Opening Speech

By

Kamran Mofid PhD

Founder-Convenor

Annual International Conference Series

On

Globalisation for the Common Good,

On the occasion of

The 5^th Annual International Conference

Chaminade University, Honolulu, Hawaii,21-25 June 2006

Given on 22^nd June 2006

Dear Friends, colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is my pleasure and honour to welcome you to our 5^th International Conference on Globalisation for the Common Good, taking place this year at Chaminade University in beautiful and inspirational Hawaii.

Before saying what I have to say, I want to invite you to listen to a favourite prayer of mine that has become like our national anthem, or should I say international anthem.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.


O Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen

It is my pleasure and honour to welcome you to the conference. In these global and too often troubled times, we need new perspectives and models so that we can find humane answers to the challenge of globalisation, based on a profound respect for the diversity of cultures and religions in our world community. As global events demonstrate, there is a desperate need to reintroduce spirituality, ethics, morality, faith and common sense into the debate on globalisation.

Looking at the conference programme, without doubt and hesitation, we can see that our accomplished speakers have risen well to this challenge. The conference is truly privileged to have speakers of the highest calibre, sharing their views with us all. Without them there would have been no conference, but with them, we hope we can travel together to heal the troubled and torn cultures of our time and pave the way to global justice, peace, prosperity and harmony.

I wish to express the conference’s respect and sincere gratitude to each of our presenters for their extraordinary commitment in being a part of this vital effort. Each one of our speakers brings a missing and essential piece that completes the process, leading to a better understanding of what globalisation is all about. Hopefully, together, we can clearly argue for and insist on social and economic alternatives that address the roots of global injustice and inhumanity, leading to Globalisation for the Common Good.

I am also grateful to and thank all the conference delegates who have come from near and far to be with us. It is wonderful for academics and non-academics to get involved and engaged with one another, so that we can all share each other’s varied experiences.

I am grateful to and thank the Local Organising Committee (LOC) in Hawaii. Space alone has kept me from naming all of them. They have given their time, expertise and know-how as volunteers to Globalisation for the Common Good. I thank them all most sincerely.

I am however, particularly grateful to my dear friend, fellow traveller for the Common Good, and my co-convenor for this year Conference, Prof. David Coleman. David has been a tower of support in organising the conference. I have greatly benefited from his wisdom, vision and insight. Thank you David for all you have done.

I wish to extend my sincere thanks to Chaminade University for hosting the 2006 conference and for all their generous support and encouragements. In particular I would like to thank the Marianist Community, as well as Dr. Sue Wesselkamper, Chaminade’s President and Brother Bernie Ploeger, executive Vice President and Provost. Special thanks are due to Dean Frank (Dino) McGinnis, our conference manager, website designer and administrator. He has worked very hard ensuring our comfort and a successful conference.

Today I also wish to pay a special tribute to a very dear friend, Namely, Prof. Yahya Kamalipour. At this conference, Journal of Globalization for the Common Good will be inaugurated. Yahya is the man and the force, behind this project. Yahya and I met first at our conference in Kenya. It was the beginning of a great friendship at the first sight. Somehow the chemistry was there. We shared many conversations, debate and dialogue. More importantly, we shared many moments of laughter and joy, necessary for a continued friendship and dialogue. I shared with him my dream of having a journal for globalisation for the common good. I always wished to have the opportunity of publishing a selection of our conference series’ papers, among others. Yahya has realised my dream. I thank you Yahya from the bottom of my heart. You are an exemplary and visionary scholar, educator, friend and mentor. All your life-long work in media/communication studies and more has been for the common good. Through your journals, many people around the world are having access to educational materials that they would have been denied otherwise. For that I salute you and for that I thank you. I am sure that our journal similar to your other journals will be a total success and I do look forward to serving the common good with you for a long time to come.

Today, many people, from all walks of life and different parts of the world are questioning many aspects of today’s moral and spiritual free-zone life and existence- the everything goes mentality. Are there sources from which we can draw meaning and wholeness to our lives? Are there resources of spirituality that would nourish and sustain our lives in this complex, pluralistic and ever changing world?

These questions and many more are being raised in our day not only by those traditionally identified with religious traditions; they are the questions of scientists, politicians, economists, educators, psychologists, people in the business world, working people, and all who experience an emptiness and a lack of purpose and orientation to human life. Young people in particular call for an alternate vision that is centred in values that give meaning to human existence.

