Osiris and the impossible art of multicultural globalisation
 

injecting Mozartian humanity, heart and non-violence into Globalisation Beyond Euro-American Centrism and "Counter-Centrism" Problems of Global Security and Equity in the new Mellenium.
developed from the study entitled LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS FOR AN INTERDEPENDENT INTERACTIVE PLURALISM recreating the forbidden Osirian-Mozartian vision IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY AS A SECURITY AND SURVIVAL NECESSITY FOR ALL

Tarek Ali Hassan, MD.
Professor of Medicine

 CONTENTS
 1. A true interactive pluralism in everybody's interest
    the end of history or an unprecedented window of opportunity?
 2. Can democracy survive in the new world of mass media
 3. representative International bodies?
 4. the very concept of Cold War is it a clear case of double standards?
   A multipronged Marshall plan urgently needed for the Southern victims of the cold War 1945 - 1991
 5. Progress, what is the yardstick for progress?
   5b. what is meant by civilisation and being civilised?
 6. In search for alternatives
   6b. Language as a communication tool and a communication barrier
   6c. The challenge of intra-cultural and cross cultural communication and expression
   6d. can modern war ever be moral? can it be legitimate?
 7. the dream of universal disarmament can it come true?
   Abuse and deprivation of the human biological existence is a biological time bomb
 8. Motivation for taking risks. A greater risk.
 9. The mechanisms of power?
 10. Religion? rebirth of spiritual values, or a continuous divisive force?
 11. The Western judeo-christian model is not the only model and calls for critical self analysis
12. Towards an Interactive pluralistic Global harmony
 BIBLIOGRAPHY


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Is a truly pluralistic world in everybody's interest ?
why ?

If we agree that with the end of the cold war, there has also been an end of history, with a final "victory" of the Western Euro-American orientatin to life, then there is no real meaning to this article or endeavours for dialogue.
The thinkers, philosophers, creators and artists of the world, but not often enough, the politicians, discourse about global dynamics. What dynamics then, if history has ended with the emergence of a unitary club of the powerful and victorious. With the emergence of one victorious culture and mode of economic thought and behavioural pattern able to impose its will whenever and wherever needed, there is no more significant dialogue.
To the end of history proponents, the Euro-American, Judeo-Christian superpower complex emerges victorious in a win/lose world. It has the right then -so it seems- and the power to establish itself forever as the dominant power and as the one and only reference point against which all else is measured. If the "other" is found wanting or deviates then it is automatically culpable and defective. If it does not make the grade then it is ignored if there is no conflict of interest. If there is conflict of interest then the "other" has to submit. History is over. It is all very simple. Thank you very much Fukuyama !
Global Dynamics?
What Global Dynamics then?
It is hopefully not the end of history but an unprecedented opportunity to transcend the win/lose history back to CONTENTS
Contrary to the believers in the inevitable clash of civilisations and the end of history hypothesis there exists alternative and more optimistic scenarios. A sizable body of serious vision and thought considers that we are on the threshold of a very exciting and qualitatively different third millenium. The birth of interactive, interdependent and dynamic pluralism in the twenty first century presupposes that more relevant people all over the world discover that it is not in anyones interest that the Western Block views the curious and complex demise of the Eastern Block as a moment of final victory for the West alone. This final victory-for-the-West concept is too simplistic and is at variance with cummulative data. Where -for example- is the role of the eternal striving of mankind towards justice, equity, non-violence and a win/win pluralistic scheme of global co-operation? How can we birth a safer pluralistic world for all of us if we start off by denying the legitimate role of all participants in the current situation of the human social evolutionary march? A situation that includes the difficult but consistent demise of despotism, dogma and all rigid systems that have failed to integrate at their centre the interactive, pluralistic and dynamic human dimension with the necessary basic modicum of respect for human rights.
The wiser see, what some call the end of history, as a moment of great transitions and of labour pains towards a new world in effect the beginning of history! This new world represents a primordial human evolutionary dream as well as a security and survival necessity. This new world is at the cross roads.
There is the potential that by cummulative awareness and understanding of history we can move nearer to civilisation -becoming civilised*- and to equity and justice than hitherto achieved.
This awareness would see the "victory of 91" as the cummulative work of all peoples against injustice, dogma, dictatorship, the win/lose dogmas of inevitable either/or conflict between classes, races and interests, violence legitamised or clandestine and of course against the degradation of our earths environment. That "victory" is but one episode in an ongoing process in which all have a role.
It would be very dangerous to use the "1991 victory" as an affirmation of the sole righteousness and supremacy of Western institutions and concepts whether in the political, cultural or economic fields. A unitary vision, however powerful, however victorious, can only be a disaster in the long term if it indulges in the delusion that it has the right thereby to end history. It will, if it succeeds, end history by ending LIFE in the all the richeness of its necessary variety, diversity, interactivity and endless healthy challenge. The imposition of static unitary vision derived from "the book", the party "dogma" or sheer brute force of arms is the very virus that led and will lead to the eventual demise of papist, fascist, communist, military and theocratic regimes. We can now add to the list fanatically capitalistic regimes if ever they exist!
I do not presume to make facile definitions of human life, but I insist on affirming that human life is endowed within it with meaning that is fundamentally different from that programmed in bees and aunts. Human life is endowed with potential that is fundamentally at variance with that of the programmed animals we have experienced in many phases of human social, political and economic evolutionary history groping slowly and painfully towards mechanisms for justice, security and non-violent peace.
Life by definition is a pluralistic balance of multiple processes. We are -if and when we are alive- diverse moving symphonies of continuous creation and re-creation, on the personal micro-cosm and up to the macro-cosm that encompasses all worlds and all peoples **. Life is a continuous pluralistic interactive process. That continuous interactive process between multiple and disparate entities and forces is one of the basic definitions of life.

CONTENTS


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          *See reflections on the meaning of "civilised" later in the article.
          **from the presentation by the author "on the deficiency of existing models in medicine and biology" at the International Salzburg Seminar, March 1980.


One of the tragedies of human history has been, the uni-dimensional march to impose frequently by force, a unitary vision of what is right -i.e what a stronger party believes is right- in a continuous win/lose strife. In effect -with few exceptions- the only "peace" we have ever known is peace imposed by force of an enormous amount of violence. The violence has to be continuously practiced to keep the peace. That violence is separated from us by temporal or spatial insulation as long as we are obedient aquiescent citizens of that peace. When we are obedient aquiescent benficiaries we have every interest in denying the data about any violence practiced in our name.
Have we at last through cumulative awareness and search reached that long awaited moment, to work together across the many pre-twenty first century barriers, for the birthing of new history able by a new consciousness to transcend the tragic win/lose march that reached its logical climaxes in 1914 -1918, 1939 - 1945, 1945 - 1991, 1991 to now, rather than continue on the nightmarish path to f ulfill the win/lose flawed logic and flawed concepts of power and of peace born out of dominance rather than harmony, with even more horrendous scenarios in the coming millenium ?
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Democracy, pluralism and mass media in the new world CONTENTS
The nightmares of Huxley's Brave New World, and "end of history scenarios" are made all the more real and threatening because with the advent of the power of mass media, the public anywhere can be made to accept anything as long as the mass media techniques are played right.
In the Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, the female is made to see "reality" of the dominant i.e. more physically powerful male. She is made to see the sun as the moon and the moon as the sun by the taming, physically more powerful dominating male. Brute physical force creates and imposes reality on the weaker or poorer or dependent party.
With the advent of the new technologies of mass communication the public can be made to see "reality" in many subtle and not so subtle modifications that can radically affect the final meaning gleaned.
Humanity sees the ligh at the end of a long tunnel in the form of the demise and failure of the anti-human rights line of experiments that put dogma, power, divine right and theory before human beings and their inalienable rights.
If the democracies become over confident and/or compacent, how easy it is for democratic and pluralistic societies to imperceptibly slide into unitary dogmatic stances. The continuous "democratisation" of democracy has to be an ongoing process without the sightest conceit or complacency.

