A future of fear: In 2025, Israel and the West are in near-martial law, with isolationism gripping the U.S., nationalism rampant in Europe, Asian nations at war for diminishing resources and markets, and a changing climate displacing tens of millions. A new Dark Ages is sweeping across the globe.
A future of hope: In 2025, a stable peace in the Middle East reflects a re-energized U.N. enforcing international law, the U.S. a global citizen rather than a global master, a stable and engaged European Union, and alternative energies that both provide economic opportunity and help to mitigate climate change. A new Renaissance is sweeping across the globe.
Which is more likely? Will the (geo)politics of emotion really determine our fate?
More below the fold....
The (Geo)Politics of Emotion - Conclusion and Critique
This week Morning Feature explores Dominique Möisi's new book, The Geopolitics of Emotion. We began Wednesday with a summary of Dr. Möisi's thesis, and his observations of China and India as cultures of hope. Thursday we examined his idea that the Arab-Islamic world is a culture of humiliation. Yesterday we looked the U.S. and western Europe as cultures of fear. Today we conclude with his projections for the future, and my critique of his theory.
To review, Dr. Möisi offers three driving emotions in geopolitics - hope, humiliation, and fear. He suggests that the dominant emotion in a culture is most apparent and important in how that people interact with the Other, and that "In the age of globalization, the relationship with the Other has become more fundamental than ever." (p.20) Broadly speaking, cultures of hope are more likely to work with the Other, cultures of humiliation more likely to lash out at the Other, and cultures of fear more likely to isolate themselves from the Other.
The world in 2025 - Fear or Hope?
The descriptions I offered in the introduction summarize Dr. Möisi's projections for our immediate future, depending on whether fear or hope emerges as the dominant cultural emotion. While Dr. Möisi focuses more on how existing conflicts will be resolved or escalate, the larger issue of climate change - likely to displace tens of millions into new regions - may be the most salient expression of which emotion has come to dominate world affairs. Those displaced by changing climates will arrive as Others, and how cultures receive them may dominate the politics of the 21st century, both domestic and international.
Dr. Möisi suggests that U.S. policies will shape the conditions for the world's emotional response. He says this not because he believes the U.S. is inherently exceptional, but on the premise that we are still the world's most powerful nation and thus what we do has the greatest impact for good or ill. He argues our most important contribution to a future of hope would be to embrace a new status of global citizen rather than global hegemon: encouraging a robust United Nations with both courts of international law and a police power to enforce their decisions ... even against us.
If the U.S. does this, Dr. Möisi suggests, we will lead other nations to do likewise. If we insist on preserving our national sovereignty, other nations will insist on preserving theirs, and relations between nations will continue to be based on the threat or use of brute force, economic and/or military. Those with legitimate grievances who lack the economic or military clout to prevail in negotiation will continue to resort to asymmetric warfare - terrorism - leading to the future of fear outlined in the introduction.
It seems a reasonable argument, and I don't disagree with Dr. Möisi's conclusion that the U.S. should lead by example in helping to establish the rule of international law. But are emotions really that powerful an international instrument, and is hope enough?
My critique - Emotions as diagnostic sums.
Dr. Möisi's ideas are certainly provocative, and I think his argument that we should consider cultures' dominant emotions is worthwhile. In the interest of fairness, this week I've tried to both describe his thesis as best I can, and to defend it in our discussions. I thought it best to explore his entire argument before picking it apart, because it is both more and less than the sum of its parts.
Unlike Gracian's comment from Wednesday, I believe cultures do exist. I agree with the article he/she cites that each of us inhabits several cultures - national, regional, local, ethnic, religious, professional, and/or household - and that no one of those describes the whole of any individual. As cultures are composed of individuals, that filters back up such that no nation, region, locale, ethnicity, religion, profession, or household has a singular, fixed cultural character. But complexity of analysis does not infer non-existence, and I think it's a mistake to conclude that we're all really individuals and "culture" is purely an analytical construct.
I also agree with Dr. Möisi that cultures express macro-emotions of hope, humiliation, and fear. Where I disagree is his tacit (and perhaps unintended) argument that these emotions are essential or endemic, rather than expressing reasoned responses. I see a culture's dominant emotion as a snapshot sum encompassing several factors: (a) history and myth; (b) economic and social conditions and expectations; (c) agendas of political leaders; and, (d) a gestalt estimate of future prospects.
In this perspective, a culture's emotions are diagnostic rather than essential. Specifically, if a culture expresses a dominant emotion that is very different from what we'd expect - most saliently in its reaction to Others - that tells us the people see perceive themselves and their prospects very differently than we do as outsiders. If they express hope when we would expect humiliation or fear, they see opportunities we don't or don't see threats that we do. The converse holds true if they express humiliation or fear when we would expect hope. We ought not to assume that our perception of their opportunities and/or threats is objective. We should explore what they perceive, and why, open to the possibility that their perceptions are more accurate than our own.
A culture's dominant emotion, expressed in its reaction to Others, begs examination of why that emotion is currently dominant. If the dominant emotion encourages us to ask those questions - to at least try to understand and empathize with the people we're considering - we have done something useful in estimating that emotion. But if we don't take that next step, or in doing so we dismiss any differing perceptions as their shortsightedness rather than our own, we risk invalidating that people as reasoning human beings, concluding instead that "they're just acting on emotion." It becomes a way of dismissing rather than understanding.
In the end, I don't think a culture can simply "choose hope" or "choose fear." Individuals may, and those individual choices may contribute to a dominant emotion, but there are other impulses and conditions at work as well. To gloss over those other impulses and conditions and suggest our future rests on which emotion we "choose" is a simplistic and egocentric approach to the human condition and international relations. Dr. Möisi doesn't quite commit that error, but I think his thesis needs a lot more refinement to guard against that error.
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Happy Saturday!