Before they were reabsorbed in the context of world history and hence distorted from their original benignity, all world religions, influenced as they were by the axial shift, had departed from the tribal myopia of communal religions. By definition these new religions from Confucianism and Buddhism to the monotheistic Western religions were possessed of a number of qualities:

Civilization is a modern as well as a modernist concept. Postmodernists eschew it as plague -- or at least as an outmoded barnacle of the past. It is too general for their new found, petulant humility, too reminiscent of gentleman scholars of the age of colonialism, and, too mired in the hegemonic universalism of modernist intellectuals. They have as little use for "clash of civilizations" as they do for their "dialogue." But the crude reality seems to confirm some of the most sanguine predictions of the maligned mid-century twentieth modernists about modernity and civilizations. The world is gravitating towards liberal democratic politics and capitalist economy following the Western progressive model. And at the same time that same crude reality seems to favor a civilizational approach to understanding world wide conflicts. After the events of 9/11 there was even an attack on post-modernist obscurantism that would blur a clear view of the non-Western terrorists as evil.

There is no denying that the world is rife with new tensions that seem to lead with shocking spontaneity to seemingly unnecessary wars, mass brutalization and genocide. The existing ethnic, religious and political strains have roots in new depths of the kind of tribalism that was supposed to have vanished from the modern world. The schizoid situation of the world calls for a descriptive as well as a prescriptive approach with the creative and constructive use of the concept of "civilization." But what is a civilization? The term was used by philosophers of history, anthropologists, sociologists and archaeologists of the modern age. Instead of delineating the different stages and shades of meaning in the history of the term, it would be better to offer my a new definition in accordance with the needs of the current conference .

Civilization is the accumulation of organized and institutionalized rational responses of city-dwelling human societies to the challenges of their internal order (e.g., political legitimacy, social administration, economic system, religious cosmology, legal maxims and libido economy), environment (e.g., technologies of food production and architecture), and external enemies (technologies and organization of war and international relations). The practical and instrumental sides of these rational responses comprise the "material culture" (e.g., art, architecture and technology) of a civilization while their substantive and normative aspects amount to its "non-material culture" which impart meaning to the natural and social world and inform the patterns of social, political and economic behavior. Thus, civilizations contain the sedimentation of two layers of collective rationality: a normative and substantive "core" and a practical and instrumental "crust."

Having thus redefined civilizations we must hasten to add that for the following four reasons civilizations are not to be taken literally: they do not exist in the same sense that real objects in the phenomenal reality do. They are neither objective wholes nor do they enjoy an organic unity and life of their own. After the following four caveats we will return to the question of the state of the world as posed at the outset of this section.

A. The Inherent Instability of Civilizations: There is a level at which we can consider a civilization as an objective but rather tenuous and frail entity. The most basic characteristic of the substantive core of any civilization is conflict. We start with the assumption of an elemental incompatibility of axioms and values that underlie every civilization. And, practical problems are bound to abound at the stage of applying the principles in daily life. Value dissonance, inconsistencies and contradictions between ethical, religious and philosophical axioms, and, between them and the practical demands of life compel every civilization to constantly work at mending, patching up, dissimilating and even systematic deception to allow the pretense or maintain the impression of an orderly and unified view of the world informing a clear set of guidelines for action. The fate of tragic heroes of the world of fiction and drama (e.g., Agamemnon, Aeneid, Rostam, Hamlet, Tom Winfield and Willy Loman) provides opportunities to ponder the manifestations of deep cultural contradictions at the level of personal conduct.

In so far as civilizations exist, they are weak and conflicted creatures who are too absorbed with their own maintenance to care much about "clashing" with other civilizations. In other words, the concept of civilization is useful in the study of the internal complications of human societies and not terribly effective in explaining external conflicts. It is in the process of solving internal conflicts that most civilizations turn to each other for communication. These efforts at higher levels might mature into a real dialogue.

B. The Question of Agency: Civilization might be considered an objective entity by proxy. In this sense it owes its objectivity to intellectuals who are its architects and carriers. Civilizations "exist" in so far as they are taken seriously by a stratum of "intellectuals" who are their creators and carriers. The reason we date civilization back to the end of the fourth millennia BC when Sumerians settled the first Mesopotamian cities, is that only at this time were human societies able to support a stratum of intellectuals (scribes, priests, school masters, administrators, etc.) who focused on the elaboration of the instrumental and substantive collective responses to the challenges of their internal order and external adversaries. The invention of writing allowed the collection, preservation and systematic development of all of the civilizational collective rational responses and enabled successive generations of intellectuals to work on their elaboration and further rationalization. Of course the irrational cores of life, (e.g., sexuality and aggression) and the sources of internal and external chaos (e.g., anomie, insurrection and invasion) are never entirely vanquished. These contribute to the inherent instability of civilizations. The recognition of the role of intellectuals in the definition of civilization is essential. To talk about civilizations in isolation from those who are its main creators and carriers is to hypostasize it. Civilization is an objective entity partly because of its "agents:" the intellectuals.

