernon Art and Science Inc.
• Release date: Mar 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9781648896675

Joseph de Rivera

Joseph de Rivera (PhD. Stanford, 1961) is Professor Emeritus at Clark University. A founding member of the International Society for Research on Emotions and a fellow in three different divisions of the American Psychological Association, he taught at Dartmouth and NYU before coming to Clark and founding their Program in Peace and Conflict. The author or editor of six previous books, he is currently engaged in research on celebrations that promote global community.

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Forming a Global Community

Joseph de Rivera

Clark University

with critical contributions from

Harry A. Carson

Series in Philosophy

Copyright © 2023 Joseph de Rivera.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Vernon Art and Science Inc.

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Series in Philosophy

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022942837

ISBN: 978-1-64889-667-5

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To my family and our global family

Table of contents

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1      The challenge of globalization

Chapter 2      The Self

Chapter 3      The Person

Chapter 4      Love, Fear, and Aggression

Chapter 5      Society, Social Identity, and Objectification

Chapter 6      The Nature of Community

Chapter 7      Religion, Rationality, and Faith

Chapter 8      Creating a Global Community

Bibliography

Notes

Preface

This work is the result of a collaboration between a psychologist (de Rivera) and a philosopher (Carson). Our thinking has been influenced by the seminal writings of John Macmurray (1891-1976) whose personal and intellectual development is chronicled in John E. Costello’s biography. Macmurray advanced a conception of the self that suggests the possibility of a global community. Believing that the survival of humanity depends on the formation of such a community we corresponded for hundreds of pages on the challenges posed by such a conception. Typically, de Rivera would write dozens of questions from the perspective of empirical psychology that Carson would attempt to answer from his philosophical perspective and Macmurray’s extensive writing. We decided to write a book, agreed on an outline of its contents, and proceeded to write chapters. The version presented here is based more on de Rivera’s social science perspective but reflects Carson’s insistence on faithfulness to Macmurray’s humanistic philosophy. We hope it will contribute to the global community that is forming.

There are numerous people I would like to thank. The first chapter benefited from the thoughts of Geir Tonnessen, Alain Locussol, and Clifford Gilpin, while the chapters on the self and the person were aided by comments from Jim Behuniak, Michael F. Mascolo, David Haines, Nick Thompson, and Robin Downie. The chapter on love, fear, and anger, and the chapter on community attempt to respond to comments by Agustin Espinosa and a critique by James Liu. The chapters on society were aided by comments from Johanna Vollhardt, Nicole Overstreet, Michelle Twali, Maho Aikawa, and Silvia da Costa, and the chapter on community was helped by Rosa María Cueto Saldívar. Chapter seven benefited from work by José Joaquín Pizarro, and the ideas in chapter eight were influenced by the thinking of Fouad Bou Zeineddine and Carlos Marin.

Intellectual and emotional support for this endeavor was provided by Melvin J. Lerner, Bruce A. Levi, Darío Páez, and the memory of Isidor Chein.

The overall text was improved by caring suggestions from Ron Turcotte and my wife Deborah, and by the skillful editing of Sarah Wagner.

Needless to say, all errors are my own.

Introduction

Massive changes in technology, travel and communication have transformed our world so that it is now intimately interconnected and interdependent. We have become a system of countries (or, more specifically, nation-states) that has achieved many successes, such as increased lifespans, greater access to healthcare, and widespread connectivity. At the same time, this global system has not been able to achieve the cooperation that is needed to deal with warfare, pandemics, global warming, and increasing economic and social inequality. In fact, the cultural differences and power struggles within and between our countries seem to be insurmountable obstacles to effective cooperation. In this book, the author will be arguing that our global system is fundamentally flawed because it connects arbitrary states rather than the communities that are essential to human life. Adequately addressing the current dilemmas posed by pandemics, global warming, inequality, widespread terrorism, and mass migration requires attaining the sort of caring and trust that occurs in human communities. This book is about developing a global community: Why it is necessary, how it is possible, and the sorts of actions that will help to create it.

