THE WORLD PERCEIVED BY THE HEART OF EUROPE

SEARCHING FOR HUMAN VALUES COMPATIBLE WITH THE SUSTAINABLE WAYS OF LIVING by Josef Vavroušek Development of Human Society in the last several hundred years has been characterised by a number of basic and still deepening contradictions. It has brought some positive trends, such as a rapid growth of technical and scientific knowledge, which increased substantially the amount of information about the world in which we live and led to a higher standard of living in most of European, North American and some other regions. It has brought improvements in health care, limited the impact of infectious diseases and therefore lowered the death rate in most of the world. An increasing number of countries assert democratic political systems and ideals of human rights and freedoms. We must, however, also consider the negative features of this development, with dangerous consequences. High, and still growing consumption of the ”Northern” and some ”Southern” countries is among the most important of them, connected with rapid deterioration of natural resources and production of enormous amounts of waste; 20% of the population thus consumes about 80% of raw material and energy resources. Most of the ”Southern” (and some ”Northern”) countries population lives in poverty, more than 780 mil. from the total number of 5.5 bill. world inhabitants even under the level of absolute insufficiency – each minute 28 people die from hunger and people attempting to survive destroy surrounding nature. Expansive development of the Euro-American culture is leading to the weakening or even destroying of national regional cultures, which means ir-reparable loss of cultural diversity of human kind and restriction of its ability to react efficiently to new circumstances – that leads to the growing fragility of human society. All these mentioned processes contribute to the rapid deterioration of nature and human environment on global, regional and local scales. Air pollution leads to acid rain, ozone layer depletion and climate changes. Forests lose their vitality, trees are cut down, soil is desertificated due to erosion, growing salinity, water content lowering, and humus loss. Humans have negative – and irreversible – impact on natural resources, the genetic pool and Earth’s life-supporting systems. Particularly dangerous is the unprecedented scale of the mentioned negative changes, and the speed with which they occur. That is closely connected with the technical capability to change nature and with ”globalisation” of human civilisation (Earth as the ”Global Village”), which is the consequence of the information dissemination and public as well as freight transport speed. One of the reasons is also exponential Earth population growth; the fact, that it doubles once in 40 years is a warning itself. The danger of such a development is even more threatening because it is regionally unbalanced – birth rate is greater in the poorest countries, and so deepens the mentioned problems. For the first time in history the whole human society, together with uncountable number of other organisms, is endangered. This is unprecedented situation: up till now a decline or even disappearance of a civilisation concerned just a separate region – as were ancient cultures which had lived between Eufrat and Tigris. We are near the crossroad – if not past it – when a reevaluation of the whole past development is critically needed. It is in the long term perspective obviously unsustainable, and could lead to the escalation of social tensions in the world, the consequence being a growing violence, and a destruction of the global environment vital for man and other organisms. Any delay could trigger uncontrollable processes. And potential attempts of some countries or regions to isolate and protect themselves by new, now electronic ”curtains” and thus preserve their prosperity is not only unmoral, but also short sighted, convicted to hard failure. Awareness of the critical need of basic, although very differentiated, changes is gradually increasing in all parts of the world, although motivated by different factors. The key conclusion of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Rio de Janeiro, June 1992) therefore was the Strategy of Sustainable Development, as a blueprint for the future orientation of mankind. Sustainable development – or perhaps more precisely sustainable way of life – is concerned with the search for harmony between man and nature, society and its environment, so that we should achieve the ideals of humanism and respect for life which searches for balance between the rights and freedoms of every individual and his responsibility towards other people and nature as a whole, including the responsibility towards future generations. We should accept the principle that freedom of every individual is limited by the same freedom of the other, but also by the principle to avoid a deterioration of nature. If we want to find the sustainable ways of living, we should analyse recent unsustainable trends, which have the character of quantitative growth connected with a number of deep discrepancies. We should attempt to build on ideals that are compatible with visions of a sustainable way of living, that could initiate a working-out of this vision, support its realisation, and at the same time avoiding such activities that are raising or deepening the huge problems of humankind. A part of such an analysis should be an identification of all important factors negatively or positively influencing current development, a support of the positive factors and their supplementation in all lacking areas. A common feature in understanding people’s behaviour is, in my opinion, the general criteria used by them in evaluation and decision making processes. These criteria are human values, which express individual or collective perception of life, values stipulated probably partly biologically (most important genetically), partly having their roots in specific human cultures. If the mentioned hypothesis is right, then an analysis of the development of human values in different parts of the world during the last decades and centuries could help us to find the roots of the recent ethical crises as well as human values compatible with sustainable ways of living. Searching for human values suitable for sustainable living we should start by analysis of values which dominate in our Euro-American (or North-West) civilisation. Not only because it is the only way how to change our behaviours and thus solve problems of our region. We have to also take into account that our civilisation affects very substantially the whole planet. When we have discovered the unsustainable character of many global trends, we have also to admit a crucial share of Euro-American