# The Unity of Civilization

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Robley Edward Whitson, The Unity of Civilization, New York: Newman Press, 1971, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> The Unity of Civilization
> 
> Robley Edward Whitson
> published in The Coming Convergence of World Religions pp. 17-34
> 
> New York: Newman Press, 1971
> 
> 1. Text
> 
> [page 17]
> 
> I
> 
> The unity of mankind, although still in large part a dream, is
> beginning more and more to evoke a sense of reality. Both the
> dream and the reality express the unique character of the Twentieth
> Century.
> 
> Without parallel in the past, contemporary civilization is coming
> to be centered upon the consciousness of man as community:
> the significance of man in personal relationship — not the isolated
> individual nor the subordinating society. Yet, paradoxically, the
> historic situation of contemporary civilization bears sad witness
> to both human isolation and subordination. Perhaps this is the
> most impressive element in the development of the first half of
> the century: materialist individualism, exalting the pragmatic
> good in the isolated value of possession, pleasure, security — the
> individual opposed to others, morally unrelated; and subordinating
> totalitarianism, identifying all reality in the will of one as
> leader, as consensus, as collective dictatorship — the individual
> absorbed in anti-relational conformism.
> 
> [page 18]
> 
> In the latter half of the century we find that our choice does
> not rest between these two. It seems, rather, that opposition to
> both is stimulating an awareness of a positive correspondence between
> man as individual and as social community. And an immediate
> consequent of even the most rudimentary recognition of
> human community is the further recognition of human unity, not
> simply in terms of external pressures and circumstances pragmatically
> forcing man to come together, but as an emerging consciousness
> of what man really is, and hence the consciousness that
> these "external" factors are not determinative causes, but dynamic
> reflections of the human condition.
> 
> Yet human unity has not attained more than a sense of reality
> for us. It is still clearly at its beginnings, still mostly dream. But
> perhaps now we can see it as a dream in the psychological sense — a sign from within the hidden inward side of our process of
> consciousness revealing our fuller life history — rather than a
> dream in the sense of theoretical ideal. The thrust toward unity
> in contemporary civilization is unique precisely because it has
> emerged in our consciousness from our real, experiential history,
> not from an abstract social theory. We can see this best in terms
> of problems. The sense of reality we have about human unity
> does not rest upon what has been achieved, but upon the appalling
> problems experienced (and only partly resolved) in the first
> half of the century and upon the problems now arising as we seek
> unity.
> 
> While stressing the uniqueness of our present situation and
> thus implying truly new issues calling — for truly new modes of confrontation,
> unity as a dream reflecting the inner process of
> human history requires us to seek to understand that history as a
> continuity. The uniqueness of the present cannot be an unrelated
> or discontinuous uniqueness, unless we would be willing to proclaim
> the discovery of an absolutely new human species and history,
> not evolved, not a process, but some sort of spontaneous
> creation ex nihilo. The uniqueness of the present is to be located in
> the emergence into our consciousness of the drive toward a real
> and realizable unity, a consciousness of present experience
> 
> [page 19]
> 
> pointed into the future but grown from the past with all its nonconscious
> implications.
> 
> Placed in such a context, the dream of unity has a very real
> history and reflects truly the process of existence. Whatever we
> observe in our world — the greatest thing, the smallest — we discover
> the same problem of meaning: how is it itself, and how is it
> that it does not exist by itself? This question must be asked when
> we look into the inner constitution of things, observing the variety
> of elements and yet the greater identity achieved somehow together.
> This holds true, even more impressively, when we consider
> things in terms of their process of existence rather than as if
> they exist statically as at a moment isolated from other moments.
> While they are real at each instant, their significance is known
> only insofar as we see what they do, what happens among them,
> the effect they have on one another — that they are not static, but
> "flow."
> 
> The inner meaning of the dream of unity becomes more evident
> when we consider living reality. Our most secure understanding
> of the basis of living things rests upon the recognition of
> their degree of organization. In a manner of speaking, the living
> are more unified, quantitatively and qualitatively, than "other"
> things. Their constituting elements are less able to preserve their
> identity apart from each other, and the effect of the unity of elements
> is dramatically beyond the individual elements themselves.