C. The Character of Civilizations: In this sense civilization consists in a real, socially and historically specific, if pale, ambience of commonalities that have lost their moorings in particular historical circumstances. Our impressions of "the character" of civilizations are not precise. But intuiting a character for different civilizations is not necessarily illusionary either. The late twentieth century social scientists opted not to pursue the question of "civilizational character" because vague impressions about the psychological and social traits of people from similar ethnic groups and national origins, let alone civilizations were often tainted with prejudices and value judgments. But, it is possible to ground, (sociologically as well as historically) these differences and save them from the company of ethnocentric bigotry. National and civilizational characters exist because the life-style and world view of a rather thin stratum is often used as the template for other classes, social groups, strata and even ethnic groups. In certain historical periods, a given status group or class takes a stance and adopts a way of looking at the world which distinguishes it. The cultural triumph of such a stylized pattern of life and weltanschauung could elevate it to a frame of reference for a society or a civilization as a whole.

D. Civilization as an Ideal Type: We may also use civilization as a heuristic device. In this sense it is mainly a "concept," an "ideal type" that allows a general view of the processes that might be otherwise too multifarious and rich in texture to be intelligible. Thus, civilizations could also function as conceptual tools and to this extent they are creatures of mercury: they merge and divide according to the interests of the observer and the need to sum up the sociological or historical common denominators of similar societies. These commonalities may not be consciously present for the members of the societies in question. Here the scientist is given a license to lump and divide as long as the bases of his or her categorizations are accepted by the community of practitioners within a given discipline. Of course this consensus itself represents a civilizational inclination as well. The aim of this article is to argue that such civilizational distortions are not quite as arbitrary or pernicious as they might appear to the methodological purist.

The dual processes of convergence and divergence in the world (to which we alluded at the outset of this article) can be explained by a rupture between the two levels of civilizational borrowing. Social sciences have occasionally tried to come to grips with these two trends but never at the same time. They have tried to capture the meaning of the worldwide unifying trends wearing the rose-tinted lenses of the theories of "progress," "modernization" and "globalization." The postmodernists spurn this approach as naive and prefer the less ambitious research projects that study our world's smaller units and its discontinuities and divisions. But, can we hope to provide a frame of reference that would make sense of both of these processes.

The most common form of inter-civilizational contact occurs not in adversarial relations but when civilizations attempt to borrow from each other. The trade occurs at two levels: the exchange at the "crust level" or the technological plain is not problematic. To borrow at the level of ideas ("core") is much more complex. In particular those ideas that relate to such spheres as religious world view, political legitimacy and libido economy are quite sensitive to sudden shocks of cultural borrowing. Another problem stems from the fact that in pre-modern times civilizational borrowing occurred more gradually and through the agency of a few intellectuals who exercised control over the process of exchange. The continuous advances in the field of communications since the industrial revolution have both facilitated the borrowing and expanded the base of contact between civilizations. The technological borrowing continues with such success that the cultural varieties of the world are threatened by the resulting uniformities imposed by the adoption of the Western technologies and its related patterns of life. But, worldwide spread of culture is not the monopoly of the West. The internationalization of ethnic cuisines and other products like acupuncture, martial arts, healing philosophies and practices proves this point.

In short, this is what has happened to the world: the instrumental crust of all world civilizations has practically merged. Consequently, the distance between the inherently unstable substantive civilizational cores has been perilously reduced. This explains the simultaneous opposite pulls that we feel in our world. If this reading is correct, then the new forms of fundamentalism and ethnic hatred would represent a hurried withdrawal to the domain of ancient certainties in the face of the shrinking of the world under a unifying technological crust and the converging drift of disconcerting new options for organizing individual, social and public life. The problem is that borrowing and adoption at the level of core ideas has lagged behind borrowing on the technological level. Hence the global heterogeneity of worldviews has become more glaring and more explosive.

The interaction of civilizations or indeed all culturally different entities goes through a number of stages which we will represent in an ocular metaphor. These stages are not rungs of an evolutionary historical ladder. Although there is a sense in which the dominance of the three patterns of looking at "the other" follows a historical order; the previous forms are not eliminated but often remain as alternatives on the list of options in the area of intercultural understanding. A reverting to the previous, simpler modes of intercultural understanding remains an option at all times. This reactionary movement is reminiscent of going back to fundamentalism in Christian world after the achievements of disestablishment and adaptation to enlightenment represented by Higher Criticism and Vatican II.

