For celebrating the end of 2002 (4)

Relatively few days ago, it happened again the end of another year,
as it has been determined conventionally and even compulsively by
those cultural assumptions that caused the emergence and evolvement
of the Western civilization. At present it is the only CIVILIZED
environment on Earth that prevails. All the other different cultures
have in practice disappeared under the homogenizing pressure - pardon
I should have written progress - of the Western Civilization. The
values of this civilization are not dogmatically maintained as it has
happened in the domain of several other quite conservative cultures.
The Western civilization is always changing in accordance with new
perspectives conceived by very creative decision-makers.

In the 1990's three main events caused some radical changes in the
dynamics of this superb civilisation:

1. The failure of the government of the Soviet Union to maintain in
operation its colonizing procedures, which during more than six
decades had masked the original socialist principles, which aimed at
improving the perspective of every worker and his/her family.
Instead, along these decades the soviet policies intended and
succeeded in making more and more homogeneous the performance of
masses of people. Once again it was successfully organized another
Megamachine (Mumford) for increasing the effectiveness, efficiency
and productivity of the industrial production. What for?

Evidently the Soviet government assumed that in this way its
decisions would be more competitive when being confronted to the
interests and possibilities of other colonial powers.

2. In 1992, the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro was the U.N
Conference on Environment and Development attended by 117 heads of
state who examined some main aspects of the negative impact of the
magnificent technological innovations which have aimed at maintaining
the civilizing trends. The participants adopted the so called Agenda
21 a blueprint for action that calls for improving the quality of
life on Earth by using natural resources more efficiently, protecting
global commons, better managing human settlements and reducing
pollutants and chemical waste.

        This Summit was the culmination of several previous warnings
such as: the �Silent Spring� of Rachel Carson in 1962 about the
threat of toxic chemicals; the U.N. Biosphere Conference discussing
global environmental problems in 1968; the �Limits to Growth�
published by the Club of Rome in 1972; the discovery of a �hole� in
the Earth's ozone layer in 1985,... Many other results were
generated by intelligent but narrow minded and short-sighted decision
making as it was unaware that the human presence on Earth is
restricted by limited terrestrial possibilities.

3. The continuous technological development supported by further
advances of scientific research that has aimed at increasing more and
more the speed in transport, telecommunications and data processing.
This development has been determined by splendid and unbelievable
achievements that have been attained by means of scientific research
employed for increasing ad infinitum the technological innovation in
these three domains. Two of the main outcomes of this human work have
caused the emergence of ICT (Information and Communication
Technology) and Automation, which are the causes of the increasing
decerebralization of humans and the growing unemployment of workers

These three events have contributed to create fabulously idealised
circumstances that gradually motivated decision-makers of colonising
entities located in rich and poor countries to conceive and design
ultra modernised technological and methodological alternatives, those
that pretend to make sustainable the UNSUSTAINABLE trends of the
WESTERN CIVILIZATION. These are tendencies that have been always
determined by decision making that aims exclusively at assuring the
utilitarianism of those terrestrial possibilities that may increase
the monetary profits and the financial benefits for every clever
elite involved. These are decisions made whatever might be the
consequences for the masses of people, as they are no more than human
resources and potential buyers and consumers of everything that might
be produced. The utilitarian principles developed all along the
civilizing adventure may possible to involve some of them when it is
necessary and only occasionally to recognize some of their needs.

Anyhow, the features of the Western civilisation are in fact a
culmination of the dynamics of the whole civilizing adventure, which
briefly can be defined with the following few words "everything must
change in order to change nothing." In other words this expression
means to change continuously the procedures in order to maintain
unchangeable the exploitation of natural and human resources.

This alternative has been also conceived under the influence of the
prevailing warfare spirit consequently, it became inevitably the
Fourth World War of the 20th century. An economic, social, political
and cultural struggle supported by ICT for allowing the big
corporations to organise the Globalisation of Free Marketing. In
fact, this is a biased globalisation that basically aims at
increasing ad infinitum the competitiveness of this Marketing. Why?

It intends to make more and more profitable their involvement in
business, financing and economic transactions, without recognising
how indispensable have become for billions of humans to have enough
employment, education and health services, for allowing all of them
to organize their daily survival. Neither it is recognised that the
development of the whole human society: the homosphere needs to be
organised according to ecological, biological, ethological and
ethical criteria.

How it has happened that decision-makers have become not only
seriously 'blind and deaf' but unable to be aware of noticing that
this competitiveness has become the source of unemployment, poverty,
misery, criminality and terrorism, which sooner or later, will
inevitably reduce the same competitiveness?

Anyhow, this Free Marketing is continuously reconceived and
implemented again and again by those few who believe that they can
always learn to produce everything and anything that may be consumed
by the masses. Consequently, they also assume that the common people
do need no more than to learn to buy and consume more and more,
whatever the consequences might be; learning on their own to be
creative enough when they do not have enough money, or are definitely
unemployed.

This globalisation, attained through this Fourth World War - an
economic, cultural and political global phenomenon, - has emerged
from the unavoidable warring against the enemies of progress,
ideologically supported by the modernised neo-liberal ideology. This
globalisation is the main concern of the very clever, therefore also
efficient business which has determined what the main concern of the
big corporations should be. This concern inevitably requires that
both ethnical and national values must be removed because they are
not anymore needed for the survival of homogenised masses, which
should be efficiently trained and tamed as parts of ultra-modern
Megamachines. These aims being determined in accordance with criteria
conceived inside big corporations, where it is considered that
neither borders nor states are necessary for the functionality of the
huge and highly civilized free marketing.

Meanwhile it is intended to allow some big corporations to use
governments, which should efficiently and systematically increase the
number of homogeneous individuals, because it is assumed that
individual motivations and social and cultural concerns should not
differ at all.

Unfortunately for the perspective imagined and planned inside the big
corporations, the whole process has become the engine that generates
the globalisation of unemployment, poverty, misery, corruption,
criminality, hypocrisy, cynicism,... and even frivolity.

Today it is clearly evident that the remains of every other
non-western culture could not resist the invitation or the simple
infection to enjoy the magnificent CIVILIZING progress that is
heralded every day by those who are organizing the voracious
exploitation of the terrestrial resources, starting with petroleum.

In my view the serious problems that humankind faces at the dawn of
the 21st century confirm the appreciation made by Ludwig von
Bertalanffy more than 30 years ago. He argued that the overall fate
of the world depends on the adoption by humanity of a new set of
values, based on a general systems Weltanschauung (worldview). "We
are seeking another basic outlook: the world as organization. This
[outlook] would profoundly change the categories of our thinking and
influence our practical attitudes. We must envision the biosphere as
a whole ... with mutually reinforcing or mutually destructive
interdependencies. [We need] a global system of mutually symbiotic
societies, mapping new conditions into a flexible institutional
structure and dealing with change through constructive
reorganization."

I sincerely believe that the conceptual potentiality of systems
thinking, information, cybernetic interactions, organization and
humane performance of humans may allow some of us to deal with the
serious problems that faces humankind at present.

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Received on Tue Jan 14 06:13:59 2003