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AN ATTAINABLE GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE b y R o b e r t G . H a n v e y

EDUCATION FO R A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

The daily life o f each American citizen involves judgments, decisions, and actions which, however minor in themselves, in the aggregate affect not only their own lives, but the future o f our democratic society and the economic and social fabric o f our nation and that o f the world. Similar decisions in other places affect us as a nation and as individuals.

Education f o r a global perspective is that learning which enhances the in d ivid u a l’s ability to understand his or her condition in the community a n d the w o rld a n d improves the ability to make effective judgm ents. It includes the study o f nations, cultures, and civilizations, including our own pluralistic society and the societies o f other peoples, with a focus on understanding how these are all interconnected and how they change, and on the individual's responsibility in this process. It provides the individual with a realistic perspective on world issues, problems and prospects, and an awareness o f the relationships between an individual's enlightened self-interest and the concerns o f people elsewhere in the world.

This paper was first published in 1976 as an exploration o f what a global perspective might be. W e find it still pertinent, in demand, and valid. W e hope this paper will continue to stimulate analysis, and development, so that we can learn how to educate American citizens to deal more competently with the challenges o f interdependence in their daily lives.

The American Forum 2004

This publication w as originally made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to the Center for Teaching International Relations o f the Graduate School o f International Studies o f the University o f Denver, Denver, CO 80210.

The American Forum for Global Education 120 Wall Street, suite 2600

N ew York, N Y 10005 212-624-1300 info@ globaled.org

An Attainable Global Perspective

Robert G. Hanvey

This essay is a beginning effort to define some elements o f what we call a global perspective— to flesh out some o f the things we will need to know and understand if we are to cope with the challenges o f an increasingly interdependent world. The views are those o f the author, published here to begin the discussion, debate, and analysis which will be necessary for a wide— spread and more complete understanding o f what global perspectives are and how they can become part o f the school curriculum.

Introduction

Contents

Introduction D im ension 1: D im ension 2: D im ension 3: D im ension 4: D im ension 5:

Perspective C onsciousness “ State o f the P lanet” A w areness C ross-cultural A w areness K now ledge o f Global D ynam ics A w areness o f H um an Choices

This is an attempt to describe certain modes o f thought, sensitivities, intellectual skills, and explanatory capacities which might in some measure contribute to the formation o f a global perspective and which y o u n g people in the U.S. m ight actually be able to acquire in the course o f their fo r m a l a n d informal education. That is w hat is meant here by an attainable global perspective. By speaking in such terms, we imply a modesty o f goals. This indeed is our orientation, to provide some contrast with the general practice o f stating objectives in ideal and often extreme terms.

W hat is a global perspective? Operationally, we will say that it consists p a rtly o f the modes o f thought, skills, etc. that will be discussed in the following pages. But as conceived here a global perspective is not a quantum, something you either have or don't have. It is a blend o f many things and any given individual may be rich in certain elements and relatively lacking in others. The educational goal broadly seen may be to socialize significant collectivities o f people so that the important elements o f a global perspective may be a variable trait possessed in some form and degree by a population, with the precise character o f that perspective determined by the specialized capacities, predispositions, and attitudes o f the group's members. The implication o f this notion, o f course, is that diversified talents and inclinations can be encouraged and that standardized educational effects are not required. Every individual does not have to be brought to the same level o f intellectual and moral development in order for a population to be moving in the direction o f a more global perspective.

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In keeping with modesty o f aspirations it is especially important at the outset to admit the limited impact o f formal schooling and the often profound impact o f informal socialization. Schools are hard put to match the drama and appeal o f the mass media or the grip on behavior and attitude exerted by the peer group. Furthermore, whatever is learned while young is continuously reshaped by later experience. The world view o f an American farm er will no doubt reflect his schooling to some extent, but it is likely to be most importantly influenced by exigencies associated w ith his role as a farm er and by attitudes currently held by his most important reference group— other farmers.

I f adult role and informal agencies o f socialization are very important, can the schools contribute meaningfully? Yes, especially if they are able to stake out areas o f special competence. The schools must select a niche that complements the other educative agencies o f the society. To the extent that those other agencies and influences w ork against a global perspective the schools can perform a corrective function; to the extent that the other agencies and influence are glib and superficial the schools can seek to be more thorough; to the extent that the other agencies have blind spots the schools can w ork to supply the missing detail; to the extent that the other agencies direct the attention to the short-term extraordinary event the schools can assert the value o f examining the long-term situation or trend (which is sometimes extraordinary in its own right).

Consider, for example, public information and socialization in the U.S. with respect to nuclear weapons policies. For many years the governments o f the U.S. and the U SSR have influenced each other in multiple ways by developing, maintaining, and threatening to use nuclear weapons o f awesome destructiveness. The populations o f each country, a n d the population o f the world, have been held hostage to this terrible threat. But neither government really informs its population about the true dimensions o f the threat. Films o f H-bomb tests, for example, have not been shown to the American or Russian people. Generations o f school children grow up without examining this profound influence on national and international policies, without really understanding w hat a single warhead would do to a city and its - environs. Occasionally, when there is some change or special event such as a weapons test or a political agreement the long-standing theories o f deterrence will be reviewed in the media. But there is little probing o f the assumptions that underlie the policies, or reexamination o f the potentialities o f destruction. The media are event-centered. A volcano is o f interest to them only when it erupts.

The result o f this pattern is that the general perception o f important phenomena is limited and distorted; the public sees only those manifestations that are novel enough to rise above the media's threshold o f excitability. B ut the phenomena, w hether they be policies o f deterrence, or corporate investments in the developing countries, or government investments in scientific research, or the protein consumption habits o f industrialized populations, continue affect our lives, visible or not.

In fairness to the media it must be admitted that such phenomena are not, by and large, intrinsically interesting to most people. To specialized groups, yes, but not to broad publics. And interest is what keeps newspapers and television stations alive. It must also be admitted that some newspapers provide extremely important resources for broad public education and that the television networks occasionally reach millions with significant documentaries and background

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stories. But the general characterization o f the media as event-centered is not, I think, unreasonable.

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The media, o f course, are more than event-centered. They are culture-bound and culture- generating. That is, they reflect the culture and reinforce it but are also capable o f turning it in new directions. The culture says, “ Consume!” and the media transmit that message— ingeniously, seductively, repetitively, persuasively. Very persuasively. And the audience responds to the cultural command. It does not question what it is told to consume. Electric heating is clean— be the proud owner o f an all— electric house. Be sure that the new car can reach 60 miles per hour in ten seconds, even with the air conditioner on. Buy the lawn fertilizer with the weed killer built in. Then the times change— and the messages change. Consume, yes, but also conserve. And watch for environmental effects. And the media, always there on the growing edge o f cultural transformation, pass the new messages along with the same devotion to technical quality and the same servility to w hatever it is currently correct to believe in that particular society. The messages may be socially useful— or not. But the influence is there, the long reach into every home and hotel room and bar, the powerful reinforcing o f enduring cultural ideas, themes, stereotypes, coupled with the equally powerful capacity to mobilize altogether new patterns o f belief and opinion almost overnight.

I f this is the way the media are: event-centered, and potent servants o f both traditional and emergent elements o f the national culture, what then o f the schools? The schools, after all, are also carriers o f the national culture. But the schools must stake out a niche that balances and corrects the media. The schools may be bearers o f culture but they are also agents o f an academic tradition that encourages scrutiny o f that which seems conventional and obvious. I f the media direct attention to events, the schools must look beneath the apparent event at the phenomena really involved. I f the media say, "Believe this w ay !" the schools must reveal that in other times and other places people believed and now believe in quite different ways. At the very least every young person should have experiences in school which demonstrate in a lasting fashion that (1)

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there are substrata to the visible event and (2) culture affects the perception o f human affairs. Thus educated, the person's reactions to reports in the media should be, minimally, "There may be more there than meets the eye," and "Other eyes might see it differently." Those are truism s but the schools can put flesh on them.

Dimension 1

P erspective C onsciousness

the recognition or awareness on the p a r t o f the individual that he or she has a view o f the w o rld that is not universally shared, that this view o f the w o rld has been a n d continues to be shaped by influences that often escape conscious detection, a n d that others have views o f the w o rld that are profoundly different fro m one's own

Few o f us in our lives can actually transcend the viewpoint presented by the common carriers o f information and almost none o f us can transcend the cognitive mapping presented by the culture we grew up in. But with effort we can at least develop a dim sense that we have a perspective, that it can be shaped by subtle influences, that others have different perspectives. This recognition o f the existence, the malleability, and the diversity o f perspective we might call perspective consciousness. Such an acknowledgment is an important step in the development o f a perspective that can legitimately be called global.

Achieving perspective consciousness is no small accomplishment. It is probably true that most people in most societies do not sense the uniqueness o f their own or their society's world view. Herman Kahn in The E m erging Japanese Superstate tells the following anecdote:

The Japanese do not think o f themselves as being racist. I once brought sharp surprise to a num ber o f senior Americans and Japanese with whom I w as having dinner by suggesting that in some ways Japan is the most racist nation in the world. One o f them asked me to explain what I meant. I started, o f course, with the obvious point that the Japanese, at least in comparison w ith other groups, are relatively pure racially. There are, so to speak, no blond Japanese, no red-haired Japanese, no blue-eyed Japanese. And the attitude o f the Japanese toward miscegenation is different from that of, say, the French or the Chinese. If somebody is born o f mixed marriage in France or China but grows up perfectly familiar with and skilled in the indigenous culture, he is largely accepted. That is not true in Japan. The children o f mixed marriages are more or less permanently barred from participating fully and comfortably in the society. Those bars also hold against children born in Japan but o f Korean or Chinese parentage. One crucial p o in t in the discussion was that the Japanese do not normally notice that they discriminate against these minorities, because the discrimination is so thorough that the issue usually does not arise [my italics], I asked the Japanese if they could imagine, for example, having a

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General o f Korean parentage. They could not. I pointed out that it was perfectly possible in China.1

It could be argued that people are very aware o f differences in perspective, or at least o f opinion. The Japanese may be blind to their racism, but Americans are surely aware o f the racist elements in their own society and keenly aware that different factions within the society have different views o f appropriate behavior with respect to minorities. And if the media are important shakers o f perspective, isn't it true that conflict and dispute are the main diet o f the press and electronic media? Anyone exposed to these influences must certainly know very early in life that people differ radically in their perspectives.

Opinion and Perspective

Here, I think, one must make a distinction between opinion and perspective. Opinion is the surface layer, the conscious outcropping o f perspective. But there are deep and hidden layers o f perspective that may be more important in orienting behavior. In such deep layers lies the Japanese view o f other ethnic groups. Korean inferiority, note, is not a matter o f opinion to the Japanese. It is profoundly assumed and thus not recognized as racism by the Japanese. Similarly, in the deep layers o f W estern civilization has been the assumption that human dominance over nature is both attainable and desirable. This, too, until recently, has not been a matter o f opinion.

One o f the interesting things that reform and protest movements do is carry out mining operations in the deep layers. They dredge to the surface aspects o f perspective that have never before seen the light o f day. Once made visible, these may become the foci o f debate, matters o f opinion. The environmental movement surfaced the assumption o f man's right to dominion over nature and thus posed some philosophical choices that had previously escaped notice. The fem inist movement raised the consciousness o f women and men with respect to "woman's place." They labeled the most commonplace behaviors and attitudes "chauvinist," and thus revealed the deeper layers o f perspective in action.

I have suggested that with effort we can develop in the young at least a dime sense, a groping recognition o f the fact that they have opinions. At the present time the schools and the media socialize all o f us to be traders in opinion. W e learn this through discussion and debate, through the contentious format o f forums and organizational meetings, through talk shows and

P ersp ectiv e

Opinion

ordinary unexamined assumptions, evaluations,

explanations, conceptions o f

time, space, causality, etc.

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newspaper columnists. W e learn, especially, that the individual is expected to have opinions and to be w illing to assert them. And we learn tacit rules about "tolerating" differences in opinions so asserted.

W e can also learn, if we approach the task with a sure sense o f purpose, how to probe the deep layers o f perspective. A variety o f specialists and social commentators regularly operate in these realms and there are well-developed methods and techniques. Some o f these methods can be learned and practiced. For example, some (but not all) values clarification exercises can heighten awareness o f otherwise unrevealed aspects o f perspective. At the very least it should be possible to teach almost any young person to recognize a probe o f the deep layers when he sees it. Such probes come in many forms, from the ironic humor o f a "Doonesbury" cartoon strip to the pop sociology o f a book like Future Shock.

There are practical steps that schools can take to develop perspective consciousness in students and to develop other dimensions that will contribute to the enhancement o f a global perspective. W e turn, now, to those other dimensions.

Dimension 2

"State o f the Planet" A w areness

awareness o f prevailing w o rld conditions a n d development, including emergent conditions a n d trends, e.g. population growth, migrations, economic conditions, resources a n d p h ysica l environment, p o litica l developments, science a nd technology, law, health, inter-nation a n d intra-nation conflicts, etc.

For m ost people in the world direct experience beyond the local community is infrequent - or nonexistent. It is not uncommon to m eet residents o f Chicago neighborhoods who have never traveled the few miles to the central business district, or sophisticated N ew Y ork taxicab drivers who have never been further south than Philadelphia. I f this is true for a geographically mobile society like the U.S. it is even more a fact for other parts o f the world. Tourism, urban migrations, commerce, and business travel notwithstanding, most people live out their lives in rather circumscribed local surrounding.