Generally speaking we can view the "other" in three ways.

A. Tunnel Vision: At the most rudimentary stages of inter-cultural understanding the vision of the other is obtained through a single opening into the exotic world. The resulting picture is not only vague but also limited and one sided. But the one sidedness and the unfairness of this stage of relating to the other is the least of its problems. As an approach that exaggerates the difference, it can hardly encourage the observer to find parallels in ones own culture for the negative or positive attributes found in the other. Nor is there any attempt to approach the self-understanding of the other. Worst of all there is ample evidence to suggest psychological projections play a significant role in this portrayal of the other. Thus our tunnel-vision representations of the other reveal, more than anything else, our own neuroses. We can assume a continuum that links prejudices -- that in our metaphor will be equated to the fantasies of a blind person about the reality beyond ones reach -- to the tunnel vision or understanding of the other by generalizing on the basis of a single characteristic. European men who encountered the veiled world of the Orient tended to indulge in the fantasies of sexual intrigue (as represented in Orientalist paintings) while European women found there nothing but oppression.

B. Double Vision: The next stage in understanding the other comes with the realization that each civilization including one’s own is a complex and enclosed universe of meaning and signification, and that it is unfair to perceive a foreign culture by only one of its parts. The discipline of anthropology ruled out judging another culture with the standards of one’s own. This was condemned as "ethnocentrism." The methods of living among the natives for long periods and suspending all judgments about them were adopted by the forerunners of modern anthropology. Armchair verdicts about the virtues and vices of "savagery" were thus shelved in favor of a value-neutral investigation and careful cataloguing of the varieties of cultural universes. Some Western moral philosophers who continued to enjoy the luxury of only reading about the primitive people rather than facing the myriad of cultural varieties, have been scandalized by the inability of the anthropologists to pass the most elementary moral judgments about the superiority of the West. Thus, flames of philosophical debate have time and again been stoked around the straw man of "moral relativism."

The anthropological, relativistic stage represents an advance over tunnel vision (of which the moral philosophers mentioned above often suffer) and a radical reversal of common ethnocentric prejudices. Yet, this is not the ideal cognitive spring board for global coexistence. Like tunnel vision, double vision is a neurological disorder. It is caused by the inability of the brain to superimpose the two pictures relayed by the eyes to create a single, three dimensional perspective. The picture produced by one eye lacks depth, but seeing double causes confusion as well. Cultural relativism is necessity at the beginning of intercultural research. One needs to put one’s judgments in a state of suspended animation at the outset of the intercultural journey. But , cultural relativism would be inadequate for healing the pernicious civilizational rifts that are appearing in the world. For civilizational dialogue we need to graduate to the third level of intercultural understanding.

C. Depth Perception: In the perception of a normal person a superimposing of the pictures provided by the eyes produces an integrated, three dimensional view of the world. Now, by a grand leap of logic -- complements of our ocular metaphor -- we land in the field of civilizational dialogue. We start with a picture of the "self" by a reading of the evolution of our own civilization. Then we produce a picture of the other, using careful historical, ethnological and sociological tools at our disposal – being careful to eschew judgments at this level. At the culmination of this study we must be able to overlay the two pictures of "self" and "other" to arrive at a unified three dimensional view of our common humanity. Like games of optical illusion, this picture will allow us to look at the picture twice and see different things each time. We can then attempt to merge the two pictures into one and be amazed by the new perspectives.

In the field of history we can read our own history as if it belonged to the other and vice versa. Studying the history of any nation including our own would be a boring affair if we did not pause to ponder the counterfactual question of: "What would have happened if?" Why not use these counterfactuals in the cause of inter-ethnic relations? Why not read the different histories of the various ethnic entities, whether within a single civilization or across them, as if they were the same story with different endings? We can utilize these methods in inter-ethnic dialogue in order to gain a new perspective on, or probably "see through," our obdurate differences. If we look at our own history as a different version of the others' we will understand it in a new light. Reading the other's history as our own story with a twist, leads to a more sympathetic reading. This method allows us to see many similarities between distinct identities and break down differences to their common elements. We might be only just a historical accident away from the fate of our neighbors. Sometimes intended or unintended consequence of a reform, an invasion or even a natural disaster at a sensitive historical moment makes all the difference in creating civilizational "character."

It also could turn out that the only difference is time. Since most conflicts occur within rather than between civilizations, we might even develop something akin to an "evolutionary" scheme. The tortured history of evolutionary theory in social sciences notwithstanding, a study can consider civilizational differences as the selective fulfillment of various "objective possibilities" in civilizational. Comparing the destinies of nations within civilizational frameworks to determine whether and to what extent these possibilities are actualized can be more than a clever way of understanding their course. It may furnish a solid foundation for civilizational dialogue as well.

