Category Archives: Civilization

Civilizing civilizations in an interdependent world

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Tetsunori Koizumi, Director

When Civilizations Meet: Civilization, as a social system, can be considered an open system defined in the space of interaction among climate, culture, economy and polity. As an open system, the life of a civilization is a story of constant struggle against the forces of nature as well as the challenges coming from other civilizations. Interactions that take place between civilizations can be grouped into four types.

The first—and the oldest—type of interaction between civilizations is “conquest and subjugation”, where one civilization conquers and subjugates another civilization with its commanding superiority in military power. India, one of the oldest civilizations of the world, saw two episodes of “conquest and subjugation” in its history: the invasion of the Aryans around 1,500 B.C.E., who conquered and subjugated the native people, mostly Dravidians, and the invasion of Muslims which culminated in the establishment of the Mughal Empire by Babur in 1526 with his victory in the Battle of Paniput. The Mughal Empire lasted, with ups and downs, until 1757 when Robert Clive’s victory at Plassey established the English rule, paving the way for “colonization and exploitation” by the British, which is the second type of interaction between civilizations.

Needless to say, the British were not alone when it comes to “colonization and exploitation”, as they were soon followed by other European nations—the Portuguese, the Spaniards, the French, and the Dutch—who went on to colonize and exploit the Old as well as the New World. What distinguishes “colonization and exploitation” from “conquest and subjugation” is that it involves domination by a stronger civilization of a weaker civilization, mostly for the purpose of extracting economic benefits. Unlike “conquest and subjugation”, the indigenous civilization is allowed to exist if only for the sake of benefiting the colonizers.

The third type of interaction between civilizations, “absorption and adaptation”, involves one civilization consciously borrowing ideas and institutions from other civilizations in its effort to improve upon its own civilization. The history of Japanese civilization, for example, is a history of constant borrowing of ideas and institutions from its surrounding civilizations, from India and China in earlier times and from Europe and North America in modern times. But in this case, as in others, the borrower does not simply imitate what others have cultivated; the borrower usually “absorbs and adapts” the ideas and institutions of other civilizations to suit its domestic environment.

The fourth type of interaction between civilizations is “exchange and cross-fertilization”, which is distinguished from the third type of “absorption and adaptation” in that it involves bilateral exchange of ideas and institutions between two civilizations. This does not mean, however, that the exchange of ideas and institutions takes place simultaneously for the two civilizations involved, for learning, transforming and adapting others’ ways of doing things to fit the domestic environment can be an elongated process, spread over centuries in some cases. Exchange of pottery techniques between East and West is an example of this type of interaction between civilizations.

Communication and Cross-Fertilization: Every civilization, while trying to carve out its own path of evolution, needs to learn from other civilizations if it is to sustain itself as an open system in an ever-changing environment. As Braudel aptly points out, “the history of civilizations, in fact, is the history of continual mutual borrowings over many centuries, despite which each civilization has kept its own original character.” (Braudel, Fernand, A History of Civilizations, New York: Penguin Books, 1993, p.8)

Mutual borrowings take place even between the colonizers and the colonized. Thus, while we tend to think of the British taking advantage of cheap supply of cotton from India in promoting their Industrial Revolution, the Indians, too, have borrowed from the British the fruits of Western science and technology, including the railroad system, and have learned about the Western notions of law and justice, the abolition of suttee being one outcome of such learning. On the other hand, it is thanks mostly to British scholars that we have come to know the Indian view of the world now known as Hinduism.

As an open system, civilization evolves and transforms itself through constant contact and interaction with its environment. Contact and interaction with other civilizations, according to Toynbee, often take the form of challenges and responses. (Toynbee, Arnold, A Study of History, New York: Oxford University Press, 1954) It is by accepting challenges from other civilizations and successfully responding to them that a civilization maintains its viability as a social system.

Challenges and responses, as the facts of life for every civilization, sustain life as well destroy it. In the history of civilizations, challenges and responses between civilizations have often taken the form of “conquest and subjugation” and “colonization and exploitation”, the first two types of interaction between civilizations discussed above. It goes without saying that these two types of interactions are destructive types of interactions, which must be eliminated if civilizations of the world are to evolve harmoniously by promoting communication and cross-fertilization.

