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Profile of Constantin von Barloewen
Hatred and violence are facts of human [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: Hatred and violence are facts of human existence ever since the history of evolution has started. It would probably be utopian to deny these individual, psychological aspects in the hope of being able to abolish them, this would certainly be a fallacy. We have to try by social integration, by political integration, by economic success, by equal rights for the population, by giving people access to technological possibilities to avoid hunger and ethnic-religious conflicts. We have to try to show concern for all these aspects in order to exercise control over the potential of hatred, which is only biologically, only evolutionarily explicable. We will not be able to abolish it, in order to do so we would have to completely modify the human condition. According to human ethology we know that among animals there is also hatred, violence and aggression. Aggression can, of course, also express positive signals in the context of an evolution, of a darwinist evolution. According to ethology we know that these aggressions and the potential of violence cannot be avoided, we can only control them in a form that is politically and socially responsible, that is by education, by schools, by universities, by the integration into the entire social process. Democracies must be able to do this in an exemplary way, because in these archaic cultures there still exist tribal rituals that are not democratically integrated in this form.
In the human evolution throughout the last 5 [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: In the human evolution throughout the last 5 or 6 million years, since the development of the sapient out of the primate, the human being is regarded as the life form which is developed on the highest level. But the notion of soul, being a deeply philosophical notion, surely needs to be acknowledged as well for the animals and plants. If one considers the idea of the sacral, as pious, as life, it is possible to acknowledge the existence of soul in other life forms. But this acknowledgement of soul, respectively of consciousness, of cognitive intelligence, is only applicable on human beings. But human beings are nowadays acting not responsible towards the other life forms of the biodiverse evolution. We prove ourselves as not responsible. But it can be said for sure that in the evolution of the consciousness the human being as a soul has more responsibility than other life forms.
The so-called capitalism is non-existent [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: The so-called capitalism is non-existent nowadays in its pure form. There are hybrid forms in the states in Northern Europe with social economies. On the other hand it is plain to see that since the opening of 1989, e.g in China or in India, there have been changes. Especially when one thinks of India where until 1991 there was a strict socialist market economy where it was hard to even ask for a telephone, where there was no infrastructure. It is amazing, one has to admit, which powerful economic dynamic has developed, as well concerning the investments, in the states of South America like Brazil or Argentina, or in India or China, under the influence of the free capitalism. The problem is, this is capitalism without any social ethics, a predatory capitalism, a so-called "Manchester capitalism" of the 19th century which ignores social aspects and ecological responsibility completely. When answering the above question one can only say that after capitalism there can be no more economy without social responsibility. And this massive hunger for profits, reigning the world nowadays and spreading throughout Africa, Asia and South America is a huge threat, a brutalisation of the world, undermining democratic principles and meaning a loss of human identity. Capitalism in this sense is a teffifying development which can only be seen with scepticism and criticism.
Economic globalization is only a part. It [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: Economic globalization is only a part. It becomes more and more evident that international business alone does not promote democracy. It is a false conclusion to believe that when the president of the United States visits an african state for 2 or 3 days, that ancient cultural traditions can be overshadowed with only financial investments. Nowadays you can only reach work-related ethics and democracy by other ways than global financial investment. This is especially true for the states of the so-called Third World countries. On the other hand, completely without economic impulse there can be no democracy. A fine and precise balance needs to be found in this case. But still it is a false conclusion to believe that financial investment will logically provide democracy. That is quite short-sighted. In the contrary. Thinking of South America or Africa, often an economic globalization causes a lot of social injustice, a loss of cultural and religious identity and in the end of human identity. Economic globalisation as such often extinguishes grown historical and cultural traditions. Consequently it would be wrong to say that democracy or the process of democratisation is promoted by economic globalization. I see this rather critically.
The violence in the cities, the violence in [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: The violence in the cities, the violence in the conflicts of the suburbs, in the "banlieus" in France during the last months, as well as in England, in the cities, the violence in the USA is a question of misguided urbanization, of the non-integration of ethnical and religious minorities in the whole social political process, in the working life. Urbanization nowadays is a very complex field, and the problems there cannot be solved by governmental violence. It resembles a volcano which is covered and will break open in another place. Like a spring or well where you can only hold back the water artificially, but a few hundred feet further on it will bubble back to the surface anyway. A misguided urbanization of non-human ways, without any green sectors, a urbanization that is only controlled by the wish to maximize the profits in architecture which has been carried out in the western industrialized cities for a long time. These are the conditions for urban violence. Only if there is a way of urbanization under human aspects it will improve. I think of Frey Otto (?) e.g. who has now deservedly won the price "prior imperiale" (?). He has always tried to practice a human architecture, no abstract or technical architecture of high achievements, but an architecture under human aspects. As well e.g. Oskar Niemeier, with his urban planning in South America, or Roberto Bolemarx, the great landscape and garden architect, has tried in all his forms of landscape and garden projects to give cities a human face to avoid the inner violence. Problems in urbanization are nowadays often unsolved because the green sector as a balance, as the lung in an urbanized world is not considered enough.
National identity and cultural identity [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: National identity and cultural identity often diverge. If we consider, e.g. Brazil, where an ethnic democracy was assumed for a long time, I am thinking of Gilberto Freyre, "Casa grande e senzala" in the thirties. This utopia of an ethnic democracy. Many, I am thinking of North America with its civil wars. National identities are helpful for a conscienceness that often cannot be provided by individual ethnic groups. Many of the black Brazilians consider themselves to be Brazilians, they feel they have possibilities of identification, even if they are not socially privileged or even absolutely under privileged. Is it a contradiction. Minorities have to be integrated into national identities, otherwise they cannot integrate into a global responsibility. But it is obvious that the black population in America rather identifies with Africa than with America, simply because the social circumstances in these black African states correspond more with them than the economic integration allows them to in America. The same applies to Africa, it applies to Asia. If we take India, a state with 150 millions of Muslims, of the 1.1 billion Indians there are not only Hindus, there are 150 millions of Muslims who still think of themselves as Indians. Ethnic identity is not always identical with national identity. This is a conflict.
This is the core question in the world. You [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: This is the core question in the world. You know the statistics of the institute on peace researches in Stockholm which prove that after 1989 when it was a time to hope that in a world political context the expenses for military budgets would go down, in fact in the last years the military expenses worldwide have increased dramatically. The leading nation here is the United States, but as well Russia, France, Germany, and England are in leading positions. Regrettably nowadays the corrupt leaders in military and political leaders in the Third World countries do enrich themselves from the military conflicts, from ethnical wars, i.e. that in Chad a short while ago a world bank credit was stopped because the military leaders did not spend the money for social needs and education, but for buying military products. Just think about India nowadays being the biggest customer worldwide for military weapons among the Third World countries, on the one hand operating scientific space projects or using nuclear power, at the same time having 47 % of the population suffering from hunger, being undernourished, and one third is living under the minimum living wage in India, that is millions of people. It is absurd, the military budgets should be reduced and the money spent on social and humanitarian needs and on education. In fact the contrary proves to be true, especially in the last few years where Third World countries like Africa, corrupt regimes buy extensively military products from the West, and the Western states, Russia as well, are happy to secure selling markets in the Third World, wheter it is Africa, South America or Asia. This is regrettable, but an empiric fact.
The Middle East is traditionally a region in [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: The Middle East is traditionally a region in the world, in which since many generations military conflicts prevail. Not least because also cultural conflicts, ethnical-religious conflicts are again-reflected here, which are ever more violent than purely national conflicts. But one must see that in the middle east world power politics are made in a very irresponsible way by America, by England, by Europe, by Russia. The central east is today a mirror image of world-political interests, which combine themselves, which again-speak themselves, from nuclear weapon industry on predominantly at all energy-political criteria by the oil field. Then may one not forget that artificial borders pulled of colonial powers, which absolutely do not correspong culture-claimant borders, i.e. conflicts since generations, it is regrettable that for instance the mediator James Wolfonson, the last World Bank president tried in every 6 points here in its switching readiness between United States, Russia, European community and the UN, every 6 points were not used in the Gaza Strip, in Palestine conflicts, in Israeli conflicts, i.e. again one has seen that even the attempt of an earned world politician failed. The American interests in Israel are considerable, i.e. Israel is still, as it the cluster bombs again and again used against Lebanon supported from America. That is dangerous, the central east is a ball of world-political interests and can in this way not an endogenous or better to find a companionship peace, which will remain also in the future in such a way.
It is a fallacy is to believe that human [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: It is a fallacy is to believe that human history can be released easily from martial conflicts. A view into the universal history of human existence for thousands of years shows regrettably that the phases of the military conflicts endure longer than the phases of peace by far, if one thinks of the 30-years war, one thinks of the plague phases in the Middle Ages, which could be partly martially solved. Only the facts that we do not have direct military conflicts since 1945 in Western Europe and North America more, entice to the acceptance that the world in peace lives since 1945. That is however not so, empirical, the first states of the world has only its wars exported to the horn of Africa, to Somalia, to Angola, to Viet Nam, after Kambodscha, into the Congo, there are many examples. The dead ones in military conflicts actually exceed the dead ones after 1945 in 2. World war, which one may regret, but that is empirical fact, i.e. there is no peace in the world since '45, it gives exported wars and it is fallacy to believe that peace prevails world-wide. The millions of dead are hardly more counted. Military conflicts outweigh the time of the peace and if one dares no material-political argument here, we will become utopians.
Human dignity as a native requirement of the [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: Human dignity as a native requirement of the human rights, liberty, the forms of expression, the soundness of the body, expression of opinion, to nourish and not to suffer hunger, are native constants, which should be fulfilled world-wide, but they are not. Over a billion humans live in the world today with the existential minimum of one dollar. Over a billion humans has no access to water, to ecological conditions, to hygiene. A majority of the population is excluded from electric energy, like the states in subsahara Africa, i.e. in the world today, which permits on the one side a hyperpower of the technology, also to the "technocracy", technocratia, from the Greek of power, an abuse of technology, on the one side in the states of the first world and do not guarantee the basic conditions of human dignity for billions of humans. This hubris, this unfairness can not and should not continue any longer, access must be created to the basic conditions of human dignity. For the predominant number of the population of world and not only for a small, small infinitesimal part, that is a policy, which is irresponsible.
The food industry today is essentially also [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: The food industry today is essentially also an agribusiness and we know how much the agricultural exports from the so called peripheral states, I'm thinking of Brazil, of India, of Africa, too, how much agribusiness nowadays depends on the import quota of the European Union and of America, how firmly the industrial states insist on only reducing agricultural aids if they see a possibility to export industrial goods. We do have enough possibilities to distribute foodstuff, this is a question of the principles of distribution, which are unfair, and not a question of the mere quantity of foodstuff available in the world. We need to think again, as a matter of principle, so that the states of the so called first world show more responsibility and cooperation towards agribusiness, I'm thinking of India. In India, 47% of the population still suffer from malnutrition and this in a state with an economic volume of 3.2 trillions of dollars. At the same time, India is the biggest importer of weapon technology from the western world. As we can see, it is a question of preference, not of the quantity of foodstuff, a question of political preference to distribute foodstuff in a better way and not just to invest in technology and weapon industry. Food could be distributed, there is a problem of distribution between the states of the first world and the so called peripheral states, which is absolutely inequal and so far has been solved irresponsibly. We can only ask that the World Trade Organization, WTO, and the APEC states and the states of Africa, Latin America, Europe and North America solve this problem of distribution in a different way. So far they have failed. As I said, this is not a question of the combined quantity of foodstuff in the world, but exclusively a question of the preferences of distribution.
The idea of a world government is as old as [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: The idea of a world government is as old as Platonic philosophy. One can reread it in Platon. The republic of the philosophers is an old metaphor of political thinking, but it unfortunately shows up the fact that the attempt "world government", today would be ever more urgently necessary but it is ever more difficult to realize it. With the conflict-ladenness of national interests, self-interestedness, the national state in Heroism, one considers what infinite difficulties the United Nations had to fight after '45 which were developed around conflicts world-wide, one thinks of the Iraq war, where they could not prevent it, or the “Hutu” and “Tutsi” problem in Africa, where 1 million humans died, what the UN also could not prevent, or the difficulties in the Sudan today, where the United Nations, the security council had to hand over the criminal abuses of human rights to the chief prosecutor of the international human right Court of Justice in Den Haag, the argentinian over Ocampo, in order to punish all violations of human rights, but one considers how difficult it is to establish a world government with rising national interests of the superpowers Russia, America, in addition, China and India, it is appropriate to doubt whether a world government can represent a solution at all. Strictly speaking, one has to strengthen the United Nations, to grant more military powers , so that really in the beginning this world government, that is Trade Union of German Employees nature after '45, also in the life can. At the same time in addition, possibilities would have to be created on national-local level of problems to solve, here must be a creation a reconciliation. But it is shown ever more strongly that with the Kyoto agreement for example, with all ecological questions in the RIO conference of the United Nations, those had actually hardly an effect on the material-political conversions 10 years after the RIO conference where nothing was fulfilled. It is shown that world-political organizations and bodies are often not in the conditions to relieve national initiatives and make them redundant. But it would be desirable that one would strengthen the United Nations for a world-wide accomplishment of global interests.
Corruption is a fact of the [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: Corruption is a fact of the politico-economic situation. There is here in Berlin the NGO(Non-Governmental Organization) Transparency International, which sets up complete statistics of the world-wide most corrupt states. One must admit that the European States are comparatively less corrupt, also the industrial nations and that the corruption in Russia is massive, in the former Soviet Republics, in Africa, in Latin America as well. One can only proceed systematically and concretely. The World Bank always reports that an amount of billion dollars is lost per year by corruption in the states of the so-called periphery. One knows that for instance, in Chad the World Bank had to lock up credits, because the presidents did not use the investments and its credits of the World Bank for social and education programs, but for a purchase of a massive weapon industry. Just in the past few months, it was successful with great effort in Chad to use the credits from the World Bank and the monetary funds for social education programs and not for the buying up of a weapon industry. Corruption is a fundamental malady, which causes world-wide billions of damage, in all states of the world. I also think of Burma, the dictatorial regime in Asia. One can proceed only systematically and again and again, and I mean what Transparency international does, as a NGO, which tries statistically to measure and to give reference points, really deserves respect, large acknowledgment. People should support it.