CONTENTS


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Public opinion and free choice in the age of mass media

The public can be transmitted to in pictures, information and commentary, even via "documentary" shades of reality that subtly point one way or another. It is very difficult to actuate mechanisms that see to it that what is transmitted is the "truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth". The dynamics that govern the process of "what" is transmitted are to the public at large mostly mysterious forces. They are still an incompletely fathomed enigma to the experts. They are therefor forces against which an effective defense is difficult.
The working up of the image and the substitute and the quasi, has been developed to a very high degree.
People can see a real war as entertaining and interesting war games just like in the games arcade down the road. They can be allowed to see the flesh and blood of that war, or denied that right, in which case indifference or even satisfaction and sense of righteousness is generated instead of angry public outcry. These "free" public responses of the free can now thanks to the new technology be engendered according to dynamics unknown to the recipients.
Reality testing, validation, critical analysis, have not been sufficiently developed since the days of the hegemony of static unitary concepts of right and wrong in a non-pluralistic world. The "people" at large have not been trained in mechanisms for validation or for ensuring neutrality or at least ensuring presentation of many divergent points of view including adequate presentation of the "other". The education, formative and upbringing forces that generations undergo in most cultures do not prepare them to develop that critical analytical eye or that questioning posture. Much of that "unitary", simplistic polarised "right and wrong" education is out of place with the advent of the enormous changes that make up our global village in the twenty first century.
The image fed through the unstoppable mass media and information agencies can easily become a substitute for reality. It can generate and or modify reality. There is very little scope for direct, unbiased information unless we have a new breed of public born and bred into the conceptual frame work of reality as a pluralistic, dynamic and interactive process. That new education immunises people all over the globe from being victims or perpetrators of the pre-twenty first century simplistic, judgmental stance of absolute a priori right and wrong and absolute a priori dual polarisation in which one side is without question the baddies and the other the goodies. A new education is needed. CONTENTS
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Even handed truly representative international institutions in the twenty first century?
International institutions create the image of an era of even-handed international justice in all fields- economic, political, cultural, military... etc.
However, we must continuously and patiently strive for the mechanisms that create and protect impartiality ingrained in the charters of these international institutions.
Are these all important international institutions truly representative.
Do they have the mechanism to receive balanced multi-sided input about problems and crises and would-be problems and crises ?
Do they have mechanisms to listen to the deprived, underprivileged and dispossessed ? Do they have mechanisms to listen to the case of those isolated by disempowerment and/or by political and/or cultural barriers or a priori prejudices, that impede their expression and communication of their case and their cause ?
It has become customary at every meeting of the rich and powerful for World leaders to feel utterly dismayed and shocked at the violence erupting at every G7 or Globalisation summit. Affirming the profound rejection of violence. Dare we delve at a causal level? and dare we perceive the many forms of hidden violence practiced ob the weak and marginalised?
Are international bodies, in common with the new universal human plight, enclosed in unitary, and inevitably distorted, input via information systems, mass media and news agencies shaping and disseminating information in a selective way according to some obvious and some inherent and clandestine dynamics ?
Superficially it seems as though we have a pluralistic world supervised by international mechanisms for ensuring justice, peace and non-violent conflict resolution. We can not afford to be compacent. We strive perpetually to get nearer and nearer to that ideal. Why then the eruptions, the explosions, the rising tide of violence, counter-violence and national and international terrorism if all forces have legitimate platforms to communicate and air their grievances on a national and international platform? CONTENTS
On deep scrutiny the question arises: is the process of international government becoming a sort of club of the powerful, whose interests matter first and foremost regardless ? A club ignoring the legitimate aspirations, needs and reality of those who are different, weaker or voiceless. What is the place of the "other" in that World Order?

Some claim that since the US and its Western allies hold the greatest shares in the corporate company "the world" then it is natural that they should be the decision makers and that the decision should reflect their interest.
The important question is whether this view in the best interests of the rich and powerful ?
Does this short sighted view not contradict profoundly with the long term interests of these powers ? I believe more and more strategists in the US and the West will see that it is in their long term interest to work together towards interactive pluralism rather than unitary dominance.
That the hegemony of the dominant posture has generated a long list of de-stabilising double standards does not seem to worry holders of that corporate company view.
That the confidence of millions of frustrated "other" world members, in international bodies and international justice, should become progressively thinned and eroded does not seem to be linked with the progressive violence that threatens all and in the end is deeply counter to the interest of the major share holders in corporate company world as the proponents of the hypothesis call it.
Examples come to mind like :
   ·Ignoring the atrocities of regimes against their own people for decades and awakening suddenly to make an international issue of the atrocities -and human rights- of certain groups only when it is expedient to do so as in the case of Kuwait, Iraq and the Kurds. A blind eye is then cast anew on old, current and new atrocities. Some come to the inescapable conclusion that the determining factor/s, have less to do with justice and/or human rights of the "other", and more to do with a hidden agenda involving the interests of the "poweful". The loss of trust has become such that even in Kosovo when there is a lot of evidence that the interference has to do with defending justice, principles, standing up to dictatorship and protecting the human rights of the Kosovars, many people find and invent other reasons why it was in NATO's interest to strike.
   ·The transformation of a workers protest movement in Gdansk into an international issue adopted by all powers including the pope, while ignoring -or acting in a disbalance and selective way- similar and parallel movements protestng human rights violations in many other countries in the middle east, Africa, North and South America, Asia and in the former colonies.

   ·The double standards in relation to human rights in Poland, China and former Eastern block countries as compared to human rights in countries whose dictators and abusers aligned themselves in service of the great-power camp, in certain parts of Africa, South America and Asia. One area engenders extreme "concern" another is responded to with indifference and disregard. It is as though the "human rights" issue is transformed into a political weapon to be used ad lib according to the interest of the Western powers. That of course undrrmines credibility and undermines the much needed sense of belonging which we need to engender in the new world-citizens all over the globe.
   ·The arms trade and the condoning or casting a blind eye on billions of dollars worth of national or aid money channeled directly or indirectly to buy modern and hyper-modern weapons for non-modern countries under the totalitarian control of non-representative minorities whose illegitimate hold on power becomes deeper and more permanent thanks to these arms that are out of synch with socio-political development.
   ·The casting of a blind eye on human rights abuses arising from inhuman economic transformations taking place without transparency or accountability etc. in parallel with the human rights abuses by friendly dictators and "strong men". CONTENTS
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The very concept of the "cold" war ?
Is it a double standards syndrome?

In the South, outside the arena of Eurocentrism, the "cold war" was in every way one of the bloodiest, and most costly and long hot wars in human history. It lasted forty five years from 1945 to 1991, dovetailing into the horror of the second world war, and the after-shocks are still unleashing themselves on the inhabitants outside Euro-America*.
Millions killed or uprooted; many social, political and ecologically balanced life systems completely disrupted; as the Western and Eastern blocks struggled over "zones of influence" and strategic advantages, each pouring expensive and sophisticated arms into the "interface" areas as the dynamics of the hot confrontations in the south unfolded.
The voice, suffering, dreams, tragedies and frustrations of the "other" peoples involved was largely not heard. There was no attempt to hear that voice or to discover it by the power-hungry regimes instituted to harness their own people into the Western block camp or into the Eastern block camp. There was no attempt to listen by the super-power in whose sphere of influence the particular southern hemisphere people had been placed. There was ver little joy from the International community representative bodies whose channels of communication with the relevant voices remained incomplete. For the US and the Western block the priority was simple and clear; contain communism! All other considerations were subservient to this highest priority. Dictators and oppressive military and quasi military regimes were okayed and fully supported if they were anti-communist. It was a case of "war emergency" there was no space, but how about AFTER the cold war was "lost and won" ? Has a non-participatory world order where fear rules and mistrust towards the great powers is the norm, become an accepted ingrained pattern? I certainly hope not but there is work to be done to surmount this legacy of the cold-hot war.
What after the anti-communist hysteria is over ? To contain communism at any price regardless of the interest of the weak and the different, was the guiding principle of US and Western block policy. As was the Eastern block policy a mirror image of the same attitude i.e. gain points in the global power struggle with complete disregard to the real interests of the peoples of the zone-of-influence-interface countries.
Arms were poured into interface areas. Power hungry adventureres mostly from the petty military ranks were encouraged and supported to set up dictatorships of one "revolutionary" description or another. Religious fundamentalism and fanaticism was condoned, encouraged and supported by the West as an excellent barrier against communism. The big mess was all justitifiable as part of the fight against communism which had to be contained and destroyed. From the other side it was all justified in the cause of the fight againt capitalism which had to be contained and destroyed. What now ?
It is important not to cast a blind eye to this recent history, because it underlines that inspite of all easy pretence to the contrary, we have a long way to go towards validating a new belief in plurality and in the inalienable right to human rights of those millions of "others" so ruthlessly entangled in the big superpower struggle of the great war of 1945-1991. CONTENTS
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*Study casualty statistics in all the nations and groups of nations that became an arena for the cold/hot war confrontations. Study in particular the high percentage of casualties in non-combatants, civilians, women, children and the elderly. Study also the numbers of refugees and displaced persons and detainees without trials sometimes for the duration of their effective lifetime.