Communication M edia and Planet Awareness

But direct experience is not the way that contemporary peoples learn about their world. M argaret Mead writes:

Only yesterday, a N ew Guinea native's only contact with modem civilization may have been a trade knife that was passed from hand to hand into his village or airplane seen in the sky; today, as soon as he enters the smallest frontier settlement, he meets the transistor radio. Until yesterday, the village dwellers everywhere were cut o ff from the

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urban life o f their own country; today radio and television bring them sounds and sights o f cities all over the world.2

Nonliterate villager or suburban housewife, it doesn't matter that one stays close to home. Information travels, rapidly and far. News o f a border crisis in the M iddle East reaches within hours the shopkeeper in Nairogi, the steel w orker in Sweden, the Peruvian villager. There is now a demonstrated technical capacity for simultaneous transmission o f messages to almost the entire human species. The character o f the messages is something else again. Here we must ask, do the messages received on those millions o f transistor radios and television sets contribute meaningfully to a valid picture o f world conditions? That question matters because it is difficult to imagine a global perspective that does not include a reasonable dependable sense o f w hat shape the world is in.

Generally speaking, the media in almost every country will transm it news from around the world. As we discussed earlier, the fundamental quality o f news is its focus on the extraordinary event. An outbreak o f influenza is news; endemic malaria is not. A rapid decline in values on the world's stock exchanges is news; the long-standing poverty o f hundreds o f millions is not. So, there are significant limits and distortions in the view o f the world conveyed by news media. Nonetheless, the prospect is not entirely bleak. For one thing, the characteristic interests o f the news media can be exploited; events can be staged in such a way as to call attention to w orld conditions not ordinarily judged newsworthy. A world conference can be convened on food or population or pollution problems. The conference itself is news. M ore importantly, the condition that gives rise to the conference takes on a new level o f visibility worldwide. And the news media are the instruments o f this increased awareness.

Communication media, o f course, transm it more than news. The local community's images o f the world outside are drawn to a substantial degree from the make-believe world o f cinema and television drama. The distortions associated with dramatic presentations are well documented. The lifeways and cultural types o f other countries are frequently caricatured; ironically, the lifeways and types o f one's own society are also commonly caricatured. W hile the export o f films and television series from a country may mean an improved balance o f payments, it by no means assures an improved balance o f perspective. The world consumers o f American television and film can be excused for believing that the U.S. population consists largely o f ranchers, doctors, policemen, and gangsters.

Limits to Understanding

There are other sources o f distortion. Political ideology chokes o ff the flow o f some information, the defense and security syndrome o f nations blocks still other information, and selective disinterest o f audiences constricts yet other channels. As an instance o f the first, Americans until recently have had little access to information about Cuba under Castro. As an example o f the second, the testing o f nuclear weapons by the French and the Indians in recent years produced few hard details about site, yield, fallout, etc. (Governments have ways to obtain the information; publics do not.) As for patterns o f audience interest and disinterest, consider how little attention is paid to the affairs o f small nations, or to conditions in the rural areas o f the world. And with no complaint from the audience.

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Finally, there is the m atter o f the technical nature o f world data. There are now unprecedented resources for generating information about the state o f the planet, and for sharing and processing the information in order to obtain a sense o f the important patterns. But the procedures are highly technical and the results expressed in technical terms. A certain level o f education is required to see the full significance o f the data. The case o f ozone in the stratosphere is instructive.

While environmental scientists are concerned about too-high ozone levels in the air o f cities (since it produces emphysema-like effects) there is also concern about the possible depletion o f ozone in the stratosphere. Ozone in the stratosphere blocks out much o f the sun's ultraviolet radiation. Such radiation is so harmful that scientists believe that surface life did not evolve on the earth until after the ozone layer had been formed. There is now a real possibility that gases released into the air by man will reduce this ozone by significant amounts. One villain is the propellant gas used in aerosol cans. This gas is very inert in the atmosphere (which is why it can be mixed with the many compounds found in spray cans), but recent research has shown that it breaks down under certain wavelengths o f ultraviolet light. When it breaks down, chlorine is released, which acts as a catalyst and destroys ozone. Thus, the gas escapes into the atmosphere when the spray can is used; it does not degrade in the atmosphere (since it does not react with other gases); some o f it seeps into the stratosphere, is broken down by ultraviolet light, and the released chlorine destroys ozone. Predicted results: increased number o f skin cancer, possible biological damage to vegetation and some insect species, possible effects on plankton in the oceans, possible effects on climate.

This is a world condition. Even if we stop using aerosol cans now, propellant gas which m ight destroy an estimated 5 percent o f the planet's ozone layer has already been released. If the propellant gases continue to be produced and production increases at its present annual rate, then ozone depletion might reach 30 percent by 1994.3

These projections are not certainties. Furthermore, the ozone, even if depleted, will eventually build to original levels if the destructive agents are controlled. So the situation is not necessarily dire. But there is a basis for concern. The question is, W ho will understand and share that concern? Can a problem like stratospheric ozone depletion be widely comprehended so that it becomes a living part o f what a general populace knows about the planet? Or are such problems fated to stay w ithin the private realms o f specialists?

Overcoming the Limitations

This is an instance where the energies o f the schools, properly directed, might resolve the question in favor o f the general populace. I f from the earliest grades on students examined and puzzled over cases where seemingly innocent behaviors— the diet rich in animal protein, the lavish use o f fertilizer on the suburban lawn and g o lf course— were shown to have effects that were both unintended and global in scope, then there could be a receptivity for the kin o f information involved in the ozone case. The ozone situation would not seem forbidding; it would be another instance o f a model already documented. Students would have a framework within which to handle it. As for the technical aspects o f the ozone situation, these do not seem beyond the reach o f science and social studies departments that fo c u s cooperatively on the technical dimensions o f significant planetary conditions. It may be true that school programs are not

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typically organized for such a task, but it is not outside the boundaries o f our predilections or our capacities.

Suppose the schools do not w ork at the task o f increasing the ability o f individuals to consume information intelligently about world conditions, or even at the simpler task o f transm itting raw information about such conditions. Suppose, for example, that the schools choose to ignore environmental conditions, problems o f world resources, trends in population, the economic circumstances o f various world regions, political developments in world law, etc. Can a "state o f the planet" awareness be achieved without the participation o f formal educational institutions? I suspect so. Despite the flaws and distortions o f the media there is simply no question that people everywhere are being reached with a flow o f information about planetary conditions— a flow that would have seemed impossible even a generation ago. The quality o f information will probably continue to increase. And so will the quality. General public awareness o f the state o f the planet may be one o f the more attainable elements in a global perspective.

Furthermore, we are not entirely dependent on broad public awareness, w hether it comes from the media or the schools. Since a global perspective is here defined as a collective achievement, the role o f specialists should be given its due. Every society depends on its specialists to sense aspects o f the environment not generally perceived by the masses. I f the specialists are aware o f important conditions in the world, then in effect the whole society has the benefit o f that awareness (or at least potentially has the benefit o f it). Perhaps few people can grasp the meaning and danger o f exponential growth in population and resource consumption. But if those few can share their alarm w ith policymakers the direction and value orientation o f whole nations can be altered.

Dimension 3

C ross-cu ltural A w areness

awareness o f the diversity o f ideas a n d practices to be fo u n d in human societies around the world, o f how such ideas a n d practices compare, a n d including some lim ited recognition o f how the ideas a n d ways o f one's own society m ight be view edfrom other vantage points

This may be one o f the more difficult dimensions to attain. It is one thing to have some knowledge o f world conditions. The air is saturated with that kind o f information. It is another thing to comprehend and accept the consequences o f the basic human capacity for creating unique cultures— with the resultant profound differences in outlook and practice manifested among societies. These differences are widely known at the level o f myth, prejudice, and tourist impression. But they are not deeply and truly known— in spite o f the well-worn exhortation to "understand others." Such a fundamental acceptance seems to be resisted by powerful forces in the human psychosocial system. Attainment o f cross-cultural awareness and empathy at a significant level will require methods that circumvent or otherwise counter those resisting forces.

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Let us think afresh about what such methods might be, with a full recognition o f how difficult the task will be and a corresponding willingness to discard ideas that don't work.

Does Understanding Follow Contact

One o f the cherished ideas o f our own times and o f earlier times is that contact between societies leads to understanding. The durability o f this notion is awesome considering the thousands o f years o f documented evidence to the contrary. Consider the following example. W hen the French began to explore North America they came into contact w ith a number o f aboriginal groups. At various times they attempted to m uster the males o f these groups into fighting units. The Indians clearly had no aversion to fighting; they were warriors, skilled in the use o f arms, proud o f triumph over an enemy. B ut they would not take orders. French commanders had no control and the so-called chiefs o f these groups depended on persuasion, which might or might not be successful. Every individual Indian warrior made his own decisions about whether to jo in a raid or war party, worked out his own battle strategy, and left the fray when he chose.

This kind o f contact between the French and the Indians provided the French with detailed information on the ways o f their Indian allies— information they noted scornfully in their journals, sometimes sputtering in rage and frustration. But the behavior they described was incomprehensible to them. By virtue o f the concrete experiences that the French had with the Indians, the French had rich data— but no understanding. The French were able to see Indian behavior only in the light o f their own hierarchical social system, where it is natural for the few to command and the many to obey. Social systems that worked on other principles were literally unimaginable.

O f course, now we are more sophisticated. W hat happens when the nature o f the contact between groups is not one o f exploitation or domination but rather one o f sympathetic assistance, and where there is at least some preparation for the cultural differences that will be encountered? Here is an account o f Peace Corps experience in the Philippines:

M ost human relationships in the world are governed by a pervasive fatalism, in the Philippines best described by the Tagalog phrase, bahala na, which means, "never mind" or "it will be alright" or, "it makes no difference." Americans more than any other people in history, believe man can control his environment, can shape the forces o f nature to change his destiny. That peculiarity, which is essentially Western, is quintessentially American.

M ost o f the peoples o f the world also value dependency and harmony relationships within the in-group. Rather than stress independence in relationships— freedom from restraint and freedom to make choices— they emphasize reciprocity o f obligation and good will within the basic group and protection o f that group against outsiders. It is the group— family, tribe or clan— which matters and not the individual. In the Philippines, this phenomenon is perhaps best described by the term u ta n g n a loob which means a reciprocal sense o f gratitude and obligation.

The value o f independence in relationships and getting a job done makes us seem

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self-reliant, frank, empirical, hardworking, and efficient to ourselves. To Filipinos, the same behavior sometimes makes us seem to be unaware o f our obligations, insensitive to feelings, unwilling to accept established practices, and downright aggressive . . .

Nearly all volunteers had to struggle to understand and deal with Filipino behavior that, when seen from our peculiar stress on independence in relationships as opposed to Filipino u ta n g n a loob, was deeply distressing . . . Filipinos wanted to be dependent on others and have others dependent on them; they were often ashamed in the presence o f strangers and authority figures; they were afraid o f being alone or leaving their families and communities; they showed extreme deference to superiors and expected the same from subordinates; they veiled true feelings and opinions in order not to hurt others or be hurt by them . . .

It is one thing to study and understand utang na loob. It is another to have a principal treat you as a status figure and to insist that you tell him how to run his school, or to have children in your class cower in w hat seems to be shame, or to have neighbors who care much more that you should have a pleasurable experience than that you should like them and that you should get your job done.

Filipinos, with their incessant hospitality and curiosity, repeatedly made it plain that for them the main job o f Peace Corps volunteers was to enjoy themselves and to enhance pleasure for those around them, an approach to life best described by the Filipino phrase, pakikisam a . . . N othing was more difficult for volunteers to understand or accept than that Filipinos wanted them for pleasure in relationships and not to achieve the tasks to which they had been assigned . . .

It was not ju st the Filipino's stress on u ta n g n a loob and pakikisam a which interfered with getting the job done. It was also bahala na, the widespread fatalism o f the barrio which showed itself in the lack o f emotion at the death o f little children, the persistent and nearly universal beliefs that ghosts and spirits control life and death, and the failure o f Filipinos to keep promises and appointments. W hy should the job matter when fate governs human existence? . . .

During the first two years, four volunteers resigned and twenty-six others were sent home, usually by mutual agreement, because they were not able or willing to cope with extraordinary psychological burdens o f being Peace Corps volunteers. Some volunteers developed a "what's the use" attitude and failed to appear at school, or made short unauthorized trips away from their barrios. Withdrawal was sometimes followed in the same volunteer by extremely hostile behavior against the Philippine Bureau o f Public Schools, Washington, and the Peace Corps Staff. Some volunteers, particularly those in the first group, wished there was some honorable way for them to cut short their tour o f duty without an overwhelming sense o f personal failure.4

The American Peace Corps volunteers, like the French officers o f the 17th century, could not escape the powerful influence o f their own culture, especially since that culture was so deeply embedded in the very definition o f the mission. The task was to render assistance. And success was measured by some kind o f closure, "getting the job done." Filipino behavior stood in the way o f getting the job done. There were distractions, delays, and detours. And the positive reinforcements that a busy, efficient American would have received in his home setting were nowhere to be found The result: puzzlement and

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frustration equivalent to that o f the French in their relations with Indian groups.

Achieving Understanding

But some volunteers did solve the cultural puzzle.

A male volunteer from South Carolina, D was as much admired by Filipinos and volunteers as any volunteer in the project. Almost from the first, he accepted people for what they were, learned the dialect, made friends, and seemed to enjoy that more than anything else. After two years, he wrote, "I consistently believed and followed a life based on getting away from all identity or entanglement with the Peace Corps. My reasons were . . . to figure out a little bit about what was going on in the Philippines, to see what was really significant in my own place, to try to understand life here, and to learn to function in a way that could be meaningful to me and the community. I burrowed into life here unmindful o f anything but my community and involvement and survival."

