GLOBAL HUMANITIES

TABLE OF CONTENTS from sam and liz and jimmy for ben

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In my head, I had sort of justified it all by saying human beings break down to three categories: You've got circles, squares and triangles. Squares are people that are neutral. They live life by knowledge and logic and scientific approach to finding information and truth, and they build people very practical things. So if you go to a square and say, "I'm homeless," he'll build you a building. He won't think anything past that. Squares give us the tools and shelter and grids and roads and blah, blah, blah. And then you have the triangles, who are people that are led by power and money and ego. These things all work on a pyramid structure: You have one person at the top and billions at the bottom. And then you have the circles, who are just led by love. The concept of the universe is built on circles. I think evolution is built on a circular sort of shape, and any natural organisms have circular things in common: If you cut a tree you get circles, natural disasters happen in circular forms, and the planets are circles, our eyes are circles.

--MIA

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person:human::world:globe

As the world became the globe, people began to focus on the idea of “humanity”. Whereas a person has an individual identity, a favorite color, a personality, a member of “humanity” is characterized only by their basic needs and abstract universal qualities. “Human rights” include access to the necessities of survival. Devji argues that,

[G]igantic realities like the globe and humanity not only push the subject who would grasp them out of a geocentric or anthropocentric point of view, they also end up making his existence impossibly abstract. No longer a humanist subject, the individual serves as an example of humanity itself as a global fact, one which can not provide a mere backdrop for this individual, having stepped into the foreground and overwhelmed him. (Devji, 16)

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liberal arts college

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what is the difference between a person and "humanity"? what is the difference between these two in a humanitarian context?

we perhaps identify more with the woman on the left photograph than we do with the anonymous masses in the right photograph. but note: devji would argue that the woman on the left is also anonymous. she is turned into a nameless representative of suffering, just like all the people on the right photograph. is there something dehumanizing about a "global humanity"?

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from a google image search for "global humanity"

My high school had an International Baccalaureate program. Look LOOK:

reed college is somewhat "international" too. what does this mean? in our school this means we have a lot of students from around the world. for my high school it meant we had this program that existed in the same form all around the world and was branded with an "international" identity.

i think about internationalism when i think about this photo, because in this photo the people themselves become flags for the nations they're from. what does this mean? does this mean that all these people have transcended nationhood? or does it mean now simply that nations are now closer to each other, joined in a global brotherhood?

global humanity could mean cosmopolitanism; "global citizens" who are not beholden to the worldly laws and entrapments of nations and municipalities. global humanity could mean an undifferentiated mass of people, anonymous and insignificant on the individual scale.

the stakes of this are huge. what do we think of as a "humanitarian" problem? is it one that affects a group of people? is it one that affects humans worldwide? is a group ever invalidated by the whole? what does it mean to be a part of global humanity?

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Justice Globalist Utopia

A justice globalist vision of Utopia entails a globe where nations interact on a just playing field, inequalities are eradicated, and all of humanity is able to achieve the same standard of living. It is possible to think of justice globalism in two parts: economic radicals challenging the validity of the capitalist system, and reformers, attempting to create a more just world within the existing framework of capitalism.

Whereas market globalists champion the idea of "free trade", justice globalists counter with the concept of "fair trade". The founder of Fair Trade USA explains that, “Fair Trade makes free trade work for the world’s poor.” The Fair Trade USA website encourages consumers to buy free trade products, noting that:

We say that Fair Trade is “market-based” because it relies on socially-conscious consumers support the movement by purchasing Fair Trade products. Through their conscious purchases, consumers tell companies that they care about the farmers and workers who produce their products. Fair Trade aims to address the underlying inequities caused by poverty and lack of access to market information that free trade ignores.

Clearly this model of "fair trade" justice globalism falls into the camp of justice globalists that seek to equalize the global capitalist system without altering the global economic paradigm.

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SUNS AND BURNING WORLDS: A SPOTIFY PLAYLIST TELLING THE STORY OF GLOBAL APOCALYPSE

Once in a Lifetime by The Talking Heads - THE BOMB HAS BEEN INVENTED AND WE ARE NOW SCARED OF IT

Do You Realize?? by The Flaming Lips - WE SAW THE EARTH FROM SPACE AND IT WAS A DEEPLY RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

Northern Lights by St. Vincent - THE SKY IS SO BEAUTIFUL BUT THE DAYS ARE GETTING HOTTER AND SO WE IMAGINE THE WORLD BURNING 

Garbage by Chairlift - THE WORLD IS SO BEAUTIFUL BUT WE THROW AWAY SO MUCH SHIT AND IT'S DISGUSTING

2080 by Yeasayer - I AM YOUNG AND EVERYONE SAYS THE YOUTH WILL SEE THE END OF THE WORLD AND THAT IS POSSIBLY THE WORST THING EVER

Gamma Ray by Beck - I AM ALWAYS WORRIED ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING, I NEVER FEEL OKAY, I CAN FEEL IT COMING

Born on a Day the Sun Didn't Rise by Black Moth Super Rainbow - ONE DAY I LOOKED OUT THE WINDOW AND THE WORLD WAS ENDING

What Would I Want? Sky by Animal Collective - I WISH THE AIR DID NOT BURN MY SKIN

Everything in its Right Place by Radiohead - "WE CAN FIX THIS. WE CAN REMAKE THIS WORLD. WE ARE AS GODS."

