Global Civilization

Challenges to Society and to Christianity

Leonardo Boff, Alexandre Guilherme

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317491682
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Transportation, telecommunications and the internet are all part of a process of globalisation that affects every sphere of life. This new phase in human evolution is central to the thinking of Leonardo Boff - one of the founders of Liberation Theology. In 'Global Civilisation' Boff presents a philosophical and theological enquiry into all aspects of globalization - from market forces to politics, military force, technology and science, communication and spirituality. The book describes the revolution taking place - in consciousness, the meaning of life, holiness, the economy, politics, culture, work standards, and ethics. Boff explores the contribution of Christianity to the "new global civilisation" and presents a utopian future for humankind.

Part I
The Rise of a New Global Civilization

A Perspective from the Great South

There is almost a consensus nowadays among world social analysts that we are currently going through great cultural changes as well as changes in civilization per se. We are entering a new phase for humankind, a new level of consciousness, and a new age for the planet Earth. These changes have impinged greatly on world religions, including Christianity, which aim to maintain and communicate a common message to all human beings and give a meaning to the universe.

Before critically assessing both the above premise and how the process of globalization impinges on Christianity, we must understand the phenomena and the logic behind this process. Globalization is occurring mainly on three fronts, namely, technological change, the globalization of the market forces, and the rise of a new global conscience. Let us now briefly assess each of these fronts which are shaping the new civilization.

1 The New Nature of Technological Progress

The Brazilian anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro (1968) demonstrated, in his great work O Processo Civilatorio (The Civilizational Process), that changes in societies begin with the introduction of new technologies, which change the dialogue between the society and the world and between the various agents of that same society. Without a doubt, we are currently living through an accelerated process of technological change. Let us now consider this in finer detail.

From the Neolithic Age to the 1950s, humankind knew and made use of two characteristics of matter, namely its mass and its energy. In particular, mass has been researched and used by the classical physics of Newton and Galileo since the 16th century. Energy became the object of much research during the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Mass and energy, and more specifically electric and nuclear energy, enabled projects of industrialization and of technological advancement, which have created all kinds of devices that facilitate and improve living conditions.

Nature, however, contains another characteristic which up to now has been unexplored, namely information. All beings, alive or not, are the carriers of particular data that can be assessed, measured in bytes (binary digit), and stored in computers. This data is built into machines as commands and used by us in our daily life as we deal with domestic digital devices (such as TVs, telephones, computers and even washing machines) and seen by us in artificial communication satellites and space exploration ships.

Telecommunications, biotechnology (i.e. the DNA-RNA chain of the human genome, which contain all necessary information for the constitution of a human being), computer science and robotics technically express this new knowledge of reality that is information. Its application brings substantial advantages to calculations, to paradigms of natural phenomena and to many other applications; it is even used in the common motorcar.

This new reality has introduced a new alphabet, the computer science language. It has turned reality into an invisible and miniaturized entity. The consumption of energy used in computations is minimal. To access one byte of information costs only 10−¹⁶ of a degree of heat on the Kelvin scale. A new relation with time and space is also created. A laptop computer (small space) can make extremely complex calculations with extraordinary speed (little time) and, moreover, this is done with minimum consumption of energy (four batteries).

This has a direct impact on the social aspect of labor relations: there is a continuous non-recoverable reduction of the labor force and an increasing exclusion of human participation in the means of production.

We are currently implementing on a large scale an informational society that is increasingly automated. The economy has changed. The economy is no longer dominated by the shortage and rarity of commodities, but by the low-cost production of goods and services.

These changes are so great that they mean much more than a new industrial revolution within the current and conventional paradigm of development, as argued by A. Toffler in his book The Third Wave. It certainly is this but much more, since it is a complete turn in history as it discharges key-concepts in the building and understanding of societies and of the evolutionary process and of the meaning of our passage through this Universe.

For instance, informatics enables a great quantitative rise in production without the generation of jobs, and, in some cases, it even destroy jobs in important sectors of manufacturing, agriculture, and services. Informatics increasingly does away with human labor.

