The Eternal Home

Come my dear, stay with me for the year of our lives.
Four seasons, four walls, four windows, we'll reside
in four houses of beauty unsurpassed

In Spring, we'll chorus in a house of crystal glass
We'll watch the cherry petals drift down above us thick and fast
Our bed will be a blanket of springy green moss
And the brook will join in a lullaby as it bubbles past

On Summer eves we'll lie below the constellations
Our house, the boughs of ancient oaks and pines rustle in syncopation
Your head on my lap I'll stroke the stardust from your hair
And lulled to sleep by the summer sweetness hanging heavy in the air.

In Autumn we'll look out from our log house in the woods
Watch the fiery leaves fall to carpet the bare and barren earth
Stare at the dying fire in the hearth, at the way our breath mists together,
When running becomes much harder than it should

I fear, my dear, in winter you'll leave me to live alone,
Gone to your warmer grounds in places far and unknown,
I can do nothing but wait by this cold house of stone
Waiting for the day I'll join you in our eternal home.

Globalisation: a moral dilemma

“We should raise our children to find it intolerable that we who sit behind desks and punch keyboards are paid ten times as much as people who get their hands dirty cleaning our toilets, and a hundred times as much as those who fabricate our keyboards in the Third World. We should ensure that they worry about the fact that the countries which industrialized first have a hundred times the wealth of those which have not yet industrialized. Our children need to learn, early on, to see the inequalities between their own fortunes and those of other children as neither the Will of God nor the necessary price for economic efficiency, but as an evitable tragedy. They should start thinking, as early as possible, about how the world might be changed so as to ensure that no one goes hungry while others have a surfeit.”

“They need to see their lives as given meaning by efforts towards the realization of the moral potential inherent in our ability to communicate our needs and our hopes to one another.”

-       -    Richard Rorty (American Philosopher)

Globalisation has become the catch-phrase of the last quarter century. No facet of humanity and its environment has been left untouched by our newfound ease of connectedness, from the spread of ideas to the distribution of resources to the proliferation of power to the people. It has reordered the fundamental building blocks that have defined politics and history in the last two centuries, empowering institutions and individuals, eroding governmental control, changing the drivers of economic success and redefining the role of business. It has also been a movement imbued with unprecedented optimism and hope – hope for peace and economic cooperation, the spread of opportunity, the improvement of living conditions for billions and a global connectedness that would amplify the voices of those that have previously remained unheard and repressed.

As a phenomenon, globalisation is not new. The seed of modern globalisation had been nurtured in the fertile soil of neo-imperialistic Europe, and the Western World have reaped the fruits ever since. Though the concept of globalisation itself has been around for as long as there have been ancient trade routes across the land and seas, we have regarded this modern phenomena as hand in hand with Western hegemony: to be modern is to be western, and to be modern, is to be global. Indeed, it is hard to think of 'modernity', 'connectivity' and 'progress' without imbuing it with Western values.

Globalisation has always radiated from focal points of economic and hegemonic power, whether accounting for the dominance of Western, American culture or the rising influence of the East. Its advocates paint globalisation as the shining ‘new idea’ of the 21^st century, spreading values, setting standards, creating opportunity for the destitute and the isolated, in an era of unprecedented peace and cooperation.

John Maynard Keynes, writing in 1920 on Britain before the First World War paints for us a vivid picture of the benefits of globalisation:

The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, in such quantity as he might see fit, and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep; he could at the same moment and by the same means adventure his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprises of any quarter of the world, and share, without exertion or even trouble, in their prospective fruits and advantages; or he could decide to couple the security of his fortunes with the good faith of the townspeople of any substantial municipality in any continent that fancy or information might recommend.

 

But to paint globalisation as a beacon of hope for humanity’s culture is to inherently suggest that outside of the influence of globalisation and the values that it perpetuates, there lies a darker world that is primitive and alien at best.

The globalisation that Keynes describes cannot be separated from its social and cultural implications. C.T. Kurian, a leading Bangladeshi economist, described the main component of globalisation as the celebration of the triumph of private capitalism and its dominant influence in the world. It is a radiating force, whereby states are absorbed into a homogeny of markets, policy and free-market values. Globalisation cannot be motivated without the profit imperatives of like-minded global consumers, cannot perpetuate without the supporting platform of standards and fiscal openness, and cannot be justified without its moral imperatives. At its core, globalisation imitated as an economic phenomena that has had profound social and political ramifications.

It is in this nursery of lasses-faire, free market globalisation that businesses have flourished, and it is their imperative to globalise these friendly conditions. Globalisation is not a purely economic phenomenon. It is also the gradual encroachment of one way of thinking, one set of values, beliefs and behaviours, one social structure and one state of the power dynamic between private institutions and government, upon the diversity that exists in our world. It comes with a sense of entitlement, where advocators of globalisation assume ethical superiority because they truly believe what they have assumed the ideal form of modernity. What we arrive at then, is a sad echo of the kind of thinking that justified colonialism and the tragedies they perpetrated.