> Yet the reality of the living whole depends upon the unity of the
> individuals, both factors, and it is not possible to theorize a supposed
> ultimacy or priority for one or the other. In fact, the observation
> of assimilation of new elements and procreation of new
> wholes insists that we approach our understanding in terms of coordination.
> When we think of human history we tend to see the great diversity
> in mankind: the long evolutionary sequence with its
> many kinds of men; the widely scattered peoples and tribes with
> all their differing ways of life; the separate races, languages and
> traditions embodied in more recent millennia in great cities and
> civilizations. Yet, if we look closely we see this vast diversity in
> 
> [page 20]
> 
> human expression in a process of convergence: slowly and at
> times in almost chaotic disorder more and more interrelation
> takes place — separate kinds of men become fewer, hardly any
> men are now scattered out of contact with each other, the races
> move together, common languages are sought and heretofore isolate
> traditions are cross-fertilizing one another, and all set in new
> cities and civilizations becoming so vast and hence moving so
> close to one another that the boundaries are becoming lost. And
> now we can see man's world from beyond it in space, and that
> world is clearly round with all parts leading to all others.1
> 
> It is one whole world, but man is not now whole, not yet significantly
> one. And the interpretation of the process of existence
> and history as convergent does not guarantee man's ultimate
> unity. Man can fail. We have lived with the terror of that possibility
> for a full generation. For the first time we actually have in
> our hands the tools to forge our unity or our self-destruction. To
> know that the dream of unity is a reflection of what we really are
> and are to be does not mean that the dream must come true. The
> reality which the dream symbolizes can be suppressed, kept from
> consciousness and fulfillment by our suicide.
> 
> Putting aside any attempt to estimate the chances of survival,
> highly subjective at best, is the direction of human development
> actually toward unity, and if so toward what kind of unity? The
> evaluation of the ultimate effect of man's present direction of development
> is not self-evident. The same data can be interpreted
> in quite opposite ways. Yet there is an interesting point of departure
> all would seem to agree upon with little hesitation: the data
> show us man is evolving, either toward a greater unity or toward a
> more and more irreconcilable state of division. (Hardly anyone
> seems to think man is not evolving in any direction!) The opposition
> of the two evaluations is certainly reflective of a prior optimism
> or pessimism — which sooner or later leads again to the
> question of future survival since both would agree that man's dividedness
> contains within it the threat of self-destruction, a threat
> increasing or decreasing proportionately with the actual presence
> or absence of the elements of division.
> 
> [page 21]
> 
> In one very real sense the interpretation of our development as
> unitive (or divisive) is not simply an objective judgment, it is an
> option. The data of human experience are not "outside" the historic
> process, and the process in its human dimension is directly
> what men do within the range of possibilities open at any one point
> in the full context of the historic situation. The observer is also
> and primarily, a participant, a doer. Thus the real meaning of
> the question of our possible unity is: will we do it? But as the option
> is not absolute, being contained within the boundaries set
> both by non-human factors and the cumulative effect of all previous
> options, the answer will not be found except in the con text in
> which the option can be made: the range of possibilities as these
> possibilities actually exist at the moment of choosing and hence
> as they limit, condition and motivate the choosing.
> 
> II
> 
> If we follow a positive interpretation the questions of the development
> toward increasing unity and of the type of unity being
> formed become a single question embodying our understanding
> of the context through which the development is taking place.
> We have already characterized the unitive process as convergent,
> and it is this notion which will be used as the norm of the present
> attempted analysis. In an evolving process in which a variety of
> heretofore separate factors come to be formed into a new whole — a
> qualitatively and organizationally new entity beyond the additive
> effect of the no longer separate component elements — the
> new whole is not something discontinuous from the previous moment
> of the process. Though it may be radically different from
> any of the entities of that previous moment, it is continuous with
> the process in that it takes origin through the interrelation that occurs
> at one moment among elements previously unrelated in this
> manner. Our most forceful specification of convergence in process
> is probably that of biological generation, in which the offspring
> is clearly a new reality not identifiable singly with the
> 
> [page 22]
> 
> parents. It is not simply an addition of their characteristics, but
> something quite different; yet in origin of individual existence it
> is in complete continuity with them: it embodies them in the
> greater effect of their convergence.
