Saturday, August 25, 2018

Globalism and the Cosmos

1. Globalism and cosmopolitanism are in tension

Globalism is often positively-associated with cosmopolitanism, but the association is based on a corruption of the concepts.  The two are in tension and conflict, and if anything, globalism would seem to be destructive of cosmopolitanism, while nationalism and tribalism would seem to be its predicates.  Attacks on nationalism are attacks on the cosmopolitan world.

This at first may seem odd and counter-intuitive.  That is because a great deal of mainstream thinking inverts reality.  To explain this is almost superfluous, since all we need to is acknowledge common-sense and reality; and, the necessary linguistic re-framing requires merely an acknowledgement of the basic meaning of the relevant concepts. 

2. Re-examining the terminology

A habit of the digital age - that we all fall into occasionally - is that will quote long, impressive-sounding words like globalisation or integration, etc., without much thought, casually and breezily assuming that we know what they mean.  It's necessary now and then to 'return to the basics' and re-examine the meaning of these words.  In doing so, often we find the modern/post-modern usage owes more to propaganda than any real understanding.

In what follows, a great deal of what is accepted as 'thinking' in the mainstream is unceremoniously subverted:

The term 'global' means the whole world.  Global actions and initiatives cover the entirety of the geographic, organisational, social or metaphysical world around us, or some combination thereof.  Global need not mean worldwide in the geographic sense, it could merely refer to the entirely of an organisation.  For instance, a 'global e-mail' is an e-mail sent to an entire organisation, team or network of people. 

Globalism is a political belief in worldwide action, while globalisation is process of worldwide integration, which may be the outcome of political and economic action (globalism) and also be the result of technological developments.

Mundialisation is the process of bringing about worldwide government and a global civic identity.  Mundialism is a belief in such.  Globalism/globalisation and mundialism/mundialisation are closely-related terms and concepts, but not quite the same.

In scientific terms, the cosmos is the physical Universe.  In general terms, a cosmos is any metaphysical space within which our particular norms and values can be effected universally.  The opposite of cosmos is chaos: a system in which there is no order or system of values and none such is possible.

A cosmopolitan world is a natural outcome of nationalism and tribalism.

We should mention the word 'metropolitan'.  On one level, this merely describes the norms and values arising from a mundane situation: that of the metropole (the city).  In a more general sense, it describes an urban/urbanite outlook that is congruent with chaos.  This arises from the multiplicity of the city in contrast to the unity of the rural/provincial environment.  The city is chaos realised.

3. Globalism and the Cosmos, Disorder versus Order

Globalism and the cosmos are opposites and in tension.    The cosmos stands for order, it's opposite, globalism, is the practice and normalisation of disorder: it is, in short, normalisation as de-normalisation.  Perhaps it is no coincidence that globalism has encouraged the flourishing of city environments, and with it, the mundane values of the metropolitanism: particularly influential in England. 

The term 'disorder' is used here neutrally, not pejoratively.  Disorder may be a positive and pleasant state of affairs for some.  It involves multiplicity, urbanism and the mixing and re-mixing of different cultures.  It necessitates civic super-values and super-polities if order is to be maintained - a state of 'ordered disorder'.  Hence, globalism is the ideology of Chaos and globalisation is its process: an attempt, and the result of attempts and technologies, imposing ordered norms and institutions on disorder. 

Most people think the metaphysical spectrum is nationalism (or tribalism) at one end and cosmopolitanism at the other.  In fact, the spectrum is the Cosmos (Order) at one end and Chaos (Disorder) at the other, with tribalism and nationalism as subsidiaries of cosmopolitanism.

Tribes and nations depend on the existence of a cosmos: a region, island, archipalego or continent within which similar and mutually-assimilable cultures can spore, flourish and co-exist.  It's an ordered existence.

Thus, a Cosmos is about assimilation rather than integration per se.  Nationalism is the major ideology of the Cosmos and the underpinning requirement for actual cosmopolitanism.

Chaos, on the other hand, seeks integration of disparate, mutually non-assimilable cultures.  In some disordered areas, globalisation will induce a search for order, which will be underpinned by ethnogenesis, followed by a shift to tribalism and nationalism.  This, perhaps, is the strategy of the ruling elites, modelled perhaps on how the elites of England evolved into an Anglo-Norman-Jewish caste.  This indeed would make them a 'cosmopolitan elite', but in a sense opposite to that commonly-thought.

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