A mixture of humility and confidence is needed if a civilization is to benefit from communication and cross-fertilization with other civilizations. Humility is needed because, as Durant clearly states, “no one of the civilizations known to us was the originator of any of the elements of civilization.” (Durant, Will, Our Oriental Heritage, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1935, p.533) On the other hand, confidence is needed if a civilization is to sustain itself, constantly exposed to challenges from other civilizations and from the natural environment: “Of course, civilization requires a modicum of material prosperity—enough to provide a little leisure. But far more, it requires confidence—confidence in the society in which one lives, belief in its philosophy, belief in its laws, and confidence in one’s own mental powers.” (Clark, Kenneth, Civilization, New York: Harper & Row, 1969, p.4) If communication and cross-fertilization are to take place, all civilizations are required to keep proper balance between humility and confidence, for excessive humility on the part of one civilization invites domination by others while excessive confidence on the part of one civilization leads to contempt, if not rejection, of others.

Civilizing Civilizations in an Interdependent World: Is the civilizing of civilizations possible in the world of global interdependence, where challenges and responses between civilizations often take the form of violent clashes between them? Let us recall that civilization, in the sense of douceur de vivre, or “the sweetness of life”, was an eighteenth-century discovery of Western intellectuals such as Mirabeau, Voltaire and Diderot. The civilizing of the West took place, as Elias’ insightful study shows, during the process of state formation that followed the divisive feudal age. (Elias, Norbert, The Civilizing Process, Oxford: Blackwell, 1994) While the sweetness of life was initially limited to the elite class of monarchs and aristocrats, the Industrial Revolution and the subsequent process of industrialization would spread the material comfort enjoyed by them by steadily increasing the members of the middle class, at least in the industrial nations of the world.

The danger facing civilizations of the world today is the fact that the two conditions—state formation and industrialization—which have contributed to the civilizing of the West and other industrial nations, are under threat by the forces of globalization in all spheres of social life. On the one hand, there is the decline of the nation-state as the center of social life. On the other, the growing gap between rich and poor diminishes the possibility of spreading the fruits of economic development equally among the nations of the world.

If communication and cross-fertilization are to benefit all the civilizations of the world, it is essential that each and every civilization become “civilized”—civilized not befitting the civilization in eighteenth-century Europe but befitting the civilization in a globally interdependent world of the twenty-first century. What, then, should be the content of civilized behavior in the world of global interdependence? As civilization is seen here as an open system defined in the space of interaction among climate, culture, economy, and polity, the civilizing of a civilization must take place in each of these four subsystems.

The industrial civilization of the past two and half centuries has been built on the aggressive exploitation of the natural environment. While this has enhanced the standards of living for some nations, no civilization should be allowed to follow the path of willful exploitation of the natural environment because the survival of the global community depends on the sustainability of that natural environment. What is needed is an environmental ethic that treats nature and all the things in it—even disease-causing micro organisms—not as our enemies to be conquered but as living systems with whom we share the interconnected system called nature.

To cultivate and develop civility in cultural life would require that the new conception of self as a relational being—with other individuals in the world as well as other things in the natural environment—replace the conception of self as an autonomous being. Civility in the conduct of economic life cannot be built on the aggressive kind of market capitalism as it undermines the stability of the global economy and widens the gap between rich and poor. What is needed is “enlightened capitalism” that regards material welfare not as an end but as a means to self-actualization, or enlightenment. Politically, civility requires participatory democracy in which everybody participates in the political process and does not surrender oneself to the wanton rule of the few.

Globalization in the world around us is changing the way in which challenges and responses between civilizations take place. For one thing, it is now possible for communication and cross-fertilization between civilizations to take place at the global level. There are some indications that challenges and responses in a globally interdependent world are giving rise to a global civilization of a sort—from awareness about our common fate in Spaceship Earth to universal demands for basic human rights. On the other hand, there are other kinds of changes that threaten the cohesion and stability of the world as a system of civilizations. These include ethnic conflicts, religious fundamentalism, and willful manipulation of the global financial markets.

Globalization is obviously a double-edged sword as we witness forces of both unification and fragmentation and tendencies towards both order and chaos. While there are constructive contacts between old rival civilizations, there are also destructive clashes between old and new civilizations, as pointed out by Huntington. (Huntington, Samuel P., The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996) Trite as it may sound, it is up to each and every civilization to take up the challenges of globalization and work out proper responses needed to transform itself into a more “civilized” civilization in a globally interdependent world of the twenty-first century.

Thirty-six views of the Eiffel Tower

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Tetsunori Koizumi, Director

“The Great Wave off Kanagawa” by Hokusai (1760-1849) is arguably the best known among the works of art created by Japanese artists. Created as one of a series of 36 woodblock prints collectively known as Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, “The Great Wave”, as it is popularly known today, is a masterpiece of composition, contrasting the relentlessness of natural forces represented by an immense wave with the helplessness of humans represented by the people precariously clinging to swaying boats. We are also struck by the tension Hokusai skillfully creates by depicting a motion temporarily frozen and a drama momentarily halted, reminding us of the unsettling condition of our existence in the world of impermanence and mutability.