There are naturally differences between [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: There are naturally differences between activities and self-defense of terror, but undoubtedly the powerful states in the east have, like Russia or in the west, America, today a Hybris of the designation terrorism, this is a fallacy, this is a political lie, which the war in the Iraq was led, are continued to deliver by the military Occupation of the Americans. Against the terrorism, which… the occupation of Iraq is not directed against terrorism just as few, as there were ABC weapons there as motive for the occupation of the Iraq. That is politically not justified. The war against terrorism must be led differently, it acts here also over, I would like to say, cosmic wars, the shape that always a superordinate spirit and culture and a religion history as a condition for identity conflicts at all become effective. Only if one understands these backgrounds, I would like to say, to cosmological dimension of the ethnical conflicts, can one proceed against terrorism. In India, it is the Mahabarata, national e9pos. In the Islamic culture there is Koran traditions, thus it is actually cosmological wars and terrorism can only be eliminate this way, by understanding this dimension of spirit-historical backgrounds. National sole responsibility and also self-defense is a Hybris of the superstates, which wants to sthrengthen their position of power and it also exists national terrorism, like America doing it in Latin America, approximately in the dictatorship in Chile under minister of foreign affairs Henry Kissinger, where in Argentina influence was taken on the violations of human rights, on the murder of approximately 35,000 humans. That is also national controlled and legitimized murders of a superpower. One must here be very carefully to make a distinction between self-defense and terrorism.
There are legal regulations to protect [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: There are legal regulations to protect civilians during war, which are penetrated again and again. One may not forget that the conflicts between national states decreased in the last 30 40 years, however the ethnical religious conflicts, which increased civil war like and acts of terror. And that, naturally, brings with itself that the civil society took up ever more, but if you consider that in the last struggles with Lebanon the Israeli side used also cluster bombs against civilians, whereby naturally the Hisbollah was substantially military weaker than the Israeli side and therefore the civilians, used as a shield. And the Israeli side, how the weapons were supplied from Americans probably, only with the restriction to take consultation the American government before using the bombs, but it was penetrated and cluster bombs were used against civilians. There are always abuses. War is actually an absurdity. As I said, war leads never to victory, war leads never to peace, war leads only to victory and victory leads not to peace. (???) Whether the civilian population is pulled in or not, is connected with the fact that the national struggles could be regulated, still somehow legally, by ever more the ambush come more over the ethnical-religious civil wars, also in the Yugoslavia war for example, in the Kosovo, where ever more civilians were pulled in. It is digusting, but it is unfortunately a historical fact in the course of the mechanization of the wars.
This question arises naturally for the [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: This question arises naturally for the moment first of all in the United States, in addition, in Western Europe in struggles with terroristic attacks. If one considers that already Kennedy let spy out Martin Luther King by installing secret listening devices in his hotel rooms, if one considers, that Roosevelt had detained hundredthousands American citizens of Japanese origin after the assault in Pearl Harbor, the same from Churchill in Europe of detainment of foreigners, which just never are publicly. If one keeps all this in memory, it seems peculiar that today in percents many Americans justify or depreciating facts that for instance the American government does eavesdropping on all international calls under the excuse to go against terrorism, civilian citizen right liberties, which are constitutionally justified and at all the ideas and spirit-historical background of the American condition in the sense of John Locke, in the sense of the civil liberty, to which already Alexis Tocqueville referred. If one considers, like these citizen-legal liberties, those actually America, is a democracy, should distinguish and thus the west as superelevated liberty term, which one would like to carry allegedly into the world, democratically to legitimize, it seems doubtful that this restriction of civil liberties is to be justified by terrorism. In America one has the impression that citizen right liberties are scooped out and into partial McCarthy well-behaved form today against the civilian population are used. This is unfortunately not in time to turn away can.
In the last decades, with the economic [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: In the last decades, with the economic hegemony of north america and the western states the fact has occured that dictators take the freedom, under excuse to fight western states, which they do not owe their own people. China still justifies its superior dominance in relation to its population with a anti-western course. In Russia it is the same. Russia today, the russiche orthodoxy in the policy, affirms the Chinese model, looks to China, because one believes a model of a non western, a non-democratic culture which can keep up economically nevertheless, is prominent in world-economical concert. I.e. Russia sees China as a political exception, which strikes the west with large economic dynamics and success and nevertheless no carrying out of western human right and liberty criteria. Russia seems to appoint itself today ever more strongly to this, I would like to say, Chinese special way, not western and nevertheless economically successfully. That is a large danger, which undemocratic systems unfortunately bring with themself and Russia is today, naturally under the Putin government, only a limited democracy. It is at most an authoritarian democracy with questionable methods of an not integrated civil society.
Economic systems, created by the industrial [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: Economic systems, created by the industrial society, have the disadvantage that they pillage, I would say in a exploitative way, in an unusual way, natural resources of the Planet Earth. I think that China, for the moment with a high economic growth, only in terms of which however it wins the medal, has today about 3 per cent, one estimates, up to 10 per cent of the gross national product under damage by environmental problems. That's about 51 billion dollars in one year. Discredit was brought completely on animal and ecological resources thereby. The same involves India, Brazil, but China is the most obvious factor, a complete discredit of ecological demands. I can repeat it one more time, that up to 10 per cent of the gross national product of China today are used or are wasted, one can say, it is threatening for ecological structure. That's 50-51 billion dollars. That involves also the states of the industrial world. Only in the latest ecological processes of rethinking, an awareness begins to crystallize, what the states of the periphery, which have a strong economic growth today, the leading position of the economy, uniquely recorded in the history, completely neglect. That is a great threat to the security and the policy of peace.
It shows up in the last 10 to 15 years, that [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: It shows up in the last 10 to 15 years, that the attempts, so peripheral and desperately they seem, of the united nations and also world-prominent companies strongly creates more and more social responsibility. There is something like “Social Entrepreneurship”, it gives movements in the world, in America, in Europe, in addition, in India, which shows responsibility, but that are only drops on a hot stone. The pure market capitalization and continued winning vines of the world companies, also in the energy sector, is threatening. That involves not only the western states, america and europe but all states. It involves China substantially, if one considers that China makes billion-investments in Africa, in Angola, in Mozambique, in the Sudan. Infrastructure and road construction, in response, oil deliveries of the world. One may not forget, that America is engaged in Equatorial Guinea, a pure dictatorship, just because of interests in oil, interests in securing energy, China does the same, for many years with large success. China has replaced the World Bank in Africa as a credit giver. The states of Africa, which are often dictatorial, prefers to get credits given by China without objection, without control from western states, like the World Bank according to democratic principles in its states. That means, China pursues here a supportless energy policy in hunger after resources, which is not to be brought in agreement with democratic rules. In that meaning it appears doubtfuly that the world economy can take social responsibility at all, on the contrary, it appears that the rivalry / competition, the absolute competition in the world market often excludes social responsibility. All efforts of the United Nations to limit children work or women discrimination in the world enterprises, I think of a Social Compact between the United Nations, like DaimlerChrysler or other world companies. It continues to be a drop on a hot stone, the world economy releases itself more and more the social responsibility.
The difficulty to integrate women into the [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: The difficulty to integrate women into the economic process in the western states has very slowly showed up over centuries. The women ratio in the universities, in schools, during economical processes rose only very much hesitating. Some goals were reached but there are still more. One may not forget that in states of Africa, Asia and Latin America the woman is still located in the family tradition, i.e. is merged old traditions which are decades old, these are often very undemocratic and it is not easy to find a balance here between tradition and modern trend. Women from a family tradition are pulled out and integrated in economical processes are not so many as it would be reasonable economicalally and also moral political. The World Bank provided that those companies are most successful, in the states, the periphery, where the women are integrated responsibly into the professional sector. One can only wish that it is more and more strongly advanced, but it is not easy, I think of India, of the old traditions, for instance the marriage ceremony, the burning of widows. There are many examples of discrimination of women. Finding here a leaving of tradition to modern trend, but it would be desirable.
Human life has begun indeed in Africa, if it [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: Human life has begun indeed in Africa, if it is based on the theory of diffusion, but according to the research of primates, human beings appeared 5 to 6 million years ago in Chad. One can not forget that Africa slowly developd backwards in old traditions, archaic traditions, so that the industrial revolution never took place there, and the nature and resources were absolutely possessed by the states of the industrial world in the 19th Century. One can not forget that social trust in colonial times was not created. The colonial times were surely imprinted for the African states. When one considers that the Islam has settled in African states, for centuries in Morocco, and also in others part of the world, i.e., there was foreign settlement, there was always the suppression of native cultures, which excluded an early democratization in Africa and the colonial times have played another role, just not allowing this social trust or democratic structures to be established, which did not make any civilian society possible, as it could be developed in the western states over centuries. Only in the past few years, now, Africa has taken a certain upswing, which is very limited, in comparison with the worldwide standard, about 6 per cent of the gross national product in the years 2004, 2005. When one considers that Tokyo has more telephone connections than the entire Subsahara Africa, it is clear nowadays in the year 2006 that “The digital device”, thus the digital gap, is very large, because the digital revolution did not take place in Africa. In addition, the colonial inheritance, the inexistent social trust, the not established democratic structures were surely the factors for the situation of Africa as well.
There are possibilities today to use [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: There are possibilities today to use technical connections wisely, the internet proves that these possibilites exist, that everybody can reveal his/her opinion in public. Of course it is a fallacy to believe that the modern forms of the digital revolution, of the internet, of the mass communication, of the TV, of the radio, of MTV, of CNN, of the movie industry, briefly, the fact that people get closer to one another, that they travel more, to the farthest places in the world, to Surinam, to Butang. All these technical, this getting-closer-technically has not led to the fact that people dealt with one another more peacefully, on the contrary, the past decades have shown growing ethnic-religious conflicts, fundamentalism as a form of anti-modernism in the islamic states, in Algeria, in Iran. People don't get closer to one other in the context of an interreligious and intercultural dialogue because of the possibilities of digitality, on the contrary, they drift apart, that is to say the soul does not seem to catch up, the technical possibilities of the digital revolution and of the mass media don't lead to a fraternization of people, they even seem to lead to an alienation. This is deplorable if we think about the meaningful and peacemaking possibilities technology can have, however not necessarily; and the main concern can only be how to use technology so that it will contribute to peace and this modest attempt today is an attempt to use the digital revolution in the context of a policy promoting peace. But we experience this paradox very clearly, that the technological pinnacle of the media industry, that the getting-closer because of many travels does not free us from an increase of fundamentalism or ethnic-religious conflicts, from the particularisation, the balkanization of the world. This balkanization has increased in the past three decades, it has not decreased despite of the digital revolution. This is alarming.
Many people in the world don't have the [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: Many people in the world don't have the right to choose where they want to live. In the past decades there have been more and more streams of migrants, never before in our history have the streams of migrants been as strong as in the past decades. If we consider that millions of people from Latin America, Central America, from Guatemala, from Nicaragua and from Mexico as well stream to America. If we consider, a scandal, that every day hundreds, if not thousands of African refugees land on the beaches of the canary islands where they are confronted with noisy and drinking tourists. This is a serious question. Of course we have to respect the national authority of a state, for instance of the European Commission, but on the other hand we can't build up tents and military camps along the border of North Africa in order to prevent these streams of migration. We have to establish economic conditions in these states of Latin America and Africa that guarantee lives worthy of a human being for the population, also in social responsibility, so that the wish to emigrate does not emerge at all. On the other hand we know that today the payments amounting to billions by emigrants in North America e.g. flow back to Mexico or Nicararagua or Africa, that these payments make up more than just a big part of the gross national product of these states, that is to say here we have the inversion of economic influence. These are high prices that are paid for this bondage, this is also a loss of cultural identity and thus of human identity. We have to exclude dictatorial periods such as the Nazi period. Today it is about establishing economic situations in the so called peripheral states by development policies, by responsible social policies, by educational policies that make migration unnecessary under these circumstances, so that these states are enabled to secure their population and to prevent streams of migration at all, not just to reduce the number of potential migrants. But this is a mere utopia, this will not happen, because the inequalities between the states of the first world and the peripheral states increase and don't decrease, because of a misled and purely economic globalization. The gross national products of the African states in the past thirty, forty years, have not increased, in proportion to the world's gross national product they have in fact even decreased. Africa's share of the world does not increase, it decreases. Other states such as Korea or India increase, but Africa decreases, consequently we have more streams of migration, this must surely be stated.
It cannot be justified, neither socially nor [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: It cannot be justified, neither socially nor morally, that over one billion people today still live on less than a dollar a day, that of the 500 million inhabitants of Latin America we have a high percentage of people that live under the subsistence level. It cannot be justified that Bolivia, a state with the greatest natural resources and gas resources in the world, with an indigenous population of 60 to 70% still has not integrated this indigenous population into the democratic process, which is only just starting now - slowly. That states such as Peru that have a high production of gold, a production of copper, cannot compete in the international market, because American or European affiliated groups reduce the value and don't reinvest in the affected states, but redirect investments into the states of the first world. It is only obvious, that now with president Morales in Bolivia, a new government tries for the first time to make use of the gas production in favor of their own population, but of course encounters massive resistance, e.g. by Petrobas, the huge Brazilian energy company and also by neighboring states that don't want to tolerate the raise of the gas prices. This inequality cannot be morally justified and the attempt of the world bank and the United Nations to revise the inequality of hunger is now already a mere utopia, because the industrial politics of the first world basically don't allow it in their wish to export the industrial production into the states of the third world. I have already talked about agricultural aids.