To turn into reality the declaration of human rights and to validate in action the belief in pluralism is a difficult and expensive process at all levels. It is necessary.
A policy of re-habilitation, restitution, compensation and support is imperative*. A Marshall plan for the countries and peoples and socio-political systems that have been devastated by the cold war is a just and justifieable must. It is not just money that is needed. Deep rehabilitation programs encouraged and supported by the international community to flourish in a matrix of human rights affirmation.That rehabilitation can not happen without the re-empowerment of the millions disempowered during the "cold" war arms race and arms sale mania practiced consistently by the superpowers and their allies. We need to reconstruct the history of that great war of 1945 - 1991 and assess the real losses inflicted on its silent and voicelss and sometimes unsuspecting victims. It is unfair to all and certainly to the US to have the syndrome of accumulated hurt and anger erupt periodically into anti-US and anti-globalisation sentiment regardless of present actions and honest aspirations for a just and pluralistic peace in the future. Past hurt must be understood and resolved in order to build present and future on a sound basis. back to CONTENTS

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* It is informative to analyse representative examples in Asia, in the middle east, in Ethiopia, Uganda, Zaire, in Angola, in Rwanda, in Iran, in Afghanistan, in Cambodia, in Indonesia, in South and Central America, not only in the form of casualties and displaced persons but in the form of modification of normal socio-political dynamics conducive of natural growth and development etc. Syndromes of development arrest secondary to variations of involvement in the cold war front are worthy of deep study.

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Another contemporary pitfall
Progress ,  What is the yardstick for progress ?
The inapropriateness of exporting Euro-american conceptual matrix as panacea for all problems
In terms of concept of progress and models for progress, the powerful and victorious still practice the habit of establishing themselves as the automatic and only reference point. In so doing they are not only imposing harm to others whose concepts, needs, models and potentials for growth and development are different, but they also harm themselves in denying the potential contributions that these "others", who are ignored, can make to the resolution of many real crises within the winning and powerful camp.
Many people and agencies defeat pluralism and development while, perhaps sincerely, believing that they are working and supporting both.
It is of interest to trace the concepts of "civilisation" and of being "civilised" and of civilised behaviour as experienced from our side of the world during the past decades.
Examples of a typical post second world war onslaught on the consciousness and the culture of a country like Egypt, inform society about what is progress :
    Breast feeding your children is uncivilised and civilisation and beauty is in feeding them with dried milk powder !
    Manual work is a sign of backwardness
    Bread eating is a sign of backwardness so is bread baking at home
    The whiter the bread, the whiter the sugar and the purer the salt the more civilised the nation
    Using refuse, agricultural waste or dung as fuel is a sign of backwardness, what is more it is disgusting
More signs of backwardness and explicit or implicit indicators of progress, civilisation and culture according to effectively exported values :
    Intimate relations with animals .. a sign of backwardness unless of course these are pets to be pampered and cared for with lavish expenditure and consumption
    the extended family is a sign of backwardness
    Free relation with the human body in nature without guilt and without division including going barefoot even when it is     climactically and environmentally natural to do so, is disgusting, uncivilised and backward
    Communality is backward and uncivilised
    The ecologically balanced self dependent non-consumerist way of life of the farmer with his extended family and intimate interactive relations with his body with the environment, with nature, with plant, river and animals is considered as a sign of backwardness
    Using river transport and depending on natural forces and or/energies for propulsion is slow. inefficient, unreliable and is a sure sign of backwardness
    How much you buy and consume in manufactured goods indicates how civilised and advanced you are
Advancement in agriculture is to be measured by :
    how mechanised it is, how much chemical fertiliser and pesticides you use. In general greater use and consumption of the  manufactured, the artificial, the chemical, the mechanical is an indicator of civilisation and progress.
    The electrically driven or fossil fuel driven was sold to nations and cultures that respected nature, animals and human  endeavour, as far more advanced and civilised than the natural, the manual and the man/animal/nature interactive. The consept  of appropriate technology was neglected in favour of overwhelming whole balanced ways of life with "wizardries" that soon  were unmanageable and unmaintainable and unsustainable.
    The power and weight of nations in the international arena and on the negotiating table is measured in terms of material wealth and military strength
    This process of exported culture supported with the full weight of arms supremacy and material supremacy deserves a lot of contemplation. back to CONTENTS


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What is meant by civilisation and being civilised ?
What will a bird’s eye view of the twentieth century tell about us being civilised or not ?

The meaning behind such slogans as development, progress, wealth, success, and power, must always be questioned and challenged and questioned again. Alternatives need to be accepted and respected for all our sakes, for our safety and well-being.
    What is civilisation and progress ?
    the state of being civilised ? What is that ?
    Eating with a fork and knife ?
    Not making a sound while you chew your food?
    Wearing western clothes ?


    Wearing shoes ?
    Wearing European clothes?
    Speaking a European language ?
    Industry as opposed to agriculture or vice versa ?
    Mamoth economic forces and production centres, trans-national and multi-national, as opposed to the small self sufficient communities with the small producer, financier
Using massive mechanisation, mass production, massive quantities of insecticides pesticides or less ambitious natural farming ?
Transport by 747, Concorde or by horse and carriage or donkey or camel ? or river transport ?
Consuming beyond your needs ? CONTENTS
Using cosmetics ?
Using drugs ?
Having plastic surgery ?
Depending on TV and other electronic screens for information ?
Smaller intimate societies or massive impersonal mega-cities ?
Still the basic problems of violence and of life and death and of happiness and meaning remain unanswered. The unresolved catastrophy of three World Wars, (1914-1918, 1939-1945, 1945-1991) with hundreds of milions of innocent victims, represents yet another of the undying question marks over our civilisation. These questions need to be answered and to be answered anew. They of course need to be asked and asked anew. What is civilisation and progress? Are we civilised?
Inspite of all the significant questions about "meaning and essence" which we must not forget, the successes of some of the Asian countries responding to the challenge of economic growth, production and progress according to the rules of the Euro-American world order is an indicator of considerable significance.
The "Tigers" inspite of the recent set backs and shock waves, together with India, Japan and China are at least breaking out of a conceptual barrier, returning much needed confidence to non-Euro-american cultures. The deep loss of confidence was perhaps the gravest long term effect of the post-industrial colonial onslaught overpowering almost all other cultures and socio-economic systems. It has been -and still is- a major barrier to natural development, natural relations and security.
It is important however that after that complex-breaking achievement by "non-western, non-western culture countries", that they should be able to create and contribute their own concepts of progress, values and apropriately re-created cultures. The dynamics emanating from these different values should legitimately become effective contributors to a richer and a safer international community. CONTENTS
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More about progress ?

On the pitfall of equating progress and civilisation with the tangible material achievements of the industrial revolution and reductionist science
The industrial revolution and the revolutions of reductionist science, both overwhelming human consciousness with their apparent achievements and power, enhanced the growth and rooting of the attitude of Western man as master of the World, and master of Nature. A counter-productive and limiting Euro-centrism was born and nurtured. It was also effectively exported to the US.
That attitude, which is parallel to that which once saw the earth as centre of the Universe before the Copernican enlightenment, still prevails in subtle but dangerously limiting ways. Unfortunately man is neither master of the Universe nor is he/she master of Nature. Neither he nor his Earth -with a very fragile environment- are centers of the Universe.
The apparent "power" of post-industrial, post-reductionist-science man-over-nature short lived ecstacy, broke the pattern of healthy respect and necessary communion with nature that former man was habituated to nurture, strove to learn and to teach his offspring.
The power of post-industrial, post science western man enhanced further the failure to communicate in an even-handed way with "other"; why ? Since I am obviously stronger and superior, should I bother to dialogue with other?
Why -since I am powerful- should I bother to dialogue with Nature? Why should I bother to dialogue with "other".


