The Epic Ideological Struggle of Our Global Era: Part 1. Multiculturalism versus Homogenization

Statue titled, Monument to Multiculturalism by Francesco Pirelli, Union Station, Toronto. licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. Author: Robert Taylor from Stirling, Canada.

By Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D

Homogenization

We live in a global era! This is a fact misunderstood, denied, distorted, ignored, or used  for advantage by those with power and privilege. Our lives and fortunes are

interdependent. Single, isolated events, once unknown or disregarded, now generate and multiply ripples across the world. Causal explanations informed by ideologies seeking control and domination through uniformity can only result in conflict. Epic ideological struggles are at hand.

Amid our global era, dominated in thought and action by a few nations, we are witnessing a struggle between homogenization versus heterogeneity. Uniformity versus differences is appearing at all levels. It is a struggle for diversity versus imposed identity. While past decades were defined as struggles for world domination between communism and capitalism, our global era has given rise to ideological struggles across technological, political, religious, and economic efforts to establish a mass global society – a world order – promoting and sustained by “homogenization.”

For those seeking control, uniformity, and conformity, differences – diversity — in a mass society are seen as sources of distraction and disruption. Mass surveillance, monitoring, and archiving generate uniformity. Individual and group variations are being compelled to yield privacy, rights, and variations in life styles to pressures for an ordered and planned society – homogenized in all areas. Within this context, multiculturalism, as an ideology, is considered a foe.

Uniformity, Conformity, Compliance: The New Orthodoxy

Developments in information processing and technologies are exercising powerful influences on social, economic, political, and moral systems. They are enabling and facilitating forces in power to control and dominate variation — diversity — favoring efficiency and compliance with uniformity. Differences are targets for imposing order. They are considered sources of “chaos” or error to be subdued and integrated into a homogenized world in which “order” is the ethos. But chaos is the fruit of diversity – and diversity is the source and expression of life itself. Efforts after order – rooted in the assertion of control by those with power, wealth, and position – serve narrow interests. Ultimately, oppression emerges as arbiter.

The inability of those in positions of power to deal with challenges to their preferred ideology of “homogeneity” is the major struggle of our times – an ideological struggle being imposed upon the world of variation, in favor of an ideology of uniformity unsuited for our global era. The myriad of differences in thought, appearance, and ways-of-life in varied expressions face extinction from the massive power invested in monolithic and monopolistic proportions in different industries and services including Big Ag, Big Education, Big Energy, Big Government, Big Medicine, Big Phar, and Big Military.  There is an inherent ideology in all these “Bigs” – an ideology favoring dominance and control. There is no room for variation from the perspective of the Bigs!

But don’t believe them!  Read about the multicultural alternative in my next post here on engagingpeace.com.

Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus, University of Hawaii, Manoa Campus, Honolulu, Hawaii, 96822. He is the author and editor of twenty books, and more than 300 publications noted for challenging the ethnocentricity and biases of Western psychology and psychiatry, and for advocating peace and social justice.

The “Just Enough” Policy: Behavioral Control of Collective Protest through Minimum Reward, Part 1 of a 3-part series

Author: James Montgomery Flagg. 1917. In the public domain.

By Anthony Marsella, Ph.D.

What does it take?

What does it take to awaken the American (USA) people to the egregious political, economic, and moral abuses and violations of their Constitutional rights and privileges? What does it take for the American people to demand changes in existing government and corporate political, economic, and social policies and actions limiting accountability, transparency, and participation?

What does it take for the American people to successfully reduce the concentration of power, wealth, and position favoring a few and denying equality and opportunity for the masses? Why are American people failing to respond to the numerous crises in American society that reveal widespread corruption, cronyism, and incompetence in public and private institutions and organizations?

Why are Americans savoring the fruits of consumerism, materialism, commodification, competition when the consequences of these institutionalized values are destructive for individuals and the social fabric? These questions are but a few of the many questions being asked daily across America and the world. At issue is the disproportionate presence of silence and passivity, and the absence of activism.

I am not discussing, nor am I advocating, widespread rebellion or revolt, even as some voices have called for these as solutions in the face of a creeping oppression. Rather, I am seeking an understanding of why so few protests have emerged and been sustained across time and place?

No one can deny the existence of protests from both “liberal/progressive” circles, (e.g., Occupy Wall Street, Wisconsin Teacher Unions, LBGT organizations) and conservative/tea party circles (e.g., regarding border immigration, abortion rights, gun ownership rights). Yet, in my opinion, these protests have been focused on specific causes, often informed by narrow ideological reasons. I am seeking an understanding of sources that could undertake a broader and unified protest, seeking to re-claim and to improve upon America’s inspired heritage of human rights — a protest to reclaim “moral authority,” “national identity,” and “social and civic responsibility,” not through guns, violence, and anger, but through virtue.