Unfortunately slave trade has not only been [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: Unfortunately slave trade has not only been - let's call it a privilege - of North America and Latin America that came form Africa, slave trade did also exist in other, earlier traditions, in the Arabic cultures, in the Asian confrontations with China back then during the expansion. On the other hand we have to say that the American political economy in the nineteenth century, especially the cotton trade, would have never had its upswing without the slave trade. It may be morally condemnable, but it is historically correct. The same applies to Latin America. The great French ethnologist and photographer Pierre Verger observed the black Brazilian cultures in Salvador da Bahia like noone else, he took photos of them, he described them, he traced the slave trade back from Benin to the Caribbean, to Haiti. We would have a completely different situation of the world, we would not have an acculturation as in Brazil between black, white and red, between different ethnic groups as it is the case today, we would not have what Gilberto Freyre called an ethnic democracy. But there is a moral category that we add to a historical fact which does not always do justice to the historical fact. In the end it is an otiose question to ask in how far historical developments would have been different if this or that had or had not been the case. America has developed as an ethnic democracy, if nothing else, then because of the civil war in the nineteenth century, because of Martin Luther King, because of the entire civil rights movement, because of Thoreau's civil disobedience which has been developed further by Emerson in the nineteenth century. America would look different, Latin America would look different. Argentina has always excluded the black population by laws of immigration, but we would not have a cultural diversity in the Caribbean or in Brazil, or as far as music, films, classical pop music and so on are concerned, without a black population.
There is always a formal right and a natural [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: There is always a formal right and a natural right of man. If we consider that the formal right can often be part of a dictatorship, I am thinking of Nazi Germany, where formal right pronounced murder and oppression, and whoever has accepted formal right during the Nazi period or during other dictatorships, during the communist dictatorship, the dictatorship of Stalin, the Chinese cultural revolution, there are many examples for this. Whoever has dealt with formal right in this way has, as a matter of fact, violated human dignity, has violated the natural right of man to integrity, that is to say we have to differentiate between formal right, as it is given in certain states, which can also be dictatorial, in that case we have to defy, in that case it is a human duty to defy this formal right, by relying on a natural right, as the founding religions for instance suggest, as the main philosophical traditions of the enlightenment, of the renaissance, from Vigo to Montaigne, from Descartes to Voltaire, formulated it. This natural right must stand above the formal right of certain states, only then will it be justified and secured, that the human history of civilization will be able to progress, whereas I don't think, in this context, that a moral progress is possible at all. It is a key question of our civilization, whether moral progress is possible at all. I doubt it. The twentieth century wasn't less inhuman than the nineteenth or eighteenth century, on the contrary, the dictatorships, the mass murders of the twentieth century show that there is no human - moral progress. In this context I don't believe in Norbert Elias' thesis of the history of civilization, I believe moral progress, for instance after hierarchical cultures, was at least as high as the industrial states.
This is a key question in current [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: This is a key question in current international politics. A few years ago the United Nations organized a big conference in Vienna on human rights policy. Dignity, the notion of human dignity is an anthropological condition of human rights. On the one hand we have the affirmation of universality, on the other hand we have the relativization because of the plurality of cultures. I think we have to find a balance here. On the one hand between what we could call a world ethos, that is a world public designed according to western patterns and the primacy of human rights as it has been constituted in the preamble of the United Nations after World War II. On the other hand, as far as the affirmation of the plurality of cultures is concerned, the affirmation of individual cultural traditions for human rights, as it was expressed back then in the conflict at the world conference of the United Nations. This is a very difficult question, because the notion of human dignity is such a deep philosophical notion as an anthropological condition of human rights. On the other hand we have to consider that in the Koran, too, and in othern world religions, there are always conditions of human rights. It is a fallacy to believe that human rights are only a privilege or a possession of western nations. We have to research human rights traditions in other cultures and traditions and to understand them and to bring them in line with western expectations. I would be against a purely western primacy of human rights that excludes other cultures and traditions because of their particularities. I would support a plurality of cultural traditions, of course not at the price of annulling the preamble of the United Nations. To sum it up, the balance between relativity and universality is necessary in this context.
There is the well-known sentence by Winston [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: There is the well-known sentence by Winston Churchill, which is often quoted, that democracy is the worst form of government, but still the best one at the same time. This is undoubtedly correct. It is a fallacy to believe that problems could be solved more easily in the states of Africa and Latin America which had military dictatorships for many decades. It is a fallacy to believe that despots could be given the power to govern to the exclusion of democratic rules in those states, despots who then should provide more political stability or a lasting economic boom. Empiricism show us that the contrary is true. Think of Costa Rica, a comparably democratic state in Latin America, in Central America which is quite prosperous economically, more prosperous than Guatemala, for instance, where dictatorial regimes were in power. Think of Paraguay, where the dictator Stroessner was in power for thirty years, today Paraguay is a very weak state economically, just like Bolivia, where Banzer was the dictator in power for decades, is a very poor state. Brazil which also had a military government has experienced an enormous economic boom in the democratic period under Lula and also under Cardoso, its last social democrat president. We cannot claim that dictatorships are economically more secure, just like in Chile under Pinochet: the economic-political upswing of the past ten years of democracy in Chile is considerable, Chile has become one of the most stable political economies in Latin America. No, I think democracy is the condition, also for the participation of wide circles of the population and we should not give in to the primacy of power, for instance we should not say, in the case of Saddam Hussein, that Hussein had a stabilizing impact on the Middle East because of his dictatorship. This is hypocrisy, this is not a form of political stability that we should strive for, this is not desirable. We should make the attempt to combine democracy and cultural-historical conditions. Moreover we cannot say that democracy is a western privilege. In Japan, six centuries before the Magna Carta in England, there were basic democratic aspirations, just like in the Hindu civilizations in India, or even in Africa. Democracy can be integrated into the entire world, democracy is not just a western privilege.
These are relative concepts, holy war and [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: These are relative concepts, holy war and the fair war. War is in the sense never reasonable. War leads to victory and victory doesn’t lead to peace, when it is now a so-called 'holy war' or a 'just war'. Can there be 'just war' on earth, such as the war of the American against the nationalsocialistic Germany? This is a question, which is not only philosophical but also political. As said at the beginning, one can only understand the militant arguments of their cosmic or also cosmological recondite meaning. If one notices that from the myth, from the myth history, from the religion history the superordinate cosmological metaphors, pictures, conceptions of the world, [integrated] argument come together, so that the military or political argument is actually a result of the cosmic warfare. In fact, there wouldn’t be 'just war', unless human rights were damaged. For example, it is necessary to resist in the nationalsocialistic Germany or also against the communistic dictatorship in Soviet Russia. Each concept for the right of a holy war and each believe that it is a 'just war', but these are not absolute, but relative expressions without truth content. The cosmic war, the superordinate spirit-historical, myth-historical ground of military arguments, has been known much too few so far. Nuclear energy in this sense is also something like atomic energy, like a cosmic divergence, so perhaps one can say and understand this conflict from the recondite position, from the myth-histories, which enables one to differentiate better between so-called 'just war' and 'holy war'. The 'holy war' is always a mythical dimension, but there is the question about the 'just war', against dictatorship of Pinochet in Chile or in the nationalsocialistic Germany, which is a matter of others.
One has the impression that power is a self [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: One has the impression that power is a self runner. The receipt of power does not relieve the self-righteousness, does not relieve a not-democratic rootedness, i.e. America stands today before the problem, to maintain ground in world politics, in an economy which turns unequal-weightily against America. One knows the statistics, India in the year 2050 and China are the largest industrial powers and America will drop back. The same for Europe, i.e. an utopia is to be believed that prominent industrial powers can decide today freely, which position in world politics they will have in the world economy in 20-30 years. They stand under a very strong competition pressure and an enormous competition. That is shown for instance in the automobile industry, if today Japanese automobile industry are building factories in America, more exportations into America in a way as the American government doesn't like to see. It shows up, if societies such as Ford, or like GM, Ford are threatened by the bankruptcy, jobs are lost, i.e. there is itself an world-economical competition, also becoming a situation total politically in a world-political competitive situation between America, Europe and the rising nations. It would be to be believed utopian that a self renouncement of power, Kennedy said that correctly, America will in the next 40 years no more be the number one in the world and technology, the summit course of the technology, is going to be used in the insdustial, military complex. This cannot be avoided, but it would be indeed necessary to consider whether we should not today develop a planetary consciousness, where these competitions around world hegemony but make space for a global planetary consciousness of a concentrated action of world politics.
Principally, nobody profits from terrorism, [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: Principally, nobody profits from terrorism, except those people who attempt an intimidation and economic influence, a negative economic influence of the world economy. Today we know that the attacks on the World Trade Centers only influenced 0.5% of the world's gross national product in this year, that is civil wars or other forms or warlike conflicts have much more influence in the world economy. However, the psychological aspect must not be underestimated. Terrorism is a massive threat to the security of our world and to the feeling of a pinncale of technology that is influenced and negatively impacted. Let alone the fact that terrorists can enjoy a certain admiration, that they are considered as heros, that is they can act in public and enjoy adoration in the states of their own religious confession; if we consider that today there are posters of Bin Laden in the world, or that there are tshirts with Bin Laden's face on them in the Arabic states, that Corsican separatists today sell tshirts with Che Guevara's face on them, then we can clearly see the unjustified propagation and adoration of terrorism. Noone profits from terrorism, except those, who want to effectively undermine the security of the world and the progress of political stability. This is a great danger.
If we consider how huge international [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: If we consider how huge international affiliated groups use advertising media and the entire advertising industry in order to make a difference when we purchase, let's say washing powder, let's say cosmetic products, thus products that basically are not really of interest for the well-being and the general welfare of mankind; if we consider how many billions of dollars are spent for advertising media and the entire industry to produce brand name products that are of no economic use, that basically are nothing but wasted energy, then we are often tempted to think that brands are more powerful than governments. In fact nowadays there are different international affiliated groups that dispose of a greater financial volume than the gross national product of entire states, of the so called peripheral states, such as African states or Latinamerican states. Thus indeed we have to think about the fact whether the enormous amount of money that is spent for the producing and advertising of brand name products is not just wasted energy. It is alarming that governments often have to bow to the interests and the imperative of the economy as represented by the international affiliated groups. Of course there are also signs of hope, I am thinking of the initiative of the United Nations, social responsibility.
There is the well-known sentence: The [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: There is the well-known sentence: The terrorist is an anarchist who can't wait. If we keep this at the back of our heads, we can only welcome courage, courage concerning civil law, human rights, courage for civil disobedience, disobedience in order to attain civil rights, courage in democracies, but in particular in the states of oppression, in the states of the Middle East, in the Latin American, Asian, African dictatorships. Courage is the necessary condition of civil disobedience. Thoreau, in the nineteenth century, showed courage when he did not pay his taxes, Emerson, the great transcendentalist showed courage as the forerunner of the civil movement of disobedience, Gandhi showed the courage to shoulder human suffering, personal suffering, Martin Luther King also showed courage until he was assassinated. Courage is the condition for civil disobedience against a technocracy, against the pinnacle of technology, against an opposition, against all consumerism, an opposition to a seriously dictatorial society of consumption which only legitimizes a share of the society if there is a share of consumption. This is a great danger. In this context, the courage to defy the situation can really be justified, the courage to find an inner niche, a niche of poetry, a nice of an poetical existence, a niche of an existence which is free from the requirements of the purely industrial society. And also the courage in the fight against dictatorships, this is even more important. A civil society has to be established and this can only be done if the population courageously gets involved in this process.
As a matter of principle, technology should [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: As a matter of principle, technology should be available for all the states that can deal with it responsibly. As a matter of principle I don't see why an Iranian nuclear bomb is supposed to be more dangerous than a Chinese one, or an Indian one. It is contradictory to imagine that president Bush was in India in March and has promised India, even though they did not sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, an enormous nuclear armament, not just for the civil but also for the military sector, just under the pretext that democracy rules India and that India is one of the oldest democracies of the world. I think this is shortsighted. On the one hand we have to see that, of course, the proliferation of nuclear power is always dangerous and we have to make it our aim to proscribe nuclear weapons. What the International Atomic Energy Agency has tried in Vienna is remarkable, but futile, because the civil usage of nuclear energy has gained in attractiveness due to the shortage of resources in the oil sector and the attempt to built up alternative energies. It is difficult to admit that the world powers, because of their own interests, try to intimidate the states that want to use nuclear power, because they know that only along with nuclear power they have a claim to a safe position in the world market and in eonomics and politics. This is very hard to answer. Iran should be allowed to use nuclear power for energy, but as a matter of principle, the danger due to nuclear conflicts because of the increase of nuclear power world wide, also in Argentina or Brazil, has become even more dangerous.
It is deplorable that the United States of [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: It is deplorable that the United States of America torpedo the international courts of human rights more and more, the developments in Rome concerning the establishing of the court of human rights in Den Haag, as well. It is deplorable that the United Nations, even though they want to adjust their human rights commissions and policies of human rights and to make them more equitable in order to reduce the proportion of dictatorships that formerly, as Libya for instance, Cuba and China, have influenced the policy of human rights and have avoided the sanctions for the transgression of human rights. But as a matter of fact, we see that China has got massive economic interests, interests in oil, in resources in Africa and that China prevents the security council, the United Nations and democratic states from imposing sanctions against Sudan. China covers this and prevents this by its own policies of oil and resources, that is to say the policy of human rights is more and more at the mercy of economic "Realpolitik" and this displays that the changes and the reforms of the United Nations concerning their human rights policy do not show the success that they should have. However, this is not an argument for the United States to keep their distance, not to participate in the United Nations or in the court of human rights in Den Haag. Is is irresponsible and of course shows the idea of the American exceptionalism, in international politics as well, which is a menace to international politics. The European states show more responsibility in this regard, but it is clear that the policy of human rights is under the influence of economic interest and the policy of power and that the affected individual, especially in Africa and Asia, must suffer because of this. However, we must acknowledge that the court of human rights in Den Haag tries to exert influence in Yugoslavia, in Kosovo, in Darfur, to line up legal procedures and to punish the transgression of human rights. But so far the reform of the UN has not shown the success that would be desirable.