The flurry of histories about the discovery of the new world which have appeared during the five hundredth anniversary of Columbus, tell us a lot about that fatal attitude to the "other" during the impact of Western man, now deeply committed to the win/lose, either/or, unconditional surrender for the "other", the enemy, the embodiment of evil, the heathen, the savage... , on the peoples and civilisations and environment of the discovered / conquered lands*. CONTENTS
The histories of the first and second world wars are being seen by a rising number of thinkers in a different light. Quite different from the facile good/evil formula which was feasible in terms of the unitary logic whose reign is so deeply entrenched**. Indeed much of human history is being seen in a different light. As minorities go through a liberated and new consciousness to re-find confidence, self esteem and self love they gradually develop a voice and are able to express and question. The challeng is to find the mechanism/s to always let the emerging consciousness of the formerly subdued "other" grow as an enrichment and an enlightenment and not as mounting grievances and hurt.
One of the major contributions of that process is the discovery by many historically not listened to groups, women for example through the newly born feminine pride movement that most recent history has been written through socialised male eyes. goto THE POWER STRUGGLE BETWEEN RA AND ISIS and THE DEATH OF THE MATRIARCH
In a parallel way, many of the conquered realise that history was written by the victors reflecting their own inner need to justify and support their actions. Responding to that need the victors normally load every step of history with automatic assumptions disseminated and repeated till they pose as fact. Many of these "facts" are found on scrutiny from a pluralistic stance to be subject to conceptual and historic challenge.
Though under progressive erosion, the win/lose, conqueror/vanquished and winner takes all, concepts continue. The observation that during the march of that win/lose history of relation with "other", there has been examples of alliances and co-existence with "other" as long as there is a sufficient meeting of interests and a reasonable balance of power i.e. force of massive violence, does not detract from the hypothesis that the reigning concept in human history has been the win/lose principal practiced and maintained through the exercise or the threat of violent power.
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* As an example I suggest Zvetan Todorov chronicle of the Spanish invasion of Mexico as a study of relation with "other".
* *The work of the British historian A. J. P. Taylor represents a wider global orientation in documenting recent European history. It is more erudite, sophisticated and complex than the easy, pure good and pure evil formulae.

The general formula with "other" that is not powerful, or is so different as to be un-communicable-with or with the other who is powerful but with whom the contradiction of interests becomes too great, has been the formula of brute force of mass violence interacting in a win/lose sequence.
Perhaps I am dwelling on this win/lose history and the post-industrial, post-scientific posture of masters-of-the-world, masters-of-nature, so deeply ingrained in the currently dominant culture, because if there is any real hope for the twenty-first century, and indeed for our communal survival it is through reversing, or better still transcending these attitudes, starting by a radically new education which is more appropriate to the challenges of the pluralistic village world, with a finite and vulnerable life sustaining environment, we live in. There are already encouraging signs.
We have witnessed the tragedy of the win/lose, unconditional surrender principal in the twentieth century exacting an unprecedented human cost; we are also witnessing the red lights emanating from our earth and from the earth environment protesting the masters-of-nature attitude born out of arrogant science and industry, and short sighted conceptual philosophy guided by limited horizon economics.
In Multi-Dimensional Pluralistic Dynamic Systems, our function and survival hope is to find and pursue a Dynamic Harmony between the various components. A recreation of the win/win principal of the I and Thou, me and you , I and other, must take place or else we all fall out of harmony with primordial forces against which there is no remedy. An unstoppable nemesis. back to CONTENTS

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In search for alternatives that are at the same time complementary
Re-finding confidence, meaning and lost cultural dignity by the many "other" peoples of the world overpowered into physical and cultural submission by post industrial revolution iron and steel
Out of the blind alley stress and strife of "masters" of nature, of the world and of "other", into the peace and security of recreating ourselves as interactive agents in the cosmos striving for harmony with the many forces that make up our world/s
It is naive to imagine that dreaming of the win/win pluralistic world will give it birth. It is true that on the eve of the twenty-first century, the dream has become a survival necessity for all who can see and discern how in our village world we have all become now so inextricably interconnected. It is all the more reason not to indulge in romantic and naive dreams and address very carefully the enormous essentially unitary infra-structure built over 10 thousand years of the win/lose principal. That infra-structure operates through deeply entrenched and established economic values, cultural values, educational and upbringing practices. The divisions within self, within nations, races, religions, privilege and underprivileged groups is a process created and supported by a massive infrastructure rooted in thousands of years of deeply protected concepts.
Why do we seem to underestimate or forget the youth movements in the now prevailing Euro-American, Judeo-Christian civilisation, which since their eruption in the sixties made a very clear and vehement statement of rejection of many of the values: economic, cultural and political of the western world ? That was the loud and clear message of the youth of the western world. Should that experience and that message not be in our consciousness as we all seem to rush to adopt the mores and references of the now ascendant super-power and world leader, presented as the only alternative for progress and civilisation, regardless of their potential usefulness or potential harm ?
The significant youth movements reaching their zenith in the sixties, but continuing all the time as a new generation phenomenon*, were searching for alternative values, alternative reference points, new paradigms. They were searching in the South and into the south for the values and meaning they yearned for . The South by and large let them down, as it missed understanding the momentous significance of that search, and that initiative. It seemed as though Osiris, the ancient Egyptian God of non-violence, greening and harmony was trying to be reborn and re-embodied in our tormented World. It was and still is an initiative that underlines the tremendous need for plurality, for the presence of alternatives, as well as the potential contribution of the South and aa new understanding of history. The contribution and responses of the South fail because of its own failure to achieve a minimum modicum of representation and of release of its own expressive rights on a national and international platform.
It was -and still is- an initiative that moved for pluralism, for human rights, for non-violence and anti-war mechanisms, for environment friendliness and echological harmony. It was -and is- truly Osirian, truly Mozartian, an initiative for communication across language barriers and political barriers. It is a protest against rabid consumerism and a yearnig for post- or supra- material values in life.
If all is not well with the South, all is not well in the North either. We need each other, and we can complement one another. CONTENTS

* The phenomenon is one of the central themes of my play "Osiris, the forbidden passion drama" (London, 1968, and currently under publication)


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Identifying language as a communication tool and a communication barrier.
The need to identify the nature and limitations of language and to bridge the barriers created by language.
Through that long heritage of win/lose dynamics, language emerges frequently as a barrier to communication and an easy way to exteriorise the "other" who makes different , incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo sounds, and is therefore inferior, not trust worthy and probably bad if not savage and uncivilised.
The arena of non-verbal communication and of beyond-the-words meaning has paradoxically been withered by verbal language rather than enhanced by it. The real meaning of words is frequently closed to us. That paradox is not so strange, in view of the win/lose principal and the anxiety to put in the cubby hole of "other", those who are different. "I" and "us" are only those who make the right sounds with the correct pre-determined meaning. These observations point out the way to an enormous amount of hard work for the researchers, thinkers, creators, and artists of our age in all fields.


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The challenge of intra-cultural and cross cultural expression


In creating the background and rooting the infrastructure for the pluralistic interactive world the enormous spectrum of the creative and expressive arts has hardly been touched.
They for their potential for social, national and international security and non-violence, deserve an investment akin to the investment lavished on defense and on arms.
They are fundamental elements of national as well as international security and conflict resolution. They are par excellence equipped to bridge the complicated verbal language barriers. They are equipped to explore to the limits the possibilities of non-verbal communication and create and re-create universal human languages. They are uniquely capable of transmitting to "I" the inherent humanity of "other" however apparently removed and different. BACK TO CONTENTS

Another intra-cultural and cross cultural channel of great importance in national and international sport. The conceptual framework of competitive sports needs to address in greater depth how to incorporate the theory and practice of communication, interaction, win/win, mutual enjoyment, the inherent beauty of excellence and of creativity, the joy and beauty and potential of the human totality i.e. mind, body, will, spirit, as well as all "interactive" concepts gradually replacing the older win/lose concepts. 