What matters most today, more than ever before, is money and economics, the "loadsamoney" culture and mentality. This philosophy of materialism and consumerism has brought us a bitter harvest. Indeed, the ecological degradation and environmental vandalism that we are witnessing in the interest of profit maximisation and the highest return to the shareholders, has prompted many respectable scholars to ask if life as we know it can continue under present conditions. For example, Lord Rees, Prof. of Cosmology and Astrophysics, and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, gives present human civilisation no more than a 50 per cent chance of surviving the current century, in his recent book Our Final Century. Are we closer to the beginning of history, or to its end?

There is no doubt in my mind that, we need a new direction, a new path: a globalisation of kindness, compassion and justice. We need a globalisation that understands that sustainability demands that efficiency and equity should go hand-in-hand. We know there must be a convergence of these values, rather than a competition between them.

For many of us, the concept that could allow this to happen might very well be that of the "Common Good".

As it has been noted by many saints and sages throughout history, fostering peace by overcoming evil with good requires careful reflection on the common good and on its social and political implications. When the common good is encouraged at every level, the conditions for peace are promoted. Can an individual find complete fulfilment without taking account of his/her social nature, that is, our being "with" and "for" others? The common good closely concerns us. It closely concerns every expression of our social nature: the family, groups, associations, cities, regions, states, the community of peoples and nations.

Each person, in some way, is called to work for the common good, constantly looking out for the good of others. This responsibility belongs in a particular way to political authorities at every level, since they are called to create that sum of social conditions which permit and foster in human beings the integral development of their person. The common good therefore demands respect for and the integral promotion of the person and his/her fundamental rights, as well as respect for and the promotion of the rights of nations on the universal plane.

Moreover, as many have reminded us, a just economy for the common good should adhere to the following values:

1) The economy is for people; 2) The economy is for being, not having; 3) The economic system ought to be needs-based; 4) The economy is an act of stewardship; 5) The economy must be a participatory society; 5) There must be fair sharing; 7) The system must permit self reliance; 8) The economy must be ecologically sustainable; 9) The economy must be productive.

Globalisation is fast evolving and rapidly changing the world and this symposium reveals the urgency of focusing on crucial questions. Clearly, it is an opportunity to reflect on how the Common Good, can constitute an international platform capable of reacting to globalisation and its consequences.

Many people around the world have turned to their religious traditions for the spiritual resources and values that would help build the human community on firmer foundations. We have come to recognise that our traditions are indeed built on profound understanding of the meaning of human existence. We are indeed the custodians of the insights, wisdom, and values handed down to us by saints and sages through the ages, as well as our own ancestors who worked and prayed and defended their religious traditions that we might have the lives we have today.

As it has been noted, in many social movements of the last few centuries, people of faith have played an important role. Historically, elements of organised religions and spiritually motivated leaders have been at the centre of struggles for social justice, and many contemporary progressives of faith are drawing from the rich and varied tapestry of faith- based activism.

There are many examples one can site. For now let us take as an example John Wesley in 18^th Century England, and his efforts to create a just economic system and to abolish slave trade; or Johann Heinrich Wichern in 19^th Century Germany and the movement to bring about a just socio-economic reform; or the Rev. Martin Luther king, and the Civil rights Movement in the United States. But why stop there? We should also remember the liberation theologians of Latin America; the large Quaker involvement in the nuclear freeze movement; the anti-poverty work of the Catholic Worker movement; Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmund Tutu in the anti apartheid struggle in South Africa; and Mahatma Gandhi in the struggle against British colonialism.

We should also acknowledge today’s spiritual Progressives and peace builders, such as Dalai Lama, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Cornel West, Sr. Joan Chittister, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Rev. Canon Paul Oestreicher, Bhai Sahib Mohinder Singh, Jim Wallis, Rev. Marcus Braybrooke, Rev. Alan Race and Jim Kenney, and many more campaigners for the Common Good.

In all, many people around the world have answered this call and have founded initiatives, programmes, projects and more, to change our world for the better. Indeed, some of them are in this room today. I salute them and acknowledge their countless contributions. Little do they know, perhaps, that they have been a true source of inspiration to me and the initiative that I founded in 2002 in Oxford: namely, Globalisation for the Common Good Initiative, which I would very much like to introduce it to you now, however briefly.