It is a great danger, today, to recognize [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: It is a great danger, today, to recognize different blocs, blocs of power in international politics in the context of a clash of civilizations, in the context of just one identity of different world cultures and world religions, a monolithic identity that will inevitably lead to conflicts and lead to violence. I would like to suggest to act on the assumption of multiple identities, a man is not just a member of a religion, be it Hindu, be it Christianity, be it Islam, he is a member of a certain social class, he may be a musician, a poet, he may love literature or the movies, he may belong to a certain social group. All I would like to say is: it is difficult to reconcile one identity with another one in the context of a clash of civilizations, this always leads to violence, this leads to identity conflicts. I think it would be more responsible to act on the assumption of multiple, of different identities, a man can be a Christian, but he can live in Africa, he can be a Muslim, he can live in America. We all have different identities and not just one. If we take India, for instance, India is not just a Hindu civilization with a population of 1.1 billion, there are also 150 millions of Muslims living in India, this is just one example of many. That is to say I think in order to avoid violence and outbursts of violence in ethnic-religios conflicts, it would be more responsible in the future to speak not only of bloc-like identities that are opposed to each other in the context of a clash of civilization, but to speak of a multitude of identities, of overlapping identities, in order to differentiate and at the same time in order to make the conflicts between the different groups of civilization and groups of religions coherent. It would be responsible, maybe the potential of violence could be reduced, which is difficult enough, for instance between the Islam and the west. There is not just only one west, there is a multitude of western traditions of different European, American cultures, and there is not just only one Islam either, there is a multitude of islamic traditions, thus multiple identities.
Today we experience a high measure of [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: Today we experience a high measure of hypocrisy, of double standards, be it moral double standards, be it political double standards. However, it is strange that a state such as Cuba with all the undemocracy under Fidel Castro is despised, whereas China, for instance, is paid court to by the entire world, by the western world, with investments of billions of dollars, especially from America. It is a moral hubris to want cheap products on the one hand and on the other hand to criticize China for its industrialization that proceeds undemocratically. We experience a moral double standard in the entire world. I am thinking of the fact, that North American politics, for instance, have supported Latin American dictatorships, be it Stroessner, be it Somoza in Nicaragua, Stroessner in Paraguay, the military dictatorships in Chile, Argentina for centuries, for reasons of "Realpolitik" and because of a phobia of communism and have supported absolutely immoral dictatorships, whereas today they put the primacy of the economy and the so called profit above everything, because of the so called economic reason. I can only turn away from this hypocrisy, from this double standard. It is counterproductive and only shows the hypocrisy and what we call "phony" in English, the injustice of the strategy of power of the western states, that has already been expressed by the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, when North America wanted to lay claim to the young democracies in Latin America, under the pretext of defending the young democracies also in the North of Latin America against the European usurper. In fact, North Americans only wanted to secure their markets in Latin America. Thus again the primacy of economic politics that destroys everything, really everything today.
It is clear that colonialism was a certain [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: It is clear that colonialism was a certain historical period in the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth century. Today there is economic colonialism, a question of globalization, on the one hand there are two positions. There is a form of western influence by the globalization of the world economy in the so called peripheral states, this is one version. Western influence has existed since the Enlightenment, since the European-American predominance in the world economy in the states of the third world and at the same time we have to realize that since the second millenium b.C. there has been a Hindu culture in India. We have to know that China and India were leading economic powers until the nineteenth century, the rise of India and China today is nothing but a continuation of old traditions. We must not forget that at the beginning of the nineteenth century 30 to 40 % of the world's gross national product came from India and China. Today's boom is nothing new, by the way, today there is also an inversion of the flow of capital form the peripheral states to the states of the first world. However, there are also new forms of colonialization because of the mass media, because of the digital revolution, because of CNN and MTV. It is absurd fact that an inhabitant of Ecuador can only receive information about his own country via CNN in Atlanta. Back then the UNESCO has justly tried to build up a new order of world communication that basically enabled those state, in Latin America or Africa, to have their own media industry and to receive information about their own country from their own sources. The digital paternalism of the peripheral states due to the mass media, the first world, MTV, CNN, Time Warner, Disney, and so on, is a massive threat to the cultural and human identity of those peripheral states. Human identity is threatened by the absolute paternalism of the influence of mass media from the first world, a liberal, a neo-liberal model which does not show any concern for cultural identities. It is contradictory, is it good that there is Globo in Brazil, a big media affiliated group. It is important that the states built up their own traditions.
This is a very difficult question because it [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: This is a very difficult question because it again leads back to the question to the universality of human right or relativity according to the cultural and religious historical backgrounds and conditions. One can just note that e.g. in China the criterion of the so-called Asian values, the communals, the values of the community are represented stronger than the individual rights, liberty and freedom as the tradition of De Carte, liberty and freedom as tradition of John Lock, so of the Western enlightenment. This is the one alternative. The other alternative would be other relativities, other cultural conditions for freedom. Here one has to find a fine balance. I think that there must be the idea of the human dignity as the anthropological precondition of human rights. Basis elements of human dignity auch as inviolability, right to free expression of opinion, ahimsa and right to a dignified death of course came from cultural traditions too, but the balance should be expanded so that not only humans in the western world do profit therefrom, whereas this often is used to achieve political aims in a new kind of colonisation, this is a big danger that should be taken seriously. We have to assign autonomy and plurality to culture and religion, otherwise we will not have the plurality of cultures. So balance is ok, but not at the cost of a total westward influence and in respect to other's cultures, traditions and religions, as long as they do not affect the human dignity.
It depends in which society, in which [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: It depends in which society, in which culture you are living. If you live in a culture concentrating on capital with Calvinistic work ethics which regards achievements as blessings, in the sense of Max Weber the North American culture. In social Darwinism in the sense of George Herman Miza, 19th century, a pragmatism over the whole philosophical tradition from Joule over James, who ever. If you live in such a society, I'd like to say, one aiming at personal profit, in the sense of a 'process of individualism' according to John Locke and personal profit and self interest are laid down in the constitution, than you have a different form of freedom and social responsibility compared to living in an archaic culture with family traditions. In such a culture your family integrates its members, instead of the state, instead of society. On the other hand people in North America are very philanthropic. They are willing to assist universities and the arts financially with billions of dollars each year. You don't have the same amount of philanthropy in Europe where more is organized by the state. In Europe you find cultural departments, for example in France, which exert influence on theatres, financially but also on the contents. This is solved differently in America, in a philanthropic way, privately. This shows that you have two sides of one coin. Personal freedom should lead to social responsibility or to put it the other way round, social responsibility shouldn't restrict personal freedom but it should integrate personal freedom. An interaction should develop but other cultural traditions have other preconditions. In states like Bolivia you cannot reach personal freedom because the indigenous population hasn't participated in the process for democracy. They have never been in government. No one of them was ever elected president. How can you expect social responsibility then. The interaction has to be secured.
There is not one education system in the [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: There is not one education system in the world but there are many different ones. The Chinese education system is different from the one in India, the Western education system is different from the one in Latin America. Basically, I think about the Brazil education theorist Frere, who remarked correctly that more social responsibility should be put in education. More global political consciousness should be put in education. Fewer national ideas should be put in education but more global responsibility. I really think that the education system, as it exists in Western states today, isn't drawing attention to the main problems of the world or civilization, no matter if they are ecological problems or problems in the sense of global responsibility. This continues on the level of universities, where a dialogue between different cultures and religions, which could only ensure our survival, isn't taught or researched in a responsible way. American universities with their enormous financial resources are islands in a public, which is often very uneducated and unread. American universities with their large libraries are islands of education. The system of elementary schools in Latin America and Africa is too little oriented towards global responsibility. It is too much concentrating of national interests to allow for a global political consciousness to be introduced to the students later on.
Undoubtedly we cannot image a world in the [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: Undoubtedly we cannot image a world in the year 2010 or 2020, in which China and India, which will then make up two thirds of the world's population, will experience the same ecological catastrophes as the states of the west did in the past hundred years. Where the production of cars is so high, and today China and Indian already make up one third of the world's population, if they have the same ecological [?], we can no longer imagine such a situation of the world. It is correct that natural resources have been taken from the states of Africa, Asia and Latin America to the industrial states over centuries and that of course the imbalance has become bigger. On the other hand, we experience the fact in globalization that India attracts enormous investments, that American companies, European companies in the industrial sector, in the technological sector, in the digital revolution, invest in the software in India, in Bangalore, whereever. We do experience, consequently, a hesitant change of the globalization process from west to east and not only from the states of the third world to the states of the first world. Nevertheless it is undoubted that industrial states have profited from the imbalance between the first and so called third world over centuries. Only the World Trade Organization and the programs of the past few years, also for instance the international monetary fund, where now the rate of Turkey, of Korea, of China, of Mexico is raised a few per cent, show a shift of responsibility in the economic-political domain and in the organization of the world. It is a very hesitant process that cannot rectify colonial inequality and the usage of natural resources from the states of the third world to the states of the first world. On the contrary. This slow process of the inversion of globalization from west to east takes place hesitantly.
It is scandalous indeed to imagine that [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: It is scandalous indeed to imagine that economically speaking the life of Americans or Europeans should be worth more than the life of an African. If you imagine a plane crash somewhere in the world, and the Western insurance company will pay 3 or 4 Million Dollars to the family of a victim if he was American or European and will pay only a few Thousand Dollars if he was an African or South American. This shows that even in death we are not considered equal, materialistically speaking. It is a scandal that about 35.000 children under the age of five are dying each and every day of avoidable or cureable diseases. And it is a scandal that two million people were swept out of Sudan. That 400.000 people died of hunger, or were murdered. Only a few examples to show that those victims are counted less because they are Africans, in comparison, of course with due respect, to the 2.500 victims of the World Trade Centre who counted more in the eyes of the world´s public because they were Americans. This in comparison to the people dying every day in Asia, Africa or South America of hunger, diseases, war, civil war or ethnical or religious conflicts. Guatemala, e.g., had millions of victims in civil war, but they do not count because they are allegedly less valuable persons, economically speaking. This is a scandal of the world´s public opinion.
For many generations it was believed that [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: For many generations it was believed that only by economic investments on the level of macro-finance it would be possible to succeed in the Third World countries. This was believed by countries and World Bank organisations. The last 10 or 15 years have shown, through the examples of e.g. Mohammed Junus, inventor in Bangladesh, or the Swiss family Schmidtheini, achieving a lot in South America, that micro-finance is very important. The "Guamin" Bank is highly successful nowadays in 50 or 60 states worldwide with the micro-finance, with micro credits which have proven that whole families, that women can be incorporated much stronger in the economy. Nowadays one needs to find a balance between so-called macro-finance of the industrialised nations, the so-called development aid, and the micro-finance and its success. There is not only the "Guamin" Bank, but a lot of other banks or institutions worldwide, showing that those "grass root" politics can be highly successful economically. It is astonishing that now micro-finance is offered e.g. in Switzerland as a possible investment by the big banks. I believe that it is possible to achieve a lot in this field, as the so-called development aid stagnates at about 0.37 %, e.g. in Germany, where the necessary 0.7 % are not reached, as well the Netherlands and the Northern European states cannot reach this. North America´s value is at about 0.1 %, and only Japan has a slightly higher value. That is to say, the macro-finance alone will not be sufficient for the Third World countries, the micro-finance is an important part of it and should be as well in the future, to create a balance.
The disadvantages that many women face in [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: The disadvantages that many women face in the economic processes have very different traditions in the different cultures. When one thinks of how long it took to incorporate women in a responsible way in the development and economic processes in the European states and the United States, one can imagine how hard this will be in the African states or the states of South America. There the family is regarded very highly, and the integration is very important. From statistics of the World Bank we do know that in the states which strongly incorporate women in the economy, as well in programmes of the World Bank or the UNESCO, the United Nations and others, the politics of development is much more responsible and effective. There is also the point of intuitive intelligence, which is very important for the abstraction of the technical world and which cannot be provided by men alone. And one should not forget that the coherence and security of the family is still highly important in the Third World countries. Only women can provide them. And the "Guamine" (?) Bank in Bangladesh, with subsidiaries in 40 or 50 countries world wide has proven of how much importance the incorporation of women in micro processes in the economy is. Only the states which try to incorporate women in a responsible way do have a chance in the future economy politics. But of course this is very difficult as one has to fight ancient prejudices which have build up nowadays, in the industrialized countries as well as the Third World countries. I think e.g. of Brasil where women have always been very important, or the possibilities in India where women have always been integrated much stronger, as well in the agricultural processes, in a very successful way.
Not only do we need a biodiversity of [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: Not only do we need a biodiversity of resistance, but we need a biodiversity as condition of a cultural diversity, the acknowledgement of the variation of cultures in the world´s civilization. An acknowledgement of the fact that there is not only one idea of progress, in the western tradition since the industrial revolution, since the enlightment, but that there are many ideas of progress in all cultures on the world, in India, in the islamic tradition, in the cosmology of South America, in Russia in the orthodoxy. It is a shortcoming in human existence to believe that only the western idea of progress, being arguable anyway, means an expression of human existence. Our ideas of time are different. In the bolivian culture the time is directed backwards, not forwards. Our work ethics are different, e.g. in the calvinistic northamerican culture or the transcendental catholic culture of South America since the scholasticism of the 16th century. Work ethics are different. We have to extend the biodiversity to a cultural diversity and to the acknowledgement of the plurality, of the cultural and religious and historical conditions of the world´s civilization in its variation. Thus not only one modernity, a western one, but multiple modernities according to the cultural, religious and historical conditions. If we consider this, the violence will diminish. In Ghandis words, the respect of the own identity, the respect of the own religious, cultural and historical traditions makes the people peaceful. And it prevents that military and terroristic conflicts build up aggression in those states. The states that know only imported technology and not their own technologies which developed according to cultural and historical conditions. Foreign technology glamourises violence because it diminishes the human and cultural identity of the population of those nations. Think of Peru, of Bolivia, Ecuador, with 60 or 70 % of the indian/original population nowadays not being integrated into the civilization process since the time of the colonies. This is a prevention of human dignity and as well an expression and condition of violent outbursts in those nations in the last years, e.g. against the oil industry. In Nigeria, e.g., in the region of the Niger delta, there are more and more attacks agains the foreign technologies.