From a Society of Full Employment to a Society of Maximum Activity

Up to recent times all production and a great part of culture were based on human labor. National constitutions emphasize the importance of labor. In paragraph 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights it is stated that “everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.” Labor emerged thus, both to capitalism and to socialism, as the building force of the world and culture, as a fundamental human right, as the enabling force of human self-development and as the shaper of human destiny. Unemployment, in the classical society, was viewed as a momentary glitch. The ideal aimed at by every society was to enable full employment for all members of society. It was inadmissible to comprehend and accept unemployment as a normal consequence of a technological revolution. Everything was set in place to provide employment for everybody. This is exactly the opposite of our current state of affairs. The computerized and roboticized productive system produces more and better with almost no human labor input. Production of goods currently exceeds the developed world’s needs. The connection between production and necessity has been dissolved. The point is never to cease increasing production. It follows from this that the idea of need must be aroused in people, even if artificially, so that these needs can be met by an ever increasing production.

At a closer look, however, the issue is not crucially centered at the production level, but in market control. To produce is relatively easy. The difficulty is selling the produce. This is the reason why companies must create a market for their produce, thus the importance and priority of marketing communication during the manufacturing process. It is the marketing communication that brings market dominance through the arousal of needs in consumers and which direct these consumers to products launched on the market in their urge to satisfy those needs. The media sector is by far the most dynamic in this cultural revolution that manifests itself in mass media, marketing, and so-called cultural goods, such as cinema films, music, photography, interior design, product design, fashion, tourism, sport, leisure activities, concerts, educational courses and games. Even food has transformed itself into a kind of communication in the form of pizza places, barbecue places, self-service restaurants, hamburgers, and the McDonald’s and Bob’s chains and the soft drink Coke.

Thus, the intensive use of technological information generates a structural unemployment. This is the great problem faced by all countries in the world, even developing countries, since even these bring in new technologies in their production lines.

Breaking free from the necessity of working under tiring, repetitive, deteriorating and dehumanizing conditions has been a long-sought-after dream. There was a longing for the freedom of creation, of enjoyment and auto-production without coercive limitations. In this kind of scenario one speaks of leisurely creation and of emancipated work. Our current means of production, however, exclude many people from the labor market. Following this exclusion, there is a social exclusion and a feeling of awkwardness that may lead to a feeling of shame.

The high unemployment rates experienced in the developed countries are structural and permanent and are, by and large, the outcome of this new phase of human society.

Between 1970 and 1990, and maintaining the same levels thereafter, unemployment in Europe went from 2.4 million to 16 million (10 percent of the economically active population). The poor of Europe currently number more than 50 million people. In the USA this figure is about 35 million.

Informatics and robotics, added to the unequal relations in international trade, which favor the developed countries to the detriment of the developing countries, created this amazing phenomena: in the last 30 years Europe has increased its wealth threefold and at the same time managed to diminish working hours by a quarter.

While there is an increase in the amount of goods and services produced through technological advancements, there is also an increase in the number of people excluded from the labor market, and also of the socially excluded. Jacques Robin, director of Transversales, Science et Culture de Paris, noted well that “The history of applied technology can be described on one hand as the improvement of living standards, and on the other hand as the succession of two kinds of poverty: dire poverty and unemployment; the first comes from work, the second from the lack of work.”¹

This situation only aggravates things further, since the benefits achieved through these technological advancements are not socialized, and thus they do not benefit the whole of the population, being reinvested in new, more advanced technologies so that companies can strengthen their position in the market, face their competitors, and produce even more.

This kind of paradigm based on technological development prolongs the perversity of the current capitalist model of development since it supports (1) a primacy of quantity over quality, (2) a privileged position for capital and the means of production over the labor force, and (3) a predominance of the material over the humanistic, the ethical and the spiritual.

Reality is Image

We are currently experiencing a new kind of technical development, which brings with it new kinds of social relations. The basis of social relations is no longer labor, but communication and informatics.

There is a new element encompassing this new emerging civilization: the image, which is an offspring of informatics. José Comblin, the liberation theologian who lives in Brazil and a keen observer of global trends, expressed this well when he wrote:

Nowadays we are seeing the emergence of a new understanding of “living.” The role of a person in society, or better said, the role of a person in the “theater of society” is more important than her labor. It is due to this fact that social activities, acting, leisure, concerts, and exhibiting are so important. For a businessman, the interviews given to the media are more important than his labor. Labor is a way of accessing a certain social status, which is now a performance. Labor does not have an intrinsic value anymore, its value relies on the kind of social performance that it enables. Insofar as labor is concerned it is not important what it can produce but the prestige that it can bring, and the way it can make a subject standout in society.²

In this changing society, the individual’s self-realization is the main concern. This self-realization does not always come from that person’s labor, as it can be realized through different kinds of activities, and alternative and autonomous occupations, such as opening a small hotel that targets ecologically conscious people as its customers, or satisfying personal hobbies or interests such as visiting historical places in a particular region or going for walks in a national park, and so on. Thus, one can see the importance nowadays of leisure time and of holidays (which is the central focus for those who work the whole year). The free weekend is far more important than the rest of the other working days.