Although everyone had thought that he epitomized the ability o f a volunteer to live deeply in the culture after ju st six months, he wrote toward the end o f his third year, "I have continued to change here and have now sort o f reached a point o f being able to feel with others. This is different from understanding how they feel. I am able to be a part o f them as they do things with each other and me . . ,"5

D was a success in both Filipino and Peace Corps terms. So was another volunteer.

A male volunteer from M assachusetts ran w hat appears to have been highly successful in-service training classes on English and science for teachers. He also had effective adult education classes and successful piggery-poultry project. He seemed to blend into his community almost from the beginning, becoming one o f the first volunteers to learn the dialect from his region and use it extensively. He enjoyed serenading at night with the gang from the sari-sari store and drank tuba with the older men who, as he put it "had the pleasure o f learning they could drink the American under the proverbial table."6

These two cases teach us some useful things. Both volunteers genuinely joined their communities. They learned the language, sought to "burrow in." M ost importantly, they accepted the Filipinos on their own terms and made friends with them, presumably long before their own understanding o f the local culture had developed D wrote, "The people are different, but willing to take me in..." Somehow or other, the Filipino traits that so frustrated other volunteers were not an obstacle to these two. Instead, these two accepted not only the worth o f the Filipinos but the worth o f their ways, enough to practice them joyfully. And out o f that long practice came D's remarkable statement that he was now able to feel with others.

Did the two volunteers "go native"? In a sense. Perhaps the most important respect in which this is true lies in the acceptance o f the worth and authority o f the local community's standards o f conduct. These volunteers participated in Filipino life. That participation was reinforced in tw o ways. First, it m ust have been intrinsically enjoyable to these particular young men. It was satisfying to drink tuba with the local males. Second, that participation must have

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won social approval from the Filipinos a n d that approval m ust have m attered to these volunteers. Conceivably the approval o f Peace Corps staff became less important (remember that D chose to shake o ff "entanglement" with the Peace Corps) as the approval o f the local community became more important.

The sequence o f events seems to go like this:

initial willingness to respect local ways and viewpoints

participation (which i s a / concrete demonstration o f respect)

rewards, internal and community approval

advanced participation: living the culture

depth understanding: "inside the head" o f the host society

It is worth noting that it was only after three years o f intense, 24-hour-a-day experience that D felt that he was inside the Filipino head, seeing and feeling in Filipino ways. This, o f course, should be no surprise, especially to Americans with their centuries o f experience in the difficulties o f immigrant assimilation. Stories o f immigrants are replete with the difficulties o f adjustment, the persistence o f old-country ways and attitudes, the stress between parents and the children born in the new country. M any immigrants never made the cultural shift emotionally, even after decades o f living in the new setting. But many did.

Respect and Participation— M issing Elements

W hat the Peace Corp examples— and the American immigrant experience— show us is that it is not easy to attain cross-cultural awareness or understanding o f the kind that puts you into the head o f a person from an utterly different culture. Contact alone will not do it. Even sustained

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contact will not do it. There must be a readiness to respect and accept, and a capacity to participate. The participation must be reinforced by rewards that m atter to the participant. And the participation must be sustained over long periods o f time. Finally, one may assume that some plasticity in the individual, the ability to learn and change, is crucial. In general, the young will be more flexible and able to achieve this.

This kind o f cross-cultural awareness is not reached by tourists nor, in the days o f empire, was it reached by colonial administrators or missionaries, however long their service on foreign soil. In American schools, despite integration and black and Chicano study programs, whites do not achieve such an awareness o f minority world-views. The missing elements are respect and participation. The society offers limited gratifications for reinforcement o f respect for minorities— and very limited penalties for disrespect. And it offers absolutely no rewards to those o f the white majority who might seek to participate in minority behavior patterns. The situation for the minority groups is somewhat different; there are social rewards for participating in the majority culture and many individuals shuttle more or less successfully between the two worlds or w ork out some kind o f synthesis.

Options

I f cross-cultural awareness o f a profound sort is extremely difficult to attain, what are the options? Are there lesser varieties o f awareness that might nonetheless be said to contribute to a global perspective? Are there better methods than have typically been employed to reach awareness? Is the goal itself worthwhile, i.e. does cross-cultural awareness matter?

Let me talk to that last question first. Yes, cross-cultural awareness does matter, for the following major reason i f for no other. Several million years o f evolution seem to have produced in us a creature that does not easily recognize the members o f its own species. That is stated in rather exaggerated form but it refers to the fact that human groups commonly have difficulty in accepting the humanness o f other human groups.

. . . we call a group o f primitives in northern N orth America Eskimos; this name, originated by certain Indians to the south o f the Eskimos, means "Eaters o f Raw Flesh." However, the Eskimos' own name for themselves is not Eskimos but Inupik, meaning "Real People." By their name they provide a contrast between themselves and other groups; the latter might be "people" but are never "re al."7

This practice o f naming one's own group "the people" and by implication relegating all others to not-quite-human status has been documented in non literate groups all over the world. But is simply one manifestation o f a species trait that shows itself in modem populations as well. It is there in the hostile faces o f the white parents demonstrating against school busing. You will find it lurking in the background as Russians and Chinese meet at the negotiating table to work out w hat is ostensibly a boundary dispute. And it flares into the open during tribal disputes in Kenya.

It must, once, have been an adaptive trait. Perhaps, in ways that we now tend to deprecate, it still is. W e call it chauvinism rather than self-esteem. Clearly, there are positive effects associated w ith a strong sense o f group identity. Loyalty is virtue everywhere, disloyalty abhorred

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everywhere. The inner harmony o f groups is strengthened if aggression can be displaced, diverted to external targets. And if aggression is to be justified, then it helps i f the enemy is not quite human. It helps even more if the enemy can be shown to be engaging in practices that are so outrageously different from one's own that they can be credibly labeled inhuman.

There was a time when the solidarity o f small groups o f humans was the basis for the survival o f the species. B ut in the context o f mass populations and weapons o f mass destructiveness, group solidarity and the associated tendency to deny the full humanness o f other peoples pose serious threats to the species. W hen we speak o f "humans" it is important that we include not only ourselves and our immediate group but all four billion o f those other bipeds, however strange their ways.

This is the primary reason for cross-cultural awareness. I f we are to admit the humanness o f those others, then the strangeness o f their ways must become less strange. Must, in fact, become believable. Ideally, that means getting inside the head o f those strangers and looking out at the world through their eyes. Then the strange becomes familiar and totally believable. As we have seen, that is a difficult trick to pull off. But there may be methods that will increase the probability o f success. Further, there are lesser degrees o f cross-cultural awareness than getting inside the head; these more modest degrees o f awareness are not to be scorned.

Levels o f Cross-cultural Awareness

W e might discriminate between four levels o f cross-cultural awareness as follows:

Level Information Mode Interpretation

I. awareness o f superficial or very visible cultural traits: stereotypes

tourism, textbooks, National Geographic

unbelievable, i.e. exotic, bizarre

II. awareness o f significant and subtle cultural traits that contrast markedly with one’s own

cultural conflict situations

unbelievable, i.e. frustrating, irrational

III. awareness o f significant and subtle cultural traits that contrast markedly with one’s own

intellectual analysis believable, cognivity

IV. awareness o f how another culture feels from the standpoint o f the insider

cultural immersion living the culture

believable because o f subjective familiarity

At level I, a person might know that Japanese were exaggerated in their politeness and gestures o f deference. At level II are those w ho know, either through direct or secondhand experience, old cultural traits that significantly (and irritatingly) contrast with one's own practices. The French in their relations with some Indian tribes and the Peace Corps volunteers who failed to adjust m ight be at this level. So, too, might those who despair over the seeming inability o f

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many developing countries to control population growth. At level III are those who might know, for example, that the really distinctive aspect o f the Japanese social hierarchy has nothing to do with the forms o f politeness but rather exists in the keen sense o f mutual obligation between superior and inferior. The level III person accepts this cultural trait intellectually; it makes sense to him. Peace Corps volunteers might have had this kind o f intellectual understanding before actual contact with host cultures. After that contact, some o f them slipped to level II and some moved to level IV.

According to this scheme, "believability" is achieved only at levels III and IV. And I have argued that believability is necessary i f one group o f humans is to accept other members o f the biological species as human. I have also noted the rigors o f the climb to level IV. This seems to leave level III as the practical goal. B ut is level III enough?

My position is that level III is indeed more attainable than level IV, and it is a reasonably worthy goal. But not quite enough. W e should try to attain at least some aspects o f level IV awareness. W e can. There are new methods to be explored. And there is a more general reason for encouragement. The evolutionary experience that seemed to freeze us into a small-group psychology, anxious and suspicious o f those who were not "us," also made us the most adaptive creature alive. That flexibility, the power to make vast psychic shifts, is very much with us. One o f its manifestations is the modem capacity for empathy.

Beyond Empathy Daniel Lerner in The Passing o f Traditional Society writes:

Empathy . . . is the capacity to see oneself in the other fellow's situation. This is an indispensable skill for people moving out o f traditional settings. Ability to empathize may make all the difference, for example, when the newly mobile persons are villagers who grew up knowing all the extant individuals, roles and relationships in their environment. Outside his village or tribe, each must meet new individuals, recognize new roles, and learn new relationships involving h im s e lf. . . high empathetic capacity is the predominant personal style only in modem society, which is distinctively industrial, urban, literate and participant. Traditional society is nonparticipant— it deploys people by kinship into communities isolated from each other and from a center . . .

W hereas the isolate communities o f traditional society functioned well on the basis o f a highly constrictive personality, the interdependent sectors o f modern society require widespread participation. This in turn requires an expansive and adaptive self- system, ready to incorporate new roles and to identify personal values with public issues. This is why modernization o f any society has involved the great characterological transformation we call psychic mobility . . . In m odem society more individuals exhibit higher empathic capacity than in any previous society.8

I f Lem er is correct, m odem populations have dramatically different outlook, a dramatically different readiness for change, than traditional populations. That difference must have been learned, and by millions o f people. I f the latent capacity for empathy can be learned or activated, then it may not be too much to w ork toward a psychic condition that reaches a step beyond empathy. Magoroh Maruyama, an anthropologist-philosopher, describes that next step as

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transspection.

Transspection is an effort to put oneself in the head . . . o f another person. One tries to believe what the other person believes, and assume what the other person assumes . . . Transspection differs from analytical "understanding." Transspection differs also from "empathy." Empathy is a projection o f feelings between two persons with one epistemology. Transspection is a trans-epistemological process which tries to learn a foreign belief, a foreign assumption, a foreign perspective, feelings in a foreign context, and consequences o f such feelings in a foreign context. In transspection a person temporarily believes whatever the other person believes. It is an understanding by practice.9

Empathy, then, means the capacity to imagine oneself in another role within the context o f one's own culture. Transspection means the capacity to imagine oneself in a role within the context o f a foreign culture. Putting Lerner and M aruyama together we might chart the psychic development o f humanity as follows:

Traditional peoples unable to imagine a viewpoint other than that associated with fixed roles in the context o f a local culture

M odern peoples able to imagine and learn a variety o f roles in the context o f a national culture

Postm odern peoples able to imagine the viewpoint o f roles in foreign cultures

Or, we might show the sequence o f development in a more graphic way, as involving a m ovement from the constrictions o f local perspectives through the expanded psychological flexibility necessary for role learning in large, heterogeneous national societies, to the advanced versatility o f "global psyches" that travel comfortably beyond the confines o f the home culture. (The gray zone is home culture.)

The modern personality type did not develop because it was planned. It emerged in the context o f changing social conditions. The postmodern personality type, similarly, is not likely to be produced by educational strategies. But if there is a broad social movement, an essentially unplanned intensification o f human interaction on the world stage, then educators, and other interested parties can play their minor but none the less useful roles in the unfolding drama. For educators, that will mean providing students with maximum experience in transspection. And maximum experience means more than time. It means a climate in which transspection is facilitated and expected— and in which the expectations are reinforced. Under such circumstances the schools might produce a slightly higher proportion o f persons with the kind o f psychic mobility displayed by D, the Peace Corps w orker who could feel with others. That would be a gain.

I f more and more individuals reach the vantage point o f level IV awareness there will be another kind o f gain. Dispelling the strangeness o f the foreign and admitting the humanness o f all human creatures is vitally important. But looking at ourselves from outside our own culture is a possibility for those who can also see through the eyes o f the foreigner, and that has significance for the perspective consciousness discussed earlier. Native social analysts can probe the deep

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layers o f their own culture but the outside eye has a special sharpness; if the native for even a moment can achieve the vision o f the foreigner he will be rewarded with a degree o f self- knowledge not otherwise obtainable.

n a tio n a l p ersp ectiv e h ig h e m p a th ic c a p a c ity

M O D E R N

f local p e r s p e c tiv e

lo w e m p a th ic T R A D IT I O N A L g lo b a l p ersp ectiv e

tr a n s s p e c tio n c a p a c ity P O S T M O D E R N

Dimension 4

K now ledge o f G lobal D ynam ics

some m odest comprehension o f key trails a n d mechanisms o f the worldsystem, with emphasis on theories a n d concepts that may increase intelligent consciousness o f global change

How does the world work? It is a vast, whirring machine spinning ponderously around a small yellow sun? Is there a lever we can push to avert famine in South Asia, or one that will cure world inflation, or one to slow the growth o f world population? Is it our ignorance o f which levers to move that results in tragedy and crisis? Is it our ignorance o f how the gears intermesh that causes breakdowns in the stability o f the system?