It proves true that nowadays in the Western [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: It proves true that nowadays in the Western states drugs are being used at an increasing rate. It shows how ill those western civilizations really are. If you think of how strongly alcohol, e.g. is used. And if you think of how strong the "Algebrasierung" (?) of everyday culture, the abstraction of the technical world has increased, one cannot help but notice that fear as a philosophical notion can strongly be found in the younger generations of the Western world. The countries which cultivate drugs, e.g. Afghanistan with 90 % of the opium production or Bolivia and Columbia with coca, are being supported by the Western countries in a military way, most of the times in connection with terroristic attacks. But one tends to forget that e.g. in Bolivia, the coca plant has an ancient cultural tradition, that it is chewed there and needed to survive in the altitude or mountains, that it is used by 70 % of the rural population there. One tends to forget that drugs in these countries have other traditions. The real problem lies in the inhumanity of the industrialized states, in its technocracy which suggests this exit, this escape (by drugs) to young people, i.e. the responsible ones can be found in the industrialized nations, as least as much as in the supplying states in South America or Asia. Drugs are a means of measuring, a thermostat for seing the social cold that reigns the Western states, and a means of escape. The responsibility lies with the consumers, at least as much as with the producers.
The responsibility is huge. Unfortunately [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: The responsibility is huge. Unfortunately the big pharmaceutic companies of the Western states which only want to maximize their profits in the states of the Third World have refused for a long time to distribute or make accessible cheap AIDS products for the population there. I am glad that nowadays states like Brazil or India have their own technologies, i.e. they produce their own AIDS products and can give them to their population. Brazil is amazingly successful with this, and the last 10 to 15 years, the AIDS rate could be kept in check. It is regrettable that AIDS is still made the cue ball of big pharmaceutic companies, and I am glad to see the massive initiatives, e.g. of the Bill-Gates foundation or of the last US president, Bill Clinton, a try to make conscious the topic AIDS not only in the industrialized world, but as well in Africa which is especially affected, and Sub Saharan Africa, South America and Asia. It has to be made possible that medicine against AIDS can be offered at cheap prices by local industry and thus made accessible to the affected population and that the AIDS economic policy is not made the cue ball of makro economic interests of the industrialized states. This would be regrettable, but at the moment it is the case.
[…] don't want to use this term, because it [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: […] don't want to use this term, because it has a military connotation. Heros can easily be people who have dominated in wars or in war-like confrontations. I would prefer to use the term "role model", people that I admire, revere and respect. One time this was an Indian playing the flute whom I met in four thousand meters of height in the Andes, north of Cuzco, on a three day ride in the eternal snow. He sat outside of a village on a hiking trail, left and right from him an abyss of thousands of meters, oblivious of everything around him and he was playing the flute, up there in the Andes in Peru, for two hours. I listened to his beautiful music. He gave me a poetry, a vitality, a hope, just like one of the big clowns in the history of motion pictures maybe, such as Jaques Tati, Charlie Chaplin, such as Henry Miller's wonderful book "The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder". The clown is a great philosopher, he transcends the abstract for a human world. So does humor, I am thinking of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot". If humanity promoted clownesque elements, if humanity transcended the grotesque, the absurd by this applied humanism, a living humanism, living metaphysics that humor can have. I think that maybe, if Charlie Chaplin had performed his great dictator in the United Nations Security Council, the third Nazi Reich could have been prevented. I believe in poetry, in living poetry, I believe that the need to integrate a poetic element in the abstraction of technology is a basic need, a necessary for survival. I believe in a living spirituality, in the necessity of living metaphysics, be it in literature, in art, in films. People who have demonstrated this, […]
... not insignificant(ly) as there is the [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: ... not insignificant(ly) as there is the danger of copy, of plagiarism. This is also true for the human sciences. But there in another form. Maybe one should make more room for creativity and create extended forms of patents. On the other hand inventions need to be sighted and filed juristically. Just think about the statistics that show that South America was the continent with the weakest patents in natural sciences until the last century. This shows why the South American economy had almost no endogene or own technologies and only foreign imported ones. Except maybe Venezuela with its riches in petrol, and Brasil. It has been and still is very difficult for South America to create own independent industry cultures because the patents in natural sciences have never been as plenty as e.g. in Singapore or North America or Europe. This means that states with a weaker culture in patents, especially in natural sciences, have more difficulties in creating their own technologies and independent industries to compete in the world market as they import each technology. And those imported technologies often are in contradiction to the own cultural and religious traditions and can cause conflicts, aggression and even terrorism, like e.g. in Peru, the "luminous path" (?). This "luminous path" was a try in the 80s to keep the peruan identity against foreign technologies of the industrialized states, against the influence of the industrialized world on Peru. This is to say that patents...
The ecological limits of economic growth [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: The ecological limits of economic growth have long been crossed already. You just need to think of the areas in the Amazon region in the rain forest, as well in Indonesia, which have the size of Switzerland and are being destroyed every year, of the dramatic changes in the climate. Countries like India and China are conducting massive depletion and robber economy with ecology as price for their economic rise. One can only support groups, e.g. in Brasil, like the NGO´s (?), the civil rights movements, the movement of the "Landlosen" (?), the various groups of natives of the Amazon who are being threatened and robbed of their lifes possibilities. President Lula has tried strongly to support the ecological movement, but has been held back by the economic interests and the investment possibilities of foreign companies and was not able to keep his promises about ecology he gave in the beginning of his term of office. And there is a lot to do left, not only in Brazil, as well in Indonesia, Africa. The total pecuniary reward, the profit maximisation is an enormous power and a threat for the ecological balance. This is true for both the industrialized countries and the Third world countries, where the industrialized world has already a bigger consciousness in this point.
... being used by one billion people, are in [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: ... being used by one billion people, are in fact democratising media because more and more people can express their own political opinion, their own preferences, and do no longer need the "gay keeper" (?) of a mass media, are no longer subject to the influence of the information industrie, i.e. in this sense the Internet and mobile telephones can be democratic media. Manual Castels, the information theoretician, has described this quite right. On the other hand it shows that the Internet more and more atomises people, does not enable them to communicate with others directly but isolates them and by this atomises them. Direct communication with other people cannot be replaced, ever, and never by the Internet. The Internet is a great medium for research, as well for communication, but not for direct communication. The question whether it can have a democratising effect needs to be seen, e.g. in China. In China in the last 10 years the number of people reading books has declined by 40 %, and the number of providers of Internet has grown by 40 %. But one knows how strongly China and other dictatorships respectively non-democratic systems are trying to restrict the Internet, to restrict access to the Internet to diminish the democratic possibilities. On its own the Internet is a politically revolutionary and stabilising force. But if you think e.g. of the Maputsche Indians in Chile who did not want to have the free computers of Microsoft because they refused to work with the English language and wanted computers with Maputsche signs. So this as well needs to be considered, that technology is never neutral, it needs...
... in the pre-christian time, thinking of [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: ... in the pre-christian time, thinking of the algebraic logarithms of the arabian cultures in the first post-christian millennium, of the evolution of technology, later in the renaissance in Europe, in the age of Enlightment, in the Industrial Revolution. On the one hand, technology is a shearing force. On the other hand, there is the danger that technology is seen in the sense of technocracy, like "cratos" for power, and not "techne" in the greek sense of the word, which meant something like artfulness, a sort of art and handiwork, and had to do with the individual, not with a machinated huge productions like the assembly line of Ford in the beginning of the 20th century. Technocracy robs the people of authenticity, of identity, takes his indigene abhility and the political dimension of his way of life, everything turns abstract in the technical world, prosaic, algebraic. It does not allow for a political dimension, in contrast to art, literature, movies, sculpting or music. This is a great danger that the technology has this connection to "cratos", power. Nowadays, there is no more agriculture or cultivation like in the 19th century, everything is business, so there is agricultural business. And this mercantilism is taking of people the autonomy, not only in quantitative but as well in qualitative ways, gives the power to the industrial production, and this means to a certain degree an incapacitation of human existence and finally the loss of identity. Herein I see the gravest danger.
Only through a policy of consciousness that [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: Only through a policy of consciousness that starts in the direct environment of every person by discussion with friends, with colleagues, and even by going public. It is about creating a consciousness that will affect everyone. The resources of the world are not replaceable, and we are depleting them. One can also see this in the architecture, in the abstraction of an inhuman architecture, if one thinks of the mega global cities like Cairo, Sao Paolo, Calcutta and Mexico City. Unliveable molochs which only allow for degrading lives. And the migration into cities that has taken place the last decades, as seen in the statistics of the world bank, and that is still increasing. Not only do we witness migrations, but massive migration into cities. And the cities suffer through disturbed urbanization. All those problems need to be acknowledged in the everyday life and in discussions with friends and colleagues. Only by this can we build up a "grass root" counter movement, a new consciousness, a universal consciousness that we all need and that is rare and cannot be provided through schools or universities.
... conflicts or war about the water supply [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: ... conflicts or war about the water supply cannot be ruled out in the future, as the politics is not distributing the water according to the needs of billions of people, but according to industrial use. And the water consumption of the industrialized nations is higher by far than the consumption of e.g. Sub-Saharan Africa which is a problem and will make water the cause for war. Nowadays we have the possibilities to get water, to have it cleaned by e.g. nuclear energy to achieve high drinking water quality. There is research in those fields in every nation. But huge companies make those patents their own because they scent big business. It is alarming that the supply with such a natural product as water, like the air we breathe, and which should be distributed democratically, nowadays is made the object of industries and companies.
As said, technology is never neutral, [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: As said, technology is never neutral, culture is more than folklore. Technology must be refined to culture and religion-historical conditions, also Internet, also the digital revolution falls not by the sky, but, if I think of Peru, if I think of Chile, of Argentina, of Africa, must refine itself to native culture traditions and those are often not provided with the information. If you consider that also the members of archaic cultures can really get culture shocks, if they are connected over Internet to the first world, to the most modern forms of technology and information. But if they go offline, drop back into absolutely still mythic culture stages, I think of Africa, of Madagascar, and many other examples, i.e. Internet cannot destroy culture only if they are in agreement with the appropriate tradition. That concerns moral conceptions, that concerns ethics, that concerns relationship between men and women, concerns work ethics, all anthropological categories, for instance the attitude to death, all that may for instance in other cultures be different than represented in the Internet. This results in dissonances, in conflicts, which the individual must bear with its own culture and which also could reveal aggression potential. On the other side, where Internet works in a revolutionary manner, I think of dictatorships in Burma for example, where the Internet access is the only possibility at all getting information or China, where the information media is absolutely directed and partly castrated by the political power. Burma, China, in many other states, also in Africa, there Internet can indeed be peace-donating.
The loss of bio diversity is the same [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: The loss of bio diversity is the same engraving threat like the loss of cultural diversity, at cultural plurality , if one considers that thousands of languages and language's groups were greater in number a few years ago in the world than today, if one considers that alone India has 23 office languages, which are threatened today, if one considers that South America enormous language tradition, in Africa oral language tradition, which are terminated by the Primat of the English and the Primat of differently-western languages, is a large threat. Likewise a large threat, like over boards of the technologies of other areas of life. We can ensure in our everyday culture only as opposite pole for the creation of consciousness, what could prevent military conflicts between national states, preventing poverty and preventing diseases. On the other side one can also use technology, one can use capital markets, I think of Warren Buffet for the moment in America, I also think of the Bill Gates Foundation, those stand for the preservation of natural resources, which make large capital quantities available also against diseases such as malaria and AIDS in Africa and other parts of the world. There are definitely countermovements, but there are too rare, because the national states do too less, because too much money is spended in the industrial military complex and not many is spent for the maintenance of the bio diversity. The bio diversity is not at all thinkable without cultural diversity, both causes themselves mutually and is a condition of human being-worthy surviving.
The television is in some states of Europe [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: The television is in some states of Europe still publicly legal, but the commercial ones in North America are enormous media companies, ever more strongly also in Europe, RTL and many different in France, Germany, England. Constantly strongly mass consumption and mass taste, the maximization of ratingses, gains a leveling of the mental level on lowest level, which one could in German really call a “verse measuring” aesthetically levels, grows more and more. By the dependence of the market, by the commercialization, this is a threat, i.e. what BBC carried out after war in former times, where the responsible person, as a publicly legal channel, making responsible culture programs, decreases more and more and the dimensioning, which already described Ortega Garcette in the rebellion of the masses at that time, wins a new face, straight in the mass media, straight on the television. On television one would use it infinitely instructional and infinitely educational. There is ARTE, there are few exceptions in Europe, PBS in New York in America. Those are naturally exceptions, but I remember GLOBO in Brazil, I remember the mexican television channels, which belongs to multi-billionaires, the richest men of their state, like Carlo Lim in Mexico for example, that are pure profit enterprises and profit maximizes the money, but quality of the contents. That is a contradiction in itself and only if one succeeds to use television as medium of the art, as medium of enlightenment, we would have a chance.
The European community, differently than [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: The European community, differently than North America, has strict regulations and does not want to import genetically altered food from Africa. America makes it more easier, because the gene manipulation is a everyday fact of political life. There are efforts, which are important and I mean one should encourage the European community to follow genetic-political restrictions. At least as long as the side effects of the gene manipulation on the state of health and the long-working effects are not perfectly clarified, so long should these restrictions be kept upright. On the other side one must naturally consider the malnutrition of the population of world, where genetically altered food can play a positive role in not letting hunger emergencies arise or prevent malnutrition at all. Should it be possible for gene manipulations to be economicalally responsible, then one must consider how far the responsibility is going to be. For the moment it does not seem to be the case yet. For the moment its hunger, hunger disasters; at least a distribution problem, the world has enough food, it is an inability of power-politics to distribute, not at least also the influence of the great powers, like in Africa or Asia. It is a contradiction that India today still 1/3 of the population suffers hunger, 74% are undernourished, at the same time India is the largest weapon buyer of the military technology of the world. Today is in the states of the third world and even space research operations and space projects are made, but this is the desire for great power, the desire for finding connection (to the modern world) and also the Hybris in world politics also in the third world.
