I just discovered this speech by Vaclav Havel, the president of the Czech
Republic, and I really like it. I think he should be a member of NCN.
- Flemming
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THE NEED FOR TRANSCENDENCE IN THE POSTMODERN WORLD
In this postmodern world, cultural conflicts are becoming more dangerous
than any time in history. A new model of coexistence is needed, based on
man's transcending himself.
BY VACLAV HAVEL
There are thinkers who claim that, if the modern age began with the
discovery of America, it also ended in America. This is said to have
occurred in the year 1969, when America sent the first men to the moon.
>From this historical moment, they say, a new age in the life of humanity
can be dated.
I think there are good reasons for suggesting that the modern age has
ended. Today, many things indicate that we are going thorough a
transitional period, when it seems that something is on the way out and
something else is painfully being born. It is as if something were
crumbling, decaying, and exhausting itself, while something else, still
indistinct, were arising from the rubble.
Periods of history when values undergo a fundamental shift are certainly
not unprecedented. This happened in the Hellenistic period, when from the
ruins of the classical world the Middle Ages were gradually born. It
happened during the Renaissance, which opened the way to the modern era.
The distinguishing features of such transitional periods are a mixing and
blending of cultures and a plurality or parallelism of intellectual and
spiritual worlds. These are periods when all consistent value systems
collapse, when cultures distant in time and space are discovered or
rediscovered. They are periods when there is a tendency to quote, to
imitate, and to amplify, rather than to state with authority or integrate.
New meaning is gradually born from the encounter, or the intersection, of
many different elements.
Today, this state of mind or of the human world is called postmodernism.
For me, a symbol of that state is a Bedouin mounted on a camel and clad in
traditional robes under which he is wearing jeans, with a transistor radio
in his hands and an ad for Coca-Cola on the camel's back. I am not
ridiculing this, nor am I shedding an intellectual tear over the commercial
expansion of the West that destroys alien cultures. I see it rather as a
typical expression of this multicultural era, a signal that an amalgamation
of cultures is taking place. I see it as proof that something is happening,
something is being born, that we are in a phase when one age is succeeding
another, when everything is possible. Yes, everything is possible, because
our civilization does not have its own unified style, its own spirit, its
own aesthetic.
SCIENCE AND MODERN CIVILIZATION
This is related to the crisis, or to the transformation, of science as the
basis of the modern conception of the world.
The dizzying development of this science, with its unconditional faith in
objective reality and its complete dependency on general and rationally
knowable laws, led to the birth of modern technological civilization. It is
the first civilization in the history of the human race that spans the
entire globe and firmly binds together all human societies, submitting them
to a common global destiny. It was this science that enabled man, for the
first time, to see Earth from space with his own eyes; that is, to see it
as another star in the sky.
At the same time, however, the relationship to the world that the modern
science fostered and shaped now appears to have exhausted its potential. It
is increasingly clear that, strangely, the relationship is missing
something. It fails to connect with the most intrinsic nature of reality
and with natural human experience. It is now more of a source of
disintegration and doubt than a source of integration and meaning. It
produces what amounts to a state of schizophrenia: Man as an observer is
becoming completely alienated from himself as a being.
Classical modern science described only the surface of things, a single
dimension of reality. And the more dogmatically science treated it as the
only dimension, as the very essence of reality, the more misleading it
became. Today, for instance, we may know immeasurably more about the
universe than our ancestors did, and yet, it increasingly seems they knew
something more essential about it than we do, something that escapes us.
The same thing is true of nature and of ourselves. The more thoroughly all
our organs and their functions, their internal structure, and the
biochemical reactions that take place within them are described, the more
we seem to fail to grasp the spirit, purpose, and meaning of the system
that they create together and that we experience as our unique "self".
And thus today we find ourselves in a paradoxical situation. We enjoy all
the achievements of modern civilization that have made our physical
existence on this earth easier so in many important ways. Yet we do not
know exactly what to do with ourselves, where to turn. The world of our
experiences seems chaotic, disconnected, confusing. There appear to be no
integrating forces, no unified meaning, no true inner understanding of
phenomena in our experience of the world. Experts can explain anything in
the objective world to us, yet we understand our own lives less and less.