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Another pertinent question left over from the sixties and from the Nuremberg trials :
Can modern war ever be moral ? Can it be legitimate ?
Unresoved issues ?
Is it time yet to equate civilisation with non-violence and with the abrogation of arms as instruments of conflict resolution or of policy? Is the cummulative vision of our race ready for this definition of civilisation ?
One of the most serious challenges in relation to the avowed conceptual behavioural frame of many of the human social, political philosophical and religious institutions and value systems, is the continuation in human history of war as an instrument of policy, a decider of right and wrong in conflict and as a keeper of "peace". This decision by war pattern continued even after the industrial revolution gave birth to mechanised machinery and instruments for systematic impersonal killing and then instruments and mechanisms for systematised impersonal, mass killing and destruction.
Mass impersonal killing is an issue that needed to be addressed at Nuremberg after the second world war. All civilised peoples needed, according to their avowed value systems to address seriously the challenge posed by the capability of mass impersonal killing in War. There were -and still is- many pertinent questions.
Indeed it is an issue that needed to be seriously addressed and resolved since the first mechanised progressively impersonal wars after the industrial revolution. It is an interesting mystery how this moment of self searching was delayed. The issues relating to systematised and mechanised -and later computerised and automated- mass impersonal killing needed to be reconciled with the purported value systems, together with the parallel difficult issues emanating from the question of individual responsibility to ones' own conscious and perception in relation to orders from above. These issues were brought up at Nuremberg and they were also periodically brought up in relation to the Berlin Wall and the orders to shoot escapees and the execution of these orders by conscripts who received them. CONTENTS
Civilisation is a quality that is entirely incompatible with impersonal killing, it is incompatible with mass impersonal killing. We can not escape this irksome fact! We should rather strive to make it a reality withour undermining peace or security. In other words new means for peace and security have to be discovered practiced and put into operation.
These are some of the major issues that should have been tackled and resolved after the tragedies of the first and second world wars. Progress has been made but much more progress is needed.
In general after the advent of modern warfare. The issue of the unacceptability of war as instrument of conflict resolution after the industrial revolution and the advent of instruments of impersonal killing, is one of the issues that needed resolution at the Nuremberg trials and were not. The issue of personal and group responsibility towards life and earth and in relation to the unacceptability of impersonal killing is still largely avoided, but it is creeping progressively into human social awareness.
Is man/woman the individual responsible or is he/she not? What are the determinants and the limits of that responsibility?
It is not surprising that these fundamental issues have never been seriously addressed let alone transcended by mechanisms for acceptable alternatives, thus leaving this inexplicable contradiciton in the quasi-civilised status of modern man. The peak century of human civilisation, the twentieth, is at the same time quantitatively the bloodiest and most violent century in human history in terms of the extent of impersonal killing deliberately perpetrated by men and women against other men, women and children. CONTENTS
That pathology of our century is leading -unresolved- straight into the twenty first century dangerously maintaining that incredible split which remains unaddressed in any effective depth. The infrastructure of plurality attempts to tackle that pathology in the national and international conceptual frame. The emergence of mechanisms for non-violent conflict resolution and power-neutral, Earth-life-morality-sensitive national and international arbitration bodies is essential. CONTENTS
If we are to seriously decide that it is an absolute necessity to lay the foundations for alternatives, for the win/win, "me" and "you" principal in the twenty first century, then we have to radically revise the mechanisms of international arbitration. These should be revised in such a way that every voice must be heard and entered into the dynamics of International decision making. Bodies set up to keep the peace and to achieve non-violent conflict resolution have to be developed with an entirely different philosophy. The challenge is our communal will to lend our creative potential to work either for a club for the powerful or for an institution for international survival of the race and of the earth's threatened environment, guided by a new earth and life morality?
Structure and function of International bodies in the political, social, cultural, educational. health, and agricultural spheres, need to be revised to comply with the new goals of a truly pluralistic, harmonious - therefore just - international community. If the problem of truer representative bodies on the international scale must be addressed, it is needless to stress that the same problem i.e. that of more truly representative institutions on a national basis must be addressed too. The macro and micro-cosms of family, society, nation, intra and inter-national spheres, have to develop into a pluralistic interactional dynamic win/win rhythm, birthing an enormous new infra-structure of concepts, of wider representation and of safeguards.

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The short honeymoon!
The dream of Universal disarmament,
Why was the promise not fulfilled ?
The gun excluded from national and international dynamics ? Systems for ensuring meticulous application needed .
After Reykjavik and Christmas and New Year of 1989; the dissolution of the Berlin wall in a wave of spontaneity, music and direct action by people who decided to stretch out across barriers; after Glasnost, Perestroika, the election of Waclav Havel as President; we all indulged in dreams of a pluralistic world of peace and dialogue and non-violent resolution of conflicts. A world in which we find writers, philosophers, poets, thinkers and artists amongst the decision makers. That dream quickly gave way to what seems to be a very acute relapse into19th and early twentieth century patterns, as seen in:
- The invasions of Grenada, Panama re-established a pre-Christmas 89 pattern.
- The gulf war
- the emergence of pathological nationalism and the return of such concepts as ethnic cleansing, concentration camps for the others who are different by race, religion or political beliefs etc.
- The burden carried by children and generation after generation on all sides sacrificed to pathological nationalism, racism, confrontation and conflict maneuvered into an entrenched racially dominated and violent growing up.
- the re-emergence of racism and neo-nazism in the US and Europe, the eruption of violence in so many parts of the western and eastern world.
- the failure of communication and harmony between many immigrant
populations, and their host populations ofa diffirent culture.
- The costly economic confrontations, and the apparent hegemony of non-human-concerned economics, engineering recessions and recoveries according to theory and ivory tower assessments and calculations, as people in the South watch producers in the North indulge in encouraging consumerism out of all proportion to human needs, "set-aside farming", waste and destruction of crops and products in protest, or as part of some economic war or other. Another pertinent example is the precipitate turn to free market economy in the former Soviet Union without human considerations with potentially extremely dangerous results including social disruption, cruel poverty imposed on many, violence, the desperate sale of war materials and weapons of mass destruction.
- A rising cultural entrenchment and inflexibility in many parts of the world, with the emergence of variations of waves of religious fundamentalism in parts of Jewish, Christian, Moslem and Hindu communities. In this context attention should be drawn to the Machiavillian methods of using, encouraging, arming and financing of Islamic extremism as a super-power ploy during the confrontation in Afghanistan and in the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula. CONTENTS
- The infamous international arms trade, with the disruption it has made and still makes in aborting the normal dynamics and socio-political development in many parts of the South; Ethiopia and Somalia, Rwanda, Zaire, Angola, the middle east, Haiti, the conflict areas in south America being recent cases in point. This disruptive international activity emerges as the twin and parallel to the infamous international drugs trade.
- The threatened Earth, especially threatened by our concepts of progress, development, wealth as well as our concepts of self defense. We already have examples of desertification, drought, uncontrollable urbanisation, destruction of rural ecologically-sound and balanced forms of life, in favour of an imposed western model for progress, notwithstanding that the west suffers seriously from over urbanisation and mega-cities and destruction of rural and ecologically balanced societies.
- The continued intransigence of the biological sciences and the humanities in refusing to take real heed of the revolution in physics introducing concepts of plurality, relativity, multi-dimensionality, unpredictability... etc.
- the threatened biological continuity of man, as viruses and other potential new enemies find access to vulnerable areas in man's living body; the immune system for example. Our same pathological concepts of wealth, power over nature are not unrelated to the catastrophe of mad cow disease. Forcing naturally herbiverous animals to feed on blood and offal is the same pattern of arrogant approach to nature, to environment and to "others". Viruses prions and other agents are expected to acquire and unleash even more virulence as man pollutes and depletes and abuses his other, his environment and creates through gross inequality and deprivation, rising masses of weakened and vulnerable humanity*.
- a lack of even-handedness in the response of the existing international bodies to the above challenges.
Just to make a few passing remarks witnessing the difficult birth of the twenty first century and the spastic relapses into the postures and attitudes of the nineteenth and early twentieth century CONTENTS

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* From an ecological and biological point of view we have to re-think our concepts and behaviour in terms of balance with nature, balance with the regeneration speeds of the limited earth's resources,. Balance and justice towards fellow human beings is an integral part of the eco system even if the majority do not see it as relevant and are successfully conditioned not to look beyond their own immediate good or harm. For the very survival of the priveleged minorities in the North, the deprived and ravaged millions must be allowed their inalienable thriving, growth and health rights without that, deprived members of the human race will represent a biological mass of extreme danger to the Species; a veritable generator of new micro-and macro biological enemies for the human cellular and genetic structure. A natural biological warfare generator. This is said from a biological standpoint quite apart from the binding humanitarian grounds. The Goddess Maat (justice) an Osiris conceptual twin may well visit us with a terrible Nemesis unless we correct our injustices before it is too late.CONTENTS