Globalisation is most often thought of within economic and technological structures as a way to denote the massive and dynamic global integration of national economies and markets. Because these economic and technological forces are central to the current and future well-being of the global human family, it is essential that they be discussed within the more general framework of human moral and spiritual experience. It is only within these frameworks that we can fully explore the values and relationships that form our human communities. Central to this discussion are religious institutions and communities which have developed time-honored wisdom arising from the deep encounter of the human person with the mystery of the sacred. The diversity represented by these communities images the profound truth of the transcendent mystery in which we participate.

As it has been observed by many throughout history, religion has been both a source of blessing and curse. Religion has been, and is, a major factor in many conflicts and wars around the world. It has also been and is now a presence calling people out of their own selfishness, challenging cultures of waste and death. Various religious communities cry out against political/economic injustice, human rights abuses, poverty, hatred, fear, ignorance, consumerism, war as an instrument of imperial policy, and the failure to respect international legal or ethical principles, even as they challenge their own communities to choose paths that nurture peace and justice instead of contributing to new conflicts, intolerance, and even anarchy around the world.

Committed to spirituality, compassion and respect for others, truly religious people must not allow their religion to be hijacked and abused in this way by exclusivist ideologues. We must make a stand together for peace, understanding, mutual respect, dialogue and justice. We must welcome religious diversity and concede that no single religion can claim a monopoly on Truth. Indeed, at this time in our social history and collective journey- facing globalisation, global warming, aids, pandemic disease, poverty, injustice and more- we need each other far more than in the past, and the future of our world demands that we teach to our students, parishioners and communities the value and benefits of dialogue, co-operation and interdependence.

In order to provide a better understanding of the role of religions in the age of globalisation, in 2002, in Oxford, a small and humble movement, "Globalisation for the Common Good" came into being. This movement is dedicated to "Rekindling the Human Spirit and Compassion in Globalisation". For us, globalisation has no meaning unless it has a soul, a universal collective vision that can give it a direction that can act to transform the world. For us, globalisation is a path to justice, solidarity, human dignity and world peace. We wanted to have an alternative to the current dominant economic/free trade globalisation and to make globalisation of benefit for all. We wished to be a path from competition to association and cooperation. We wanted to demonstrate that, although it may seem as though capitalism has won the day, nonetheless, if it suffers from some kind of moral and spiritual bankruptcy, then, it is not going to last.

For us, as it has been noted, "The life of the individual only has meaning insofar as it aids in making the life of every living thing nobler and more beautiful. Life is sacred- that is to say; it is the supreme value to which all other values are subordinate". Moreover, for us in the wise words of Rumi, "Be certain, in the religion of love, there are no believers or unbelievers. Love embraces all".

Our movement found many dedicated and committed friends around the world. From Oxford we went to St. Petersburg, Russia, then to Dubai. In 2005 we were in Kenya. This year we are meeting at Chaminade University in Honolulu. In 2007 we will meet in Istanbul at Fatih University. Future conferences are currently under consideration.

The Mission of Globalisation for the Common Good, is to promote ethical, moral and spiritual values and personal virtues into the areas of economics, commerce, trade and international relations amongst other areas, and to advance understanding and action on major global issues by civil society, the private enterprise, the public sector, governments, and national and international institutions, leading to the promotion of collaborative policy solutions to the challenges posed by globalisation. We are committed to the idea that the marketplace is not just an economic sphere, but ‘a region of the human spirit’. While considering the many economic questions and issues we should also reflect on the Divine dimension of life, and should, in contrast to what is practised today, be concerned with the world of heart and spirit. We view the problem and challenge of globalisation not only from an economic point of view, but also from ethical, spiritual and theological perspectives.

Globalisation for the Common Good affirms that economics is, above all, concerned with human well-being and happiness in society and with care for the Earth. This cannot be separated from moral and spiritual considerations. The idea of a "value-free" economics is spurious. It demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of what it means to be a human being.

We affirm our conviction that genuine interfaith dialogue and cooperation is a significant way of bringing the world together. It is indispensable to the creation of the harmonious global culture needed to build peace, justice, sustainability and prosperity for all. The call of Globalisation for the Common Good is an appeal to our essential humanity. It engages the most pressing concerns of peoples the world over.

Globalisation for the Common Good, by addressing the crises that face us all, empowers us with humanity, spirituality and love. It engages people of different races, cultures and languages, from a wide variety of backgrounds, all of them committed to bringing about a world in which there is more solidarity and greater harmony. This spiritual ground for hope, arising at this time of wanton destruction of our world, can help us to recall the ultimate purpose of life and of our journey in this world.