Article 71 New World: A different take on Diversity

Beyond an over-reliance on the materialist mindset.

At a recent BRICS+ conference last week, Xi gave a keynote address. It is well worth reading the whole speech, but the following section is what provoked today’s Article:

Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends,

China stays committed to an independent foreign policy of peace and the building of a community with a shared future for mankind. As a developing country and a member of the Global South, China breathes the same breath with other developing countries and pursues a shared future with them. China has resolutely upheld the common interests of developing countries and worked to increase the representation and voice of EMDCs in global affairs. Hegemonism is not in China’s DNA; nor does China have any motivation to engage in major-power competition. China stands firmly on the right side of history, and believes that a just cause should be pursued for the common good.

At present, we Chinese, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, are advancing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation on all fronts by pursuing Chinese modernization. Chinese modernization aims to achieve common prosperity, material and cultural-ethical advancement, harmony between humanity and nature, and peaceful development for a huge population. Chinese modernization has created a new form of human advancement and presented a new future of modernization. We hope that other developing countries can draw on the outstanding achievements of human civilization and find their own paths to modernization in keeping with their national conditions.

Achieving high-quality development is a top priority in China’s goal of fully building itself into a modernized country. We are committed to applying a new development philosophy and creating a new development paradigm. In the past decade, China has contributed more than 30 percent of annual global growth. This year, the Chinese economy has maintained the momentum of recovery and growth. China enjoys several distinct advantages: a socialist market economy in systemic terms, a supersize market in terms of demand, a full-fledged industrial system in terms of supply, and abundant, high-caliber labor force and entrepreneurs in terms of human resources. The Chinese economy has strong resilience, tremendous potential and great vitality. The fundamentals sustaining China’s long-term growth will remain unchanged. The giant ship of the Chinese economy will continue to cleave waves and sail ahead.

In those three paragraphs, the word modernization was used five times and development four times. The 2022 Special Military Operation involving Russia, Ukraine and NATO (aka ‘the West’) has flushed out a dynamic long hidden in the brush but now in the open for all to see, namely the replacement of a ‘Hegemonic’ World Order with a ‘Multipolar’ World Order. Now, we cannot precisely know how the New World Order will look since we are still mainly in the Old one, but we can say that the days of the Hegemon are numbered and it remains to be seen what our world will look like once it has been dethroned. Xi’s speech gives an outline of the vision animating this New Order.

This Article is a rumination raising a few questions and tentatively offering an outline of a suggestion. The points are made simply to avoid an overly complex presentation.

1. Modernization:

China came late to the Industrial Revolution, waiting until the 1970’s to get going whereas Japan’s Meiji Restoration had begun in 1868, a century earlier. The Industrial Revolution itself was a natural development emerging from the overthrow of old Monarchic, Feudal and Theocratic polities ushering in what we think of as ‘the Modern Era’ which is idealistically regarded as pragmatic, rational and secular, raising all citizens out of poverty, unfair class systems and widespread injustice - very much along the lines outlined in President Xi’s speech. One of the principle features of modernization is significant material progress resulting in markedly improved living conditions featuring more efficient infrastructure, electricity, plumbing, communications, manufacturing, transportation and more, the core thrust being to take people out of premodern undeveloped into modernized developed conditions.

Two related issues with Modernization:

A. Quality: Not all modernization is equal. Bad practices damage the immediate environment by spreading toxins which compromise health and longevity. Some countries address this better than others.

B. Values: Especially where Quality issues have not been resolved, it is an open question whether or not shifting people from undeveloped tribal or agrarian communities into modernized urban situations constitutes genuine progress. Yes, they are now in apartments with electricity and can take buses or trains to work and earn a weekly wage, but is this truly substantive improvement? What is the purpose in life and what therein do we find meaningful? Material improvements alone may not provide all the answers.

2. Materialism: This topic has been covered regularly on this blog, especially of late, so will not say much more here except to point out that it is an important consideration. Put simply: if modernization is pursued primarily as a materialist endeavour then it often does more harm than good.

3. Progress-Modernization: In both China and India about half the population lives in pre-developed conditions with little or no electricity and minimalist plumbing. This means that roughly 1.5 billion people in these large leading and still-modernizing nations live in pre-modern conditions demonstrating that a modern State does not necessarily mean that everyone therein lives in modern conditions. This begs the question: is it always a necessary, let alone good, thing to insist that all should enjoy up to date modernized conditions, and if so at what point does it stop? By the time one has finished modernizing one is out of date only a few decades later, which is why Tokyo and now Shanghai eclipse previously developed cities London, Paris, New York and Rome. Should these latter now tear everything down in order to be cutting edge modern again forever re-modernizing for the rest of time? When is development enough? Or is it never enough? And is development always mainly about physical infrastructure ‘modernization’?

4. Diversity, a different definition: How about a new way of considering diversity? Let us agree that, as is so often stated, ‘diversity is strength’. But diversity according to what criteria? Ethnic? Religious? Racial? Geographic? Cuisine? Language? Let us just say that ideally we can find an optimal mix of differences and commonalities. Which brings us to the central question which prompted this Article: is not a diverse spectrum of development a good thing in itself? For example, probably the main thing I love about Mexico is its diverse range of living standards and related rural, small town and urban cultures. A fifteen minute drive from where I now live are villages of only a few hundred people wherein many live without electricity or automobiles – though admittedly that is steadily changing at this point; many live off raising sheep, cattle and basic agriculture; their tortillas are superior, and in demand in local markets, because they use traditional, not modernized, strains and make them by hand.