Or is the machine useful as a metaphor? Is it perhaps better to think o f the world as an organism, evolving steadily in response to the programming in its germ plasm? Are w ars and famines merely minor episodes in the biological history o f a planet serenely following a script already written?

The latter view is not a comfortable one for people in industrial societies, raised to believe that almost anything can be engineered, including the destiny o f the world. But the machine

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image doesn't quite work, either, although we continue (as I have done) to speak o f "mechanisms." The idea o f a machine suggests an assembly o f parts that interconnect in a very positive fashion, so positive that when you manipulate one part you get immediate, predictable, and quantifiable response in other parts. That does not seem to describe the world as we know it.

But both machines and organisms are systems o f interconnected elements and it is the idea o f system that now prevails. How does the world work? As a system. W hat does that mean? It means we must put aside simple notions o f cause and effect. Things interact, in complex and surprising ways. "Effects" loop back and become "causes" which have "effects" which loop back It means that simple events ramify— unbelievably.

The W orld as a System

The world as a system, is it well understood? Are the interactions, however complex, charted and analyzed? N ot yet. B ut the dynamics o f the world system are under intensive investigation, frequently in the context o f policy planning by governments and corporations. These ask their advisors. "What will happen i f we make decision A as opposed to decision B?" There are a number o f strategies for answering that kind o f question, but the world conceived as a system is intrinsic to all o f them. This kind o f experience and other studies have generated a small body o f knowledge about important factors in the world system and about the dynamics o f the system— how the elements interact. Many aspects o f that knowledge are very technical and beyond general understanding, but certain concepts and principles are reasonably accessible. Some— like the concept o f feedback— are already making their way into the domain o f poplar knowledge. Other ideas, with a bit o f effort and ingenuity, can be put within the reach o f non­ specialists.

These ideas will have considerable value as constituents o f a global perspective, primarily because they replace simplistic explanations and expectations with more sophisticated explanations. For example, the simplistic explanation o f high birth rates in some o f the less developed countries is lack o f education and lack o f technology. People don't know how to control reproduction and they lack the means to do so. The solution, then, is to add information and birth control devices. The systems view, by contrast, is that there are more factors operating in the situation than one initially imagines. And you'd better find them and figure out how they connect to the other factors. That assumption o f hidden complexity alters radically the interpretation o f global phenomena. It reduces the likelihood o f contempt for those peasants who strangely, do not seize the opportunity to lim it family size. And it improves the long-range possibilities for real control o f the situation.

The systems view in itself, however, does not guarantee that hidden or subtle factors will automatically be revealed. For that we must turn to a variety o f independent inquiries w hich have attempted to isolate and measure such factors. Many o f these studies have been part o f the general m ovement in recent years to understand and facilitate economic development. W hy have some countries leapt ahead o f others in economic productivity? W hy is there resistance to technical innovation in some situations, acceptance in others? The more conventional answers to these questions have been increasingly challenged by explanations that involve factors o f culture and psychology, such as patterns o f motivation and cognition. Perhaps these newer explanations deserve no special standing, but they do direct the attention to factors that are not ordinarly

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considered. This is worth noting. Because it is also true o f systems thinking. The results o f thinking in

systems terms often offend what we like to call common sense. Similarly, the newer explanation asks us to believe things about ourselves and others that fall outside the ordinary repertoire. We must learn not only to accept the intricacies o f system interactions but the influence o f cultural expectations and cognitive states that we do not usually sense. The implication is this: much o f what should've been learned about global dynamics will not be learned in informal and non formal settings, i.e. the media's view o f how the world works cannot be counted on to incorporate our best knowledge o f how the world works. So we must use the schools to transm it that knowledge. This is appropriate because the knowledge is technical, and it is necessary because the knowledge often runs against the grain o f common belief and thus requires special justification. The classroom, with all its limitations, is a reasonably good environment for mastering the technical and legitimating the new and strange.

The School and Global Dynamics

But let's begin to talk in more concrete terms. W hat exactly might the schools teach about global dynamics? The answer proposed here is very selective, with the criterion o f selection being: Does the particular learning contribute to an understanding o f global change? Because the control o f change is the central problem o f our era. There are changes we desire and seem unable to attain. And there are changes we wish to constrain and, as yet, cannot. There is also another kind o f change— in spite o f our difficulties we are growing in our capacities to detect and manipulate change. A global perspective that fails to comprehend both the problems o f change and the promise o f improved control will not be worthy o f the name.

Three categories o f learning about change suggest themselves:

I. Basic Principles o f Change in Social Systems - the ramifications o f new elements in social systems— unanticipated consequences - overt and covert functions o f elements - feedback, positive and negative

II. Growth as a Form o f Change - desired growth in the form o f economic development - undesired growth in the form o f exponential increase in population, resource depletion, etc.

III. Global Planning - national interests and global planning attempts to model the world system as related to national policy formulation

Principles o f Change

As stated, these are dry bones. So let's put some flesh on them, beginning with the

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question o f how students might learn some basic principles o f change. One o f the most important and illuminating principles is that

things ramify

Suppose there is a pond. In the pond and around it live several hundred species o f animals and plants. One day a new species is introduced to the pond o f habitat. W hat will happen? The innocent view is that you have simply added something. You had several hundred species; now you have one more. By contrast, the educated view is that the introduction o f a new species to the pond system may bring profound changes. The population o f some species may dwindle, others explode; some may perish altogether. The new species may have such effects because it disturbs complex relationships that had achieved some degree o f equilibrium. The new element sends shock waves through the entire system because the habitants o f the pond environment are bound up with one another; w herever and however the new element enters the life o f the pond, the effects will ramify through the system.

Social systems operate in equivalent ways. Consider the case o f the Papago Indians o f Southern Arizona. Around the turn o f the century Indian agents began to provide the Papago with farm wagons. Until that time, the primary means o f transporting goods had been the horse, used as a pack animal.

Papagos had their own methods o f packing. They made saddles o f two cylindrical bundles o f w heat straw or grass tied together w ith leather thongs and sung so that one rested on each side o f the horse's back. Goods to be transported were put in panniers, made o f fiber or rawhide nets, which where slung over the strawpack saddles...

The Indians customarily changed their residence with the season. During the w inter months they lived in the mountains, where there were permanent supplies o f water in the form o f springs. In the summer they moved down into the valleys to plant and harvest crops o f corn, beans, and wheat. The w inter and summer villages were from 6 to 8 or 15 to 20 miles apart.

Trading expeditions were frequently organized by the Papagos for the purpose o f obtaining seeds to p la n t. . . Buckskin, grass rope, large baskets, and pottery ollas were the usual trade goods. Papago trades sometimes went as far as 250 miles on such expeditions— reaching Bisbee, Arizona, and Hernmosillo, Sonora.

Papago villages were small, rarely consisting o f more than a hundred people, and were organized as landusing, political units, laying claim to some permanent water supply in the mountains and to an area o f arable fields in the valley. Usually a charco, a large dirtbanked reservoir, held the domestic w ater supply for a field village during the summer months . . .

Hardly any surplus was produced in the desert villages, and there was no full- time specialization o f labor. All the men, including even the curing and diagnosing shamans, worked in the fields. They took care o f the horses and managed their packing, and most men could engage in the simple crafts o f leather and woodworking. Women, besides cooking and performing other household duties, were part-time specialists in pottery- making and basketry. The older boys and girls gathered wood from round about the

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village, armload by armload, and also carried the w ater in ollas from the charcos or springs to the houses.10

Then came the wagon, which was welcomed by the Papago even as it began to transform their lives. The w agon was a thing o f iron and wood. Keeping it in repair required ironworking, so a new skill and a new role for males developed, that o f blacksmith. On the other hand, the skills o f making panniers and pack saddles fell into neglect since packing goods on individual horses was no longer necessary.

The wagon made it possible to haul w ater from the reservoirs to the households in large metal barrels, which gradually replaced the clay ollas. The female craft o f making ollas became much less important and the women devoted less time to it.

The wagon was also a convenient means o f hauling firewood. The men began to cut wood in large quantities, replacing the random gathering o f women and children. Some o f the wood was sold in nearby towns and this stimulated interest in the possibility o f selling surplus com and wheat to townspeople. Thus the Papago began to move more actively into the cash economy o f the area. Although contact with local towns increased, trading contact with Mexicans decreased in terms o f numbers o f Papago males involved. One or two men on the wagon could make the trading expedition in place o f the much larger num ber o f men and horses previously required.

And the wagon had an effect on community solidarity.

Acceptance o f the wagon as a resource o f the whole village under joint management was surely not a part o f the expectation o f the Indian agent. He probably thought in terms o f individual ownership. W hat happened w as an adjustment to the existing social organization and property concepts o f the Papagos. The village headman brought the wagon into the culture as a unique resource, like the land, the use o f which must be shared This sharing led to the new group activity o f road-building, in accordance with the same pattern as land improvements.11

Things ramify. A new element is introduced. Technologies disappear or decline. The sexual division o f labor changes. N ew skills are learned. Old patterns o f contact with outsiders erode, new patterns emerge. Community activities find a new focus. The effects o f a lowly farm wagon on a packhorse culture.

The Papagos and their wagon seem remote from us now. And not, perhaps, very important. B ut cases like this document the natural behavior o f social systems in useful ways. From such cases students can learn not only that new elements have the power to alter whole systems but that there are inevitably unanticipated consequences. The Papagos wanted the wagon. They had practical tasks clearly in mind. And it served many o f their intentions. B ut it seems unlikely that they intended the destruction o f certain traditional crafts, or a new division o f labor, or increased participation in the region's cash economy. I f they had wished for any o f these effects, it seems ju st as improbable that the wagon would have been chosen as the instrument for bringing them about. And yet, it was the instrument.

Partly because our understanding o f complex social systems is limited, surprise continues to be the rule. Carroll Pursell, a historian who specializes in American technology, puts it this way: there are always more effects than intended. To a considerable extent we have traditionally

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tended to blind ourselves to this fact. W e have dismissed those unintended consequences as "side effects," as if they are o f minor importance. But the "side effects" are often the most important effects. In recent years the ecology movement has perform ed a major job o f consciousness raising in this regard. There are now laws and regulations that require organizations to anticipate and assess the environmental consequences o f their activities. A new level o f consciousness is thus reinforced by government fiat. There are no equivalent pressures to examine other kinds o f impact, but sensitivity is growing. W hat the society is learning is that

there are no "side effects" but there are surprise effects

W hat this rule says is that when you intervene in a social system be prepared for surprising consequences too profound to be dismissed as "side effects."

The extent to which consequences can be both surprising and profound is nicely demonstrated by the case o f bottle-feeding technology. It is an article o f faith in the developed countries that "modem" practices are superior to "traditional" practices, and that if less developed lands will incorporate modem practices the lives o f their peoples will be improved. The bottle- feeding o f infants is a modern practice involving special containers and nipples and commercially marketed "formulas," most o f which must be mixed with water. In recent years bottle-feeding has become a symbol o f modem sophistication in developing countries, although it is beginning to lose its appeal in the countries where it has its origins.

In the U nited States, the breast has been gradually transmogrified from its nutritional role into a cosmetic and sexual symbol so potent that an American woman may no longer nurse her baby in public. The trend is beginning to reverse: over the last decade there has been a grass roots movement to resume breast-feeding, a back-to-nature reaction against unwarranted intrusion o f technology into an intimate aspect o f family life. Ironically, ju st when American mothers are putting babies back to the nipple, women in under-developed countries are imitating in droves the W estern fad for the bottle.12

W hat are the consequences o f bottle-feeding for the people o f developing lands? Economic loss, for one thing.

Twenty years ago, 95 percent o f Chilean mothers breast-fed their children beyond the first year; by 1969, only 6 percent did so, and only 20 percent o f the babies were being nursed for as long as two months. Potential breast milk production in Chile in 1950 was 57,700 tons, o f which all but 2900 tons, or 5 percent, were realized. By 1970, 78,600 tons (or 84 percent) o f 93,200 potential tons were unrealized. The milk o f 32,000 Chilean cows would be required to compensate for that loss.13

Bottle-feeding tends to be an urban phenomenon in developing countries although declines in breast-feeding are also reported in rural areas. Even when calculated only for urban populations the losses are substantial.

An estimated 87 percent o f the world's babies are born in the developing countries,

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about a quarter o f them in urban areas. I f 20 percent o f the estimated 27 million mothers in urban areas do not breast-feed, the loss in breast milk is $365 million. I f h alf o f the other 80 percent do not continue to breast-feed after the first six months, the total loss reaches $780 million. These estimates, however, clearly understate the situation; losses to developing countries more likely are in the billions.14

These figures do not adequately depict the losses in personal terms. The poor cannot afford to buy much o f anything; they especially cannot afford to buy w hat they do not need. A poor woman persuaded that bottle-feeding is superior to breast-feeding is simply being robbed; henceforth she denies her child the superior nutrition she possesses and allocates scarce resources for the purchase o f inferior nutrition.

The child is also being robbed, possibly o f life itself. Formulas must be mixed with water and local w ater supplies are often contaminated. Severe diarrhea is much more common in bottle- fed babies than in those who are breast-fed.

According to a 1970 study in San Salvador, three quarters o f the infants who died from the end o f the first through fifth month had been breast-fed less than thirty days, if at all; o f those who died in the last h alf o f the first year o f life, slightly over h alf had been breast-fed less than a month . . . Deaths o f children from diarrheal diseases (which are usually nutrition related) in Recife, where only 22 percent o f the children were breast-fed at least one month, were nearly three times the rate in Kingston, where the corresponding figure is 73 percent.15

Even when children do not lose their lives they— and their society— may lose a portion o f their human potential. Adequate nutrition is crucial to the full development o f the brain and it is especially important in the early months o f life. As breast-feeding has declined, the average age o f children suffering severe malnutrition has dropped from eighteen months to eight months. M alnutrition at that early age often leaves permanent handicaps.