> 
> Conditioned by the primitive mechanical vision of existence of
> pre-contemporary science and philosophy, we tend to see ourselves
> and our universe as an accumulation of separate entities,
> basically static in themselves but moving deterministically in
> relation to one another only because each has been "set going."
> Everything will eventually "run down" and the haphazard relations
> of one to the other will again be resolved and cease. In
> terms of human history we tend to see separate individuals, gathered
> only conveniently into groups, and acting upon one another
> in a long series of essentially external cause and effect relationships.
> There is nothing but a linear succession of this producing
> that, and that replacing this. In such a mechanistic vision of the
> process of development if unity were to be produced it would be a
> "new thing" which would replace the previous situation of nonunity,
> and such replacement would be necessarily destructive of
> what had gone before. It is important here to see the effect of
> linking the two questions: will there be unity? and what type will it be?
> A mechanistic unity inevitably is a uniformity: many individual
> elements are made into something not diverse, and hence not a
> unity of things but one new thing made out of its predecessors in such
> a way that it displaces them — they are in themselves destroyed.
> A mechanistic unity is actually no unity at all, but is simply the
> elimination of diversity. A new thing now exists, and the "old
> things" have been absorbed into it, reduced from what they were
> in themselves to being mere parts in the machine, without their
> own authenticity, and subject to replacement if it suits the well-being
> of the machine.
> 
> Translated into the sphere of human relationships, this vision
> is the basis of the horrors of nearly four centuries: the political
> and religious absolutism of crown and later nationalistic state,
> economic absolutism of the industrial revolution, the totalitarian
> 
> [page 23]
> 
> ideologies. Each claims to produce unity, but actually produces a
> "new thing" conformity, in which the individual human as such
> is a mere part. In man's sacred relationships this vision has produced
> religious and ideological imperialism, in which the experience
> of Absolute has been twisted into an absolute experience
> calling for destruction of sacred relationships which have made
> the present moment possible but which do not conform.
> 
> Is this kind of unity unity at all? Not if unity means somehow
> bringing the diverse into significant interrelationship without destroying
> them — the opposite to uniformity. Mechanistic unity
> must be something external, determined from without and not
> reflective of any supposed inward thrust of things themselves. It
> is not convergence but conformity. Can such a "unity" be
> achieved? We are in the midst of that issue, still unresolved. Our
> century stands in sad witness to the emergence of effective social
> totalitarianism with its ideological imperialism. And three paths
> are still open to us: conformism, separate coexistence or convergence.
> 
> Perhaps it is significant that when we attempt to articulate a
> world view liberated from and opposed to the mechanistic we
> can describe it only negatively as non-mechanistic. We have not
> yet succeeded in settling upon a designation which would positively
> and adequately identify what we are catching sight of as
> we move away from the closed vision of the machine. We should
> be reminded by this of the newness of the vision, the still primitive
> condition of our experience of openness and the fact that for
> most of mankind it is only the practical effects of the new vision
> which have been experienced, not the vision itself. As a consequence
> we have not yet been able to develop a non-mechanistic
> language and hence it is very difficult to communicate the new
> experience — which for the most part must be achieved directly in
> one way or another, rather than be initiated through communicational
> sharing. The child is still drawn into Western society
> with a conditioning into a vision of things as separate elements in
> basically external relationships. He sees his parents acting first
> 
> [page 24]
> 
> and foremost as individuals who concede areas of life and action to
> others in society. He learns to speak of "them": society, government,
> church, fellow citizens, the human race.
> 
> The difficulty in correlating in life the old vision of things with
> the already felt implications of the new (especially where there is
> no conscious suspicion that there is a new vision) can be seen in
> the contradictory symptoms of the total tension of the contemporary
> situation. Thus, coupled with widespread revolt against the
> patterns of conformity is the deep need very forcefully expressed
> for group acceptance (and a powerful social sanction of excommunication
> for all who fail to conform to the revolt). With great
> devotion to causes of idealism there is the all too common failure
> to focus commitment upon actual human beings, preferring, for
> example, the liberation of "peoples" and "races," and outright
> rejection of "classes" and "generations."
