Maximizing Horizons
An essential part of Richard Rorty’s liberal utopia is the inclusion of the greatest amount of human beings possible into what he calls the “we”. This denomination corresponds to the group of people with which one identifies, as opposed to the “others” who are considered different, and many times, inferior to the “we”. Thus, extending the “we” to every human being is the first step toward global solidarity.
Although this American philosopher presents the identification of shared particularities as a means for the desired extension, it is easy to notice that this approach is utterly impractical. First, the identification with strangers, foreigners, people of different religions and different political views, as well as all the rest of the people that form part of the “others”, would be hard to achieve without a personal interaction that led to the recognition of particular similarities. Second, even if that was possible, a deeper complication hinders this goal: by definition, the “we” cannot exist if it is not in opposition with a “they”, so exclusion and incompleteness are inherent to the notion.
Is, therefore, a way to include everyone in the “we” without making use of universalistic and ineffective categorizations, such as “we are all humans” or “we are all children of God”? If there is not, can this general statement be given any significance? It is, in fact, clear from the preceding argument that both of these options can be achieved by finding the right “other”. To fit our purpose, this “enemy” should be opposed to all humans as a whole and would, thus, make being human a particular characteristic that would make it possible to seamlessly include everyone in the “we”.
The fact that people unite when under the threat of a common enemy is something that can be easily verified through a not necessarily deep study of the history of societies. As a recent example we could make reference to supra-statal organizations, such as the European Union, which are created, in spite of the historical rivalries between the conforming states, to compete and interact more effectively in the economical and political global sphere.
But, what would be an “other” big and different enough to make all humanity join under the same “we”? Evidently, this must be something supra or extra human. In the book The First Global Revolution, published by the renowned global think-tank The Club of Rome, this organization asserts that:
In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself. [1]
Indeed, it seems reasonable to think that, since we lack the knowledge of the existence of any kind of extraterrestrial life which we could confront, thinking of ideas as enemies would be the best choice. Phenomena such as global warming, AIDS, war should be used as issues against which people can join to fight for. The potential of these ideas is, therefore, of great magnitude. Furthermore, this fact has led some people to the belief that the veracity of these problems, especially in the case of global warming, is unimportant and we should foster fear as a way to unite people. The ethics of this position is, nonetheless, debatable.
The problem, however, remains of the possibility that, once the threat is established and most people consider humanity as their “we”, someone “betrays” humanity and identifies himself with the “other”. This person would have to be capable of re-describing his vocabulary in order to relate himself to the threat and would have to be insensitive of his fellow humans. In Rorty’s terminology, the “betrayor” would be an extreme example of a cruel ironist.
Nevertheless, it is still clear that an empowerment of the ideas of threat as means to foster solidarity would, at least in theory, yield positive results and would offer a practical way for Rorty’s utopia to become more than a nice dream.
[1] King, Alexander, and Bertrand Schneider. The First Global Revolution: a Report by the Council of the Club of Rome. London: Simon and Schuster, 1991. 75. Print.