There is another consequence o f bottle-feeding. N ursing mothers are less likely to become pregnant. In societies where breast-feeding is common, births are spaced more widely. Lactation is a kind o f birth control, and bottle feeding removes this natural constraint.

Economic loss, infant mortality, improper brain development, population growth. Surprising and profound consequences o f a minor technology introduced to the developing peoples o f the world. The commercial food companies intended only to expand their markets and increase their profits. The governmental agencies with their dry milk feeding programs intended only to improve nutrition. But the consequences ramified beyond and in some respects contrary to intentions. That has been the common experience o f those who seek to change even the smallest elements o f social systems.

M uch o f the difficulty in anticipating consequences originates in the failure to discern the complex functions o f system components. Breast-feeding has a very obvious function: to provide nutrition for the infant. But it has taken much research to show that there are special factors in that nutrition which build nutrition for the infant. But it has taken much research to show that there are special factors in that nutrition which build the body's immunity systems and thus guard against disease throughout life. Another hidden function o f breast-feeding, as mentioned above, is

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birth spacing. Thus, there are obvious functions and less obvious, concealed or unknown, functions. W hen we remove a component from a system we are unplugging not only the obvious connections but often inadvertently tearing loose the concealed wiring o f all those other functions. The best— and often the most painful— way to learn all the functions o f a component is to remove it from the system. That, in effect, is what happened when bottle— feeding supplanted breast-feeding in the developing countries. W e now know much more about the complex functions o f breast-feeding.

Sometimes, o f course, the concealed wiring is not very concealed. People know about it, at least intuitively. This is one explanation for resistance to change. People realize that a seemingly small change will turn their world upside down. A classic case o f this is described by Elting M orison in M en , M achines a n d M odern Times. At about the turn o f the century the American naval bureaucracy was resisting the efforts o f a young officer to introduce a new kind o f gunfight pioneered by an English admiral. The new gunfight called for a new system o f gunnery, called continuous-aim firing, and was much more accurate. Using the old system the Navy had fired 9500 shots during the Spanish-American W ar and registered 121 hits. B ut we had won the war, so why change the system? U nder the new system, by contrast,

. . . one naval gunner made fifteen hits in one minute at a target 75 by 25 feet (at a range o f 1600 yards); h alf o f them hit in a bull's-eye 50 inches square.16

Eventually, the young officer won his case but only after the intervention o f President Roosevelt. W hy the resistance? Here is how M orison explains it.

The opposition, where it occurs, o f the soldier and the sailor to such change springs from the normal human instinct to protect oneself, and more especially, one's way o f life. M ilitary organizations are societies built around and upon the prevailing weapons systems. Intuitively and quite correctly the military man feels that a change in weapon portends a change in the arrangements o f his society. In the days when gunnery was taken lightly, the gunnery officer was taken lightly. After 1903, he became one o f the most significant and powerful members o f a ship's company, and this shift o f emphasis naturally was shortly reflected in promotion lists.17

M orison's hypothesis seems eminently reasonable, i.e. it is quite likely that there are times when people intuitively understand the complexity o f their social arrangements and the fragility o f those arrangements. There are surely other times when such understanding is lacking and people single— mindedly pursue narrow goals without anticipating any effect except the achievement o f those goals. In trying to understand change and resistance to change both possibilities must be kept in mind. But perhaps the most useful adjunct to our understanding is the rule that reminds us metaphorically o f the multiple and often hidden functions o f elements in a system:

look fo r the concealed w iring

Suspect, in other words that the obvious function o f the element is not its only function; track down those other functions. The obvious function o f that naval gunfight is to aim a gun. The

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hidden function o f that naval gunfight was to serve as the technological base o f a social hierarchy. Proof? Change the gunfight and watch the hierarchy change.

Let's take stock. Three rules have been proposed:

things ramify there are no "side effects" but there are surprise effects look fo r the concealed w iring

Do these contribute to an understanding o f change in social system? In a small way, perhaps. The first two rules constitute a prescription for caution and humility. They say, "Watch out, consequences can be unexpected and profound." The third rule helps to explain the reasons for that caution and humility— the connections that tie the system together are complex and to some extent hidden from view.

Technological Innovation and Change

But we need to know more. A global perspective appropriate to the times must include not only general principles but insight into particular patterns o f change, those m ost characteristic o f the times. The cases sketched above— the Papago and their innocent acceptance o f the farm wagon, the Navy bureaucrats' resistance to the new gunfight, the destructive effects o f bottle- feeding— are small episodes in a worldwide movement that has been building for several centuries. This movement undergirds w hat m ight be called the technological innovation pattern o f change. There are two elements in this pattern: the generation o f new technology and the diffusion o f technology from one society to another. Since W orld W ar II this has been an especially powerful pattern in the world. The reconstruction o f w ar— deviated lands and the emergence o f proud but poor new nations called forth major programs in technical assistance. The economic redevelopment o f the industrial countries that “lost” the w ar enabled fresh starts and engineering breakthroughs; Japan, for example, jum ped ahead in steel, shipbuilding, and electronics in nuclear weapons, biochemistry, space capabilities, computers. Educational institutions produced increasing numbers o f scientists and engineers to feed the growing demands o f governments and corporations. Billions allocated to R & D (research and development) assured their employment. And other billions were allocated over the years to technical aid, to transfer advanced technology from the “haves” to the “have— nots.”

The rapid pace o f technological development and its diffusion shapes and shakes our lives. But we hardly notice. W e cannot imagine living under other circumstances. Like riders in a racing car our senses are dulled by the roar o f our passage and we do not feel our speed.

Is it possible to become more aware o f this pattern o f world change— the continuing revolution in technology that transcends all ideologies and undermines all traditions? I f so, to what purpose? Will increased awareness bring increased control? That will depend to some extent on the nature o f the awareness. The desirability o f technological innovation has not been questioned until very recently. N ow there is a questioning attitude, with respect to environmental consequences. But there is only slight attention to other kinds o f effects. In general, the benefits o f technological change continue to seem concrete and immediate, the risks tenuous and distant.

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Confidence in technological solutions remains high, particularly in the developed countries. Under these circumstances, gains in awareness will require very focused effort. I would

suggest three targets. First, young people should be sensitized to the global consequences o f technological decisions which seems to be the legitimate responsibility o f the individual, or corporation, or nation. Stratospheric ozone depletion is a case where individual indulgence in a m inor convenience and corporate interests in the sales o f that convenience may be leading to a condition o f global peril. There are similar cases worthy o f study.

Second, students must be encouraged to imagine w hat has hitherto been unimaginable— the abortion o f certain technologies. We need some classroom games and simulations in which the central task is to decide about pulling the plug. Like the psychopathic computer in the film "2001," the machines and their advocates will threaten and m utter as the process o f disconnecting them proceeds. The nuclear energy industry, which is a prime candidate for abortion because o f the totally unresolved problem o f radioactive wastes, can be expected to go down fighting. The readiness to contemplate abortion o f selected technologies will be facilitated by knowledge o f alternatives, some themselves technological, some involving new institutions and values. The "need" for nuclear energy, for example, rests on certain assumptions about the inevitability and sanctity o f economic growth, and the availability o f alternate energy resources. These assumptions are not inviolate; we should be w illing to entertain alternative assumptions.

W hich brings us to the third and m ost important awareness— that our beliefs about the naturalness and the goodness o f technological change are related to our beliefs about the naturalness and goodness o f economic growth. The belief in the desirability o f economic growth comes close to being a universal secular religion. Advanced industrial countries, however wealthy, pray that growth will continue and view temporary interruptions as calamities. The less developed countries pray at the altar, too, hoping to achieve rates o f economic growth that will more than match rates o f population growth. Sophisticated technology and continued advances in sophisticated technology are more widely viewed as the necessary instruments o f this growth. In advanced economies the movement is in the direction o f automatic machinery and the gradual phasing out o f tasks requiring human labor and human thought. In the developing countries the problem o f production is seen in terms o f machines that will amplify human labor, chemicals that will increase the fertility o f land and suppress insect pests, and transportation that will link the hinterland to markets.

It seems unarguable that developing countries should seek and be helped to improve the material conditions o f life and particularly to eliminate the direst kinds o f poverty and suffering. Growth that will provide adequate nutrition, health care, and shelter is not to be despised. That means increases in agricultural productivity at the least, developments in transportation and communication, possibly major efforts to develop and improve industrial production. But improved living standards may also come by improvements in the social arrangements through which people obtain the necessities o f life.

How do you help developing countries grow? The dominant W estern model calls for increased use o f complex machines and the training o f technicians to operate and maintain them. Apply the knowledge o f scientific experts. Use the latest variety o f seeds, even though they require irrigation and heavy application o f chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The main thing is to increase production through efficient use o f all the factors that contribute to output— tools,

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resources, labor, knowledge. The W estern model o f economic growth is strongly oriented by the value o f efficiency and

by the goal o f maximum production. It does not attend, typically, to the problem o f equitable distribution. The ruling assumption is that if productivity rises everyone in the society will benefit, at least to some degree. There is another model o f growth, represented by the ideology o f Mao's China:

The Maoists' disagreement with the capitalist view o f economic development is profound. M aoists believe that while a principal aim o f nations should be to raise the level o f material welfare o f the population, this should be done only within the context o f the development o f human beings, encouraging them to realize fully their manifold creative powers. And it should be done only on a egalitarian basis— that is, on the basis that developm ent is not worth much unless everyone rises together; no one is to be left behind, either economically or culturally. Indeed, M aoists believe that rapid economic developm ent’s not likely to occur unless everyone rises together . . .

W hile they recognize the role played by education and health in the production process, their emphasis is heavily placed on the transformation o f ideas, the making o f the communist man . . . The M aoists believe that economic development can best be promoted by breaking down specialization, by dismantling bureaucracies, and by undermining the other centralizing and divisive tendencies that give rise to experts, technicians, authorities and bureaucrats . . . M aoists seem perfectly w illing to pursue the goal o f transforming man even though it is temporarily at the expense o f some economic growth. Indeed, it is clear that M aoists will not accept economic development, however rapid, if it is based on the capitalist principles o f sharp division o f labor and sharp (meaning unsavory or selfish) practices . . .

W hile capitalism, in their view, strives one-sidedly for efficiency in producing goods, Maoism, while also seeking some high degree efficiency, at the same time and numerous w ays builds on the worst; experts are pushed aside in favor o f decision-making by the masses; new industries are established in rural areas . . . expertise (and hence work proficiency in a narrow sense) is discouraged; new products are domestically produced rather than being imported— more efficiently"; the growth o f cities as centers o f industrial and cultural life is discouraged . . .

O f course, M aoists build on “the worst” not because they take great delight in lowering economic efficiency; rather their stated aims are to involve everyone in the development process, to pursue development without leaving a single person behind, to achieve a balanced growth rather than a lopsided one . . . 18

The W estern model o f growth has significant achievements to its credit, but does not always travel well when applied to the problems o f the less developed countries. It creates new scientific and technical elites in countries which may be frantic to lay aside a societal structure controlled by elites. It fosters new dependencies, not the least o f which is a dependency on fossil fuels. And it is based on an ethic o f individual striving and achievement that often runs counter to the mode o f groups which treasure cooperative social activities and goals. M ost important is the primacy o f growth itself—the ultimate goal is an unceasing expansion in the production o f goods and services. In the service o f that goal technological progress is viewed as an unblemished asset.

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The M aoist model subordinate growth to other considerations: equitable distribution o f material benefits, collective participation, the denial o f legitimacy as well as opportunity for self­ striving, localism, and inventiveness by non experts. Nonetheless, growth is important there also, and has been achieved. The M aoist model may travel no better than the W estern model but on the home grounds there seems to have been substantial success. China is still "underdeveloped" with a per capita GNP o f perhaps $160 but:

The basic, overriding economic fact about China is that for twenty years she has fed, clothed and housed everyone, has kept them healthy, and has educated most. M illions have not starved; sidewalks and streets have not been covered with multitudes o f sleeping, begging, hungry, and illiterate human beings; millions are not disease-ridden. To find such deplorable conditions, one does not look to China these days but, rather, to India, Pakistan, and almost anywhere else in the underdeveloped w orld.19

China's contrast with other sectors o f the less developed world is striking, but the contrast with the values and strategies o f the W estern industrial world is no less striking. For those seeking cross— cultural perspective on growth and development Mao's China offers a superb curriculum.

Let me stop for a moment to review. The dimension under discussion is that o f global dynamics, with an emphasis on principles, patterns, and mechanisms o f change. A few cautionary principles o f systems change were illustrated. Then I argued that an understanding o f global change required not only the guidance o f principles but awareness o f certain dominant patterns o f change in the real world. One such major pattern was technological innovation. I suggested that consciousness o f that pattern required, among other things, a recognition o f the link between ideas about technology and ideas about growth. The almost universal commitment to growth was noted, as was the existence o f a m ajor society— China— now practicing a form o f development in which growth, while important, is subordinated to other values.

W hat I have not yet said, at least directly, is that growth itself is perhaps the most significant change in the contemporary world. It manifests itself in the form o f increases in the absolute numbers o f human beings, in the size o f political units, in the productivity o f goods and services, in the intensity o f interactions among human groups. These forms o f growth depend on other forms o f growth increases in the consumption o f resources, in the extension and grip o f political authority, in the organizational m anagement o f people and things. And they spawn yet another form o f growth— increases in the waste products o f human activity, thermal pollution o f the atmosphere, chemical pollution o f air, land, and water.