Rushing to judgments is almost inevitable in tunnel vision. If, out of consideration for the recent etiquette of political correctness, the judgment is not blurted out, there remains a suppressed inclination to "call a spade, spade." Knowing the pitfalls of using one's own cultural system as a tribunal to judge others, social scientists have renounced judgments all together. The strong case for this attitude would posit the observer at the position of an objective instrument that records but does not judge. Cultural relativism does not advance beyond registering the radical multiplicity and even incommensurability of human cultures. It does not aggravate the ethnic tensions (in the manner of tunnel-vision snap judgments) but it is not advance dialogue either.

The process of engaging in civilizational dialogue can not be launched without a bona fide attempt to understand the other by using all of the tools provided by the sciences of history, anthropology and sociology. But at the end an attempt must be also mounted to find common civilizational parallels, possibilities and pitfalls by engaging in what we have dubbed "depth perception." We must not shy away from judgments. Our scientific principles and aspirations notwithstanding, we are all "human" after all, and humans are judgmental. Eschewing judgments in the field of inter-civilizational understanding is neither possible nor desirable.

The apprehensions of social sciences about judging others have been due to inevitable distortions that shape our views. But scientific phobia of judgments is counterproductive to the cause of civilizational dialogue. While it is reasonable to avoid prejudgments, why do we fear considered judgments? The problem arises from the assumption that the knowledge of the other is a one way street. The gaze of knowing is assumed to be directed only from the Western to the non-Western world. But our global community is advancing to a point where we may not have to maintain this assumption any longer. If we agree that the task of knowing the other, is not the solitary "burden of the white man," but the process in which different parties exchange glances, we might also assume that the distortions, mistakes, misperceptions and wrong judgments will be corrected in time and during the process of an inter-civilizational dialogue. This is true because the economic and political hegemony of the powerful nations and their monopoly of the means of knowing is not nearly as total as it used to be a few decades ago. In such a world as we have come to inhabit, we are finally able to put down the heavy burden of being saintly "objective" and antiseptically "non-judgmental." We are able finally to engage in understanding and even judging one another without the fear of condemning the object of our gaze to an eternal "object" of understanding. The "other" is now able to return the gaze and render judgments on the Western viewer. And when the glances meet both sides can be at once subjects and objects of knowing. And herein starts the process of civilizational dialogue.

The colloquia of civilizational dialogue must avoid the discourse of cultural relativism and its questionable moral progeny: "sensitivity training." The worst thing that we can do is paper over our judgments. Even those judgments that are the result of blind prejudice or tunnel vision must be acknowledged and dealt with in the direct sunlight of rational critique. Although the first baby steps toward a any useful dialogue requires a degree of cultural relativism, one cannot engage in useful dialogue without critical encounters. Civilizational coexistence is itself a moral position. After all, what scientific principle would prove that pulverizing the entire planet in a thermonuclear disaster would be a bad thing? Therefore integrating judgments in the process of civilizational dialogue is not such a grand move that it might appear at the first blush. Of course, like charity, judgments must start at home: it is called self-criticism. Every meeting of the civilizational minds must begin with self-criticism. Airing one’s own dirty laundry in public is a great starting point of civilizational dialogue. The next step would be clearly acknowledging and renouncing prejudicial (tunnel-vision) pictures of the "other." Any lasting attempt at civilizational conflict resolution, however must be go beyond these stages to a non-emotional scientific plain where "objective" studies of one the other are conducted and publicly presented.

Civilizationaly determined angels of reflection, would only add character and interest to the perspectives that will be gained in "depth perception." Some of the inevitable distortions that are caused by mistaken interpretations will of course be corrected in the process of cultural exchange. But other distortions will remain as tokens of the civilizationaly grounded differences of values and points of view. Consensus is not the hallmark of the success of civilizational dialogue. Distortions are integral to our human condition: we are finite creatures whose interests are determined by the tiny slice of time and space allotted us. Even our best considered judgments are after all human. Even the most scientifically minded among us can not help but view our social world through the prism of a particular time and place. Acknowledging this rootedness in time and space and this cultural specificity will allow us to recognize our point of view as only one "point of view." Only then can we use this "perspective" as a tool for narrowing down the plethora of information in the subject of our study. To use yet another ocular metaphor, the consciousness of the blind spot, will turn it into a discriminating lens. In a civilizational dialogue differences of viewpoints will lead not to consensus but a crescendo of evolving, collective understanding of the variety of civilizational experiences in the vanishingly brief history of human city dwelling on this planet.

Ahmad Sadri is a Professor of Sociology at Lake Forest College near Chicago, IL.
 

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