It is well known to students of art history how Hokusai’s “The Great Wave”, along with works of his fellow artists in Edo Japan such as Utamaro (1753-1806) and Hiroshige (1797-1858), sent a great shock wave through the European art scene in the middle of the nineteenth century. In fact, European artists were so shocked and amazed by the novelty of composition, lines and colors used by the Japanese masters that they went on to produce Japonism, an artistic style that mimics, interprets, and translates the style used by these masters. Van Gogh (1853-1890) and Monet (1840-1926) are among the many European artists who, inspired by artists in the far-off land in the East, tried to recreate the scenes they saw in Japanese woodblock prints on their canvases.

The idea of depicting different views of the same object, as exemplified by Hokusai’s Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, also turned out to be a source of inspiration for Henri Riviere (1864-1951), a French artist who published a volume containing 36 lithograph prints titled Thirty-six Views of the Eiffel Tower in 1902. Unlike Hokusai’s Thirty-six Views, in which a natural object—a mountain that is greatly revered by the Japanese—is depicted, Riviere’s Thirty-six Views depicts a work of human engineering, a majestic tower constructed in commemoration of the 1889 Exposition Universelle held in Paris.

Some prints depict the actual process of constructing the Eiffel Tower from the ground level up. One showing the workers assembling materials at the foundations does not give any hint that these foundations would soon become the great tower that we know today. Another showing the foundations beginning to take the shape of a tower actually resembles Hokusai’s “The Great Wave” in its composition, with the soon-to-be massive structure on the left towering over the people on the ground. Riviere also includes scenes of the workers doing the job of constructing the great tower at dizzying heights above the ground. In addition to these prints showing the Eiffel Tower in the foreground, suggesting its majestic scale, there are other prints showing the Eiffel Tower in the background, with other famous landmarks of Paris such as Jardin du Tracadero, Place de la Concorde, and Notre Dame placed in the foreground. As a matter of fact, some of these other prints show the Eiffel Tower only as a tiny speck in the distance, almost disappearing from the scene.

Just as Mount Fuji is only one element in each of the 36 composite sceneries Hokusai creates in his Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, the Eiffel Tower in Riviere’s Thirty-six Views of the Eiffel Tower is also only one element in each of the 36 composite sceneries. The message is that the Eiffel Tower is not a thing that exists by itself apart from other things depicted—humans, buildings, trees, streets, rivers, ports, clouds, and the sky. The Eiffel Tower, in other words, exists only in the context of relationships among all these things and becomes visible only when conditions are right. Or, as Thich Nhat Hanh would say, the Eiffel Tower—every one of some 15,000 pieces of iron, every one of some 7 million nails that were used—is an “interbeing”. As such, it is made up of non-Eiffel Tower elements—those things depicted as well as those things not depicted by Riviere—and is inherently empty.

If the Eiffel Tower is inherently empty from the perspective of Buddhist thought, it is also empty from the perspective of quantum mechanics. Saying that it is empty does not mean that the Eiffel Tower does not exist, for it surely does as an “empirical reality”; it is Paris’ most visible landmark and attracts millions of visitors every year. However, to a French physicist like Bernard d’Espagnat, an advocate of quantum field theory, the Eiffel Tower is not an independent object but a composite of properties such as its height, weight, size, and shape, expressible by a vector representing these properties. What is it, then, that these properties represent? “The only answer I am able to provide is that underlying this empirical reality is a mysterious, non-conceptualizable ‘ultimate reality,’ not embedded in space and (presumably) not in time either,” writes d’Espagnat in his blog piece published in The Guardian on March 17, 2009. In distinguishing between “empirical reality” and “ultimate reality”, we can see that d’Espagnat comes very close to the Buddhist distinction between “conventional reality” and “ultimate reality”.

Whether we look at the Eiffel Tower from the perspective of Buddhist thought or from that of quantum mechanics, we are thus led to the conclusion that it is devoid of intrinsic existence. The Eiffel Tower only exists as a potentiality in the latent world, or the realm of “veiled reality,” which is another term d’Espagnat uses. It comes into existence in the manifest world of “conventional reality,” thus becoming visible as an “empirical reality” when we choose to view it—on a clear day, that is, when Paris is not covered with a thick fog.