value systems of this frustrated development. By starting at home we could help all humans. The value system of Euro-American civilisation develops in time and is relatively non-homogenous, with regional differences and varieties of values typical for specific social groups, for ”real capitalism” as well as for former ”real socialism”. But even though I suppose, we can distinguish in our civilisation such general value orientations which have directly initiated appearance and growth of all mentioned social, economic, environmental and political problems of our times. But, at the same time, we could discover in the roots of our Euro-American civilisation values compatible with ideals of sustainable living, brush them up, develop and enforce them. The following brief survey is a working hypothesis, which tries to describe the most important values of our Euro-American civilisation contributing towards unsustainable trends (values A), along with alternative values orientations (values B) which could lead us in a sustainable course – some of them have been emerging especially during recent years. It is a very simplified description of an immensely complicated subject but nevertheless, I believe it could contribute to a better understanding of our situation and initiate further discussions. Let me analyse the basic relations of our Euro-American civilisation towards human life and nature: Relation of man to nature A. Reality: Predatory, exploitive, relation to nature, which is concerned as bottomless resource of raw materials and passive ”playground” for human activities, disrespectful to natural limits of carrying capacity of landscape; still growing orientation toward non-renewable natural resources and emissions of wastes, often very dangerous. B. Alternative: Awareness of relation to nature, respect for life in all its forms and to nature as a whole, use of the landscape within limits of its carrying capacity, orientation on renewable natural resources, minimisation of wastes and their recycling. Relation of human individuals to society A. Reality: Two extreme approaches: one-sided emphasis on individualism and competitiveness (typical for the ”real capitalism”) based on assumption, that egoistic behaviour of any individual and his competition with all others is ”automatically” mostly beneficial not only to him, but also to the welfare of society as whole (A. Smiths ”invisible hand”). This approach has on one side enabled the explosive economic growth of Western Europe and North America, but on the other side has led to the decline of personal responsibility for common matters and to the release of relations to other people. one-sided emphasis on collectivism (typical for former ”real socialism”), where all interests of any individual should be theoretically subordinated to the collective interests. But in reality all powers had been concentrated in the hands of a small group of people or even a single person, who represented the communist party, without any control. At the same time the immense majority of the people had no real right to participate actively in public affairs and lost many other human rights and freedoms. This led to a huge loss of self-confidence and a feeling of shared responsibility for the development of the society and its environment. The results were on one hand a common state of ”collective irresponsibility” that led to the apathy of powerless or, on the other hand, the conviction of some independent people, that the whole system should be radically changed, if the decomposition of the society and destruction of nature should be stopped. Fortunately, in 1989 in all European ”socialist” countries the second approach prevailed. B. Alternative: Balanced emphasis on an individual and a collective, which should be not only our family, community, nation or state and culture, but also a humankind as a whole. Self confidence of every single individual based on free decision-making, connected with the cognition of interdependence of every person with all other people. Emphasis on love, solidarity and altruism as driving forces of human behaviours. Supplement of competition with cooperation in the name of common human values and goals. Relation to the time and sense of history A. Reality: Fascination and obsession by the idea of quantitative growth; one of the ”engines” accelerating the process in the society is the common conviction that it is the growth of selected criteria (e.g. the GDP on the national level or the incomes or earnings on the personal level) that these are the measures of its success, and healthy development and even happiness. In the world of limited resources, such an orientation is not perspective and in rich societies even useless: no growth can continue for an unlimited period of time, sooner or later it will reach objective frontiers. B. Alternative: Emphasis on qualitative development of human society, oriented first of all on improvement of the quality of life and human relations, development of science, culture, spiritual and intellectual life and cultivation and use of people’s abilities, because human creativity is perhaps the only unlimited natural source. But the prerequisite of this orientation is certainly the saturation of basic human material needs. Relation to the sense of our life Reality: Hedonistic orientation and consumer life style, where the main sense of life is seen in achieving higher and higher comfort (which is often paid by growing stress) and higher satisfaction of material needs, which have usually no natural limits. The whole mechanism of market economy with the help of aggressive advertisement based on brainwashing practices is focused on the creation and stimulation of still newer and newer material needs in situation, when all basic needs of almost all people living in Western democracies are satisfied for a long time. The amount of money and a quantity of luxury consumption became the universal measures of success. Alternative: Emphasis on quantity of life, deliberate modesty and renunciation, self-denial of superficial things. Just these values stayed by the cradle of the Jewish-Christian civilisation, together with love, solidarity and altruism and a return to them is extremely important for sustainable living. Relation to freedom and responsibility Reality: One-sided emphasis on human rights and freedoms, erosion of personal co-responsibilities and lack of intergenerational awareness. Underlining of human rights and support of human freedoms in the period of Enlightenment was extremely important for the development of European and American democracies, especially in sharp contrast with the previous serfdom of medieval times, but it was not accompanied by a corresponding sense of responsibility for common public affairs, and in the ”real socialism” not