> 
> For those caught in the transition from the mechanistic to the
> non-mechanistic, the goal of the developmental process is not
> seen as unity but as coexistence. Individuality is strongly asserted
> and minimal social interrelation is conceded, with a positive confidence
> in direct personal experience as the means of resolving
> the tension. This is still a mechanistic vision — the elements are
> essentially individual and not internally constituted in interrelationship,
> but only passing into (and out of) relationships according
> to external circumstances. It is the mechanistic which is
> adapted to the already experienced practical consequences of the
> non-mechanistic, through the emphasis on direct experience.
> And this both fulfills the beginnings of the truly contemporary
> situation and also thwarts it.
> 
> Direct experience demands that we see things from the "inside,"
> that we not be content with description or external effects.
> It calls upon us to take seriously the present moment, what we
> are and what we are doing, and to extend this seriousness to all persons
> and things — who are together with us in this moment. It
> does not allow us to prefer the security of retreat to the risk of involvement.
> Ironically, at the same time the emphasis on direct
> experience can make it impossible for us to enter the reality of
> 
> [page 25]
> 
> the contemporary situation, if direct experience is approached
> through the unconscious acceptance of the mechanistic vision of
> the universe. For in that case our experience is divisive: the present
> moment and its importance are seen as standing against others,
> past and future, since all are discontinuous; all value must be
> concentrated exclusively in the present experience, with other dimensions
> of experience — our own or others' — denied as value-charged,
> lest a comparison of differing values undercut our commitment
> to the narrowed present. Fundamentally, mechanistically
> formed direct experience must so emphasize the individual
> experiencer that significant communication of experience from
> one to another becomes impossible, even though, tragically, this
> is the very thing sought!
> 
> Hence, the further significance of the diversity of people and
> things cannot be seen in terms of unity, for in the response to direct
> personal experience where the authenticity of both person
> and experience cannot be maintained except by evading integral
> relationships any unity must mean uniformity. In a mechanistic
> world coexistence must be the optimistic option.
> 
> III
> 
> There is a profound difference between the older classic
> mechanistic vision and the contemporary emphasis on experience.
> The quest for the experiential marks the decisive movement
> away from the mechanistic, although as long as it remains
> a negative response — moving away from — the tension of the
> transition cannot be resolved, nor can a unitive pattern be envisioned
> genuinely alien to a conformity. A positive response in
> which the transition can move to completion will involve the
> achievement of personal experience but beyond the context of
> the individual basically alone — the mechanistic heritage — and thus
> neither conformity nor coexistence will be within the range of
> possibilities open to the fulfillment of the historic process. A non-mechanistic
> world excludes the static, the isolate and the closed,
> 
> [page 26]
> 
> insisting on a dynamic process of existence open to all that can
> happen from "inside." And thus the absolutizing of neither the
> one nor the many is possible.
> 
> The experience of individuation involves both the assertion of
> the authenticity of each element in itself and the assertion that
> no element exists simply in itself but in essential interrelation
> with others, ultimately each interrelated to all others. The interrelation
> is essential, deriving its significance from the constitution
> of the individual, from "within." Since individuals are constantly
> in change both in themselves and in their relationships, their interrelatedness
> is necessarily dynamic, and this dynamism is also
> essential, from "within." Fundamentally, the experience of reality
> evaluated in a non-mechanistic framework is that of process:
> the vast multitude of individuals, wholly themselves and totally
> interrelated in a dynamic unity of many — many individuals and
> many relationships. From one vantage point the process is singular,
> the ultimate unity of all things; from another the process is
> unimaginably complex, involving all the processes of every possible
> individual and group in all their relationships. Whatever the
> level of our observation, this is our experience of reality, not one or
> many, but one and many, a basic paradox in which the authenticity
> of every individual as such must be maintained and yet
> never as if unrelated.
> 
> Within a processual understanding of reality, any unity must
> be seen as one of convergence: unity formed out of actual individuals
> which somehow do not cease to be themselves within the
> unity. Convergence excludes the isolation of individuals — there
> simply are none existing alone; convergence also excludes a unity
> in the sense of uniformity — any interrelation must be an interrelation
> of individuals or groups of individuals.