Even life in society has changed. Before, one experienced society through active participation. This was the so-called active citizenship. Nowadays, however, one experiences society through the means of communication. We know what is happening in the places we live through what is aired by the radio and television stations and written by the newspapers. The city has become a great stage through its shopping malls, shopping windows, matches, and concerts. Everything has become a mass media image. Whatever has not been shown on the TV does not exist, did not happen. This is a global show with Olympic Games, international football championships, show-business, and great singers such as Pavarotti, Carreras, Elton John, and The Beatles; it extends itself even further as armed conflicts and wars, such as the two wars against Iraq, which were primarily a media and technological conflict. Everybody was able to take part in the battles by way of their TV sets, and, with certain tranquillity, support one side or the other as if watching a sports match.

Everybody has become a spectator and has the desire to be one. It is through images that the citizen contemplates him or herself and is able to project his or her own personal identity into society. Our individual personal identity is increasingly the projection of our own particular image in society. It now has less to do with one’s inner self, the dialogue that lies within, and how we mediate the inner and external worlds we inhabit. One either takes part in this world-show in a direct manner, as participant actor, or indirectly through imagination and images. José Comblin noted that the mass does not practice sport, but watches it on TV; the mass does not produce music, but listens to it; the mass does not make history, but talks about it. It is through images that the mass feels that it is taking part in history and not being excluded from it. The masses are, however, passive participants, mere consumers and not active citizens, who manifest their opinions, who criticize, and who refuse to support certain views and conscientiously defend certain causes.

Such changes in society have transformed the old traditional idea of fighting for workers’ rights. The worker has lost status. However, it must be said that there are workers who know much more than their bosses. These workers deal with a large amount of information and knowledge, and this gives them more actual power than the actual owner of the company. The businessperson is a mere specialist in management; he or she is one of the workers, so to speak; he or she does not, however, renounce his or her privileged position as the owner of the company and the right of accumulation that comes with it. In order to guarantee the continuation of their employment, workers team up with the companies they work for, producing a team effort in an attempt to fence off competitors. Instead of the class war, we have now the war between companies. The company that does not hold its ground in such a competitive market succumbs and ends up being swallowed by better positioned companies. The worker, fearing unemployment, prefers to accept, even if unwillingly, to support the company she works for, even if the company exploits her, because the company guarantees her employment and some sort of activity; and thus, this situation guarantees the employee a proper place in society and an active position in her family.

We are now seeing the beginning of the post-television era, as a revolution with numerical, synthetic and virtual images takes place. Thanks to numerical synthesis (no longer the 0, 1 binary system, but the 16 to 64 multiple system – for now) and to mathematical models in computers, we are now able to create images that feel more real than the ones produced by photography. Moreover, unlike photography and filming, there is no need for an actual reality as a basis. It is possible to create simulations that give a visible and realistic form to abstract ideas and daring dreams. This technology enables a cloning (the creation of a perfect double) of people and objects. Through the cloning of a human representation it is possible to create scenarios that project a new form of reality. For instance, the image of a Benedictine monk from Monte Carlo has been cloned as a guide to the Museum of Cluny (a place in the South-east of France where the great Benedictine reform of the 11th and 12th centuries took place), which is in Paris. Both the cloned representation and the real monk guide tourists through the museum and comment on it. Everything, however, is nothing more than a synthesis of images.

One must not forget also virtual images. Thanks to visual stereoscopic techniques, spectators feel themselves immersed in the image, taking part in this imaginary world that unfolds around them from all sides and angles. Technology in this area is being developed so that TV sets (called 3D TV) produce visual stereographic effects that enable the spectator to “enter” into the image. A laser of l...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I The Rise of a New Global Civilization
• Part II The New World Order and Christianity
• Part III Conclusion
• Appendix A: Earth’s Charter
• Appendix B: The Ages of Globalization
• Appendix C: The Globalization Process and its Challenges to Liberation Theology
• Notes
• Bibliography and Further Reading
• Index of Subjects
• Index of Names