Growth, them, has two faces. There is the smiling face that promises improvements in material welfare. And there is a tragic face that we have preferred not to see. Some who have recently dared to look upon it say that it too holds a promise. The promise that growth in the human population, growth in the consumption o f resources, growth in pollution, cannot continue for very much longer. The limits have almost been reached.

That diagnosis or warning has been circulating or some time. Harrison Brown worried about it in The Challenge o f M an's Future in the 1950s. A more dramatic form came several years ago with the publication o f The Lim its to Growth. This was the report o f a research team at the M assachusetts Institute o f Technology sponsored by the Club o f Rome. Using a great deal o f data, and positing specific quantitative relationships among factors, the team projected

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productivity, population, resource, and pollution figures into the next century. The graphs spewed out by the computer were shocking. Several important mineral resources were on the verge o f exhaustion; in practical terms, for example, zinc and tin ore might be unavailable within twenty years, and petroleum would last only another half century. There w ere other supply problems. Arable land is a finite resource. At present rates o f productivity, agriculture can support perhaps eight billion people. The world could have that many people shortly after the turn o f the century. Increase productivity? O.K. But i f population growth rates continue, that only delays the day of reckoning for a few decades. By the middle o f the 21st century the human race would have banged its head against a hard and final w all— no further increases in food possible from agriculture as we know it.

Lim its scared people and they sought reassurance. It was available, abundant, and free. But events and new studies tend to bear out some o f the grim forecasts o f the Lim its analysis. A very recent study by M esarovic and P estel20 looks at the future o f the world system region by region. Various scenarios, testing the effects o f different policies, were played out on the computer. The results for one region— South Asia— were especially tragic unless population growth could be quickly halted and unless the region could be given massive help in industrializing its regional economy. Since these two conditions are not likely to be met, the tragic scenario will probably be played out— with real actors.

I have suggested that a global perspective should include some understanding o f change, and that growth may be the dominant form o f change in the contemporary world. That sounds academic and not particularly important. W hat the Lim its and M esarovic-Pestel studies assert, however, is that growth is o f critical importance. The central message o f these studies is awesome. It goes something like this: Before very long the w o rld system is going to break down. That doesn't mean total catastrophe but it does mean that the system w ill suffer some terrible shocks. The reason f o r tile impending breakdown is that population, resource consumption, an d pollution are grow ing exponentially. Since the w orld population is already large, since many nonrenewable resources are alm ost used up, since the environment's capacity to absorb pollutants is already strained, such growth cannot be considered benign. Exponential growth is treacherously rapid a n d w ill bring us to the earth's fin ite limits— a n d thus to a condition o f severe stress— within a fe w generations.

Schools and the Issue o f Growth

This is an important message. It may not be entirely accurate in its analysis, but as a warning o f probable danger it deserves wide dissemination. By all agencies, including the schools. The young as well as the rest o f us need to be apprised o f the situation.

My impression at the moment is that issues o f growth are not commonly found in the schools’ curricula. This is not too surprising. There needs to be a context, a persistent context. Not ju st the occasional spasm o f interest in this problem and that. And there needs to be some consensus in influential quarters that growth can be thought about, questioned, planned in other words, this is an issue open to rational thought and thus a proper subject for inquiry in those o f our institutions that teach and subscribe to reason. The problem o f a context will be solved if teaching for a global perspective begins to play a larger part in the orientation o f curricula - and there are other possible contexts if that does not occur. The problem o f legitimacy is, I think, on

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the way to being solved by events and by the convergence o f several broadly based social movements. The environmental and countercultural movements o f the late sixties and early seventies hammered away at the values that undergird the cult o f growth. Energy politics in the last few years has shaken the serenity o f true believers previously untouched by the protest movements. The movements forced people to look at subtle costs o f growth hitherto ignored. The rise in the price o f oil forced even the hardiest capitalist to think twice about the conventional costs. So awareness has to some extent already been raised, doubts have been uttered, and it no longer requires bravado or ideological intemperance to think about growth. The underlying commitment o f the society (ours and most others) to growth will doubtless continue, perhaps even be reinforced by the shock o f apostasy, but agnostics are not in any danger o f becoming outcasts.

But can the schools manage the issues? At the outset I suggested the need for modest expectations, for "attainability." Assuming that it is increasingly respectable to discuss the problematic aspects o f growth in precollege classrooms, is it intellectually practical to do so? The answer, I'm afraid, is a rather subdued affirmative. Affirmative because the important forms o f growth in the world today, and the mechanisms which feed them, are not too difficult to understand. Subdued because the issues are intricate.

Exponential increase is the crucial aspect o f growth that m ust be grasped. Positive feedback (when dominant over negative feedback) is the mechanism that energizes it. Feedback simply refers to a situation in which the “ effect” o f some event loops back and influences the next event. Imagine a city whose streets are clogged with automobile commuters. An expressway is constructed to handle the traffic. The availability o f the new expressway encourages more automobile commuting, which has the effect o f clogging the expressway. So more expressways must be built, which in turn will soon be clogged.

more auto traffic

clogged streets

new expressway

In effect, the more traffic the more highways and the more highways the more traffic. In population, the more people the more births and the more births the more people. That's positive feedback. If automobile commuters were rational, the long delays on the crowded expressways, the increased rate o f accidents, and the hours o f breathing exhaust fumes might prompt the search for alternative transportation. Clogged streets might lead to mass transit and less auto traffic. That's negative feedback. Sometimes positive and negative feedback are in rough balance. When

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they are not, when positive feedback is stronger than negative feedback, high rates o f exponential growth can result. In the case o f world population, birth rates have remained high in many regions while death rates (negative feedback) have declined, producing a net growth o f 2% each year. That's 2% o f a growing population so each year the world adds more people than it added the year before. Thus exponential growth: a constant rate o f growth applied to a growing amount.

Year Population Number Added (at 2% growth)

1975 4000 million 1976 4080 million 80 million 1977 4161.6 81.6 1978 4244.8 " 83.2 1979 4329.7 " 84.9 1980 4416.3 86.6

I f the world added 80 million people each year that would be linear growth; if you graph it you end up with a straight line. B ut the world is not adding the same number o f people each year; it is adding the same percentage (in this case 2%) o f a growing total. Graph that and you end up with a steepening curve, the signature o f dramatic and possibly catastrophic growth.

The dynamics o f feedback and the characteristics o f exponential growth are not beyond the reach o f young students. Once grasped, they set the stage for at least a beginning comprehension o f issues related to growth. The basic issue, and the most profoundly heretical, resides in the simple question "Is growth desirable?" That question can be applied to hundreds o f specific instances, from plans to increase the agricultural productivity o f South Asia to the housing policies o f local communities in the U.S. It is not, o f course, a simple question at all. N ot too long ago it was. The answer was always "Of course!" Should community X permit real estate developers to build thousands o f new houses on the edges o f the city each year? O f course! Why? Well, partly because some people still live in substandard housing, but mostly because a lot o f people who live reasonably well w ant to live even better. But what if the additional housing overloads the w ater and w aste-disposal systems? That could be a problem, but we have to think about the local economy, too. I f we don't keep building, a lot o f carpenters, roofers, electricians, and other craftsmen won't be able to buy the things and services that keep the rest o f us at work, and you know where that leads. So even if continued growth brings problems we don't dare stop, do we? N ow you're getting it!

Questioning the desirability o f growth forces all kinds o f subterranean assumptions to the surface. That can be unsettling— like picking one's way through a philosophical minefield. Those bumps on the ground are value choices you never thought about before. Touch one and it may remove your equanimity for some time to come.

Is it realistic to imagine that precollege students can safely and usefully trod such difficult terrain? Usefully, yes, in a minor sort o f way. Simulations can give students practice in the

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emergent arts and techniques o f growth assessment.21 Such simulations, o f course, offer the merest shadow o f actual experience, but they anticipate and legitimate a world where growth is increasingly subject to critical evaluation and less the outcome o f cultural momentum. Safely? If that means w ithout stress, no. W e are in the process o f transiting from one psychic order to another psychic order: W e are beginning to see things that we never saw before, to know things that we never knew before, to doubt things that we never doubted before. It isn't comfortable. W e are changing and it hurts.

Dimension 5

A wareness o f H um an Choices

some awareness o f the problem s o f choice confronting individuals, nations, a nd the human species as consciousness a n d knowledge o f the global system expands

Imagine a land o f permanent dusk, a rough terrain through which winds a darkly gleaming river. Here and there across the landscape and along the river campfires glow. Around each fare a cluster o f people, huddled against the dark, preoccupied with its own affairs. From time to time, there are forays into the area away from the light o f the campfires and sometimes a b rief contact with other groups. N ot always a very rewarding contact. Each group has developed distinctive ways o f living, ways that seem appropriate and natural to its members, bizarre and threatening to outsiders. But the dark separates and allows each group to cultivate its own mysteries and what it sees as its own territory, the area illuminated by the flickering light o f its own campfire. And in the dark the downstream group does not know that the upstream group abides by the same river. Or even that it is a river and not a sea.

But now imagine (bear with me!) that the long night begins to end. The campfires which had once been the center o f each group's existence now seem pale and the whole landscape is etched by brightness and shadow. The people stand amazed and trembling, their previous perceptions and understandings and myths washed away by the glare. The hills, each o f which in the dark had been experienced singly, are now seen to be connected, forming a chain. Each group along the river sees for the first time that other groups share the same flowing waters. There are patterns to be seen— valleys and forests and a network o f trails, a yellow and dusty embroidery o f meadows vividly green. Outcroppings o f rock that in the dark had seemed mysterious and ominous are shorn o f their personalities and reduced to the ordinary. And other peoples that in the dark had seemed mysterious and sometimes ominous now look only awkward and a bit unsure.

This is fantasy— but it is also a fair depiction o f the situation in which human species now finds itself. Flooded by new knowledge o f how social and physical systems w ork and interact on the global stage, sensing trends and patterns never sensed before, newly able to see into the distance o f time and imagine the future consequences o f present actions. In the glare o f new understandings, the old centers o f our existence grow pale and old habits lose their authority. So we stand awkward and unsure, troubled by the need to resolve strange new questions, lacking

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confidence that the ethical principles o f the past apply.

Pre-global to Global: A Transition

Throughout this paper I have talked o f changes in awareness. Awareness o f our own cultural perspective, awareness o f how other peoples view the world, awareness o f global dynamics and patterns o f change. In this final section I wish to emphasize that such heightened awareness, desirable as it is, brings with it problems o f choice. As an instance, in a "pre­ awareness" stage the undoubted benefits o f pesticides in agriculture, forestry, and the control o f diseases such as malaria provide clear justification for prolific application.

But then information about the dangers o f pesticides begins to accumulate. DDT is found in the tissues o f organisms far removed from the points o f application. Some species are threatened with extinction. Risks not only to present human populations but to future generations are identified. In some countries the use o f certain pesticides is halted altogether. A change o f awareness has occurred and new behaviors have resulted. In some parts o f the world.

W here is the problem o f choice? It lies in the fact that pesticides like DDT are still in use. Widely. Hundreds o f millions o f people depend on DDT to control malaria and agricultural pests. Ask someone in the developed countries if DDT is still in use and he will likely say no, answering in terms o f his own country's practices. But pose the question on a w orld basis and the answer is yes. Viewed as a collectivity, the human species continues to use DDT.

This continued use constitutes a de facto human choice. In a conflict between the rights o f living population to control obvious and immediate threats to health and the rights o f other living and future populations to freedom from subtle and long-term threats to health and subsistence, the former wins out. The immediate and the obvious triumph over the long-term and subtle. But although the choice seems to have been the problem o f choice remains. There is a new cognition in the world. W e now know that there are long-term and subtle risks. Once we did not. W e now admit that other peoples and future generations have rights. Once we did not. That new knowledge has not had the power to halt the use o f DDT where life and health are under severe threat, but it has had the effect o f blocking its use in many other parts o f the world. To put is simply, there are now two possible behaviors with respect to DDT:

- if it will solve a problem, use it - even i f it will solve a problem, don't use it

The second o f these behaviors originates in the new cognition, the new awareness o f risks and rights.

The DDT situation is simply an instance, a small manifestation o f the major cognitive revolution that is now underway. But it is a representative one. M any practices once essentially automatic, whose benefits were assumed, are now questioned. They are questioned because we know new things. W e know how to measure minute quantities. W e know that factors interconnect in complex ways. W e know that there are limits to the resources and carrying capacity o f the planet. In the context o f the new cognition, action does not proceed automatically. Calculations o f advantages and disadvantages become explicit and detailed. Choosing a course o f behavior becomes a more reasoned process. That shift— from the automatic to the calculated— is a very

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important expression o f the cognitive revolution we are now experiencing. Let me expand on the concept or cognitive revolution, particularly as represented in the

writings o f the economist Robert Solo. Solo developed the concept o f "cognitive revolution" in his book Economic Organizations a n d Social Systems. In that book he analyzed and compared stages o f economic development in terms o f what people could question and think about.

Those values, conceptions, relationships, and forms o f functional organization which, for a society, are set beyond the pale o f critical evaluation or reasoned change are called here traditional. Those that are considered open to critical evaluation and are systematically challenged and changed will be term ed r a tio n a l. . . For every society there is a zone o f the rational and a zone o f the traditional. W hat is contained in the zone o f the rational vis a vis the zone o f the traditional is o f fundamental importance in determining the capacity o f a society for economic development.

