Dr Asangba Tzudir
Globalization, in spite of the closer networking on one hand, comes with its own version of moral dilemmas and where the individual is exalted over the community. As such, though globalization has the breadth to connect and expand the community towards other communities, it has posed many threats to the community by way of creating conflicts with the kind of intimate and neighborly relationships of people to each other and to the land. This has become the mantra of modernity.
The traditional society was such that the pursuit of every activity aimed at the larger good of the community, and thereby the context of the larger good and communitarian well-being provided the impetus for each and every individual to have a sense of community feeling, and a strong bonding without any selfishness. That was the framework within which life and living progressed as communitarian concerns and the larger good was always over and above all individualism.
The way in which globalization is playing its part of creating moral dilemmas somehow threatens the sense of community and responsibility and it is dangerous because it exalts the individual or a particular group’s interest over the community even as materiality is exalted over moral values. The pull of globalization is such that, in order to destabilize the pull, the very meaning and essence of community needs to be revived. This should begin by bringing the concept of community closer to the heart.
To bring the ‘community’ closer to the heart lies in situating the community within the neighborhood of people living together along with the place of the neighborhood. Thus each small ‘neighborhood of community’ should network to bond with the other neighborhood and create a dependency neighborhood of communities and thereby create, relate and connect to form the larger community.
The community of neighborhood should be built around the notion of virtues like selflessness, cooperation and responsibility, and which are vital to being neighbors. If it is just another populace in the neighborhood simply occupying space and time or a geographical region, then the neighborhood of community will not evolve or connect with the other community/s in the neighborhood.
Further, the neighborhood of community is not about simply existing by virtue of being in the neighborhood, but by participating in the very act of neighboring itself. Moreover, added to the virtues of selflessness, cooperation and responsibility is the golden virtue of dignity of labor, which needs to become a uniform for life. Dignity of labor should not primarily be seen as a kind of menial work beyond the while collar jobs. Earning ones dignity lies in skilling oneself, not necessarily to earn a livelihood but in evolving as a human that knows how to do things and in the process evolve and become a better human being. These are traits that add impetus to the very act of what can be considered as the participation in the neighboring itself.
The global 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, it is indeed challenging for people living in a neighborhood of community to survive in an age of globalization. But globalization is not going anywhere, and a serious concern is for communities to resist the disintegrating forces of globalization.
Having seen the problems threatening community today and which has stemmed from the detachment of the human ‘being’ as responsible agents living in a community there is need to regroup the community feeling by unlearning and relearning the moral values and the dignity of labor. There is a kind of natural sweetness in the neighborhood of communities coming together for the good of the larger community.
(Dr Asangba Tzudir contributes a weekly guest editorial to The Morung Express. Comments can be emailed to asangtz@gmail.com)
