Dr Asangba Tzudir
In this era of globalization, materiality has taken precedence over moral values. Wendell Berry in “Conservation and local economy” gives a strong claim that the end to disintegration of community can be made possible through the resurgence of local economy. While local economy has its own binding role to play in preventing community disintegration, at the core lies culture which in context gives the basis for communitarian life and living, and where both local economy and culture finds related through land and its people.
However, the sense of community and the responsibility that comes with community finds threatened by globalization, which is dangerous because it exalts the individual or groups interest over the community. Berry further contends community is a “neighborhood of humans in a place, plus the place itself.” So the term neighborhood is used to describe a community, because neighborhoods imply the belonging to people and to place of members who not only know each other, but depend upon each other.
Virtues like selflessness, cooperation and responsibility are vital to being neighbors. The community is not merely a geographical region, but a participation in the very act of neighboring itself where some kind of a harmony exists among the members of the community.
While Globalization has the breadth to connect and expand the community towards other communities, it has posed many threats to the community. The global worldview conflicts with the kind of intimate and neighborly relationships of people to each other and to the land as it gives priority and exalts the individual over the community. This has become the mantra of modernity.
Within this exalted mantra, the global worldview detaches the individuals living as a community from responsibility. This is also aptly highlighted in Milton’s ‘paradise lost’ and the fall of man, when Eve, in order to “achieve what might lead to happier life,” breaks communion with God, her husband, and the whole purpose of creation. Milton accounts that God made eve superior and Adam inferior. Eve proposes that the garden being too big, they should work in different parts of the garden. This can be aptly translated as the emergence of ‘I’ the ‘self,’ ego and pride. The idea here is not just the ethics of working together but what emerges out of working together. The world today prioritizes utility over responsibility with the empty promise of achieving personal happiness by material means, thereby negating human dignity and moral responsibilities.
The capitalist framework concerns production and consumption and not the growth or even the preservation of community. Thus, people as a Community cannot survive in an age of globalization. As such, local economy and culture are two main facets that can save community. But globalization is not going anywhere, and a serious concern is how communities can resist the disintegrating forces of globalization.
In context, the trend of disintegration of communities, as seen through the numerous formations of unions has not helped the cause of community building. People have lost sight of the dignity and calling of community. At this juncture, liberal education is needed to help us embrace moral values that come with a call for the larger communitarian responsibilities.
In sum, the problem threatening community is both economic and cultural, and this has stemmed from the detachment of the human ‘being’ as responsible agents living in a community. Community will only survive in an age of globalization if people, in praxis, unlearn and relearn the moral values associated with economy and culture.
(Dr Asangba Tzudir contributes a weekly guest editorial to The Morung Express. Comments can be emailed to asangtz@gmail.com)