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Motivation ?
The evolutionary drive is a primordial and fundamental force. If we fail to fulfil its pre-requisites, it is logical that we shall be destroyed -manouvered into destroying ourselves- or made non-viable and replaced. No one can argue that the journey from fishes to bees to humans has been to recreate fishes and bees again.
It can be argued, what is the motivation of the rich and powerful to give away some of their privileges, in favour of a more just and pluralistic world.
It is not only the new dynamics of threatened village earth but the recognition that we are all in crisis and we all need each other.
There is real complementarity in the order of things and we would be fools not to take advantage of that complementarity and opt instead to maintain our short- sighted privileges.
When Ghandi, Saad Zaghlool, Martin Luther King, the many great Asia pacific philosophers and visionaries, the youth of Europe and America, the many unknown and unpublicised men and women individuals and groups who all moved with essentially non-violent means to make their point and express their commitment to change towards humanism and justice, taking enormous risks physical, psychological and emotional, against the full weight of entrenched "power", they were also moving for the "other". If they were moving towards more justice they were moving towards dialogue and the harmony and essentially interactive relations responsive to the interests of all parties.
If they were moving towards interactive justice they were not after mere reversal of roles between oppressor and oppressed. They were concerned with the challenge of listening and understanding of the "other".
These courageous men and women determined to achieve interactive harmony frequently had to face in the beginning the resistance and aggression of oppressors and oppressed alike. A priori rigid assumptions are easier. The win/lose, either/or, baddies/goodies formulae are much easier. They unfortunately are still the norm. Every crisis has to have the goodies with all the right on their side and the villains who are evil through and through. It is so easy to respond to Eurocentrism with I-centrism. It is easy to respond to "other" racism with me-racism, "other" prejudice with me-prejudice.
Movements that transcend this win/lose circuit and are thereby essentially non-violent were, and still are, lessons for us all. They are effective lessons from the oppressed to transcend the win/lose, either/or principle into the arena of interactive harmony, balance of interests and interactive justice. They represent initiatives not just for the liberation and salvation of Indians, Egyptians, Palestinians, Asians, Africans, Blacks, Women, Children South Americans or Poles, but also an initiative for the salvation and liberation of Europeans, Americans, Israelis, Russians, and all or any of a group which may find itself tempted in conflict, to use superior power to force a suppressive or amputative resolution of that conflict thinking that it has by so doing ended the conflict.
The temptation to solve challenges and conflicts by brute force OR "STAR WARS" fashion, especially when you have that force, is still great. The long term price of that posture is greater still for those who have holistic and long term vision. Let us re-study deeply the history of the twentieth century in order to understand and to transcend. We need to resolve problems and conflicts at causal levels and when they are unresolvable we need to find acceptable balance points. CONTENTS



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An important question: how is "power" generated in the modern village world ?
How is "power" practiced ?
What are the mechanisms of decision making
What are the mechanisms for national and international justice in the light of our modern awareness of universal human rights and environment rights?
Is participatory democracy surviving all these dramatic changes overtaking the world. Are new mechanisms not badly needed ? What and who controls mass media ?
Who are the powerful ? Persons, ideas, prejudice or corporations ?
Interest ? Whose interest ? The multi-nationals, the trans-nationals ? Lending, borrowing, the exchange rate, the price of raw materials and manufactured goods? The military-industrial complex ? The military ? The drug barons ? The Mafia ?
It is important for all people of goodwill to achieve at least a minimum modicum of knowledge about the process/s that are responsible for decision making that profoundly affects the life and well-being of their societies and in the end human society as a whole.
In general we should be all striving towards transparency i.e. no forces or dynamics can be incriminated or praised off hand but rather we should insist that the operating forces in national and international dynamics be committed to come out in the open.
Allies in the process of bringing back to the open the clandestine, mysterious and impersonal dynamics of decision making in the modern village world is the emergence and growth of trans-national, multinational and trans-authority, trans-power communication via the communications networks growing slowly but progressively. This will bring with it a rise in the empowerment by information of so called NGOs who will represent a rising body of people who can afford to be more loyal to the new Earth and Life and Environment and to non-violence as the pre-requisite for progress and civilisation. These could eventually become effective forces for demilitarisation which is again a pre-requisite for civilisation, progress and survival. CONTENTS



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Spiritual Values or a resurgence of divisive religious sentiment?
Can the struggle between the rational and the irrational be turned into a non-exclusive complementarity ?
Is there a balance point where the known and the unknown can co-exist ?
The tyranny of pure science was born as an understandable reaction to the tyranny of the irrational.
There is little doubt about an international yearning, after decades of arrogant science, industry and materialism, to spiritual values: to the rediscovery of, and making peace with the simple, the mysterious, the unknown; a yearning for harmony with nature and a re-introduction of intuition and lost emotions in human life; simple faith, so necessary to cope with the inevitable realities of human life and death, vulnerability, and the inevitable loss of loved ones.
Will that yearning be left to be harnessed -in the face of an obstinately unjust world- by political opportunists or religious bigots and dogmatists to recreate religious fanaticism, violence and a resurgence of the "othering" of those who are different. It is an "othering" much more violent for having been sanctified by divine decree.
Will that yearning towards spiritual values move away from science and learning into a darkness of dogma and rigidity instead of working to enlighten reductionist and sometimes arrogant or humanly blind science, industry, economics and politics into the richness of interactive dynamic dialogue with life, with earth and with environment ?
Science, industry, economics and politics need to become imbued with spirituality and with a new pluralistic, humanistic morality; with the new earth morality. Will the yearning for values feed that need or just breed religious resurgence taking the form of fanaticism and violence? CONTENTS
The outcome will depend on the untiring contribution of us all; each in their field. It will depend on the contributions of new theologians who understand the challenges facing humanity and the earth in our age. The outcome will depend on the implementing of effective moves towards neutral, representative international bodies fed by information systems that transmit ever-changing multifaceted reality in a tirelessly searching and researching way. it is such dedicatedly pluralistic systems that can work and can be seen to work towards justice and equity for all without exteriorising any persons or groups because of their race or culture or religion.
It is important to point out that the new physics and the new cosmology have set paradigms and established postures that are a far cry from those of the arrogant reductionist sciences of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. New physics is almost spiritual. Indeed, it is a mixture of science, spirituality and music. It has devised space for certainty and uncertainty together.
We so need modern physics to teach and establish the needed paradigm shift in the humanities, sociology, economics, and in the biological sciences and medicine.
Urgent and deep changes in the education and upbringing forces of children of all nations are needed to support the I and you win/win pluralistic concept, parallel changes in international sport are needed. Cultural expression and exchange must substitute the canon and the gun, or trade wars, mutuality, mutual interdependence and complementarity must develop as the natural non-violent path to national security and conflict resolution CONTENTS

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The West and the Euro-American and now judeo-Christian model is not the final answer to the challenge of civilisation. It is but one of many models, one of many endeavours on the road to civilisation. They are all flawed.
The endeavour shall go on indefinitely but it shall gradually inch towards civilisation at it learns to resolve violence, impersonal killing and the use of force as arbitrator in conflict while developing the mechanisms and safeguards for a pluralistic, interactive justice in our globe
It is therefore fallacious and self defeating, and a reactionary step to offer I-centrism as an antidote to Eurocentrism for this can only be a repetition of history without te benefit of cummulative knowledge of our mistakes !
It is through laying the foundations for multidimensional dynamic pluralism in education, upbringing, and the mass media, through vastly increasing the input/ output expressive arts, experience and interactions, of peoples that we can hope to find and learn the pathways of harmony between the I and the other. The interactive and pluralistic concepts need to be integrated sensitively into the teaching of history, religion and art to children of all nations and groups. It is through that same learned pluralism that we can find the balance point between the fixity and certainty, necessary for faith, and the doubt, challenge and movement necessary for creativity. In a dynamic matrix certainty and doubt need not be mutually exclusive. The balance between rigidity and flexibility can be reached. They need not be either/or. They can be complementary. The human body is a simple material example of this concept. The bones are rigid, the soft tissues are soft yet they co-operate ingeniously to create and allow movement. Their complementarity enhances movement. Neither looses their specific quality nor the usefulness born out of that specific quality.
With certain developments in the learning and upbringing process, the other can be seen as potential enrichment and not as continuous threat. The other can become a necessary and even an indispensable enrichment. CONTENTS