5. Unity: If we are considering a New ‘Multipolar’ World Order, then just as within each individual nation, so also must there be Unity as well as Diversity world wide. To me this is the same as the philosophical principle animating our entire Reality, namely One-and-Many. All particulars, along with being unique, are part of an overall Whole just as any Whole comprises many particular parts. It’s some sort of axiomatic Truth about the nature of the situation we all share as living beings which I call an ‘Experiential Continuum’, Experiential being the particular and living – or Part - aspects and Continuum being the universal – or Whole – aspects. So along with the diversity of having no end of individual particulars, there must also be things held in common. Millions live in Mexico leading uniquely different lives but all share a sense of being in one overall realm called Mexico which, like all other nations, is like no other on Earth. Within each nation there is limitless Diversity along with overall Unity or Wholeness. Which begs the question: what are the most valuable principles to foster in order to develop and maintain the best sort of Unity?

I won’t try to answer such a deep topic in depth, only suggest that the materialist mindset alone will fall far short in providing all the elements needed for a vibrant, thriving society enjoying both Diversity and Unity.

6. Values Again: Which brings us back to values again, some sort of shared spiritual sense of Values which involves how we derive meaningfulness in our life journey, individually and together. Xi mentions it in his speech above: ”Chinese modernization aims to achieve common prosperity, material and cultural-ethical advancement, harmony between humanity and nature, and peaceful development for a huge population.” Note how he combines material and cultural advancement in the same phrase. I don’t mean to be bashing China here, but it seems the overall emphasis is on material development founded on materialist criteria. Now, China has enjoyed continuous existence as an advanced civilization for over two thousand years, with roots going back deep into antiquity, so considerable value-system skeins are embedded within their bedrock culture and generally transmitted through the family; so even if the leadership is mainly concerned with material progress, this doesn’t mean that other values, including spiritual, are not held and transmitted in the hearts of most modern Chinese. But still: how a society thinks and talks about itself does have an influence over time and if the materialist view dominates official expression for generations, less materialist attitudes and customs almost certainly decrease over time.

Which raises another question I again won’t answer: is primarily material progress truly the best progress for human beings?

7. Hegemonics: What has the Hegemonic approach been doing that is so bad? Hasn’t it been attempting to create Unity on a global level, a natural development of the industrial revolution whose progress shrank the world thanks to extraordinary developments in transportation and communication? Doubtless in the minds of many this hegemonic progress was indeed regarded as fundamentally benevolent, a way of providing prosperity for All. However, perhaps because it is based on an over-reliance on materialism which by definition emphasizes the secular over the sacred, the material over the non-material (including things such as Imagination, Feeling, Fun, Beauty and so forth), it has ended up in increasingly narrow cul-de-sacs. There are two main fronts on which such hegemony is pushed:

A. Cultural: For example of late the secular, liberal West has been pushing homosexual marriages, adolescent hormone blockers and life-changing ‘gender reassignment’ surgeries. Not every culture in the world feels comfortable with such mores.

B. Financial: And yet the Hegemon wishes to enforce them on various nations, predicating crucial national infrastructure development loans on whether or not such things are taught in the schools, not to mention also anti-racist and anti-patriarchy teachings which do not always align well with the local culture. Many of these cultural mores are recent societal fashions, but all share the underlying thrust emanating from an essentially materialist, secular worldview which insists that other more traditional religious, spiritual or tribal worldviews must be sacrificed on the alter of ‘Modernization’, ‘Development’ and ‘Progress.’

8. Suggestion: Even if we tried, we couldn’t turn back the clock to recreate ancient Chinese, Egyptian or Byzantine civilizations, each of which lasted over a thousand years in relative stability and glory. Many of the old ways of structuring societies have gone by the wayside: monarchical, tribal, militaristic and theocratic, though most countries today still retain various elements. One of the over-arching characteristics of the Modern Era is the push towards secularization, no doubt because it goes hand in glove with scientific materialism. Leaving aside what I believe is the valid criticism that it constitutes a new type of religious fundamentalism, as expressed by the term ‘scientism’, in any new World Order we will need to share the same fundamental values, so even if not formulated in specific religious doctrine, there has to be something we all hold in common, moreover not only or merely based in the materialist mindset.

So my suggestion is that the Oriental polities now assuming a leading role in this next phase of world development consider taking their cultural synthesis of Daoist, Confucian and Buddhist mores as a foundation for modern societies to foster experience of sacred reverence for life and Nature free from sectarianism so that spiritual meaningfulness and related cultural forms (in the Arts, architecture and so forth) can flourish along with material development. Daoism fosters relaxation, physical health and adaptability; Confucianism transmits stable family structures and societal morality; and Buddhism provides excellent mindfulness and awareness meditation methods which can easily be presented and learned with minimal religious dogma.

Of course many cultures will want to maintain their traditional religions, but if they can do so along with this bedrock Oriental approach then they can enjoy their own particular flavors whilst also feeling a part of, and not too much apart from, the same wider World Order. Maybe such an approach is impractical – and why the Chinese government is so anti-religious; but one way or another we have to come up with something that isn’t so heavily weighted towards the reductionist materialist mindset which simply doesn’t do Unity or Wholes very well, and rather tends to fragment things into parts, often divisively so. (Yet another left-brain/right-brain dynamic.)

Somehow this has to happen, otherwise the New World Order will only involve reshuffling of the main players, and once every village has electricity and every individual a computer screen, we will end up not having made very much true civilizational progress, which will become clear over time on the Values front and most likely manifest with, yet again, a whole load of Kleptocrats at the top controlling everything, except now instead of having to do so one separate nation at a time, they can lord it over the entire world.

Which will not be a good thing!