Zygmaunt Bauman, one of Europe’s foremost sociologists, describes globalisation as an ‘ethical challenge’ in two ‘secessions’. He points firstly towards the separation of businesses from the local household and community, when the village merchant turned their eyes outwards towards the frontier lands free of all governmental, legal and moral constraint. What followed was an era of unprecedented economic prosperity, but also one of unprecedented human agony. The industrial flourishing of the colonial era was built upon the backs of the conquered and the marginalised. It was an era of extremes: the rich got richer and the poor struggled on.

Keynes himself acknowledges this in his book, quoting:

The greater part of the population, it is true, worked hard and lived at a low standard of comfort, yet were, to all appearances, reasonably contented with this lot.

As we read on, it becomes hard to ignore the inherent egoism and sense of entitlement in the expectation of globalisation as a modernising and 'moral' force.

'He could secure forthwith, if he wished it, cheap and comfortable means of transit to any country or climate without passport or other formality, could despatch his servant to the neighboring office of a bank for such supply of the precious metals as might seem convenient, and could then proceed abroad to foreign quarters, without knowledge of their religion, language, or customs, bearing coined wealth upon his person, and would consider himself greatly aggrieved and much surprised at the least interference.'

The assumption that one should be able to access resources, markets and opportunities freely, acquire freedom of labour and movement across borders, have access to capital is one that very closely echoes what globalisation has brought us today. Keynes has chosen to view culture as separate from the economic activity and ignored the innate embeddedness of business in the environment that surrounds it. Whatever resistance is then met in the due course of performing these activities is not approached with due consideration, but with surprise. What he has essentially described is the need for ease of doing business despite cultural, governmental and legal barriers, and perhaps even without them.

Bauman described globalisation as the ‘second wave’ of secession. Businesses have once again, broken away from the locality of nation states and entered into an international territory of legal inconsistency and moral greyness. The territories that offer the most resistance can be tactfully avoided; those weakly governed can be swayed. Some of the wealthy, and most powerful entities in our world now are no longer states, but businesses.  The kind of global development we see now is not far different from a hundred years ago. On the whole, the world is making progress. Average income is rising. There is much more international trade, international FDI that brings opportunities for development into third world countries. But it is the gap in the speed of development, the unequal sharing of the fruits of globalisation that must be addressed. The Report of the World Commission on Social Dimension of Globalisation describes our current trajectory as encouraging "deep-seated and persistent imbalances in the current workings of the global economy, which are ethically unacceptable and politically unsustainable".

In the year 2014, globalisation is not a trend, but a reality. The ability to communicate with others, by itself, is not an insidious force, but one marked with untold potential for human good. Free markets, commerce, trade and business, similarly, is not by itself a force of evil or benevolence, but simply a structure through which people and resources interact. What is imperative then, is that we realise the potential for improving lives through the tools that we have at hand. It is important that businesses understand the power that they have in this brave new world, and to learn from the mistakes of the past. To not proceed with the same kind of thinking that drove Keynes, and the tragedies of the colonial eras. To recognise the moral need for self-restraint, to abide by the regulations, recommendations and standards set by international organisations like the WTO and ILO not for fear of bad press or subpoenas, but to create a globalisation that brings equal opportunity and respect for human dignity.

Businesses must take up their moral role just as they have donned the mantle of profiteering. They must recognise their part is fostering a culture that looks at the world not only as a grand supply chain fluctuating in a sea of economics, but as a space for imagination and potential from all individuals. They must realise that they are not only exporting goods, but a culture, a way of life. To realise that modernization does not necessarily equate with Westernization, and concurrently the adoption of western lifestyles and products. This epiphany is not just important for moral imperatives, but for long term sustainability in an increasingly multipolar world, with the rise of the Asian Century. The most attractive markets of now and the future may not be set in the hegemonic monopoly of the west as the capitalists of the 20^th century had envisioned. The current distinctions of the ‘globalised’, the ‘Connected’ and the ‘Westernised’ markets and economies from the ‘under developed’ and ‘isolated’ world will and should become invalid. 

We should extend opportunities not only to those that would adopt our values, and not to seek for the universalisation of those values, but look for the possibilities that exist at the meeting of great civilizations, cultures and ways of thinking. To be culturally sensitive and to create equal opportunity is then not only a moral imperative, but makes business sense as a driver of innovation, increased consumption in foreign markets and more developed human resources. If that is still not enough justification for an equal globalisation, then we only need to look to the past to understand that for every action we take now to increase human suffering, we are building up karma for dissent, conflict and revolution in the future.

Nought shall quaver the burning of midnight oils
When the sleepless wander through lonely halls
And stranger than fancy in the night,
The tricks that Oberon plays on the mind.

Summer Ball

She said dance with me, so we twirled
To the whirl of wine in glasses
While the band tapped out a merry waltz
And the fire crackled in its niche
 Holding her tender waist against mine
Our feet draws out the swirls of our love
She felt lithe and soft, felt like home
The dancers slow,as the band fades out
Her eyes seeking the next dancing partner
Pressing a soft sigh and a kiss to her cheek
I let her go