. . . most Americans consider any machine or mechanism, any technique or process o f production, or any business organization to be properly subject to critical evaluation, to reasoned study, to purposeful change. In the light o f this rational cognition o f mechanism, o f technical process, and o f business organization, Americans have developed the ways and means o f subjecting these to systematic analysis, evaluation and change. For some other societies, and particularly the— developing— ones, the cognition o f mechanism, or process, and o f business organization fall within the zone o f the traditional. They are . . . outside the scope o f systematic challenge or change.22

Solo goes on to examine three stages o f historical economic development in these terms. In the craft economy, individual activities, various technical processes, and the relationships among economic actors all fa within the traditional. The craft economy “ . . . manages itself, following its beaten paths, moving by an ancient clockwork that has been driven into the instincts o f the individual and into the habits o f the group.”23

The shop economy was ushered in by the Industrial Revolution.

The Industrial Revolution was part o f a general assault on the traditional society by the individual in the rational pursuit o f his self-in terest. . . each was on his own, out for himself, free within the scope o f his personal powers to inquire, to manipulate, to change the world for the sake o f personal advantage . . . Each operation, and consequently the whole economy, was driven by the open-ended desire" o f the single individual for more for himself, more to consume, more to possess, more to display, more as a mark o f worth and succeed. The "craft economy" o f artisan and peasant became the "shop economy" o f the technician-inventor and the free-wheeling entrepreneur . . . The watchwords in the shop economy were not authority but efficiency, not continuity but progress, not status but succeeds . . . The ancient rhythms o f the crafts were stop-watched, manipulated, speeded, divided into parts, analyzed, redesigned . . . 24

Rationally, however, stopped at the shop door.

All that went on within his factory or shop was submitted to the critical inquiry

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and creative imagination o f the owner-entrepreneur. But what o f the interaction o f his ship with all the myriad o f others? . . . These interactions were not brought within the zone o f the rational. W hat occurred in the market vortex was subjected to critical analysis or reasoned, deliberated change.25

Then came the Organizational Revolution.

Another fundamental change in the scope o f the rational cognition is now occurring. In the name o f economic planning, or o f political direction, or through the development o f autonomous corporations that encompass a vast number o f complex activities, the rational cognition is being extended beyond the scope o f individual supervision and o f private self-interest. Virtually all economic relationships are being opened to inquiry, to analysis, and to the possibility o f control and systematic change . . . this extension o f the rational cognition is coming about in many ways and has been expressed in a variety o f functional organizations. In Russia and China it is being engineered from the top downward with the rationality introduced first in the control o f general relationships and in reference to collective goals. In the United States and W estern Europe, emerging out o f the rationality o f small entities, it is occurring in the corollary growth o f the large corporation and the extension o f political responsibility.26

In the craft economy both individual economic activities and the relations among individuals are customary, habitual, unquestioned. The Industrial Revolution and its shop economy open individual economic activities to critical evaluation in order to maximize individual gain, but economic interactions (the market) remain unquestioned and unplanned. The organizational economy is marked by the application o f reason to both individual economic activities and interactions.

With apologies to Solo for the simplification o f the differences between craft, shop, and organizational economies might be charted as follows:

Traditional Rational

Craft individual behavior social interactions

individual behavior

Shop social interactions individual behavior

Organizational individual behavior social interactions

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Global Awareness and Systems Interaction

The clear trend in this sequence o f economic modes is from tradition to reason, from the habitual to the questioned and calculated. That same trend, I believe, can be discerned in the cognitive revolution that underlies the emergence o f a global perspective. The new cognition, the global cognition, is characterized by new knowledge and a more deliberate use o f it. The differences between the pre-global cognition and the global cognition can be displayed in a chart similar to the previous one.

Traditional (either unseen or unquestioned)

Rational (subject to critical evaluation)

long-term consequences linkages between events,

Pre-global social goals and values effects Cognition on other societies primacy o f

national interests

short-term consequences (for one’s own group— family, company, country)

methods and techniques for maximizing benefits for one’s own group

Global Cognition

long-term consequences linkages between events, social goals and values effects on other societies the relationship o f national interests to human interests methods and techniques for maximizing human welfare

This chart, too, is an outrageous simplification but in shorthand it says something like the following. In the pre-global stage, rational consideration o f goals, methods, and consequences tends to be limited to the near— the near in time and the near in social identity. The preoccupation with the short— term and the neglect o f the long-term has been particularly characteristic o f W estern industrial societies. Engineering prowess, economic production, and developments in scientific knowledge gave them a strong sense o f competence in coping with any problems that might arise. With the evidence o f their success (self-defined) accumulating around then, attention to fu tu re problems seemed a meaningless exercise. American culture has taken the tendency a step further, displaying an almost phobic reaction to long-term thinking and planning. Planners were un-American, dangerous radicals trying to upset the natural balance achieved by the unplanned interplay o f private interests. In very recent years a new tolerance for longer-range planning has emerged as an adaptive response to energy deficits, but the old habits o f mind remain strong, reinforced by such mechanisms as year-to-year governmental budgets. The most systematic approach to planning is probably to be found in the Defense Department. Even here,

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though, the planning is for contingencies. The future is conceived as an array o f possible situations, with some attempt to assign probabilities. Plans are drawn so that when a situation arises the response can be quick and appropriate. Such plans can be extraordinarily sophisticated, but analysis o f the long-term consequences o f each possible alternative response, and the costs to populations other than one's own, tend to fall outside the boundaries o f the calculations, or at least outside the realm o f things deemed important. Even costs to one's own population are portrayed in a technical jargon that discounts their importance and meaning. Rem ember megadeaths?

Pre-global cognition is characterized not only by a constricted view o f the future but by a relatively simple theory o f linkages between events, a linear theory in which some things are causes and other things are effects. This theory leads in its most exaggerated and magical form to the conclusion that conditions are the result o f single causes, sometimes personified. To primitive societies this is the basis o f witchcraft and ghost beliefs. In a sophisticated society like our own we have the recent example o f two presidents who employed the C.I.A. to locate the sinister foreign influence that m ust surely have been the root cause o f the antiwar movement.

In the pre-global stage social goals and values are not, as the chart seems to say, entirely unquestioned. But the tendency is in that direction. In 19th century America, developing the wilderness was an essentially unquestioned social goal and human dominance over nature an essentially unquestioned value. In the 1970s developing domestic energy resources is a largely unquestioned social goal and economic growth a largely unquestioned value.

The pursuit o f goals (as noted earlier) almost inevitably has consequences that range far beyond those intended. When energetic collectivities like nations pursue goals, the consequences for other nations can be massive. It is typical o f the pre-global state that such effects on other societies have little standing. M aximization o f national self-interest is paramount and since the connections between "external" and "internal" conditions are dimly perceived and poorly understood, practices and policies that have destructive effects beyond the national borders can be followed without recognition o f the self- destructive implications. Further, since the protection o f national interests is an expansive enough concept to include suicidal displays o f pride and determination, the scale o f destruction visited on others can be awesome. For the last 25 years it has been possible for R ussia and the U.S. to contemplate seriously the use o f weapons that would devastate not ju st the two countries but the planet, for generations to come. That kind o f nonchalance about effects on others epitomizes the pre-global cognition.

Global Awareness and Human Problems The emergent global cognition contrasts sharply with the pre-global. Long-term

consequences begin to be considered. Linkages between events are seen in the more complex light o f systems theory. Social goals and values are made explicit and vulnerable to challenge. And nations begin to note that their interests and activities are not separable from the interests and activities o f others. Further, systematic attention is given to problems that transcend the national, regional, or coalitional. Hum an problems.

A global cognition has certainly not been achieved. Pre-global forms o f knowing continue to orient much o f human behavior. But the transition is underway, driven by the convergent energies o f a variety o f social movements. I f the essence o f the transition is the shift from the unquestioned to the consciously considered, then science must be seen as the most potent o f these

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movements. Demanding exposure o f assumptions, active and systematic collection o f evidence, and a fluid readiness to alter conclusions in the light o f new data, the ethic and procedures o f science pose a profound challenge to other modes o f knowing. The challenge is worldwide. Scientific inquiries have been so manifestly productive that scientific methods are universally employed, permeating almost every aspect o f human activity.

W ithin the main current o f the scientific movement, or closely associated w ith it, are developments in technology that constitute a movement in their own right. There are the measuring and observation instruments that make it possible to detect, monitor, count, and analyze tiny quantities o f chemicals, patterns o f macro-change on the earth's surface, electromagnetic radiation, microscopic structures. These are more than devices for generating the data that leads to pure knowledge. They are tools for monitoring the consequences o f human action. W hether a satellite sensor detecting and oil spill or a gas chromatograph measuring the parts per million o f DDT in animal tissue, such instruments extend the human nervous system a nd thus the probability o f human action based on rational calculations o f effect.

Other technologies and institutions are contributing to the emergence o f a global cognition. The computer plays an important role in world demographic and economic studies and in the systems engineering movement. The latter, which had its early applications in military and corporate planning, uses the computer to work rapidly through the thousands o f equations that posit how and w ith w hat quantitative force various factors in the w orld system relate to one another. Systems engineering and its models o f how the world works can be challenged on many grounds, not the least o f which is that its forecasts may be ju st plain wrong. But accuracy at this point is less important than intention and effort. Studies like The Lim its to Growth represent an altogether new level o f concern with long-term effects, complex linkages o f factors, and the worldwide consequences o f local decisions and actions. Computer technology clearly facilitates this particular approach and the consequent healthy shocks to conventional wisdom inherent in its "counterintuitive" results.

I don't wish to exaggerate the influence o f science and technology on the development o f a global cognition. Other forces are at work, even a few aimed directly at the target. But the unaimed, the inadvertent, are perhaps the more important. This would certainly include anything tending to enrich the vision o f nation-states as they pursue their "interests." Even the much maligned multinationals might contribute to such an enriched vision. Corporate managers with far-flung interests may take a longer, more complex view in some instances than political leaders. Their perspectives are not channeled by popular attitudes; their interests are not served by the success o f anyone nation. The multinationals as organizations are creators and beneficiaries and necessarily guardians o f what is fashionably called interdependence.

The popularity o f that term — interdependence, testifies in itself to the reality o f the m ovement toward a global cognition. I have been troubled at times by the facile use o f the term, believing that it was a technical concept and meant to be used with technical precision. If interdependence meant mutual dependence did that extend to asymmetrical relationships? For example, w hat about trade between the economically w eak and the economically strong, where in one sense each needed the other but possessed decidedly unequal bargaining powers? Or what about the mutual dependence o f antagonists, e.g., military establishments? External threats are the primary nutrients o f military organizations; with a high enough level o f threat they grow and

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careers flourish. They depend for those threats not on their friends but on their enemies. Surely that is a kind o f interdependence.

All o f the complaining was nonsense on my part. It took a while but it finally hit me. Interdependence w as not a technical term at all. It was a code word Social movements need their code words and o f course they use them a bit crudely. But the core message was there. The word was a distilled argument, a challenge to the conceit o f autonomous power and privilege, a call for recognition o f connections and consequences and vulnerabilities that the old cognition did not admit. And, like other code words, it was a badge o f identity. To speak o f interdependence was to belong to those who knew how the world really works.

Let us consider. Proposition one: we are in a period o f transition, moving from a pre- global to a global cognition. Proposition two: global cognition is characterized by new knowledge o f system interactions, by new knowledge o f long-range and wide-range effects, and by a more conscious use o f such knowledge in planning human action. Proposition three: as such knowledge and its rational use expands, human choices expand. Proposition four: an awareness o f this expanded range o f choice constitutes an important dimension o f a global perspective.

Awareness and Alternative Choice

Concretely, what might such awareness involve? It might involve knowing o f proposed alternatives to continued economic growth, as in the so-called steady state world or equilibrium society. It might involve knowing o f alternatives to national policies o f humanitarian aid and technical assistance, as in proposals for concerted efforts by the developed nations to build not only the agricultural and industrial capacities o f developing regions but a more coordinated global economy in which emergency needs for food aid would be much reduced and in which necessary food imports could be paid for by regionally specialized industrial capacities o f developing regions but a more coordinated global economy in which emergency needs for food aid would be much reduced and in which necessary food imports could be paid for by regionally specialized industrial exports. Or, in some contrast to the high technology on which the latter proposals depend, it might entail knowing o f the small-scale, self-sufficient food and energy systems being devised by John Todd and the N ew A lchemists group at W oods Hole27 or some exposure to E.F. Schumacher's ideas about "intermediate technology."28 It might consist merely in recognizing that the energy deficit used to justify development o f such dangerous technologies as the fast breeder reactor is the product o f a particularly gluttonous way o f life, and that changing our habits may be a reasonable alternative to risking our habitat.

W orld Hunger: A Case Study or Alternative Choices

As a way o f exploring in more detail what an increased awareness o f choices might mean, consider the problem o f hunger and malnutrition in some areas o f the developing world. Prevailing practices call for donations o f food to meet emergency situations and technical assistance to increase local productivity, both allocated largely at the discretion o f individual governments. M otives tend to be mixed, political aims clearly interwoven with humanitarianism. The W est sees fragile economies as susceptible to infection from the left and seeks to strengthen

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their resistance. The collectivist countries use aid to build political debt and opportunity, looking toward eventual restructuring o f the total society. The competitors, however, share this: they meet their own cultural/ideological expectations and serve their own political interests through the actions they undertake. The primacy o f those expectations and interests is never in doubt.

The prevailing practices, at least at current levels, are not doing the job. The secretary- general o f the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization noted in a recent speech that the goal o f self-sufficiency in food within a decade could not be met and that "the most urgent need . . . in the immediate years ahead will be for a radical increase in food aid on a guaranteed basis."29 The 1974 W orld Food Conference suggested that the developing countries w ork toward an annual increase o f agricultural production o f 3.6 percent, a rate o f increase that, unlike the current 1.6 percent, would outrun population growth. In his appraisal the FAD official said, "To speak frankly, it is clear that such a transformation cannot be brought about w ithin the next ten years."