DLZ by TV On the Radio - I HATE THAT DEATH PROFESSOR WHO DIRTIED THIS WORLD WITH HIS SCIENCE

Culture Shock by Death Grips - FUCK THE YUPPIE TECHNOCRATIC ELITE

The Information by Beck - WE DO NOT BELIEVE OUR EYES, WE ARE THE ONES WHO LIVE IN THE WORLD BUT WE ACCEPT ONLY THE VISION OF APOLLO WHO LIVES IN SPACE

O Green World by Gorillaz - I DESPAIR AT THE LOSS OF MY BEAUTIFUL GREEN MARBLE

Lost in the World by Kanye West - CYBERNETICS IS HARD

POWER by Kanye West - CYBERNETICS IS HARD AND FAILURE IS CATASTROPHIC

Warrior by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "and I'm small"

Revival by Deerhunter - THE WORLD HAS DIED AND CHRIST HAS RISEN

Plastic Beach by Gorillaz - MAN HAS DIED AND THE SNAKES HAVE RISEN

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Market Globalist Utopia

Market globalism offers a vision of Utopia where goods are manufactured efficiently as possible, and free markets equal free humanity. Although market globalist true believers argue that market globalism is inevitable and unstoppable, they promote the idea of market globalism as a benevolent force. The joint communique from the heads of state at the 1996 G-7 summit paints a rosy picture of globalization:

Globalization provides great opportunities for the future, not only for our countries, but for all others too. Its many positive aspects include an unprecedented expansion of investment and trade; the opening up to international trade of the world's most populous regions and opportunities for more developing countries to improve their standards of living...Hence we are convinced that the process of globalization is a source of hope for the future. (from Steger, 81)

The myth of a market globalist utopia is that if a nation participates in the system fully and without trade barriers or protecting domestic markets, they will become wealthy and their peoples' standard of living will increase. For market globalists, free trade, free markets, and democracy go hand in hand. The market globalist vision: a democratic, unrestricted, wealthy, free trading globe.

[globalhumanities2013-blog]

Justice globalists criticize the neoliberal market-globalist policy of “free-trade” facilitating a race to the bottom for wages and working conditions around the world.

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from a google image search for "global violence"

LOOK AT THIS PHOTO! THE WORLD IS BURNING! WHEN WE BURN THE METROPOLIS WE ARE BURNING THE WORLD! WHEN WE BURN THE POOR WE ARE BURNING THE WORLD! WHEN WE BURN GASOLINE WE ARE BURNING THE WORLD! WHEN WE BURN ATOMS WE ARE BURNING THE WORLD! WHEN WE BURN THE CHRIST WE ARE BURNING THE WORLD!

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from a google image search for "global network"

THE WORLD AS NETWORK

Devji claims that Al Qaeda is creating a "worldwide web of war" that is a "kind of spectre of our global interrelatedness". The influence of cybernetics on Devji's thinking is clear. That "worldwide web of war" can be abbreviated as WWW is no accident. The "www" portion of internet URLs stands for world wide web. In this way we see that Devji is comparing the functionings of Al Qaeda to that of the internet and of global networks generally.

A comparison to the internet evokes the notion of communication on a global scale. Devji himself considers the possibility of violence as being its own sort of language (42). The internet is not the first global communication network. Before the internet there was the telephone, mail, and explorers and travelers talking to people around the world.

Communications are not the only thing encompassed by the idea of the "global network". Other "global networks" include international politics, the environment, the market. For a while now (albeit only since fairly recently) people have found appealing a description of the world as an interrelated network, one in which all things and events are inextricably tied to each other through an incredibly complex cybernetic system.

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Humanity in Sacrifice

"Martyrdom is noble not because it will result in the political, economic or religious triumph of Islam so much as because it allows Muslims to exhibit the fundamentally human virtues of courage and sacrifice, thus doing their duty to represent humanity itself as a global agent rather than victim."

--Devji page 39

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Imperial Globalism

Market globalism, in essence, is the global dissemination and imposition of neoliberalism. Market globalism seeks to remove trade barriers, linking humanity in a system of trade networks reminiscent of a cybernetic system. These trade barriers have been removed through the application of both “soft” and “hard” power. Soft power uses non-violent institutions, such as the IMF, to make market globalism attractive and seemingly necessary for an individual country’s economic success. Hard power pertains to the use of military force in order to open up a country’s markets. Imperial globalism makes use of both soft and hard power to open up world markets. Pictured below is the cold, rigid utopia pursued by imperial globalism.

[globalhumanities2013-blog]

We will make a collective network of all our particular struggles and resistances. An intercontinental network against neoliberalism, an intercontinental network of resistance for humanity. —Subcomandante Marcos of ELZN

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ELZN's Sixth Declaration from the Selva Lacadona, 2005

We are the zapatistas of the EZLN, although we are also called “neo-zapatistas.” Now, we, the zapatistas of the EZLN, rose up in arms in January of 1994 because we saw how widespread had become the evil wrought by the powerful who o­nly humiliated us, stole from us, imprisoned us and killed us, and no o­ne was saying anything or doing anything. That is why we said “Ya Basta!,” that no longer were we going to allow them to make us inferior or to treat us worse than animals. And then we also said we wanted democracy, liberty and justice for all Mexicans although we were concentrated o­n the Indian peoples. Because it so happened that we, the EZLN, were almost all o­nly indigenous from here in Chiapas, but we did not want to struggle just for own good, or just for the good of the indigenous of Chiapas, or just for the good of the Indian peoples of Mexico. We wanted to fight along with everyone who was humble and simple like ourselves and who was in great need and who suffered from exploitation and thievery by the rich and their bad governments here, in our Mexico, and in other countries in the world.

The Zapatistas place themselves in a global context of oppression, and seek to unite with the exploited around the world who suffered due to market globalism. The Sixth Declaration from the Selva Lacadona stakes a claim for human rights due to the oppressed and argues that the powerful exploited them and treated them worse than animals.

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