In the first chapter, we shall see that a global community is necessary because threats to national identities, an economic system based solely on profit, and a reluctance to share power prevent a commitment to finding common solutions. Individual and tribal identities dominate a more fundamental identity that is based on our personal relationships with others. The selfishness bred from fear and the struggle for power among competing nation-states will continue to generate either war or oligarchic control until we create the caring relationships and unifying rituals of community.

Although community at first might seem only feasible at a local level, developing a global community is possible if we transform our usual ways of conceiving our identity, the nature of community, and the function of religion. Chapters two through seven consider these transformations. Building on the seminal philosophy of John Macmurray (1891-1976), I argue that our human identity and existence have always depended on the personal relationships that underlie communities. Chapters two and three show that who we are cannot possibly be the conscious selves with whom we ordinarily identify. Rather than being knowers of a world that is separate from ourselves, we are better understood as actors or agents whose relationships involve both a caring for the other and a fear for the self. The precise nature of this love, this fear, and inevitable aggression is considered in chapter four, where I argue that justice depends on the dominance of love over fear.

Whereas chapters two through four are primarily concerned with personal identity, the next three focus on how this identity relates to our understanding of the nature of society and community. Chapter five examines our social identities and society; chapter six considers different ways to view community and how to conceptualize a fully effective global community. Chapter seven argues that to cope with the continual presence of fear and anger, societies have long been unified by secular and religious traditions and rituals. We will maintain that the rituals which succeed in reinforcing the dominance of caring over fear are what enable societies to be communal. From this perspective, a communal world with states that promote human rights is possible and is not a utopian political or social ideal which succeeds by erasing our worldwide diversity. It is instead a world in which we live our personal lives in a universal community that is based upon the more particular communities we inhabit.

The final chapter considers what actions will help establish this universal community. Reaching the East by sailing West required realizing that the world was not as flat as it appeared. Likewise, reaching a global community will require realizing that persons are not as individual as they appear. If we understand our fundamentally personal-communal nature we can take actions that will transform the current system of nation-states, with its global economy, and religious conflicts. The actions we describe will gradually establish structures of governance that are more based on love than power, a political economy that is oriented to common welfare as well as individual interests, and common rituals that can unite us in a global community.

A note to the reader: Much of this material is presented from the perspective of social science and assumes some familiarity with its vocabulary and approach. However, I believe the arguments themselves can be followed by those who seek a viable approach to global problems, regardless of their fluency in the field.

The challenge of globalization

We are currently living in a system of nation-states which each asserts the legitimate right to use force to regulate the society within the territory it claims. This system has enabled important successes but has not been able to achieve the cooperation that is needed to deal with warfare, pandemics, global warming, and increasing inequality. The cultural differences and power struggles within and between these countries seem too large to permit effective cooperation. Although the system might function if one nation-state acquired enough power to force the organization of a world state this seems both unlikely and undesirable. The failure of the system leads us to ask some fundamental questions: Why is force needed to regulate society, what gives a state the legitimacy to use force, and how should its territory be established? The author will be arguing that our system of nation-states is fundamentally flawed because it builds on arbitrary states rather than the community that is essential to human life. Succeeding chapters will explore the details of this argument and its conception of human nature, society, states, and community, but first, it seems important to examine our current system in more detail. What has enabled the cooperation that has occurred and what is limiting the extension of this cooperation?

The challenge faced by our current global society is illustrated by the mixed response to the COVID-19 pandemic. On the one hand, there was enough international cooperation for governments, health organizations, manufacturers, scientists, and civil society to collaborate in accelerating the development, production, and access to tests, treatments, and vaccines. On the other hand, there was not enough cooperation to adequately prepare for the epidemic, and a lack of cooperation contributed to the extensive loss of life, prolonged period of recovery, and inequitable distribution of vaccines. In this chapter, we shall see that the cooperation needed to face challenges such as pandemics and global warming will require the establishment of a global community. Hopefully, the international cooperation that exists harbingers the beginning of a global community. We can see such a beginning in organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pronouncing, all lives have equal value and acting to begin a Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) that created a market for the development of vaccines. Our interdependency requires a communal response as revealed when we examine the international response to the pandemic.

