The New System of Global Governance: The ongoing Paradigm Shift

Inhalt

PART ONE

THE END OF LINEAR SOLUTIONS IN GEOPOLITICS: THE OVERDUE PARADIGM SHIFT

THE SPIRITUAL FATHERS OF THIS BOOK

INTRODUCTION

CALL FOR A SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PARADIGM SHIFT

THE END OF LINEAR SOLUTIONS IN POLITICS

Crisis: the chance for new happiness

LINEAR THINKING IN POLITICS LEADS TO A DEAD END

SUCCESSFUL EXAMPLES OF PARADIGM SHIFTS IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

The policy of reconciliation and peace under Willy Brandt

Singapore: from Third to First World

Perestroika and German reunification

China's economic and social transformation

CHANGING THE PERSPECTIVE LEADS TO FINDING A NEW PATH

INITIATING THE PARADIGM SHIFT NOW

PART TWO - THE EMERGING NEW SYSTEM OF GLOBAL GOVERNANCE

INTRODUCTION

THE CULTURAL FOUNDATIONS OF CAPITALISM

TRANSFORMING THE SYSTEM OF GLOBAL GOVERNANCE

THE FUTURE SYSTEM OF GLOBAL GOVERNANCE: THE CULTURAL BACKGROUND

PERSPECTIVES FOR THE COMING SYSTEM OF GLOBAL GOVERNANCE

Bibliography

PART ONE

THE END OF LINEAR SOLUTIONS IN GEOPOLITICS: THE OVERDUE PARADIGM SHIFT

… how do I show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle?

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical

Investigations, §309

THE SPIRITUAL FATHERS OF THIS BOOK

The intellectual authorship of this book is held by two American thinkers and visionaries. The two have never met in person, but what they have in common is that they derive their thinking from cybernetics as a scientific means to understand and explain this world¹. This is obvious in the case of Gregory Bateson², because he speaks of it frequently in his writings. In the case of R. Buckminster Fuller³, the reference to cybernetics is visible everywhere in his writings and also in his works, but he was more of a pragmatist and generalist nature. Bucky Fuller strove to live a life, in which he fought for the practical implementation of his ideas, mainly through the use and application of his design artefacts, while Gregory Bateson limited himself to theoretical and epistemological reflection and teaching.

What they both have in common is that they were very sharp observers of what was going on in the world and were always keen to understand how people acted. Both have always put people at the centre of their efforts and have always looked at people in a larger, more comprehensive context and from a system view. In Buckminster Fuller's case, it was man in the universe. For Gregory Bateson, a trained anthropologist and biologist, it was the systemic relation between man and nature. What both have in common is that they saw the fundamental fallacy in human thought and action in the fact that man saw himself disconnected from these necessary systemic relations with nature and the universe. Both explained this as the result of the one-sided emphasis on the development of the natural sciences since the 17th century, which has led to a mechanistic world view. This paradigm of human isolation from nature and the universe, as both saw it, has slowly dissolved again since the early 20th century with quantum mechanics and new insights gained by biology in the self-regulating systems of life. These scientific discoveries generated progressively a new world view that related life and the role of humanity to the uncertainty principle. A door into the unknown had opened. From now on, the meaning of life and human nature were perceived in a new light. It had become possible to reconnect with the nature of man and his importance in the cosmos.⁴ This sums up the experience shared by Gregory Bateson and Buckminster Fuller.

In order to understand these two great minds, we would like to emphasize the decisive basic idea that is characteristic of each of them. Buckminster Fuller developed his fundamental ideas after 1930, formulated them in 1969 in his Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, and summarized them with the formulation of Synergetics as Explorations into the Geometry of Thinking⁵. Intuitively, he seized the need for the application of general principles and laws to the understanding of the functioning of Man in Universe. He convincingly shows that it is not a lack of energy that inhibits the development of humanity. Rather, the fundamental mistake lies in the fact that humanity has not found, not understood, the access to the infinite source of energy that is provided to us from the universe through the sun. This lack of access to understanding eternally regenerating energy has so far kept people caught in a self-made trap. According to Buckminster Fuller, this phenomenon can be traced back to the work of British economist Thomas Robert Malthus, who established at the beginning of the 19th century the principle that humans would reproduce with the necessary fatefulness, but at the same time had only limited natural resources at their disposal. Hence, the fight for limited resources was inevitable. For Darwin, this became the struggle for existence and led Darwinists to formulate the principle of the survival of the fittest. If we take these thoughts just a few steps further, we end up directly at the rationale for the demand for unlimited growth of the economy, and at the political level, for the hegemonic striving and the seemingly inevitable wars as a means of gaining power, which are at the center of the critical analysis of our book.

Gregory Bateson is an anthropologist and a biologist by training. He has also worked successfully in psychology and psychiatry⁶. However, he has the most important significance as a researcher on epistemology, and in particular on the importance of cybernetics for the sciences and for the shaping of human living conditions on earth.

He says of himself that the two most important historical events in my life were the Treaty of Versailles and the discovery of cybernetics.⁷ This certainly sounds astonishing, because it is not immediately clear what the relationship between these two events looks like. We come closer to understanding what Gregory Bateson means when he says that, in his view, the important question for history is: has the default⁸ or attitude been changed?. He goes on to explain that the most important points in history are... the historical moments... in which attitudes are changed, in which previous values change. He then shows that the Treaty of Versailles has not successfully changed the attitudes and values of the most important signatories of the