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Towards an interactive, pluralistic global symphonic rhythm, an Osirian visionOSIRIS the forbidden drama homepages
Final Comment
It would be a major misunderstanding of my work and my orientation if it is construed as an unawareness of the major contributions of European culture and science to the movement of humanity towards civilisation and a humane existence for all --still far from attained inspite of the significant steps and enhanced potential. European culture has produced Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, in my opinion the greatest interactive pluralist of all(a web page about" Mozart and Osiris" to be published and linked soon). When Mozart writes, musico-dramatically, the history of the amazing "day" at the Almaviva household, he completely transcends all matters of prejudice by race, sex, nationality, class, age etc.., he goes far beyond the simple labels of goodies and baddies that we have become inured to write our history by, and we are confronted through the greatness, compassion and understanding of Mozart, with a micro-macro cosm of the drama of human existence, sometimes in conflict, sometimes in alliance, sometimes acting individually, sometime in couples, sometimes in groups but "all in it together". In the very final act -of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro- "we are all in it together" groping in the darkness for happiness and for some sort of reality out of the illusion/s and limitations of the senses in a challenging darkness reminding us of the many dimensions of an unlimited unknown. It is along such lines that I ask for human history to be reviewed and taught to "pluralistically" prepared generations. The contributions made by Western science, Allopathic Western medicine and Western technology have been, and are still, enormous. They can be helped to continue giving these contributions with lesser side effects and a minimum of tragedies and blunders, which they have many times unleashed upon themselves and upon others, if the Western contribution is given its rightful place as part of the progress matrix of the human march. The European contribution is neither the sole legitimate inheritor nor was it the initiator of the human movement to civilisation. The European engendered references have no justification for monopoly, which I repeat, is not only unjustified but is harmful and impoverishing to the richness of the contribution that they can make. Examples abide in the practical experience of Western medicine. Many parallel and complementary techniques have a place. None should arrogantly exclude the other. None should make itself impervious to criticism or questioning. Our challenge is to develop the art of diagnosing what is relevant and necessary and when. We have to keep the interventions' options open and to develop the art of invoking and activating the appropriate one/ones.CONTENTS
On the other hand it would be diametrically counter to my hypotheses to use my arguments as an excuse for complacency, rapid and easy self congratulation, self praise by "other" cultures and other systems in the East and in the South who have in many cases not responded to the real challenges of humanising the world they have made locally within their national borders and the world we live in at large. By failing to respond effectively and creatively to the challenges of our times and of civilisation in its deeper meanings and by failing to offer successful models that justify their different orientations, they feed and amplify an inner sense of justification for Western hegemony and Eurocentrism. They are not only share the responsibility for Eurocentrism but offer it legitimacy by their rigid inability to present viable and attractive alternatives.
Criticism of Western hegemony and Eurocentrism must never be used as an excuse for mediocrity or second rateness.
Such criticism is not intended as support for ignorance, rigidity and denial. This analysis is intended as a plea for a polyphonic cross fertilising, cross enriching multicultural dynamic world, rather than a monophonic two tiered world were one side becomes too loud and the other side/s is unheard and the "symphony" and the enriching harmony disappears, and hence the possibilities for marvelous developments are lost.
Pointing to the dangers of a creeping hegemony of the Western reference does not intend in any way to dismiss the relevance of the standards of excellence established by the West or by any other performer in the arena of contemporary human history. It is of interest to note that many of these post industrial standards have been attained and surpassed in Asia Pacific. Before the industrial revolution the East and South had made a major contribution towards the concept and the practice of excellence. Excellence in itself is an important cross cultural, cross generation and cross national value.
The argument really intends to affirm our current and future responsibility -all of us East and West- to such perennial and hitherto unattained values as interactive justice, as the right to growth by children and by men and by women and by nature, as the right to creativity, the right to non-violence and the right to be different without the threat of violence. It is a reminder that in the continuous and dynamic striving for these perennial humanising and civilising values, there are many different but parallel paths that must be taken. These differences can be mutually enriching. The commitment to the standards of excellence and of creative excellence must be unrelenting.
This brings me to the new WHO definition of health, as the sense of well-being born out of freedom from physical and mental illness and the ability to have creative relations with self, others, society and the environment. It is in the nature of our new-world-reality that these rights can not be separated or divided.
All peoples and cultures have contributed to where we are at now. The blunders, the tragedies as well as the magnificent achievements. No culture, race, or nation can claim a monopoly on civilisation. No single party can be blamed alone for the blunders or praised alone for the achievements. We are all in it together. It has always been so. The salvation of a part of the system was never independent from the salvation of the other parts, even though we did not know it. Now we know. At last we know that we are all in it together; inextricably. The laying of the infra-structure for international justice, international representation, and a new education for a new earth and life morality which includes the abrogation of force and violence as arbitrator in human conflict and as a way of subduing nature, is a survival necessity.
Our very patient mother earth at last is manifestly protesting our violence, our lack of imagination, our lack of love for all the parts that make our multifaceted selves and the many systems in which we live. Our life sustaining environment is in jeopardy. This primordial protest warns us against the violence we habitually practice on nature and on the "other". It is an ominous protest that no responsible member of the human race can afford to ignore.back to CONTENTS

