Ethos and Actuality. A unique world of diverse civilizations

Abstract

This article seeks to enrich our awareness of the present day, the civilization that wanted to be The world civilization is in crisis, complicated by the need for the recognition of the other civilizations -outside and within one’s own territory-, in their existence and confrontation. Rootedness is natural for a unique human being, which gives rise to diverse civilizations, in a single world. Today, in the process of globalization, three concomitant sub-processes can be discerned: a) The need to re-recognize the identities that are close to us, sometimes local and sometimes of the other civilizations in the process of reinventing their identity –in the transversal neighborhoods of the Global Village– and not only in the original territories of that civilization. b) The strong presence (pollution) of Euro-American civilization in the highly urbanized environments of the other civilizations (before the Big Mac and Coca-Cola, Marxism –a post Victorian European idea– was the vehicle for the modernization of Russia, China and Vietnam), as well as the relevant presences of some of the other civilizations in it, and c) The crisis of what is valued in Euro-America (not limited to its space, but to where those valuations are experienced as their own in the Global Village) due to the crisis of the last stage of Modernity and European self-uprooting. Finally, we will dwell on the problem of the crisis of power, characterized by the immense expansion of its means and the poverty of its ends, in a society that refuses to deal with the problem of the good society –because of the curvature of the will– and irresponsibly produces the return of inequality.