even by responsibility for our own lives. In the praxis of ”real capitalism”, personal freedom is often reduced to the freedom to consume material goods. Alternative: Establishing symmetry between human rights and freedoms on one hand, and human responsibilities on the other hand, with respect to other beings and to nature, and to develop both. Relation to our knowledge A. Reality: ”Pride of the reason”, considered in the overestimation of the scale depth, reliability and complexity of our knowledge and experiences, one-sided reliance on intellect, rationality and simple casual thinking, lack of our ability to foresee and shape future development. Extreme overvaluation of our knowledge was typical for centralistic command economy of former ”socialist” states, but we can see it also in Western societies. B. Alternative: Adopt precautionary principle, exclude all activities, possible negative impacts of which could not be judged with sufficient reliability in alltime horizons, supplementation of rational thinking by institution, bring together sciences and arts, intensive support of scientific research development and education. Relation to our lives Reality: Weakening of the human instinct of self-preservation, alienation to our own lives, lack of feedback. Man often deliberately behaves in such a way, which destroys the environment and endangers his life or lives of his relatives; he smokes, destroy forests and spoils rivers. Alternative: Awareness of human activities negative impacts, evolution of mutual links of events in space and time; a precondition is again the systematic education and informing of the broadest possible groups, and improvement of institutional feedback. Relation to future generations Reality: Preference of short-term goals over long-term permanent ones following principle ”carpe diem”, life at the expense of future generations due to overexploitation of natural resources and spreading of wastes. Alternative: Awareness of the long-term goals and consequences of human activities, based on precautionary principle and development of our knowledge, responsibility for future generations. Relation to the other opinions and to the other civilisations Reality: Low respect for the other opinions, ideological, religious, racial or other intolerance, solving of conflicts by force and violence. Often also sharp underestimation of even ignoration of the human civilisations and cultures, based on the unjustified assumption that our Euro-American civilisation is superior to all others, sometimes also our aggressive behaviour against the other civilisations, by military means in recent history, and by economic and cultural instruments now. Alternative: Mutual tolerance, empathy for situation of the other people, cultures or civilisations and their values and goals, attempts to use the experience, knowledge and wisdom of other cultures. Political, economical security and other global mechanisms enabling cooperation and mutual enrichment of different people, states and civilisations, preserving their uniqueness/uniquity and autonomy. Relation to the common affairs Reality: Resignation on common decision making, passivity, brainless acceptation of foreign patterns, monopolisation of political and economic powers in hands of small number of people, leading to an infantilisation of the human solidarity and to a decrease of its ability to govern future development. Alternative: Develop participative democracy supporting creative activities of all citizens, decentralisation of powers with effective coordinational and feedback mechanisms, preventing the abuse of political, economic and other powers. All the people can participate directly on decision making presses concerning future value orientation of the society, even if they have not enough information and knowledge to solve specific professional problems. The short above analysis is a work hypothesis which needs to be carefully revised and amended. But it suggests, that some of the value orientations on which our recent Euro-American culture (values A) is based, are a blind alley. But at the same time I propose human values, which could be compatible with sustainable ways of life. These values B are not ”new”, artificial constructs. Almost all of them have their roots in Greek-Roman-Judaic-Christian foundations of European culture. We should ”rediscover” them and supplement of modify in those areas where it is necessary due an unprecedental increase of humankind’s ability to destroy nature as well as itself, or where it is possible because of development and deepening of human knowledge. The type B values could have the real influence only when people will locate them rather high on their hierarchies of individual values. These values should have to be incorporated into legislative, institutional, and economical arrangements of the human society, as shared values of an important part of their citizens. It is not possible to assume, that the ”sustainable values” (type B) could be adopted from one day to another, by some ”big leap”, and the values of the type A will simply disappear or will be abandoned. We can foresee the consequent, step by step changes of the order of different human values or shifts of their relative weights in the assessment and decision-making processes of people, accompanied by feed-back corrective measures and should do everything to support these trends. Because any delays of necessary changes of value orientations are very dangerous, the inertia of the recent trends is working against a sustainable future. It is the race with the time. We do have to come back towards the basic question on the sense of life and search for answers appropriate to dangerous and rapidly changing situation. There are probably only two basic alternatives of future development. The first one is a continuity of existing unsatisfactory and unsustainable trends, which could lead, with a high probability, to chaos and a series of catastrophes of different kinds. There is a real threat, that the period of environmental deterioration and of a decay of social structures could be very long, in extreme case could lead to degradation of humankind. The second alternative is a systematic and quick evolution oriented towards the solution of existing problems and prevention of some new ones. The common care for our common environment perhaps could form the foundations of such an alternative. Existing substantial political, economic, national, religious and other contradictions in the world do not offer us too many changes. I am convinced, that searching for and enforcement of values, which could lead us towards humanism and harmony of relations between man and nature is a common deal of religious people as well as people believing in man, his ability to distinguish good and evil.