It must be asked whether current divisions across gender, racial, ethnicity, social class, political, wealth, regional, and religious boundaries have limited any collective citizen response challenging the concentration of power, wealth, and position that seeks national and global domination. In my opinion, the concentration denies citizen participation by controlling means, motives, and consequences of national activism, especially by creating divisions across diverse population sectors. Although developing diverse identities is to be encouraged because diversity is the essence of life itself, a sense of unity is lost as too many are denied equality.

And how does the fractioning of a society lend itself to external control and domination by those with wealth, power, and position? For me, the answer is simple: “A society can assume unlimited diversity, as long as it provides equal access to opportunity.”

It is the disproportion in opportunity, rights, and freedoms that lead to resentment, struggle, and violence. The USA needs a national vision identity that recognizes and accepts the conditions required for civility and citizen accommodation in our global era, including (1) an appreciation of the value of diversity, (2) a willingness to accept an interdependence ethic, (3) the commitment to nonviolence/nonkilling, and (4) a belief in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Unfortunately, what has emerged in the USA is a “limited good” mentality1 in which gains by one group or sector are considered losses by another, because there is only so much “good” to go around. But while this may be, in part, an accurate appraisal of our global situation, there are forces at work that seek control stemming from the age-old divisions rooted in concentrations of power, wealth, and position. Choose your century, country, or cause, and “concentration” will always be the root of problems.

In today’s global era, filled with challenges that defy solution (e.g., population increases, poverty, violence, wars, environmental pollution, crime), “control” by a few (e.g., 1%, bankers, dictators, corporate royalty, Davos faction, monopolies) has become the means and the end. In the USA, which leads the world in military force, financial wealth, corporate cartels, and exportation of popular culture, “control” is essential to preserve an existing state of affairs that denies equality, and promotes homogeneity.

The USA has the world’s largest military budget, highest medical costs, greatest number of prisons and prison inmates, and greatest divisions of wealth (e.g., 1% versus 99%). What this enables — indeed ensures — is the opportunity to implement a “Just Enough” approach to keeping collective control.

NOTE:

  1. George Foster (1965). Peasant society and the image of limited good. American Anthropologist. Limited good refers to the concept that in peasant societies the world is seen as a “competitive” place in which “goods” are limited, and so distrust, envy, jealousy, and resentment are fostered. Hmmm?

 

Anthony Marsella, Ph.D., a member of the TRANSCEND Network, is a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii, and past director of the World Health Organization Psychiatric Research Center in Honolulu. He is known nationally and internationally as a pioneer figure in the study of culture and psychopathology who challenged the ethnocentrism and racial biases of many assumptions, theories, and practices in psychology and psychiatry. In more recent years, he has been writing and lecturing on peace and social justice. He has published 15 edited books, and more than 250 articles, chapters, book reviews, and popular pieces. He can be reached at marsella@hawaii.edu.

This is the first in a three-part series originally published on https://www.transcend.org/tms/2014/06/the-just-enough-policy-behavioral-control-of-collective-protest-through-minimum-reward/

The psychology of revolutions, Part I

By guest author, Dr. Majed Ashy

There are at least two models for national development: evolution and revolution.

The Centennial of Independence by Henri Rousseau, 1892
Le centenaire de l’independance by Henri Rousseau, 1892. In public domain.

Evolution involves the gradual development of a nation over considerable time. It requires progress by both the government and the people in ways that address socioeconomic and cultural realities. It takes into account:

  • Principles of justice
  • Inclusion of society’s diverse members and groups
  • An understanding by both the people and the government regarding the basic concepts of human rights
  • Recognition of the importance of civilian governments standing at equal distances from all groups in society.

By contrast, revolutions happen when the government is rigid and biased towards certain groups in society. Revolutions are most likely when people feel stagnated socioeconomically and culturally in ways that reflect unfairness and corruption in the ruling parties.

Revolutions represent hope for radical changes in the system and society that will allow for rapid development and counter the times lost in stagnation. They tend to be motivated by popular hopes for justice, equality, and dignity. However, these hopes might conflict with the realities in society of some people motivated by personal greed, power, or revenge.

Among today’s Western European democracies, we can identify governments that were largely achieved through revolution as well as governments that emerged through a more evolutionary process. For example, the French government grew out of revolutionary activity that involved about 200 years of bloodshed, fighting between the partners in the revolution, wars with other countries, and counter-revolutions.

At the same time, England’s democratic system evolved gradually, without major internal revolutions, after the 1215 signing of the Magna Carta (The Great Charter of the Liberties of England), which imposed limits on the power of the king.

In recent years, the Middle East has seen several revolutions. There are two visions that joined hands in the Middle Eastern revolutions. The first vision pictures the Arab world as moving toward various versions of Islamic states; these states might be hybrid between some form of democracy and Sharia law. The second vision reflects a desire for a civilian secular government focused on respecting diversity, liberty, human rights, and socioeconomic development. These visions will be considered further in my next post.

For further reading, please see The Psychology of Revolution, by Gustave Le Bon.

Dr. Majed Ashy is an assistant professor of psychology at Merrimack College and a research fellow in psychiatry at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School.