The failure of cooperation in preparing for the pandemic occurred in the absence of true global community, where many wealthy nations failed to follow 27 specific recommendations for controlling pandemics. The recommendations for controlling pandemics had been made in 2016 by a United Nations panel investigating the difficulties in controlling the earlier Ebola epidemic.1 The cooperative success occurred because one of the recommendations was followed by some philanthropists and a few governments who thought communally and contributed funds to begin a Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). The existence of CEPI made it possible for scientists to immediately collaborate on tracking the spread of the new virus, determine how it was spread, and immediately work on vaccine development. The cooperative failure occurred because many nations were not yet thinking communally. The UN panel had noted that lack of political leadership had been a critical factor in undermining effective action in controlling epidemics and that there was a need for a single global health leader. It recommended that the World Health Organization (WHO) be reformed and given significant resources to determine and execute global health priorities. Yet this did not occur and as the pandemic began the United States withdrew from the World Health Organization. The WHO does still not have the resources that are required and the world’s nations still lack the political will to accomplish what is needed.

The modern advances that have led to globalization have benefited us in several ways. Most of us want to live long lives and in the last 55 years, the average person’s life span has increased from 52.6 to 71.9 years. Most want the conveniences of modern life and 85% of people now have access to electricity, 90% to water, and an incredible 98% now have access to cell phones.2 Both statistical and anecdotal evidence suggest that overall violence is decreasing and that most of us are living in a much better world than in the past.3 We complain about the deficiencies of capitalism, the size of government, increasing homogenization, pandemics, and much else, but in many ways, the world is a better place and few want to relinquish the benefits of modernization. This modern standard of living currently depends on medical technology, energy supplies, and a large infrastructure of communications and transportation that is established and maintained by states and large corporations.

However, this progress has come with a cost and created several crises: CO2 emissions have risen from 3 to 5 metric tons per person and since the population has more than doubled in the last 50 years we are now confronted with global warming that is producing rising sea levels and contributing to droughts and extreme storms. The corporate exploitation of mineral resources has driven indigenous peoples away from their lands and although overall poverty has decreased, there is an increasing economic inequality, with less than 10% owning 84% of the world’s wealth and only 0.7% owning half of that. The race for national global dominance supports an international arms trade and threatens nuclear war. The shrinkage of space and time has contributed to the homogenization of cultures, a loss of spoken languages, and the same shopping malls and fast-food choices in city after city. The ease of movement facilitates pandemics. The movement of millions of people from villages to large cities has led to a loss of traditional ways of life and habits of cooperation, and the need to compete in global markets has led to an individualism that is replacing communal morality. When adolescents from Thai villages are asked to give a personal example of doing something that was good or bad they are twice as apt to give an example of having helped someone as are adolescents living in a city. Those in cities tend to give examples of dishonesty or of refraining from lying or cheating.4

It is easy to forget how dependent we are on whatever community exists where we live. Some neighborhoods enjoy community norms and those from wealthier neighborhoods are apt to blame those from impoverished neighborhoods for high rates of delinquency and drug use because they underestimate the difficulty of acting responsibly in those environments in which a sense of community is lacking. In a similar manner, those living in affluent societies take for granted the money needed to adequately pay for the public police forces, health, and water supplies needed for community wellbeing in contemporary cities and may fail to understand the sort of aid needed for the wellbeing of community in other nations. Costa Rica, for example, operates as a democracy with a rule of law that is comparable to that in the United States yet it lacks enough money to pay for a good public police force so the personal security of Costa Ricans living in upper-middle class neighborhoods is actually lower than those living in some lower-class neighborhoods in the United States.5 When the owners of factories in the United States moved production to other nations in order to have cheaper labor expenses, they failed to consider the impact on local communities and how this would affect the emotional climate within the United States. In general, local communities in all nations are embedded in societies that lack sufficient concern for their wellbeing. Many aspects of personal life are influenced by political and economic events in the societies that surround communities and are outside of community control. Hence, communities are subject to the influence of impersonal markets and power-oriented states that erode their control and the freedom for them to act in their best interests.