Bibliographyfollow the Osiris forbidden passion drama for a poetic rendering of the basic issues
(1). Is a truly pluralistic world in everybody’s interest ? Why ?
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(2b). Public opinion and free choice in the age of mass media
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(3). Even handed more representative international institutions in the twenty first century?
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Beigbeder, Y "Management problems in United Nations organisations: reform or decline?", London: F. Pinter, 1987
Imber, M "Environment, security, and UN reform", New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994
Logue, JJ "The great debate on charter reform: a proposal for a stronger United Nations", New York: Fordham UP, 1955
Baratta, JP "Strengthening the United Nations: a bibliography on U.N. reform and world federalism". New York: Greenwood Press, 1987
Muller, JW "The reform of the United Nations". New York: Oceana Publications, 1992
(4) Aspects of a subtle double standards syndrome. The very concept of the "cold" war ?
Chomsky N, " ‘Human Rights’ and American Foreign Policy", Nottingham: Spokesman Books, 1978
ed. Bates G. "Mobilizing Democracy: changing the US role in the Middle East". Monroe: Common Courage Press, 1991
ed. Keller EJ, Rothchild D. "Africa in the New World Order: rethinking state sovereignty and regional security". Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1996
Clough M, "Free at last? : US policy toward Africa and the end of the Cold War". New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1992
Epstein EJ, Deception: the invisible war between the KGB and the CIA", New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989
Bledowska C, "KGB, CIA", New York: Exeter Books, 1987
Yajee, SB "CIA operations agains the Third World", New Delhi: Criterion Publications, 1985
Feurlicht RS "Joe McCarthy and McCarthyism: the hate that haunts America.", New York, McGraw-Hill, 1972
Theoharis, AG, "Seeds of repression: Harry S. Truman and the origins of McCarthyism", Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971
Freeland RM, "The Truman Doctrine and the origins of McCarthyism: foreign policy, domestic politics and internal security, 1946-1948" New York: Knopf
ed. Leitenberg M., Sheffer G. "Great power intervention in the Middle East" New York: Pergamon Press, c1979.
McClintock M., Instruments of statecraft : U.S. guerrilla warfare, counterinsurgency, and counter terrorism, 1940-1990. New York : Pantheon Books, c1992.
Hader, Leon T. "QUAGMIRE: AMERICA IN THE MIDDLE EAST", Cato Institute
(5). Another contemporary pitfall: Progress ? What is the yardstick for progress ? The inappropriateness of exporting Euro-American conceptual matrix as panacea for all problems
(5b). What is meant by civilisation and being civilised ? What will a bird’s eye view of the twentieth century tell about us being civilised or not ?
(5c). More about progress ? On the pitfall of equating progress and civilisation with the tangible material achievements of the industrial revolution and reductionist science
Pike ER, "Human Documents of the Industrial Revolution", London: George Allen and Unwin, 1966
Schumaker EF, "Small is beautiful: a study of economics as if people mattered", London: Abacus, 1973
ed. Taylor AJ, "The standard of living in Britain in the Industrial Revolution", London: Methuen, 1975
Antony Sampson, "The Midas Touch", Coronet Books, Hodder and Stoughton, 1990
Tzvetan Todorov, "La Conquete de L’Amerique, La Question de L’autre"
translated by Bashir El sebaee, Ibn Sina Publishing, 1991
Alan Moorehead, "The Fatal impact", London, Hamish Hamilton, 1966
ed. Gardels NP "At century’s end: great minds reflect on our times", La Jolla: ALTI Pub., 1995
(6). In search for alternatives that are at the same time complementary
(6b). Identifying language as a communication tool and a communication barrier. The need to identify the nature and limitations of language and to bridge the barriers created by language.
(6c). The challenge of intra-cultural and cross cultural expression
ed. Polunin N, International Conference on Environmental Future, 2d, Reykjavik, Iceland, 1977. "Growth without ecodisasters? : proceeding of the Second International Conference on Environment Future (2nd ICEF) held in Reykjavik, Iceland, 5-11 June 1977"
ed. Douglas JD, "The Technological Threat", Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1971
ed. Muller KE, "Language as barrier and bridge", Lanham: UP of America, 1992
ed. Artega A, "An other tongue: nation and ethnicity in the linguistic borderlands", Durham: Duke UP, 1994
ed. Fawcett E, Newcombe H, "United Nations reform: looking ahead after 50 years". Toronto; Science For Peace: Dundurn Press, 1995
ed. Gardels NP "At century’s end: great minds reflect on our times", La Jolla: ALTI Pub., 1995
(6d). A question left over from the sixties and from the Nuremberg trials : Can modern war ever be moral ? Can it be legitimate ? What are the limits of personal responsibility?
LAPIN,D. "We Were Only Following Orders". Judaism Today, Sept. 1995
Wyzanski Jr, Judge CE, "Nuremberg—A Fair Trial? Dangerous Precedent" April 1946
Harwood, Richard, Nuremberg and other war crimes trials: a new look, Southam, Eng. Historical Review Press, 1978
Wilbourn, E.(ed.), Nuremberg: German views of the war trials, Benton and George Grimm, 1955
Markusen, Eric, The Holocaust, strategic bombing: genocide and toatl war in the twentieth century, Boulder, Colo.:westview Press, 1995
Crane, Conrad C., Bombs, cities and civilians: American airpower strategy in World War II University Press of Kansas, 1993
Kostovic I., Judas M., Mass killing and genocide in Croatia 1991/1992: a book of evidence, rvatska Sveucilisna Naklada for pubisher Ante Selak, 1992
Hartigan, Richard Shelly, The forgotten victim : a history of the civilian, Chicago, Ill., Precedent Pub., 1982
Alperovitz G., Tree S., [et al.], The decision to use the atomic bomb and the arcitecture of an American myth, New York, Knopf, 1995
. Alperovitz G., Atomic diplomacy : Hiroshima and Potsdam : the use of the atomic bomb and the American confrontation with Soviet Power, London, Boulder, Colo., Pluto Press, 1994
. Nagle, William J., Morality and modern warfare : the state of the question, Baltimore, Helicon Press, 1960
. Wasserstrom, Richard A., War and morality, Belmot, Calif., Wadsworth, 1970
(7). The short honeymoon. How can the promise be fulfilled? The gun excluded from national and international dynamics ? Systems for ensuring meticulous application.
Committee on International Security and Arms Control, National Academy of Sciences, "Reykjavik and beyond: deep reductions in strategic nuclear arsenals and future direction of arms control", Washington DC: National Academy Press, 1988
Collinson, H, Death on delivery : the impact of the arms trade on the Third World, London, Campaign Against Arms Trade, 1989
International Institute for Peace and Conflict Research Stockholm, The arms trade with the Third World, Stockolm, Almqvist & wiksell; New York, Humanities Press, 1971
COPAT, Committee on Poverty and the Arms Trade, Bombs for breakfast: how the arms trade causes a vicious cycle of impoverishment, repression and militarisation in the Third World, London, COPAT, 1978
Keller, W., Arm in arm : the political economy of the global arms trade, New york, Basic Books, 1995
Mazrui, A. A., The barrel of the gun and the barrel of oil in North-South equation, New York, World Order Models Project: Institute of World Order, 1978
ed. Gardels NP "At century’s end: great minds reflect on our times", La Jolla: ALTI Pub., 1995
(8). Motivation ? The evolutionary drive is a primordial and fundamental force. If we fail to fulfil its pre-requisites, it is logical that we shall be destroyed -manoeuvred into destroying ourselves- or made non-viable and replaced. No one can argue that the journey from fishes to bees to humans has been to recreate fishes and bees again.
Erik H. Erikson, "Ghandi’s Truth", New York, W.W. Norton and Co.,1969
Zaghlul, Sad, 1857-1927.Mudhakkirat Sad Zaghlul / tahqiq Abd al-Azim Ramadan.Cairo : al-Hayah al-Misriyah al-Ammah lil-Kitab, 1987
Hassan THA, "Osiris, the forbidden passion drama", London,1968(currently under publication2001)
Wasserman, LD, Martin Luther King Jr.: The moulding of non-violence as a philosophy and strategy, Boston University Thesis, 1972
Berton, Pierre.,Voices from the sixties; twenty two views of a revolutionary decade, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967
ed. Freeman J, "Social movements of the sixties, New York, Longman, 1983
Gitlin, Tod, The sixties: years of hope, days of rage, New York: Bantam Books, 1987
ed. Stine, P, "The sixties", Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1995
ed. Gardels NP "At century’s end: great minds reflect on our times", La Jolla: ALTI Pub., 1995
(9). An important question: how is "power" generated in the various human conglomerations of modern village world ? How is "power" practised ? What are the mechanisms of decision making? What are the mechanisms for national and international justice in the light of our modern awareness of universal human rights and environment rights? THE ISIS RAA POWER STRUGGLE AND THE DEMISE OF THE MATRIARCH
ed. Weinberg A., and Weinberg L., "Instead of violence; writings by the great advocates of peace and non-violence throughout history", New York, Grossman, 1963
Bergquist, G, "The pen and the sword: war and peace in the prose and plays of Bernard Shaw", Salzburg: Salzburg UP, 1977
Hassan TA, "Round table conference on tolerance" University of Marmara, UNESCO,(in arabic) Istanbul, 1993
(10). Religion in the new world order ? Spiritual Values or a resurgence of divisive religious sentiment? Can the struggle between the rational and the irrational be turned into a non-exclusive complementarity ? Is there a balance point where the known and the unknown can co-exist ? Is there a balance point where faith and doubt can coexist and complement each other ?
ed. Westerlund D, "Questioning the secular state: the worldwide resurgence of religion in politics"
ed. Sahliyeh E, "Religious resurgence and politics in the contemporary world", Albany : State University of New York Press: 1990
Hollinsworth M, "The economic league: the silent McCarthyism", London: National Council for Civil Liberties, 1989.
Malachy, Y "American fundamentalism and Israel: the relation of fundamentalist churches to Zionism and the state of Israel". Jerusalem: Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1978
Hadawi S, "Christianity at the crossroads". Ottawa: Jerusalem International Pub. 1982.
Lustick I "For the land and the Lord: Jewish fundamentalism in Israel". New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1988
Ariel, YS "On behalf of Israel: American fundamentalism attitudes towards Jews, Judaism, and Zionism, 1865-1945", Brooklyn: Carlson Pub., 1991
Rausch, DA "Zionism within early American fundamentalism 1878-1917: a convergence of two traditions". New York: E. Mellen Press, 1979
(11). The West and the Euro-American, and now Euro-American-Judeo-Christian model is not the final answer to the challenge of civilisation, a mirror image Eastern-centrism and Eastern cultural and religious-centrism is not the answer either
Tofler, A., "War and anti-war", Boston: Little Brown, 1993
Tofler, A., "The third wave", New York: Bantam, 1981
Burns, EC, "Love, power and justice as central elements in a view of social change: a comparison and evaluation of the thought of Rheinhold Niebuhr and Martin Luther King, Jr.", Pittsburgh, 1974
Neville, R, "Out of my mind : from flower power to the third millennium : the seventies, the eighties and the nineties", New York: Penguin, 1996
Dominguez, JR, Robin V, "Your money or your life: tranforming your relationship with money and achieving financial independence.
(12). Towards an interactive, pluralistic global symphonic rhythm. Is an equitable humanistic globalisation possible?OSIRIS VISION PAGE  Final Comment
Hassan THA, "The current crises of modern medicine and the place of music", University Press of America, Lanham, New York 1985
Hassan THA, "The missed development in biology, the humanities and medicine, potential conceptual contributions from the expressive arts",(in arabic) Fusul, GEBO, March, 1985
Hassan THA, "Soliman, an Egyptian drama" GEBO, Cairo, 1991
Hassan THA, "On the greatness of Mozart,(in arabic) Ebdaa, Vol. 7, July 1991
ed. Gardels NP "At century’s end: great minds reflect on our times", La Jolla: ALTI Pub., 1995
Tofler, A., "War and anti-war", Boston: Little Brown, 1993
Tofler, A., "The third wave", New York: Bantam, 1981
Dammann, Erik, "The Future in Our Hands", Oxford, Pergamon Press, 1979back to CONTENTS
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