Globalization: Curse or Promise?

Fred Dallmayr, professor of political theory at the University of Notre Dame and author of the recently published Alternative Visions: Paths in the Global Village, joined colleagues at the Boston Research Center in mid-August for a luncheon presentation and dialogue on the topic, "Globalization: Curse or Promise?"

"I come from a background of Western, more specifically, European culture and philosophy," Dr. Dallmayr began. A willingness to venture toward encounters with other cultures and other cultural traditions, particularly encounters in India, he explained, "changed my life. It's just as simple as that."

Responding to inquiries by David Rasmussen, professor of philosophy at Boston College, about memory and about the processes of globalization and secularization, the luncheon speaker replied, "If we want to have a viable global community, we must remember where we come from. What I fear is happening, under the influence of MacWorld and the Internet, is a sort of global amnesia. I have Indian students who are completely westernized and have never heard of the Vedas. I have Chinese students who have never looked at the Analects. This is amnesia, a wild amnesia that is happening all around the world."

The lecturer on globalization continued, "I think we need memory work--memory work in the sense of a liberating remembrance: remembrance which liberates us from the attachment to the consumer market which we are glued to at this time; liberates us into our humanity; a remembrance which is also a paideia , which educates us." Dr. Dallmayr acknowledged that there are, of course, memories--such as the Holocaust and other genocides--which must not be extinguished but which, like other sufferings, should "awaken or trigger transformation."

Turning to the issue of secularization, Dr. Dallmayr expounded: "A believer, let's say a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim, cannot just retreat into the temple or the church or the tabernacle or shield himself, but has to see what is happening in the world. We are sent into the world. This is the mission in all religions, not to ignore the world but to be in the world and to make a difference in the world."

Enlarging on Dr. Dallmayr's views of memory, Tu Weiming, professor of Chinese history and philosophy at Harvard University and director of the Harvard Yenching Institute, added a cautionary note. He observed that, with the Internet and the rapid dissemination of information, "teenagers learn all kinds of things. But, at the same time, that accumulation of information and knowledge does not necessarily lead to wisdom or purify the life of the mind."

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, associate professor of government and of social studies at Harvard University, noted an important area that had not been addressed in Dr. Dallmayr's comments and offered a critique: "There is a certain kind of Panglossianism underlying your vision. When one thinks of modernity, one thinks of globalization. One can think of it in a certain kind of tragic way, meaning that one can't have all things that are good. There is no such thing as a world without loss. There seems to be no loss in your future community. It's somehow as if this ecumenism can bring all the best of our aspirations together."

Acknowledging the criticism, Fred Dallmayr responded, "If we are here to make a difference, I want to stand up for something and say, Look, it's going to be very hard and probably it's not going to work, but I put my shoulder against the wheel and I try what I can. Maybe it's not going to succeed, but what can I do? If I stand there and say, Well, it's all hopeless and it's all very tragic, what's going to change? That's a form of self-indulgence."

In a similar vein, director of Boston University's Institute for Dialogue Among Religious Traditions, John Berthrong, observed, "It seems to me that what the New Agers are doing and other kinds of people who are crossing religious cultural boundaries are trying in their own way is to apply a larger global repertoire of ideas. I think we need to look at the boundary crossing in religious popular culture."

Harvard's John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities Charles Hallisey placed a contemporary conundrum before the audience: "People are being moved off the land in Sri Lanka as part of development schemes. The slogans were, Development is a task that must be done. There's no sacrifice too great in the name of development. What that meant was the abandonment of all cultural practices. This creates a real problem."

Following Dr. Hallisey's illustration, Dov Ronen, lecturer on psychology at the Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, and author of The Challenge of Ethnic Conflict, Self-Determination, and Democracy in Central Europe, posed a fundamental question, one which there was insufficient time to probe further: "How can this cultural dialogue which you propose--this emphasis on the different cultural elements that exist in the world--influence the process of globalization and modernization that is presently engulfing the world in a destructive manner?"

Dr. Dallmayr paid tribute to networks of public intellectuals and religious people, such as those gathered at the Boston Research Center. He emphasized, "Intellectuals in the West need to decide where they put their shoulder to the wheel. We can learn from others, from the suffering of others especially. We can come to the support of counter development movements, counter modernization movements, self-help movements. . . . As intellectuals we have a responsibility and we should speak out."

--Helen Marie Casey

Fred Dallmayr Luncheon Seminar

August 13, 1998

Doug Allen, University of Maine
John Berthrong, Boston University School of Theology
Barbara Darling-Smith, Wheaton College
Rob Eppsteiner, Boston Research Center
Bina Gupta, University of Missouri-Columbia
Charles Hallisey, Harvard University
Michael Hays, Cornell University, retired
Doris Hunter, Unitarian-Universalist Church, Medford
Howard Hunter, Tufts University, retired
Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Harvard University
Karen Nardella, Boston Research Center
David Rasmussen, Boston College
Dov Ronen, Harvard University
Virginia Straus, Boston Research Center
Tu Weiming, Harvard University