Some believe that our problems are relatively minor and that our overall progress, and especially the decline in violence, is due to an increase in a cosmopolitan modernity that is opposed to the constricting, anti-modernization forces of traditional community and religion. Pinker offers a reassuring liberal perspective that argues for a reasonable state system, increasing commerce, feminization, an expanding circle of empathic concern, and the growth of the ability to reason that one’s own interests and the interests of others are equivalent. In this view, although things are far from perfect, we are headed in the right direction and, barring an accidental nuclear war, we can rely on reason and cosmopolitanism to help us achieve a better future.6

I believe that this reasoning involves a fundamental error that ignores the extent of the difficulties our species must resolve if it is to survive. The liberal perspective assumes that our species consists of individual organisms who behave in a self-interested manner but can rationally cooperate to achieve a common good. And certainly, individuals often do this. However, this assumption neglects the emotional aspect of our nature and how our fear and anger lead us to act in irrational ways. Time and again, individual and national self-interests prevent sufficient consideration of the common good, and the desire for immediate profit and power overrides the consideration of future consequences. It seems to me that the kind of cooperation that is needed involves a caring for others that goes beyond enlightened self-interest and team spirit. Our species is not composed of individual organisms but of emotionally interconnected persons who only thrive when they live in community and argue that today’s situation requires the rescuing of local community and the establishment of global community. We are beginning to live in an increasingly global society. Societies require ways to govern, manage economies, and ensure sufficient unification. Let us examine the progress that has been made and the limitations that have been reached in our society of nation-states.

Governmental procedures

Although current struggles for global power involve national alliances, nuclear deterrence, and military actions, we are attempting to control global conflict with the procedures provided by the United Nations. Global economics requires extensive trade between nations that differ in their economic wealth and political systems and must compete for advantage in a global market. Hence, there is a struggle for resources, market dominance, and beneficial trade arrangements. This competition would quickly result in military and trade wars among nations were it not for a substantial number of agreements among national governments. The formation and upholding of these agreements constitutes a sort of world government; it is remarkable how much world governance we have been able to accomplish in spite of the many differences in national wealth and ideology.

In many areas of governance, nations have managed to cooperatively create a functioning international bureaucracy. We take for granted an international postage system managed by the Universal Postal Union, international phone calls and the shared use of radio frequencies and satellite orbits enabled by the International Telecommunication Union, and safe global air travel and transportation managed by the International Civil Aviation Organization. Who thinks about the World Meteorological Organization that monitors weather, climate, and the flows of water, or the International Maritime Organization that is responsible for the safety and security of the shipping that accounts for more than 80% of world trade?7 All of these agencies belong to the UN’s Economic and Social Council and there are many others that are part of this UN system. Each deals with multiple problems. To highlight one example, the World Health Organization does not only struggle with pandemics. It managed to eradicate smallpox and continually attempts to cope with international public health issues such as communicable diseases like HIV/Aids, malaria, and tuberculous. Besides sending medical teams to combat epidemics, WHO deals with sanitation, sexual and reproductive health, ageing, nutrition, occupational health, and substance abuse, and its many crucial publications include a World Health report.

The work of all these agencies and programs, together with the work of the General Assembly and Security Council, is facilitated by the UN Secretariat with a staff of over 40,000 members in New York and around the world. This central UN bureaucratic branch has departments and offices that deal with the management of the General Assembly and conferences, public information, disarmament, peacekeeping forces, humanitarian affairs, economic and social affairs, and the many other aspects of global management. They furnish the agenda and background reports for the hundreds of meetings that establish global policies. The Secretariat’s chief administrative officer, the UN Secretary General, chairs the meetings that coordinate the work of all the agencies and programs, brings issues to the Security Council, and represents the UN to the world.