> 
> When we translate this in terms of man's way of life it is quite
> clear that we are witnessing the formation of dramatic new relationships
> arising from and involving many kinds of ways of life
> heretofore basically separate in both their development and their
> effects. We speak of the emergence of a world civilization but if
> this is within the context of convergence such a civilization will
> 
> [page 27]
> 
> have to be both singular — a way of life for a unified mankind — and
> plural — derived from the world of many traditions and
> meaningful for a world of many kinds of individuals. A realistic
> world civilization must be fundamentally pluralistic; for men,
> real historic men, have been formed in great diversity and have
> achieved genuinely fulfilling values in ways simply not the same.
> Nor are the values in their entirety the same, but have an all important
> internal variety which can be grasped the moment we
> cease thinking of human value as an abstraction and begin recognizing
> it as it is actually lived out integrally within a way of
> life.
> 
> The emergence of a singularity in civilization, dependent upon
> the development of radically new elements in human life and
> hence of new relationships whereby they can be shared, strangely
> enough makes more significant all that has developed separately.
> Brought together through the new relationships of sharing, the
> now mutually available varieties create a complex of choices for
> men, and different needs can be filled from a more open range of
> possibilities. In convergence, the singularity in civilization rests
> upon the degree of sharing open to the participants in which
> common achievement is made possible, especially the achievement
> of the communication of experience. Many come to share
> experience in important and broad areas of life. Yet this singularity
> in no way excludes a true variety. The two are brought into a
> dynamic relationship. Individuals who are not the same come to
> share experience together, and from this come to understand the
> basis of their individuality and finally to see that valuable differences
> are complementary rather than divisive. Convergence,
> then, presumes that the unresolved and unresolvable paradox of
> the one and the many is the positive key to the understanding of
> what is taking place in man's way of life: unitive pluralism — men
> are becoming truly one insofar as all that they are can be brought
> into dynamic interrelationship.
> 
> Regardless of the logic in the attempt to analyze the basic pattern
> of a unitive pluralism, one way or another we must always
> return to the practical question: is convergence taking place? This is
> 
> [page 28]
> 
> not to ask: will unitive pluralism actually be the pattern of the future? We
> are not required to predict a future fulfillment of the present direction
> of development, but to assess that direction as it now appears.
> At this stage we need not become involved in the optimistic
> or pessimistic options discussed earlier. With regard to its final
> result (dependent upon countless factors still unrecognized or still
> to come to bear) we recognize the hazard of predicting, yet we
> can inquire into the type of pattern now evolving in terms of objectively
> observed factors now present which must be accounted
> for and which certainly will form at least part of our future.
> 
> Without doubt the most important single factor in contemporary
> development is that of communication, in the most extensive
> sense of all that makes possible and/or inevitable the sharing of
> experience. The fundamental issue in the unitive side of convergence
> is the degree in which experience is shared — not simply
> newly forming areas of experience but experience already formed
> in the past separateness of the pluralist variety, the other side of
> convergence.
> 
> We recognize in the sharing of experience, whatever the scale,
> another basic paradox which must be dealt with if we are to approach
> any human situation realistically. Experience as such
> takes place within individual consciousness and partakes of the
> uniqueness of the individual. Yet experience always has the possibility
> of extending beyond the individual because whatever the
> object of experience might be it is independent of the subject, and
> because among individuals the biological-psychological means of
> experiencing are common. Since each individual is a distinct entity
> in terms of "equipment" and since there can be no exact reduplication
> of the total formative process whereby each is exactly
> himself at the moment of any experience, what occurs must be
> genuinely unique to the individual. And yet at the same time
> something proper to the experience can be communicated to others
> (at least communication is attempted) so that they can share
> the original experience by the evocation of a related experience
> in themselves. (Perhaps the paradoxical character of the situation
> 
> [page 29]
> 
> becomes most evident in those instances in which communication
> of the most intimate experience is attempted, where, in
> effect, the individual seeks to make available to another that
> which is directly reflective of his self-identification, his uniqueness.)