[...] as purely scientifically oriented, [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: [...] as purely scientifically oriented, there are large analyses [rückürter] myths for example from Ramondo Panka, or also from the Kieler philosopher Hübner over the myth. The myth is not less rationally than science. Cosmology and [Kosmogendie] promotes exactly the same realizations of the wisdom teachings from Greek Platonic philosophy until today. It is not to be seen that large human scientific books should be objectivized substantially less than natural science. I believe we must take distance from the conception that any objectivity given to science, neither Natural Science nor Human science. Even Karl Popper, the large positivist wrote his large writing “the open society and its enemies” on very subjective motives, on the escape from Nazi Germany on a ship, in the migration to Australia. One sees also that behind each large human-scientific book may be a personal motivation, embarrassment, Hanne Ahrens is another example, “Banned into Evil”, there was the Eichmann trial, yet a large writing came. Science is not not more objectively than the myth, by any means.
Every human can try to live a [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: Every human can try to live a environmentally-oriented live in its personal environment and try to influence, in whatever occupational group he works, as a journalist, as a writer, as a technician. Every human can influence his private environment, in his vocational surrounding field, where he can notice the threats and can meet them. Is crucial to strengthen the political groupings today which really engages themselves ecologically and try a predatory exploitation, as it for instance the North American policy at present tries to hold back. It is a threat that humans, 80% of humans in the industrial nations or the other way, perhaps one can formulate it in the following way, that 20% of humans in the industrial nations use 80% of the world energies. The world is not any more thinkable without system development, first of all it is not thinkable that a world exists where China and India with the two-third of the population of the world in 20 30 years has the same autoproduction, having the same smoke, the same contamination. One considers that today in China between 3 and 10 per cent of the gross national product must be already spent on the pollutants of the environmental impact, that are about 50 to 51 billion dollars in the year, already today with rising tendency, i.e. the economic growth in India and China has its price, as also in Brazil, as also in Africa. Only a lasting development, with whom everyone must cooperate, which corresponds to the ecological challenges, can at all be proven to be true. Everyone must act by himself in its private and vocational environment and that is possible.
A basic problem is inherent in the fact that [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: A basic problem is inherent in the fact that 20% of the world population live in the states of the industrial regions and that these 20% use up up to 80% of the world's energy. Every American citizen, every American driver, every European driver, every user of energy disposes of a multiple of energy compared to black African, Asian or Latin American regions. It is even worse that states such as Peru, Bolivia or Ecuador sell their natural resources, gas, oil, copper, gold to the states of the first world on the world market in order to get foreign currencies and that these states can't have the population have its share of the economic upswing. This is dramatic in Bolivia, nationalizations have taken place that try to prevent this and the government has considerable problems with the maintenance of the industrial affiliated groups after the nationalization. The problem is that we cannot live in a world in which the entire world has the energy consumption that the industrial states have today. This means we need new resources of energy, we need a balance, we need an ecological world policy, an ecologic world domestic policy as Karl Friedrich von Weizsäcker put it and the factor four that has been propagated by his son Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker as an ecologist is one of the perspectives to create a responsible energy policy today that has to be distributed worldwide and not only proportional to the industrial states, otherwise it will lead to nothing.
[...] or a rationality of obeying. The [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: [...] or a rationality of obeying. The rationality of the market makes it basically not possible for innovation, for an human architecture. That concerns also the landscape architecture, which should be integrated like a guarantor, a balance of architecture. Today with the increasing urbanity, the migration from the land, that ever more largely becoming urban centers of the world, in addition, centers of violence, which is ever stronger large act of violence. I remind of Sao Paolo in Brazil in the last weeks, in Rio de Janeiro, where from the prisons over telephone communication hundredfold mass murder was operated out in motorbuses. I think of Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Africa, Latin America, the urban centers of violence and architecture must correspond to it. Human architecture, traditional architectural elements must be included and not be allowed to be simply smoothly shaved. It is shocking to see like in Shanghai or in Cairo, or Alexandria, where beautiful partial colonial architecture, partly still traditional architecture is today abandoned to modern buildings and that is always a loss of human identity.
[…] united congruently in itself again, a [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: […] united congruently in itself again, a world in which sacral ideas and also the notion of spirituality, not the esoteric meaning of the word, but rather in terms of a balance, an equilibriumm, against the abstraction of technology, is possible again. A world in which art can be an expression of sacral ideas, be it in films, in literature, in fine arts or in music as well. I wish for a world which is not dehumanized by technocracy, from Greek "cratos" meaning "power", thus a completely degenerated world. I regret that sacral ideas have disappeared from the history of civilization in the past centuries. I mean, a human being cannot exist without the integration into nature, into ecology, but it can't exist without the integration into something supernatural either. Death remains a mystery. Man is the only animal which knows that it must die. This is why death is an expression of the anthropological constant and an expression of the finiteness of existence and makes human life a mystery. A human being is a deeply rooted, metaphysical animal. A human being is a symbolic animal, but also a metaphysical animal, as much as a human being is an "animal rationale", a rational animal. We have to reconcile myth and logos, logos by itself cannot exist, logos keeps human beings from an inner determination. I am in favor of a union of myth and logos […]
The fact that the mass media uses the [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: The fact that the mass media uses the digital revolution, the availability and the amoebalike spreading of the mass media into the last quarters of this world, is at the end a large threat rather than a benefit. If one remembers the attempt of the UNESCO with the new communication detection in the 80's, one noticed that mass media are used politically, i.e. at that time by the Eastern Bloc countries or by North America. It is a contradiction in itself that todays western media regulate mostly of the world market, like the people from Ecuador or from Indonesia, from Bolivia or from Peru can get better information about his own country, maybe the only ones over CNN, over MTV or over the digital media, but not from its authentic view, from its own culture, from its own identity. That creates contradiction, creates force, creates conflicts. It is also a contradiction that the world grows together on the one hand digitally and on the other hand massmedialike. Humans travel always far to the last corners of the world. On one side one could hope that the conflicts would decrease, but we have a paradox: Ethnical-religious conflicts became larger actually in the last 20 years. The balkanization, the ethnical pluralization, the sectioning of the world, the fundamentalism as a threat to the different founder religions. They do not only exist in the Islam but also in christianity, in hinduism. One cannot assume that one can peace-politically achieve really much with a massmedialike crosslinking.
[...] each kind of logical successions that [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: [...] each kind of logical successions that quite, but emotional intuitive intelligence is not possible nevertheless up to the today's computers and I would like to add in addition: Thank God. The conception that computers can have also emotional and intuitive intelligence would be naturally somewhere threatening. I remind the work of Marvin Minsky at the MIT in Boston. Minsky is one of the prominent [fotologs] and computer specialists for AI. The AI today is very far advanced, in addition, by the nano-technology, they can reconstruct the succession of a chess game but not the possibilities of feeling love or also feeling nostalgic or deep sadness with the death of loved humans, like parents or of the life partner. This form of intuitive intelligence and emotional intelligence, and i mean it, is an indication more humanly in the natural as also in the supernatural sense is in this form of intelligence not yet given to computers. And I would like to say: Thank God.
[...] However it must be taken into account [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: [...] However it must be taken into account that native traditions, mythologies, cosmologies from thousands of years of history, like in Africa or Latin America, where oral literature traditions flows into schooling and into education. The fact that we have an education, which is occupied exclusively with a future, which is no more future for humans, but also for the robots. I am for an education, which cares very strongly about the rootedness of humans and also in its traditions and with its authenticity in a still native world, which finds a balance between between tradition and modern trend, whereby the modernity should not be under-weighted, by any means, but she must be examined over her humanizing character, otherwise she cannot exist, otherwise she does not deserve to be lived.
[…] of the so called notion of progress. In [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: […] of the so called notion of progress. In traditional cultures that still exist in Africa today, or in Latin America, man is integrated into his family. He was born and he died in his family. Today he knows that he will probably die behind spanish walls in the abstraction and solitude of a hospital, maybe even without a familial integration. The atomization of man in the technical world is progressing fast, just like urbanization does and man is torn from his rural communities into the urban world. He often does not have the necessary conditions, he is not integrated into a culture. The suicical rates increase in Germany, in Europe, in North America, in China. At the same measure as material prosperity increases, humanity does not automatically increase as well and solitude does not decrease, that is for sure, on the contrary, material prosperity leads to solitude even faster, because our attention is drawn to merely material aspects and not to the solidarity between the people. This increasingly takes place in the course of the continuous industrialization and in more and more parts of the world. David Riesman wrote his classical sociological book "The Lonely Crowd" back then in the fifties already and he spoke of inner-directed and other-directed people. Today we have more and more people who are other-directed by the mass media and fewer people who are inner-directed by education and tradition. In this context he speaks of lonely people. This will […]
I am not sure whether the access to Internet [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: I am not sure whether the access to Internet and computer technology is really the correct way to increase economic development and above all social community consciousness. We have today in the world a situation which one calls a digital divide, thus a sharp separation between the states of the first world, where Internet and digital possibilities are very remarkable and the states of the periphery, like Subsahara Africa, where it is substantially the smaller case, as there are naturally also Internet Cafés in the rising measure, which I surely know and one also uses the medium. Nevertheless, if one considers the fact, that today Subsahara Africa has less telephone connections than Tokyo, until day, i.e. the last World Bank president Wolfenson made a whole effort, a whole energy furnished in order to overcome this digital gap, to deploy Internet meaningfully on large parts of the underprivileged population of the world. Theoretically, Internet is a very democratic medium, but practically one sees that in the last 20-25 years, when the digital revolution took place, when humans traveled more, when mass media in the TV, CNN, when mass media communication embraced more and more stronger the world, telecommunications, digital revolution, the world actually did not grow together neither politically, perhaps economically by the globalization, however not politically. We have further on the one side the technical homogenization, on the other side the ethnical-religious, political separation, balkanization in the Kosovo, in the Congo, in India, in Africa in other parts of the world, i.e. it is not compellingly necessary that a digitization actually influences further circles of population of world peace-donating and economically productively. One must also consider that this technology, which penetrates into partial archaic cultures can be rejected absolutely. Technology is never neutral, it must be refined. [Ampouche] - Indians in Chile did not wanted Internet, so they rejected Microsoft, because the English language would have destroyed their own culture tradition on the computer.
When I sit on the terrace, by my small [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: When I sit on the terrace, by my small Fisher house, in Corsica in a small fishing village and looking to the star at night and slowly seeing the moon, when I read in addition Fernando Pesoas “book of unrest” or poems of Oktavio Baas and in addition hearing music, I have a unit, I can only say a getistic unit of nature and a supernatural, of an experienced form of art, which is also always mirror-image ritual and which always gives hope. This moment of hope to be able being contributed into a world, into which one is born against its will and which one will again leave again against its will, to use these few given years, everyone as they can, everyone within its own responsibility. In indian cultures in Bolivia they talk about the Patchamama, the mother earth and to keep Patchamama alive, perhaps in the term of the beauty. The beauty always stands against the bad, against the brutal. An affirmation of the beauty, a lived beauty, to come perhaps a lttle more closer to a life-poetry in theory and practice, that would be already a large gift.
As I said just before, that has to do with [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: As I said just before, that has to do with the fact that informations of mass media is ever more strongly under control of a commercialization of all areas of life, also a commercialization of contents of mass media, because it concerns companies, large companies, which are represented at the stock exchange. Large medium companies are industrial companies which must work profit-maximizing and the broad mass, the so-called broad public has always the predominance before quality of contents and it is a large danger, that this purely quantitative and consumeroriented orientation of large mass media quality of contents and also alternative quality, may it be politically or ecologically or artistically, placing it in agreement. If one considers that in Germany for instance the WDR in Cologne, in the 70's, essentially promoted the very young german film as a public medium, it comes more and more into the background. That would not be thinkable with todays commercial channels. Innovation, courage can be agreed in mass taste very badly. One serves only the product, the largest number of listeners and this maximization of the ratio, this dictation of the ratingses prevent the fact that transmissions can be made, which are really substantially contentwise responsible. It is still a large danger, more in America than here in Europe, because here are still some public channels, which are also ratio-certain, but not in the measure of consumerdependently, not as strongly as the commercial medium companies in America, only in the film industry, the Independent Cinemas, the Independent film companies could offer a way out. It is very hard to find balance between the aesthetics of the particular, which naturally always is levelling aesthetics of the individual and the requirement on an consumeroriented mass medium, which has to obey the law of the large quantity, that is naturally levelling and levelling here means levelling downwards.
Humans are not only part of nature, because [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: Humans are not only part of nature, because nature does not share the supernatural. In this sense humans are also part of the supernatural. Ecology in the sense is also theology or different, one cannot answer ecological questions, if one does not embed it into a cosmic connection, if one does not connect theology with ecology. The question: “Can nature be bad?” is a very serious question. If one thinks of Tsunamis, one thinks of the rain forests, which are cleared. One thinks of the seas, which are soiled. One thinks of the greenhouse contamination in the cosmos. Crucially, humans will only be able to stand up in nature, if he becomes conscious, its position in supernatural, thus no physics without metaphysics. Questions of the natural sciences can be solved only if they are solved with questions of philosophy or theology in agreement. There must be thus an encroachment between the philosophical answers and also the scientific questions, approximately with the question of the evolution teachings, with the question of the socialdarwinism, the catholic church, the Pope has held in the last week a very important colloquium for the imbedding of the evolution teachings in the Christian framework, where also different perspectives were expressed by creationists in America up to the sozialdarwinism. I believe, one can understand natural science and the technological summit course, only if one counter-carrries her with the cultural human identity at the other side. That is, one can speak of cosmic abortion, straight if one speaks of nuclear energy, of atomic energy. Humans will not find their place in nature, if they do not make sure to the sacral, the loss of the sacral, to the secularization of the last centuries, since the European enlightenment were very important. Only the Sacral altogether in connection with nature [...]