In some areas, the representatives of different nations can engage in dialogue, find it fairly easy to cooperate, and can make decisions by consensus. However, when issues involve human rights, military forces, or economic discrepancies there is much less agreement, decisions must be made by voting, and political maneuvering occurs. When issues must be decided by the 15-member Security Council, even less cooperation may occur and important decisions may be avoided because China, France, Great Britain, Russia, and the United States have the power to veto resolutions that most nations would like to see enforced. For the global bureaucracy to function, there needs to be cooperation among parties with different interests and ways to ensure funding, control corruption, and manage inefficiency. However, there are obvious problems: Wealthy nations exert more power and threaten to withdraw funding when they do not get their way. Rather than securing cooperation through constructive dialogue about how to achieve common interests, officials who are representing nations with different ideologies and amounts of wealth may engage in defensive posturing. Achieving responsibility and efficiency requires a personnel system that can reflect competency and integrity, but this is sometimes hindered by the demand for national representation. Corruption can only be controlled when there is global oversight and authority and this is difficult when there are no transparent global elections. Any bureaucracy may be undermined by struggles for personal power and status, and the UN bureaucracy is built on nations with different power and status that may compete to control what happens.

When powerful nations struggle for international dominance, their search for military and economic advantages prevents the international cooperation that is needed to end civil war, global warming, and the abuse of human rights. The prerequisite for effective cooperation is a strong community, and the international cooperation needed to deal with global problems requires the development of a global community. In fact, the political procedures used within nations reflect the relative absence of community in most nations and leave much to be desired. Those living in multiparty systems are aware of how the struggle for party power often prevents the creation of productive policies that could meet present needs. Western political theory deals with the corrupting effects of power by stressing the separation and division of power and by the holding of elections based on competition between different parties. However, it ignores the fact that elections are often simply wars by other means rather than healthy competition between different ideas and interests. In general, it fails to sufficiently distinguish aspects of the competition for power that benefit versus harm the system of governance, and by focusing completely on multiparty systems it ignores exploring variations on the single-party structure advocated by the founders of the American government and the administrative structure of the Swiss model. Conversely, the theory used by single-party systems ignores the dangers posed by the desire to perpetuate power, the difficulty of controlling corruption, and the problem of minority rights. Later I will argue that the dilemmas faced by both systems cannot be solved without a better understanding of the role of fear in our human identity and in succeeding chapters we will show how understanding different ways of managing fear may help us negotiate the differences between nations such as the United States and China.

Economic procedures

We are living in an era where economic development largely depends on private choices about how to invest capital.8 Although states raise money through taxes and conduct important investments in infrastructure, there is a consensus that the central planning that was used by the Soviet Union and China is inefficient. Global capitalism has ensured a global standard of living and life expectancy that has never been higher. However, this progress has come at the expense of environmental degradation, increased inequality, and the loss of local communities. The emphasis on profit-making has led petroleum and mining companies to move indigenous peoples off of lands. Oxfam reports that global economic inequality widened last year, with 82 percent of all wealth created going to the richest 1 percent and the poorer half of the world’s population receiving none at all of the new wealth. 2017 saw the biggest increase in billionaires in history and ninety percent are men. The shifting of jobs and mechanization has come at the expense of local communities whose people have lost work and local businesses. And the migration to cities has harmed our environment and damaged systems of morality that relied upon a strong, established community. An economics that is focused on maximizing profits neglects the psychological needs provided by community and the damage to local communities is worldwide. The political consequences include a desire for smaller, more manageable governments that are sensitive to local needs and support for ethnic rather than state identities.