> 
> The success of the communication of experience is the basis of
> human culture, civilization and tradition. What is learned in immediate
> experience by one individual can enter the experience of
> another by communication rather than by an independent reduplication
> of the experience. There thus takes place a cumulative
> effect of experience in which one level is "inherited" through
> communication rather than rediscovered. And hence the starting
> point of the new level of experience is the end point of the previous,
> which alone makes possible the development of complex
> ways of life — civilizations.
> 
> There is something more to this sharing of experience, however,
> another dimension beyond what might be thought of as a
> horizontal and vertical system of transferal. The experience of
> sharing experience (either by one communicating his individual
> experience to another, or by the cumulative communication of
> one level of development as the basis for another) shapes our way
> of experiencing, so that in the very process as it takes place
> within the individual consciousness our experience tends to be
> formed in a manner easily allowing for or even demanding communication.
> All of our conscious reflections of experience are psychologically
> conscious through symbols, mostly language symbols.
> These are themselves the devices of communication, the
> commonly developed indicators derived from previous attempts
> at sharing. Thus, something significant in all of our conscious
> thought is, in a manner of speaking, already "packaged" for
> transfer to another. And we observe that in normal circumstances
> we find ourselves not merely capable of communication
> but urged to it. A value is seen in having others share in our own
> experience. Further, there is a special value in sharing experience
> as a community by placing ourselves in situations where we each
> 
> [page 30]
> 
> experience some common factor simultaneously and then bring
> our communicable evaluation together immediately into a common
> pattern.
> 
> Quite obviously, a radical extension of these dimensions of
> communication increases proportionately any process toward
> unity. The more that is shared experientially, and the more effectively
> this is extended (both in terms of the numbers of people involved
> and the degree of intensity of the involvement), the
> greater will be the development of singularity in the pattern of
> interrelationships. As the Twentieth Century progresses isolated
> individuals and societies are becoming less and less possible. We
> have already moved rapidly from a welter of closed human systems
> to a few — with the drive toward openness as yet unresolved
> but a principal element in the evolving pattern. There is one certainty
> at present: the radical extension of the dimensions of communication
> is continuing in so extraordinary a fashion that only
> an unknown intervening factor of the future could make possible
> the continuance of past human isolation.
> 
> IV
> 
> But communication by itself cannot be the basis of a convergent
> unity. Effective extension of the sharing of experience could
> issue in a rigid uniformity, a possibility rightly feared at present.
> The elimination of a number of closed systems could result in the
> emergence or survival of a single closed system (at least for as
> long as a non-processual world view could be maintained). Convergence
> requires both the movement of a variety toward significant
> unity, and also significant variety within that unity.
> "Significant" in both instances, while not allowing for actual
> definition except insofar as the unfolding process of development
> actually takes place, indicates the recognition of the need for actual
> interrelationship of real individuals. Unity to be significant
> must embrace relationships allowing individuals to experience a
> 
> [page 31]
> 
> true common identity in complement to their self-identity. Variety
> to be significant must provide real options in the range of
> human possibilities and insure that the unitive shape of life will
> remain open to all that it can be in a future development.
> 
> Correlated with communication in the contemporary pattern
> of civilization is its complementing factor of specialization. The
> cumulative effect of our shared experience has been the opening
> of more and more specialized areas of experience, each requiring
> its own mode of approach and further extension. We have but to
> observe the progressive development of the empirical sciences
> over the last century to realize the openness which specialization
> demands. Each specialization becomes a way to reality differing
> from other ways and not reducible to them. Yet at the same time
> these proliferating developments more and more demand effective
> intercommunication so that specializations will not become
> isolated and meaningless to the rest of life experience, but will
> come into unity and thus be meaningful. Extend this basic pattern
> of scientific concern to the other areas of our civilization and
> it is evident that insofar as specialization — scientific, technological,
> artistic, economic, political — is a rising factor, diversity becomes
> proportionately characteristic of the development toward unity.