Water is a natural product, water is a [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: Water is a natural product, water is a product that people fight for, water belongs more and more to the rarest products at all. Over one billion people have no normal access to a water supply. Coca Cola is a mass product that can be produced technically and mechanically, thus is is more easily available than water. It is alarming that there is the attempt to produce fresh and clean water by using nuclear energy, which so far has failed. Water belongs to the resources that people fight for most, there can even be wars of terror or war-like confrontations about water shortages. The UNESCO has stated this again and again and this is why technically produced products are more easily available than natural resources that people have to fight for.
The western world can learn an endless [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: The western world can learn an endless amount of things from Africa, from Brazil, from other so called peripheral states. Africa has an enormous tradition of deep mythology, an enormous tradition of oral literature, has, for instance in Madagascar, the ancestor worship, has this ancestor worship in other states and cultures as well, that is a whole different way to deal with thepeople who are dying, to deal with the dead. In the industrial world the dead are concealed behind spanish walls, they die in the technical abstraction of hospitals, without their families, without integration. In Madagascar people live with the people who are dying, with the dead, they have an ancestor worship, a compassion, a humanity which is by far superior to us in the technical world. In general, we have to state that if we want to establish a pool of humanity, the inspiring impulse surely won’t come from the first world, they will come from the peripheral states, from Africa, from Latin America, a whole different form of humanity in the culture of our everyday life that may still be archaic from a historical point of view, but which is by far superior to the abstraction and the algebraization of the first world. Humanity is something that they care about, a form of cordiality, of living cordiality, of living metaphysics, of living spirituality that can enrich the world spirituality, that can enrich us. We can only say: It is them who dance, not us. That is to say they have a vitality, a zest for life, despite of their poverty, despite of the appalling poverty that we have lost long ago. When it comes to humanity, it is us, in the first world, who can learn from the peripheral states and not the other way round.
This is a key question, a very serious [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: This is a key question, a very serious question, because on the one hand we have a technical homogenization of the world that spreads like amoebas in all forms of technology, of the media technology, of the industrial technology, on the other hand we have a spiritual protest like an anthropological thermostat, we have ethnic-religious conflicts, balkanization, particularization, forms of fundamentalism as antimodernism in Algeria, in Iran, in other parts of the world. That is to say the compatibility of technology and culture, or rather the non-compatibility as in Latin America for instance, the conditions related the the history of ideas for the acculturation of modern technologies are considerably different in different cultural and religious traditions. There is not only one notion of progress, there is a multitude of notions of progress, not only in western, occidental cultures, but also in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America. I plead for a multitude of notions of progress and multiple modernities. A cultural diversity such as the biological diversity is a condition of human survival. The technical industrialization fundamentally menaces the diverse culturality. We experience an uniforming, we experience an absolute standardization of ethestic norms by the influence of the mass media worldwide, which consequently means a loss of cultural and in the end of human identiy. The compatibility of technology and culture is a question of survival of humanity. Technology is not neutral, technoloy has to be acculturated to the concerned cultural and religious traditions, otherwise it will destroy cultural and in the end human identity. Culture is more than just folklore, culture is a metaphor of existence, of human survival, is an expression of giving sense and meaning to all spheres of life, which are absolutely threatened by technocracy, from greek "cratos", "the power".
By making use of the democratic [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: By making use of the democratic possibilities of the internet and on the one hand by this performance today and on the other hand by spreading this message step by step, everyone in his/her own way, to our friends, at work, also in our symbolical work, in our creative work, on travel, in conversations and also by practicing our ability to be friends with people as a condition for human existence. And I believe that, if everybody does this in his/her life, and if we all do this, thanks to the disseminator effect, we won't be able to achieve more than this, we cannot do more than this, and this is already a little bit more than nothing.
I remember a deaf-mute, old Indian, about [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: I remember a deaf-mute, old Indian, about one hour from Potosi in Bolivia in four thousand five hundred to five thousand meters of height, who sat in an old village at the corner of a street, covered by his poncho, his indian traditional costume, who obviously could not cope with globalization, with this mighty word, who sat between old Coca Cola cans, who was deracinated, who was not at home in his old tradition anymore, who was thrown on to the beach like a grain of sand, who was scared of gobalization, who was a victim of globalization. On the one hand, he had been thrown out of his own tradition and into a new globalization of technology that he had not been prepared for. It was a country road outside of Potosi, a mining city in Bolivia which still has an old silver mine, which is populated by workers who die, who work for two or three dollars a day in this great heat, many don’t return but die in the depth of the mine. This is what he had done, the deaf-mute Indian and now he was out on the streets. The mine was closed in the course of globalization. He was unemployed, he had lost everything, for me he was an appalling picture of speechlessness, he was not able to express himself, he was not able to tell the truth to a journalist. A personal victim of globalization as I have experienced it and as it has touched me deeply, two years ago, on a country road, late at night, outside of Potosi, Bolivia.
Constantin von Barloewen:
[…] the ability to feel concernment face to [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: […] the ability to feel concernment face to face with poverty, with the misery of other people, but also the ability to begin a friendship. After all, the condition of existence is the ability to feel love and to be friends with people, as certain Latin American cultures practice it. I remember Octavio Paz, I remember many great authors, great artists, but also many so called common people who are often much greater and whom I met on train rides, on bus rides through the Andes, through Peru, through Bolivia. The ability to begin a friendship, to approach other people, to open up, to be willing to enter a dialogue, a dialogic dialogue so to speak. The notion of dialogue is very important in this context, the ability to enter a dialogue, to begin a friendship, this is what we should cherish, today more than ever.
[…] This is a fallacy. If we think about [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: […] This is a fallacy. If we think about this, there is the metaphor of the old Indian chief who is sitting by the water, at a riverbank in order to prepare himself to die. He is visited by a manager, a leading manager, from New York, from a big industrial city, who does not understand. The manager says: "I would like to be able to sit by the water like you do and meditate, but I can't, I can only do things like that two weeks a year." The Indian pities him: "I can do this whenever I want, I am a free man". Dromology, the science of speed, I am thinking of Paul Virilio for instance, is an essential part of human science research. The unconditional reinforcement of speed in the hope of winning time fails, on the contrary: Technical acceleration always means dehumanization. We know this from flights, for instance. The jetlag is also due to the fact that the soul cannot catch up with a transatlantic flight, with the catapulting into other cultural circles within six, eight, nine hours, the soul cannot cope with this rapid change. A man knows his limits. "Man in the Age of Technology", as Arnold Gehlen put it. It is a fallacy to believe that we can duplicate time just like this, as in mathematical calculations. Time stands still. The linear notion of time of the western world is not the only one in the world. Indian cultures have circular notions or backward notions of time, progress does not lie ahead, progress lies in the past, a significant, an Inka or Aztec past. Indian cultures have a backward notion of time, not a forward one. How would it be possible to win time in this context? This shows how euro-centered this notion and this idea of winning time is and how much we are rather the victims of the attempt to maximize time technically, and not the winners.
[…] since World War II, be it in Nazi [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: […] since World War II, be it in Nazi Germany, or be it in America as opposing force to Nazi Germany, how much space research, how much nanotechnology, how much all forms of applied technologies are determined by the military armament affiliated groups, which can only provide the means, on the one hand and by the market forces on the other hand. The nuclear industry in Los Alamos in America essentially is a military complex, because of the Manhattan Project, back then with Einstein, with Oppenheimer, with Edward Teller, thus during the Nazi period in Germany. In the course of these state-aided nuclear research centers an important technological progress took place in America, also because of the armament against Nazi Germany during World War II. Market technology is extremely cost-intensive, modern technology, and can only be afforded by the market forces of the industry at all. The state by itself would be overextended. But it is a threat, it is a danger. Of course we cannot control that technology will only be used peacefully and for the solution of human problems, and not just for armament. It is deplorable that the market forces form and demand the technical development so much that it degenerates, I want to use this word consciously, it degenerates and dehumanizes. Dehumanized, because technology is no longer useful for the people, it uses people.
The resources of the world, the oil [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: The resources of the world, the oil resources, the gas resources, the nuclear resources are hotly disputed today, so that no world power can abstain from this enormous competition between America, China, India, Russia, the European Community. World politics nowadays equal economic politics. Russia sells its oil profitably on the world market, stabilizes its economy, invests in nuclear plants in Iran, thus does not want to protest against the nuclear armament in Iran in the security council. China has massive oil and other economic interests in Africa, expands entire infrastructures and in return the affected states: Angola, Mozambique, Sudan, the African states, vote for the Chinese in the security council of the United Nations in order to gain credits amounting to billions. It is a competition between the dictatorships of Black Africa, which are supported by Americans or Chinese in this enormous competition for resources. China gets oil from Iran and thus does not vote against Iran in the security council. All this shows the connections between economic policy, safety policy and foreign policy. We can only warn against a worldwide war, this also concerns water, water, the water resources are just as hotly disputed and fought for. The world resources policy has become a world "Realpolitik" today without which no perspective seems possible. It is deplorable, but this is the way it is. Dictatorships are supported, if they, as in Sudan or in Equatorial Guinea, have natural resources such as oil. Nigera is another case. The gobal powers will turn a blind eye to human rights policy if they get natural resources. This means we have an absolute hubris of human rights policy.
If we lost our abilitiy to be indigenous, we [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: If we lost our abilitiy to be indigenous, we would lose our ability to be authentic, we would lose our ability to endow ourselves with an identity, an identity of our own culture, an identity of our own literature, an identity of our own film, of music, of poetry, of art. If we lose our ability to be indigenous, we will lose our entire human identity. The technical homogenization of the world is a threat, also to the indigenous potential of the people in the industrial states. But even more concerned by the technical globalization are, of course, the inhabitants of the so called peripheral states, because they are not as resistant, so to speak, because they cannot be as resistant against the technical homogenization because of their education and their material poverty, there the indigenous factor is even more threatened than in the first world. If we think of Japan, we might have the hope that a balance could be found there, on the one hand between the affirmation and conservation of the cultural tradition and on the other hand of a technological progress, nevertheless a belonging to the states of the first world. Japan may be an example that gives us hope, but other states, as we realize more and more often, lose their indigenous potential, they lose it in the states of Africa, of Latin America, and consequently the existence of mankind in its identity is essentially menaced. The compatibility of technology and culture is a question of the survival of mankind, the loss of indigenous, of mythic knowledge is an irreversible loss.
[…] where famines really don't occur, where [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: […] where famines really don't occur, where they can be relieved, we should use it where it can help to improve people's state of health, for instance in the struggle against cancer, but we should use it very carefully, because indeed whole branches of industry often make the genetic material subject to their partly unscrupulous speculation and mercantilization and thus they can evoke as much danger as they can do good.
Words such as “truth” and “fact” are deeply [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: Words such as “truth” and “fact” are deeply philosophical terms that cannot be summarized in a few sentences. A religious person would say that there is no truth except the transcendental notion of truth, except the reference to a god or god-like figure. Thus an absolute truth is impossible. And facts are not facts when they are clouded by the mass media. Statistics are not always clear. As Churchill put it: “The only statistic I trust is the one that I have made up myself.” There are only doubtful facts. There are no real facts. We saw this in the war against Iraq when the American government presented supposedly real facts. The foreign secretary Powell even took chemical test tubes with him to the United Nations in order to prove the existence of NBC weapons in Iraq by showing what he believed to be facts. The terms “fact” and “truth” are open to suspicion and should be used sparingly. The last truth can only be comprehended metaphysically, only deeply transcendentally, and facts are facts that have not yet been scientifically proven. Not even in science do we have knowledge of real facts. Human science cannot be quantitatively objectified. That is why the need to create facts is extremely problematic, in science as in human science. I would only very sparingly introduce terms such as “truth” and “fact” into a discussion. Both are only to be comprehended relatively, unless we take death and the absolute fact that everyone must die as the only empirically proven fact.
[...] not to use this weakness, but to [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: [...] not to use this weakness, but to recognize it in expression of the greatness and to correspond to it equally, as one accomodates it with the own opening of the visor, to a certain extent. If this could be transferred into the political area, many conflicts could be overcome, to make the first step, to put forth one's hand again and again, not to give in, to strive for peaceableness again and again, to defuse conflicts in this sense, not to intensify conflicts further by persisting and exaggerating of persisting. The acknowledgment of the other one, also in his poverty. "The great human is great also in the dust." as A. Bee Balasques said so correctly, so do not judge humans by material successes, but search dignity in an attitude full of content and humbleness.
[...] and tries to make true statements in [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: [...] and tries to make true statements in few points. I believe that a certain modesty in relation to the material life [is] certain taking backness, today we have an evolution history of six million years. The great art in the Renaissance was sacrale art. I think, art should be an antipole, a balance like also the human sciences are an antipole, a balance to a technical world, which becomes evenly more abstract and inhuman. The art, is it in the film or in the music or also in the literature, should find this reconciliation, a humanising reconciliation in a dehumanising world of technical abstraction. If art becomes a component of this technical modern trend and follows their laws, it will lose its meaning in the long run and only become the reflection. It must remain a corrective, a corrective of the human one, a balance, in the best sense a reconciliation. Then it could reach already much. And the world requires this reconciliation. I think of the great film history, I think of Bassollini, Fillini, La Strada, “mummy Roma” from Bassollini, Aca Done, I think of Rossilini, I think of “Rome, open city”, as the padre is shot from the boys, whom he saved from the life, in the last moment - it is an expression of the sacral ones.
[...] against the technical homogenization, [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: [...] against the technical homogenization, the universal forming of all areas of life, never mind whether they are aesthetic or political. As an anthropologist, I try hard to contribute something to a world, which has an humane face as the world of pragmatic politics, as a world of a imperativ of the economy or a pure primate of strategic game of power. I try hard to work for a truthful inter- and intrareligious dialogue as a condition for human surviving at the beginning of the 21st Century, because I believe that culture in a holistic sense combines all areas of human life. Culture is not a part of economy, but economic is a part of culture, the same goes for politics. If there is no more superordinate power for the culture, the life will have no sense anymore and will be de-humanized. As an anthropologist I try to carry out around a small contribution into the world, in which I was born and soon will leave again. Life for me is a gift.