In short, we live in the postmodern world, where everything is possible and
almost nothing is certain.
WHEN NOTHING IS CERTAIN
This state of affairs has its social and political consequences. The single
planetary civilization to which we all belong confronts us with global
challenges. We stand helpless before them because our civilization has
essentially globalized only the surfaces of our lives. But our inner self
continues to have a life of its own. And the fewer answers the era of
rational knowledge provides to the basic questions of human Being, the more
deeply it would seem that people, behind its back as it were, cling to the
ancient certainties of their tribe. Because of this, individual cultures,
increasingly lumped together by contemporary civilization, are realizing
with new urgency their own inner autonomy and the inner differences of
others.
Cultural conflicts are increasing and are understandably more dangerous
today than at any other time in history. The end of the era of rationalism
has been catastrophic. Armed with the same supermodern weapons, often from
the same suppliers, and followed by television cameras, the members of
various tribal cults are at war with one another. By day, we work with
statistics; in the evening, we consult astrologers and frighten ourselves
with thrillers about vampires. The abyss between rational and the
spiritual, the external and the internal, the objective and the subjective,
the technical and the moral, the universal and the unique, constantly grows
deeper.
Politicians are rightly worried by the problem of finding the key to ensure
the survival of a civilization that is global and at the same time clearly
multicultural. How can generally respected mechanisms of peaceful
coexistence be set up, and on what set of principles are they to be
established?
These questions have been highlighted with particular urgency by the two
most important political events in the second half of the twentieth
century: the collapse of colonial hegemony and the fall of communism. The
artificial world order of the past decades has collapsed, and a new,
more-just order has not yet emerged. the central political task of the
final years of this century, then, is the creation of a new model of
coexistence among the various cultures, peoples, races, and religious
spheres within a single interconnected civilization. This task is all the
more urgent because other threats to contemporary humanity brought about by
one-dimensional development of civilization are growing more serious all
the time.
Many believe this task can be accomplished through technical means. That
is, they believe it can be accomplished through the intervention of new
organizational, political, and diplomatic instruments. Yes, it is clearly
necessary to invent organizational structures appropriate to the present
multicultural age. But such efforts are doomed to failure if they do not
grow out of something deeper, out of generally held values.
This, too, is well known. And in searching for the most natural source for
the creation of a new world order, we usually look to an area that is the
traditional foundation of modern justice and a great achievement of the
modern age: to a set of values that - among other things - were first
declared in this building (Independence Hall). I am referring to respect
for the unique human being and his or her liberties and inalienable rights
and to the principle that all power derives from the people. I am, in
short, referring to the fundamental ideas of modern democracy.
What I am about to say may sound provocative, but I feel more and more
strongly that even these ideas are not enough, that we must go farther and
deeper. The point is that the solution they offer is still, as it were,
modern, derived from the climate of the Enlightenment and from a view of
man and his relation to the world that has been characteristic of the
Euro-American sphere for the last two centuries. Today, however, we are in
a different place and facing a different situation, one to which classical
modern solutions in themselves do not give a satisfactory response. After
all, the very principle of inalienable human rights, conferred on man by
the Creator, grew out of the typically modern notion that man - as a being
capable of knowing nature and the world - was the pinnacle of creation and
lord of the world,
This modern anthropocentrism inevitably meant that He who allegedly endowed
man with his inalienable rights began to disappear from the world: He was
so far beyond the grasp of modern science that he was gradually pushed into
a sphere of privacy of sorts, if not directly into a sphere of private
fancy - that is, to a place where public obligations no longer apply. The
existence of a higher authority than man himself simply began to get in the
way of human aspirations.
TWO TRANSCENDENT IDEAS
The idea of human rights and freedoms must be an integral part of any
meaningful world order. Yet, I think it must be anchored in a different
place, and in a different way, than has been the case so far. If it is to
be more than just a slogan mocked by half the world, it cannot be expressed
in the language of a departing era, and it must not be mere froth floating
on the subsiding waters of faith in a purely scientific relationship to the
world.