There is a number of reasons why contemporary capitalism is having negative impacts: The way money is created by the banking system requires continual economic growth; nations have been unable to find a satisfactory way to regulate the competition for world trade, and the sole focus on profit and political influence has led to the neglect of local community and the creation of large international corporations which exercise more power than some nations. We will consider each of these problems in turn. In each case, the solutions require procedures that involve creating a global community.

Money

Many think of money as a sort of commodity that people may have more or less of, or they think of the paper bills and coins furnished by the government. However, money is not really a commodity.9 Rather, it is a fairly arbitrary means of exchange that allows people to trade labor and goods with one another. It serves as a promise to exchange one thing for another. Although whatever is used for money may have little intrinsic value, it facilitates trade and may become used as a measure of value. This latter fact has dangerous consequences: when money begins to represent value, it may become equated with the real value of needed resources, labor, and beauty. In later chapters, we shall see that value is what fosters community and cannot be equated with money. Money is a useful means but when it begins to be taken as a valued end, people begin to work for it rather than to create real value. Contributing to the problem is the peculiar addictive property of money that leads many to feel that one cannot have too much of it. Chayes details how these unfortunate properties contribute to the ubiquitous problem of corruption when money is used to buy political influence and confer unjust prestige.10 When one lives in community, it is easy to recognize the natural value of honesty, dedication, and labor, and the community confers honor and prestige on those who contribute to the community’s real wealth. In the absence of community, these qualities are more difficult to recognize. Money is more apt to be taken as a measure of worth, and a vicious cycle may begin as money encourages the corruption that harms the community, and the lessened sense of community creates a desire for the false meaningfulness of being economically wealthy. People become esteemed for possessing money rather than shamed for working for what has no real value.

Money poses other challenges as well. Although a government may print paper bills to represent money, the worth of that money depends on the commodities, factories, goods, and promises that back it up. When the U.S. government prints bills or issues checks, it borrows the money from a system of private banks (the Federal Reserve). Thus, the money itself is created by banks issuing a loan. It is a promise to pay and must ultimately be paid with taxes collected by the government. This involves two problems. First, banks charge interest for making these loans and this interest can only be paid when the economy expands. This encourages development without regard for the environment. If we simply allowed national governments to create the money that was needed, there would be no interest but there would be a tremendous temptation to create more money than needed for economic exchange and inflation would occur. Second, there are cycles in business that require adjustments to the money supply. A certain amount of money is needed for an economy to function. Too much in circulation will result in inflation and too little in depressed activity. Currently, most nations are putatively attempting to control these cycles with a modified Keynesian fiscal policy. Ideally, when the economy is depressed a nation borrows more than it collects in taxes and spends the money on projects that will foster employment and encourage economic growth. This will incur a national debt that, ideally can be reduced when the economy expands, allowing an increase in taxes and decreased government spending. Unfortunately, even in good times, most governments are reluctant to increase taxes. Hence, even in years when there is no deficit, the need to pay interest on past years tends to lead the total amount of government debt to keep growing. The current debt for the United States is over 27 trillion dollars—129% of its GDP and steadily increasing. This burden is effectively put on the shoulders of the next generation. These problems might be solved by allowing local economies to establish and regulate their own supplies of money. However, this would require strong local communities and their currencies would need to be traded in a global market that was regulated by principles established by a global community.

World trade

Our standard of living currently depends on international trade. This dependence is not simply on the lower cost of imported goods enabled by international competition, or the jobs furnished by exported goods, but involves components critical to the development of medicines and technology. In the United States, for example, the minerals in computer chips, flat-screen televisions, pollution-control devices, etc., are imported. This international trade system requires a way to exchange the currency that is used in different nations. In an important sense currency is a public good, but since we lack a public bank it is controlled by private banks and affected by international competition. Currently, the international worth of a currency such as the dollar used to buy things in the United States, the Renminbi used in China, or the Riel used in Cambodia, is determined in foreign exchange markets. Ideally, this would produce global stability: A nation running a trade deficit would have the value of