The item "myths" actually comes from other [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: The item "myths" actually comes from other civilisations to stages of cultures that have not reached this degree of rationalisation or rationalisation with purpose, as we know it in our technical world nowadays. But of course man can ask, which socalled everyday life-myths are hidden in our industrial culture today. Raimon Panikkar already pointed at the Indian culture in his great book "Return to Mythos". Human needs stories, modern myths, lived narratives and tales, man needs a returning to poetry of the culture of everyday life. We live in an age of abstraction, an technical age of abstraction of an always absolutely prosaic world. Those myths or everyday life-myths that reject commercialisation in any spheres are neccesary. They enable the returning to a poetic way of life, a poetic lifeform, in films, in literature, if one thinks of Filini for example, or Filini, Notti di Cabiria, [...] in Vitelloni, Natrada, Basolini, Mamarona, Acatone, the early Visconti films like "Obssesione [..]) in the film history, or Marseille Caleive "Le jour se leive". That were the forms of an poetic expression. Films can create many myths, naturally the same for art, particularly since if it takes a resort to sacrals. The question put today is whether art in movies combined with literature can express the sacral point in a technical world where the sacred things have been lost.
Absolutely. If you think about what is [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: Absolutely. If you think about what is practicable today, for example cleaning water to drinking water quality by nuclear energy, you can assume that this is not inversely proportional. The same is true for wind energy and for solar energy on the whole. We have to keep track of these necessities. In the financial market there are already collective investment schemes, which invest in renewable energies, not only in natural resources, but also in solar energy and other energy forms. These schemes have still had increments in the last four to six years in the global share market. This means that there is obviously an economic need for renewable energies on the global capital market. Advantage should be taken from this. The invested money should be used in a reasonable way. There are possibilities to raise money for energy saving resources. Synergies should be found out between the capital market and the technical possibilities of energy production.
It is true that thinking in national [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: It is true that thinking in national categories is ultimately alarming. On the one hand you need some kind of national identity, which gives you a certain kind of cultural identity. That's unquestionable. On the other hand, terms like 'fatherland', no matter how important they were in the 18th and 19th century, are more and more replaced by the necessity for a global consciousness. By the necessity to realize that we are living in a planetary civilization, which imposes the problematic situation of mankind on us more and more, no matter if the problems are ecological, political, military. We have to aim for the problematic situation of humanity and no longer for national particularities. I think that it would be necessary to promote such a global, planetary consciousness in education in schools and universities. This should not only take peace politics into account but also practical politics. It should move national ideas and particularities more and more to the background. National conflicts are still the starting point for warlike turmoil and military action. Much has changed in the last decades, since 1945, that's unquestionable. The global consciousness has been growing but what we need today is a cosmic, planetary consciousness for the challenges which humanity shares. Not thinking about individual states, which represent their own egoistic ideas and particular interests. These ideas and interests will not help to solve the problems of the world today. Altogether I am clearly pleading for a planetary consciousness.
Because large food companies, like Unilever [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: Because large food companies, like Unilever or Nestle or large American companies partly use genetically manipulated products. Because they replace natural products with what is technically possible, because they replace natural products with technically manipulated products. It corresponds to reaching a technical peek and it would be a wonder if the technology would only affect the media, nuclear power or the pharmaceutical industry and would restrain from food industry. Today, we experience the Mcdonaldization of the world, although something different is claimed. For example in India McDonald’s claims to use Indian ingredients, different sorts of meat, variations which are in accordance with Hinduism. They claim the same for Africa or Latin America but these are only gradual differences not differences as a matter of principle. Basically this is only an attempt to achieve a larger market share. Fast food chains are not securing the plurality of cultures or respecting local eating habits. We have to strengthen local eating habits. Local eating habits are expressing cultural identity and therefore human identity. It is alarming that traditions in connection to eating and drinking, which have been handed down for a long time, are destroyed by fast food chains which are only engaging in local traditions superficially. France is a kind of exception. There is some resistance there. In India there is some resistance as well, for example against Coca Cola. In India Coca Cola was accused of having used unclean water, therefore it was banned from schools. But this is only a drop in an ocean.
[…] be it Islamic, Hindu, be it Shintu or [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: […] be it Islamic, Hindu, be it Shintu or from Russian orthodoxy or from African mythology. I believe no god can claim to be the only one, not at all. This is the starting point for the conflict between cultures and civilizations. I believe in a measure of humility and in a measure of humanity and in the avowal of beauty as a counterpart to the brutality and cruelty of the world. I believe sacral elements lie in nature, not just in the supernatural but in the beauty of nature. I believe man to be a metyphysical animal and to stay a metaphysical animal because of his finiteness. Man is the only animal that knows that it must die. This is the continuous mystery of human existence and if we want to equal this existence to god, then we would have a multi-denominational god, a god who belongs to us all, to whom we can all address ourselves. This would be a ecumenical god in the actual sense of the word, whom I could respect. I believe that the interreligious dialogue is of the greatest significance of all and that it is a basis of human survival. The dialogue between states is a dialogue between religions and cultures in the first place. Man is not a member of a state, but in the first place a member of cultural and religious traditions in the course of the history of evolution from the year 10 000 on. That's why we shouldn't ask: "What is God's religion?" We should point the mystery of man to dignity or to sacral ideas that we can imagine in an ecumenical context.
This is a question of modern architecture, [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: This is a question of modern architecture, there are different possibilities. There is, e.g., Remy Kohlhaas who always tries to develop architecture models in a responsible way. And there are architects for landscape and gardening. But there is the threat of the unscrupulous greed for profits of the big investors or prestige projects by politicians, e.g. think of Columbia, Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur or Shanghai where the highest skyscrapers in the world are about to be built. I.e. more and more sky scrapers and the like are becoming prestige projects of politicians or of whole governments. And there the human being, the individual and the identity of the individual is neglected. There is no "green" architecture, there are no so-called "green lungs", there is only the maximization of space by building sky scrapers. The human being is neglected in this sort of abstraction of concrete architecture. And there are only a few ecologically motivated architects trying to do something about it, or even architects who can achieve almost poetic buildings even with concrete. E.g. what Oskar Niemeier achieved in Brazil, his whole life´s work in the field of architecture. Growing is the need for architects of landscapes like Roberto Bolemarx from Brazil, the greatest landscape architect of the 20th century, who create green sectors as a balance to the abstraction of modern architecture. More and more old buildings are torn down, e.g. in Shanghai, and are then replaced by inhuman sky scrapers. There is the need to find a unison in architecture from local traditional ways of building and modern technology instead of replacing the whole traditional building culture by the abstraction of sky scrapers.
Ethnic affiliation is without a doubt of [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: Ethnic affiliation is without a doubt of great importance for a so-called multi cultural society. But a multi cultural society cannot exist without being incorporated into a national consciousness. What is happening at the moment in England with the islamic parts of the population. Or in France, where you also find 3 or 4 million people of islamic origin. In England a lot of pakistanian origin... The increasing immigration into Spain from parts of Africa. But as well from Ecuador, Columbia, millions of people. In short, ethnic affiliation is important, but it can only be effective in ways of policy of peace, if the consciousness of the affiliation to a certain state is given as well. Otherwise we will have identification "brückenschlagend" (?) that is erraneous. There is not much sense in a black American who more identifies himself with Nigeria than with the United States. He is living in the United States and is responsible for his country where he was born and raised. And the memory is an important factor, the oral memory, the memory from mystic traditions, the memory from old cultural traditions of the countries of origin. "Roots", the famous masterpiece in America has proven it at that time. And even so, with all the mythology of the countries of origin, there needs to be an incorporation into a new national association. Otherwise there can be no alliances of policies of peace.
Young adults should deal with the great [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: Young adults should deal with the great traditions of our world literature, but also with poetry. This can be Octavio Paz "The Labyrinth of Solitude", this can be Fernando Pessoa "Book of Disquiet", this can be Borges "The South", this can be William Faulkner, this can be J.D. Salinger "The Catcher in the Rye", where he comes across the expression "phony" for the first time, ambiguous, abysmal, wrong, the adult world, where he comes across the adult world down there, in front of the cornfield, into which he does not want to fall and cannot fall, he does not want to fall into the world of "phony", into the adult world. Young adults can also watch movies, as I mentioned, "Rome, open city" by Rossellini, the last scene, when the Catholic priest is shot by the Nazis, and the boys whom he had protected and whose lives he had saved watch him. This is a form, a humanitarian act, of self-sacrifice that has always deeply touched me, because it is also an expression of sacral ideas for me, of non-denominational sacral ideas that are not integrated into church traditions, but that are an expression of humanity. I can support these sacral ideas that are not connected to a certain denomination or a certain church situation, thus they are even more valuable.
[…] I am thinking of Birma, I am thinking of [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: […] I am thinking of Birma, I am thinking of China, I am thinking of some dictatorships in Africa. There, the internet can turn into a democratically subversive force and can really be used as an information medium, this is unquestionable. It can also be used as an information medium in education, in university education, in school education, this is unquestionable. On the other hand technology is never neutral, technology has to be acculturated, the internet has to be acculturated and if it is used in cultures that have not yet reached the same level of civilization as the states of the first world, in Africa, in Latin America, it can lead to the isolation of people that cannot combine this alienation with their own culture. They come into conflict with values, with moral values that do not fit in with their cultural traditions, in this context they are culturally beheaded. This is a great danger. The internet can build up constructively, but it can as well destroy identity. I am thinking of the Maputschi-Indians, I have mentioned this before, or of other Indian groups in Latin America, the Guarani-Indians in Paraguay, they did not want internet, even though Microsoft wanted to provide them with a free internet access, this was also the case in Bolivia, because they were scared to lose their archaic cultural traditions, their authenticity, their indigenous forms, their own idea of time, and they did not want internet, they did not want to confront the English language, this should also be considered. Technology is not only […]
Today we experience a growing urbanization [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: Today we experience a growing urbanization of the world population which has increased dramatically over the past decades, exponentially in Sao Paulo, in Mexico City, in Nairobi, in Cairo, in Calcutta, in Tokyo, everywhere. A growing migration into cities, a growing urbanization, in thirty to forty years the percentage of urbanized people will have increased even more dramatically. This is the condition. As far as architecture is concerned, it is hard to keep up with this pace and to master the situation. The leading architects must not only renounce artful decorations, but they have to create an architecture that is humane, that also considers the green sector as a lung, as a mental guarantor. But the mercantile and competition-oriented forms of architecture are more and more common, I am thinking of the skyscrapers in Malaysia, in Kuala Lumpur, where there are competitions for the highest skyscrapers, which are not humane at all, which are only an expression of megalomania and a striving for power, also by the peripheral states which want to become just like the industrial states. I am thinking of China which builds nothing but skyscrapers in Shanghai, which has torn down the entire ancient architecture, I am thinking of Beijing. The image of the city is changing dramatically and the authentic architecture disappears and is replaced by an absolutely inhuman architecture of skyscrapers and by housing estates that are not worthy of a human being. In this respect architecture has to reconstruct a lot in the following years in order to be able to design and organize a more human form of this urbanization of the world population. This is a great challenge. There are models, such as Oscar Niemeyer has tried in Brasilia in the sixties. And Roberto Burle Marx, the great landscape architect, the greatest in the twentieth century, a Brazilian, has tried to create green spaces, to lay emphasis on a green soul, a green sector. There always are futuristic attempts and constructions, but mostly they are to the disadvantage of human beings and technology dominates once more.
The idea that all Chinese people want a car [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: The idea that all Chinese people want a car is understandable, and the car industry of the US and Europe is making dramatic investments here. The company Volkswagen and the US industry only see markets, and China is considered the market of the future, without thinking of the humanitarian or ecological consequences. It is alarming that the non-democratic government in China is subordinating everything to the economy and is only allowing any ecological steps very reluctantly. If one thinks of the fact that a few years ago there were almost no studied lawyers in China, and no culture of justice. Nowadays there is a reluctantly growing small culture of justice with a few thousand studied lawyers. There is a lack of the civil society that could act as a balance in an ecological counter movement. And anyway, it is being oppressed. If there are steps of the public against plans to build yet another embankment dam, the people are arrested and put into prison. The Chinese government does not tolerate any criticism on its economic growth, and in case ecological regulations are suggested, they are considered as threat to the system and to the government and are brutally oppressed with prison sentences, especially again in the last months. There are arrests as well of members of civil rights movements who dared speaking in favour of ecological regulations. To think of this is threatening, both in India and China, and the markets of the future lack an ecological basis.
We always just see the egoism of the oters, [...]
Constantin von Barloewen: We always just see the egoism of the oters, not our own egoism. This is unfortunately a fact of human evolution. If we understand human egoism in the sense of Social Darwinism - George Herbert Mead, for instance - in North Ame... [15 sec. no image, no sound] ... so called capitalist system without social cushioning, in which ruthless profit seeking significantly supports egoistic motives - may they originate from the individual or from the state, from natoinal economics or simply from one's personal biography. Neither individuals who do not care about their rights and advantages, nor whole national economies can survive without this motive. It is dangerous, it is threatening. On the other hand we are experiencing the tremendous upcoming of NGOs: in the last 10, 15 years about 3- or 4000 NGOs have been founded world-wide. This shows that social conscience is articulated indeed, and - Thank God! - increasingly articulaed. It can be seen on the worldwide social forum at Porto Allegre, or elsewhere. This means there are signs of hope, but the so-called capitalist economic system, put in quotes, clearly promotes egoistic motives. If we look at today's power politics of e.g. the United States or Russia, increasingly also of China, we understand that it is only one's own benefit in strategy and economy that counts. Cushioning and social responsability in a multi-polar world are diminishing. I experience egoism as a threat at the personal domain as well as at the national level. We should strive for taking on more collective responsability and social conscience, also social trust. This is a critical point to secure the survival of mankind.