> 
> Reflecting all that contributes to the possibility of a world civilization,
> unified and diverse, and speaking from the vantage
> point of contemporary Asia, K. M. Panikkar draws our attention
> to two sides of convergence:
> 
> Any return to a purely Asian tradition is ruled out by the growth
> of social, economic and political forces which no country in Asia
> had to deal with in the past .... Though the influence of Europe
> and the penetration of new ideas have introduced vast
> changes in Asia, and may lead to even greater changes, Asian
> civilizations will continue to develop their marked individuality
> and remain spiritually and intellectually separate from Christian
> Europe.2
> 
> Although still in general terms, we have here the recognition of
> 
> [page 32]
> 
> the concrete process of convergence as it is occurring in the experience
> of heretofore separate sections of mankind. The continuance
> of "a purely Asian tradition" is no longer possible, but, implicitly,
> neither is that of a purely European tradition. The
> social, economic and political forces previously unknown in Asia
> are not simply being imported into Asia from Europe, but are operative
> in both spheres of civilization, more and more becoming
> the factors of integrating shared experience and hence more and
> more becoming formative agents for a unified way of life.
> 
> However, this unity is seen as convergent, embracing profound
> differences with every prospect that the Asian civilizations will
> develop in ways reflecting those differences. Perhaps our best
> example of what this can mean is to be found in contemporary
> Japan, the complex outgrowth of a century of the deep interpenetration
> of two quite different kinds of civilization. Both the extraordinary
> interchanges and the violent antagonisms of this remarkable
> history point to the dynamic tensions set in motion by
> the convergent process. Although it is still far too early to attempt
> any long-term prediction concerning the final shape of Japanese
> life, it is evident that the Japanese have not simply been "Westernized,"
> nor have they segregated Western and older Japanese
> dimensions of their civilization into controlled departments.
> Even though the interfunctioning of the two forces is now at a
> relatively rudimentary level of integration, it is clear that all aspects
> of Japanese life are involved in both. Japan is not "Westernized,"
> it has not been merely made over into a Western-style
> country, and Japan cannot ever return to its pre-Western history.
> 
> For Japan and all centers of difference in culture (including
> Europe and America) the question of evaluating the process of
> convergence is not so much the concern with the factors here and
> now tending toward the unification of experience as with those
> which now and in the future will be the foundation of the pluralism
> in that experience. Panikkar formulates this for Asia as a
> spiritual and intellectual separation from Christian Europe. As a
> contrast to the increasingly unitive experience in scientific,
> 
> [page 33]
> 
> technological, social, economic and political spheres, separation according
> to spiritual and intellectual spheres can be a useful formula
> to state the paradoxical balance in unitive pluralism, at
> least for this moment in history. But on the positive side, what
> can the Asian and Western spiritual and intellectual traditions
> mean or come to mean to one another? This is an inevitable
> question since those who are drawing ever closer in the sharing of
> experience cannot be expected for long to segregate arbitrarily
> areas of experience which they must always regard as the most
> significant of all.
> 
> Although we must raise the question and come to such conclusions
> as we are able concerning its implications for the future of
> convergence, we must be aware of the very severe limitations we
> work under in any attempt to analyze the present state of the
> meeting of East and West in these dimensions. In World Cultures
> and World Religions, Hendrick Kraemer provides us with a sober
> evaluation:
> 
> The contemporary encounter or meeting of Orient and Occident
> in cultural and religious respect, truly impressive and fascinating
> as it may be in many senses, is fundamentally speaking still a superficial
> matter.3
> 
> The superficiality of the encounter in this area, in contrast to
> that in which our civilizations have begun the process of interpenetration,
> is due to the fact that the encounter is not taking
> place from the "inside," that is, experience in intellectual culture
> and religion is not being communicated and shared. With rare
> exceptions contact in these spheres is external, involving at most
> the syncretistic borrowing of one or another item without recognition
> of its significance within the full context of meanings in
> which it is integrated. Generally speaking, especially in the
> sphere of religion very few are struck with the fact that the alien
> way they are observing is actually effective, evokes real experience,
> forms people positively and hence must be taken seriously
> as something which has objective significance for men.
> 
> [page 34]
> 
> But what if the encounter in religion ceases to be superficial? What if the continuing development of the convergent process begins to challenge the spiritual and intellectual separation of peoples?
> 
> 2. Image scans (click image for full-size version)
> 
> METADATA
> 
> Views6828 views since posted 2013-06-24; last edit 2025-03-06 07:48 UTC;
> 
> previous at archive.org.../whitson_convergence_world_religions
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