Conventional Answer

The conventional assessment o f the situation, then, goes something like this. Hundreds o f millions o f people lack adequate food. They should be helped. Help consists o f direct food transfer, technical assistance, and investment. Such help has averted immediate calamities, there have been breakthroughs in agricultural productivity, but there are not guarantees o f long-term assistance, and investment commitments are insufficient. Furthermore, the recipients seem unable to achieve some o f the changes in their societies, e.g. land reform and income redistribution, which might facilitate economic development and gradually eliminate the need for outside assistance. So the problem o f hunger in the world remains unsolved.

One conventional answer (at least in the W est) to the stubbornness o f the problem is to increase the level o f assistance. This is essentially w hat the FAO official was proposing. More direct food aid, more technical assistance, more investment in agricultural production by both the developing and the developed countries. (Population control has been a standard component o f the conventional answer but this has become an increasingly delicate subject, with much suspicion o f W estern motives.)

Increases in assistance are not everywhere accepted as the answer, but some level o f aid is assumed. A June 1975 item in the New York Times noted that "the European Common Market governments refused early today to increase their contributions o f grain to needy countries."30

Debate centers not on whether these should be aid but on how much, o f what type, where allocated, for what reasons, and with what probable results. These are questions discussed by national and regional policymakers, and the answers reflect national and regional priorities and concerns.

The discussion, o f course, is highly technical and the sketch I have given does not do justice to the variety o f ideas or the sophistication o f analyses that play a part in decisions. There have been decades o f concentrated attention to problems o f economic development, thousands o f studies and projects and programs. On the basis o f this w ork by the specialists, however, broad policies are developed and the public acquires a rough sense o f what the alternatives are. It is my impression that until quite recently the public conception o f alternative policies fo r dealing with w o rld hunger reduced the question to "How much a id should my country contribute? ” There are two assumptions in that question. The first is that aid should be given. The second is that

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decisions about aid are properly national (or regional as in the case o f the Common M arket.)

Challenges to Traditional Approaches

Consider, now, some ideas that challenge or bend these assumptions and the traditional approaches to aids. The biggest public splash has been made by the proposal to apply the criteria o f triage to decisions about aid. and by Garrett Hardin's "lifeboat ethics." Triage is a battlefield surgery concept that focuses assistance on those who need help and can be helped. Those who cannot be saved and those w ho will survive w ithout aid receive no attention. Hardin's lifeboat analogue simply proposes that pulling the, drowning into a lifeboat already filled to swamp dooms all; the survival o f some requires letting others go under.

These are public shockers and have been widely denounced as morally reprehensible. Triage says don't assume that every desperate situation can be salvaged; allocate your resources on the basis o f deliberate judgm ents about who can really be helped. Deny the self-gratifications o f charity mindlessly diffused and substitute the more sober rewards that come from concrete improvements in selected situations. Hardin's message is somewhat different. He raises the possibility that the giving o f aid can be dangerous; don't risk the whole human species in order to save part o f it. Triage says be effective. Hardin says be careful. Both deny the easy satisfactions o f the humanitarian impulse and both ignore political criteria.

A message in a similar vein comes from Jay Forrester o f MIT. Forrester's w ork is in computer models o f systems and in recent years he has turned his attention from engineering systems to social systems. His studies have led to the following view o f humanitarian efforts:

Humanitarian concern means help for one's less fortunate fellow man. At times such help is based on a much too simplistic view o f the situation. It is usually aimed at immediate goals. Long-term and short-term goals may be in conflict. When does help in the present lead to increased distress in the future?

Consider an overpopulated country. Its standard o f living is low, food is insufficient, health is poor, and misery abounds. Such a country is especially vulnerable to any natural adversity . . . Droughts bring starvation; but is that due to w eather or to the overpopulation that made sufficient food stocks impossible? The country is operating in the overextended mode where all adversities are resolved by a rise in the death rate.

. . . But suppose that humanitarian impulses lead to massive relief efforts from the outside for each natural disaster. W hat is the long-term result? The people who are saved raise the population still higher. W ith more population the vulnerability o f the country is increased . . . Disasters occur oftener and relief is required more frequently. But relief leads to a net increase in the population, to more people in crisis, to a still greater need for relief, and eventually to a situation that even relief cannot handle.31

In many ways this is not a new argument but in Forrester's case it derives from and is bolstered by a relatively new procedure o f forecasting— the computer modeling o f systems. In a rather famous paper, "The Counterintuitive Behavior o f Social Systems," Forrester details the advantages o f this approach:

It is my basic theme that the human mind is not adapted to interpreting how social systems behave. Our nonlinear feedback systems. In the long history o f human evolution it has not been necessary for man to understand these systems until very recent historical times. Evolutionary processes have not given us the mental skill needed to interpret

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properly the dynamic behavior o f the systems o f which we have now become a p a r t . . . Until recently, there has been no way to estimate the behavior o f social systems

except by contemplation, discussion, argument, and guesswork . . . It is now possible to construct realistic models o f social systems in the laboratory. Such models are simplifications o f the actual social system but can be far more comprehensive than the mental models that we otherwise use as the basis for debating governmental action . . . The mental model is fuzzy. It is incomplete. Furthermore, within one individual a mental model changes with time and even during the flow o f a single conversation . . . Fundamental assumptions differ but are never brought into the open. Goals are

different and are left unstated . . . it is not surprising that consensus leads to laws and programs that fail in their objectives or produce new difficulties greater than those that have been relieved.

For these reasons we stress the importance o f being explicit about assumptions and interrelating them in a computer model . . . But the most important difference between the properly conceived computer model and the mental model is in the ability to determine the dynamic consequences when the assumptions within the model interact with one another. The human m ind is not adapted to sensing correctly the consequences o f a mental m o d e l. . . The inability o f the human mind to use its own mental models is clearly shown when a computer model is constructed to reproduce the assumptions held by a single person . . . Then it usually happens that the system that has been described does not act the way the person anticipated.32

Forrester would argue, then, that solutions to the world food problem should be determined by fashioning a very explicit model o f how the world system works (what affects what), adding pertinent data, and then letting the computer test the consequences o f alternative policies. This, in fact, has been done. M esarovic and Pestel, in their study Mankind at the Turning Point, tested hundreds o f scenarios for South Asia, a region particularly susceptible to food shortages. Their standard scenario assumed that "the historical pattern o f developm ent based on a somewhat optimistic view o f the past and present situation will continue."

W e . . . assume that an equilibrium fertility level will be attained in about fifty years. W e also assume, quite optimistically, that the average use o f fertilizer per hectare in the entire region will surpass the present N orth American level toward the end o f the fifty- year period. At that time south Asia alone will consume more fertilizer than the whole world consumed in 1900. Assuming that the fertilizer is used on every piece o f land under cultivation, the yield per hectare will increase by about 1000 kilograms— approximately the increase that the Green Revolution brought to the best lands in India and Pakistan. Still proceeding optimistically, we assume that all remaining arable land in South Asia is quickly brought under cultivation, and that all technological inputs, such as irrigation systems (which must accompany the fertilizer to produce high-yielding grain), will be available as needed. Finally, we have assumed that no mass starvation takes place. The difference between the food needs o f the region and the food production in the region . . . is assumed to have been made available by other regions.

Our computer analysis, pregnant with optimism, shows clearly that the food crisis in South Asia will worsen. In spite o f all the advancements assumed, the availability o f fertilizer and land assumed, the protein deficit will continuously increase; by the year 2025 it will be up to 50 million tons annually. Such deficits could never be closed by imports; to pay for that quantity o f imports, South Asia would have to spend one third o f its total economic output, and three times what it earns from exports. But even if South Asia had that kind o f money, the physical problems o f handling those quantities o f food would be incredible. In one year the region would then have to import 500 million tons o f grain— twice as much as the total tonnage o f a ll goods now being shipped overseas fro m the United States . . . Moreover, these quantities would have to be delivered every year, in

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ever increasing amounts, without end. In sum, it would be impossible.33

W hat M esarovic and Pestel really expect for South Asia is tragedy. Since the demands o f the standard scenario cannot be met, the problems will be resolved by natural means— a much increased death rate. The only way to avert the tragedy, they say, lies in policies tested in another scenario. These policies include a population control plan that looks to fertility equilibrium in 15 years, a concerted effort by the developed world to build the agricultural and industrial capacities o f the region, and the creation o f a coordinated world economic order.

In the fifth scenario, investment aid is provided to South Asia in sufficient amount and at the time needed to close the food-supply gap and the export-im port imbalance. The magnitude o f such a program will require a concerted effort by the entire Developed World. The export potential o f South Asia would be increased substantially, and the world economic system would have to be modified so that South Asia could pay from exports for most o f its food imports. These exports would have to be industrial, since the regional food demands obviously will absorb the local agricultural output. But to make this scenario feasible, the Developed W orld must help South Asia to develop its own exportable and competitive industrial specialization.

Scenario five— the only way to avert unprecedented disaster in South Asia— requires the emergence o f a new global economic order. Industrial diversification will have to be worldwide and carefully planned with special regard for regional specificity. The most effective use o f labor and capital, and the availability o f resources, will have to be assessed on a global, long-term basis. Such a system cannot be left to the mercy o f narrow national interests, but must rely on long-range world economic arrangements.34

Note the prime condition for saving South Asia. N ot the erratic provision o f aid at the discretion o f individual nations but a massive, concerted program in the context o f a coordinated world economy.

These four view points— triage, lifeboat ethics, Forrester's ideas about humanitarianism, the M esarovic-Pestel conclusions— represent alternatives to conventional responses to the hunger problem. And, in some measure, all display the distinguishing marks o f global cognition. All suggest that customary responses to the needy be set aside and replaced by more deliberate, more effective measures, even though these outrage conventional wisdom or morality or national sensitivities and sovereignties. Simple theories o f cause and effect (the problem is a food deficit; the solution is more food) are set aside in favor o f more complex theories. Assumptions, criteria, and goals are made much more explicit. And the goals themselves change, from simple rescue o f those in immediate distress to consideration o f the survival o f the species. Further, the nation as the main actor in policymaking is challenged in favor o f coordinated global planning.

To know o f these alternative viewpoints is to expand one's repertoire o f choice. To know o f them, also, is to become aware o f problems o f choice, dilemmas that do not present themselves when the vision is more limited. In spite o f the difficulties raised, however, this increased consciousness is surely an important constituent o f a global perspective.

Access to such alternative viewpoints is not especially difficult these days but it is by no means automatic. Efforts must be made and some o f those efforts can take place in the schools. An operationally defined mission for educators might be to increase the number o f solutions that students can propose for a given problem and the quality o f the solutions, as measured by criteria o f global cognition. That would include being sensitive to the likely consequences o f different policies and particularly to the differences between short-term and long-term consequences. After instruction, a student would be able to advance more solutions, including some that rest on nonlinear theories o f social dynamics and that incorporate a concern for peoples and generations other than those that seem to be involved.

Such an increase in awareness is, I think, a fairly modest goal. I am not proposing that students choose among alternatives— only that they know o f them. This in itself is a mildly revolutionary step. It means becoming more conscious, potentially less bound to custom and

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convention. Is such awareness enough? Enough for what? W e are talking here o f a. global perspective, from which other things may flow. Let's say, simply, that such an increase in awareness is a solid and necessary base from which to proceed.

I have discussed five dimensions o f a global perspective. Are there more? I am tempted to be waggish and say no, this is it, the final crystalline truth, but o f course there are more, as many more as anyone cares to invent. And that, o f course, is precisely the case. Such dimensions are inventions, constructs o f the mind. This particular set is ju st one assemblage, a collage o f ideas selected and shaped by one individual's proclivities and prejudices. This is not to say that there are not real changes underway in human consciousness. I am convinced that there are and that they are in the direction o f something that can be called a global perspective. But any particular description o f that phenomenon is properly suspect. Even this one which is, by coincidence, my favorite.

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5. Ibid., p. 253. 6. Ibid., p. 250. 7. W endell H. Oswalt, Understanding Our Culture (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc., 1970), p.

19. 8. Daniel Lerner, The Passing o f Traditional Society (Free Press, 1958), pp. 50, 51. 9. M argoroh Maruyama, “ Toward a Cultural Futurology,” Cultural Futurology Symposium,

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11. Ibid., p. 31. 12. Nicholas Wade, “Bottle-Feeding: Adverse Effects o f a W estern Technology,” Science, April

5, 1974, pp. 45-48. 13. Alan Berg, The Nutrition Factor (Brookings Institution, 1973), p. 90. 14. Ibid., pp. 92, 93. 15. Ibid., pp. 94, 95. 16. Elting E. Morison, Men, M achines a n dM odem Times (M.I.T. Preg, 1966), p. 22. 17. Ibid., pp. 35-37. 18. John W. Gurley, "Maoist Economic Development: The N ew Man in the N ew China,” in

Charles K. Wilber, ed, The Political Econom y o f Developm ent a n d Underdevelopment (Random House, 1973), pp. 308, 312.

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February 28, 1975, pp. 727- 729. 28. E.F. Schumacher, Sm all is Beautiful (Harper & Row, 1973). 29. N ew York Times, June 26, 1975. 30. N ew York Times, June 26, 1975. 31. Jay W. Forrester, “Churches at the Transition Between Growth and W orld Equilibrium ,” in

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33. M esarovic and Pestel, op. cit., p p .121, 122. 34. Ibid., pp. 125, 127.

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