Paradoxically, inspiration for the renewal of this lost integrity can once
again be found in science, in a science that is new - let us say postmodern
- a science producing ideas that in a certain sense allow it to transcend
its own limits. I will give two examples:
The first is the Anthropic Cosmological Principle. Its authors and
adherents have pointed out that from the countless possible courses of its
evolution the universe took the only one that enabled life to emerge. This
is not yet proof that the aim of the universe has always been that it
should one day see itself through our eyes. But how else can this matter be
explained?
I think the Anthropic Cosmological Principle brings to us an idea perhaps
as old as humanity itself: that we are not at all just an accidental
anomaly, the microscopic caprice of a tine particle whirling in the endless
depth of the universe. Instead, we are mysteriously connected to the entire
universe, we are mirrored in it, just as the entire evolution of the
universe is mirrored in us.
Until recently, it might have seemed that we were an unhappy bit of mildew
on a heavenly body whirling in space among many that have no mildew on them
at all. this was something that classical science could explain. Yet, the
moment it begins to appear that we are deeply connected to the entire
universe, science reaches the outer limits of its powers. Because it is
founded on the search for universal laws, it cannot deal with singularity,
that is, with uniqueness. The universe is a unique event and a unique
story, and so far we are the unique point of that story. But unique events
and stories are the domain of poetry, not science. With the formulation of
the Anthropic Cosmological Principle, science has found itself on the
border between formula and story, between science and myth. In that,
however, science has paradoxically returned, in a roundabout way, to man,
and offers him - in new clothing - his lost integrity. It does so by
anchoring him once more in the cosmos.
The second example is the Gaia Hypothesis. This theory brings together
proof that the dense network of mutual interactions between the organic and
inorganic portions of the earth's surface form a single system, a kind of
mega-organism, a living planet - Gaia - named after an ancient goddess who
is recognizable as an archetype of the Earth Mother in perhaps all
religions. According to the Gaia Hypothesis, we are parts of a greater
whole. If we endanger her, she will dispense with us in the interest of a
higher value - that is, life itself.
TOWARD SELF-TRANSCENDENCE
What makes the Anthropic Principle and the Gaia Hypothesis so inspiring?
One simple thing: Both remind us, in modern language, of what we have long
suspected, of what we have long projected into our forgotten myths and
perhaps what has always lain dormant within us as archetypes. That is, the
awareness of our being anchored in the earth and the universe, the
awareness that we are not here alone nor for ourselves alone, but that we
are an integral part of higher, mysterious entities against whom it is not
advisable to blaspheme. This forgotten awareness is encoded in all
religions. All cultures anticipate it in various forms. It is one of the
things that form the basis of man's understanding of himself, of his place
in the world, and ultimately of the world as such.
A modern philosopher once said: "Only a God can save us now."
Yes, the only real hope of people today is probably a renewal of our
certainty that we are rooted in the earth and, at the same time, in the
cosmos. This awareness endows us with the capacity for self-transcendence.
Politicians at international forums may reiterate a thousand times that the
basis of the new world order must be universal respects for human rights,
but it will mean nothing as long as this imperative does not derive from
the respect of the miracle of Being, the miracle of the universe, the
miracle of nature, the miracle of our own existence. Only someone who
submits to the authority of the universal order and of creation, who values
the right to be a part of it and a participant in it, can genuinely value
himself and his neighbors, and thus honor their rights as well.
It logically follows that, in today's multicultural world, the truly
reliable path to coexistence, to peaceful coexistence and creative
cooperation, must start from what is at the root of all cultures and what
lies infinitely deeper in human hearts and minds than political opinion,
convictions, antipathies, or sympathies - it must be rooted in
self-transcendence:
- Transcendence as a hand reached out to those close to us, to foreigners,
to the human community, to all living creatures, to nature, to the
universe.
- Transcendence as a deeply and joyously experienced need to be in harmony
even with what we ourselves are not, what we do not understand, what seems
distant from us in time and space, but with which we are nevertheless
mysteriously linked because, together with us, all this constitutes a
single world.
- Transcendence as the only real alternative to extinction.
The Declaration of Independence states that the Creator gave man the right
to liberty. It seems man can realize that liberty only if he does not
forget the One who endowed him with it.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Vaclav Havel is the president of the Czech Republic. This speech was made
in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, July 4, 1994.
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