Globalization

Taking advantages of globalization - some preliminary topics seen from Portugal

1. Globalization is unavoidable; it is a very old process that was always occurring to our species; obviously, this does not mean that this specific way of globalization that we are experiencing is good; in many aspects, it is horrible, creating exclusion, etc. But instead of wasting time saying the obvious I prefer to do something in order to contribute to overcome some negative aspects of the situation. Apocalyptic approaches are useless.

2. Communication is vital. It always was. It approaches people, “cultural traditions” and beliefs, promoting a better mutual understanding. The important point at stake is: which is the quality of that communication? Who may have access to it? Who is excluded and how can we try to overcome that? Communication was never just language, speech, but this one is very important to our species.

3. The language of global communication has nothing to do with our mother language. That is also a very old story (the Babel one). Each time people entered in contact they needed to understand each other. Sometimes we needed to understand and speak the dominant language, as Iberian people when Romans invaded us 2000 years ago. Portuguese language, that we prize now so much, is an output of that forced learning, of that encounter of different powers. In last instance, everything is political and economical.

4. The language of communication today is the English language. Those who do not speak, read or write in English (even if it is awful like mine), beyond their mother language, are condemned to isolation. Isolation was never good (in general meant death, except in Romantic imagination), but now it is radically negative.

5. To have English as a mother language is an advantage and is also a handicap. Because the world today is a networked and multi-vocal one. To know only one language is again to be isolated, even if it allows the faster access to many contents and products. That “diversity” may turn in the short term to a sort of illusion. In spite of a vast movement into translation (another keyword of our time), we know that the very act of translation is simultaneously a gain and a loss.

6. To be in the periphery (or in a semi-periphery) may be a useful location – although space and time today are very relative things – because we are moved into a surplus of effort that may be very fruitful, and we are perhaps better prepared to establish a dialogue between differences.

7. In spite of every negative aspect of capitalist neo-liberal globalization, revolution does not seem a solution, as proved by many well known examples. The struggle for rights and the effort to keep informed and busy, learning every day how to do things best, helping itself and the others, is for me a fundamental political option. Critical thought is not dead, even if we need to equate it through the language of the global empire. As we have seen before in history, empires fall down, and history will not stop in global frantic capitalism. Hope and action are also political options.

8. The power of thought, articulated with the “new technologies”, in the era of the image and the virtual, is enormous. We know that powerful organizations want to eat the whole cake; but, as long as we, common people, are not beasts, but educated persons, we will do our best to face the two big menaces of our time: the violence of the empire, and the violence of those who simplify everything, through terrorism. Both methods, both faces of violence are our obstacles to a world where mankind may leave in peace.

9. I know that you think that I am a dreamer and a naïf. But I believe in equal rights for every human being. No new born being has asked to be made; we shall assume a responsibility to the whole of mankind and we need to rebuild an ethics for it. Mankind does not live in a void, but in a world full of other species and rich in diversity and beauty, not only horror. We need to struggle for those values. We need to keep diversity and critical consciousness in order to have mutual respect and be in peace with our own minds.

10. We need to settle down and to think a bit, like if we were under an old and shadowy African tree. What have we lost? What can we still rescue from destruction? Which future do we have in common? Using internet, mobile phones if needed, and English language to communicate at a global scale, we may do nonsense and act like fools, but we may also focus in important issues. Together.


Photo: Pascal Renoux
reprod. permit.
http://www.pascalrenoux.com