Interview Meme (2)

This post is continued from my previous post, Interview Meme (1).

The Rules: Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”I respond by asking you five personal questions so I can get to know you better. If I already know you well, expect the questions may be a little more intimate!You WILL update your journal/bloggy thing/whatever with the answers to the questions.You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

My questions come from Thinking Girl.

4. How can we, as a global society, balance the principle of non-violence with a desire to achieve human rights in a violent and corrupt dictatorship/autocracy/theocracy?

As a general, fundamental principle, I place the human rights above the sovereignty. Sovereignty of an independent nation-state and principles of self-determination and non-intervention are all important, but neither sacred nor absolute. Giving absolute rights of self-determination to a nation is fundamentally contradicting to the equality of human rights, vital and indispensable element of the modern world. We believe that every woman should be treated equal to men regardless of in which country she was born, and at the same time, we allow each nation to freely determine women’s status in the area they govern. When a nation decides or legislates to make women’s status inferior to that of men’s, or restrict what women can do because of their gender, no matter whether a dictator or the majority of people makes a decision, no matter if it is based on culture, tradition or religion, women in that nation are discriminated against only because of where they were born.

In my idealist dream, I envisage the worldwide system like EU Human Rights Court that overrides a national court in matters of human rights. It is this system that brought the historic victory for Polish women yesterday; even a ultra-conservative government of Poland has no right to take women's Right to Choose away. It is not realistic in a foreseeable future, when majority of the world's government don't seem to understand or don't want to understand what human rights means; nevertheless, an endeavour to establish a worldwide justice system has borne fruit in a form of the International Criminal Court, so no matter how imperfect it is, the world is heading for the better direction. And also, as a result of 2005 World Summit, international society's 'responsibility to protect' the world population from genocide and crimes against humanity is formally recognised.

I enthusiastically support humanitarian intervention when necessary, especially under circumstances of genocide and massive human rights abuses, for example, in case of Darfur. Intervention to save human lives and rights doesn't really contradict against the principle of non-violence. Realistically I'm not expecting much from the Security Council anyway, as usually one of three selfish veto powers, namely the US, Russia and China, vetoes to exercise responsibility to protect. (The US veto is usually highlighted and criticised, but China has been vetoing to protect the most brutal regimes in the world with which they have economic relations, including Sudan. These resolutions to save people of Darfur aren't even voted as they know China would veto it.)

However, this is not to support intervention by any country to protect human rights and save people from an oppressive regime. War is also a form of human rights abuses, and actually, I don't really think forcibly toppling a violent dictatorship would always improve human rights, except in extraordinary circumstances I mentioned above. It would be easy if killing a single evil dictator turns a country into a human rights paradise, but the reality is not that simple. War is costly too, to promote human rights we can put resources into education instead of into bombs and bullets. Education makes citizens who can create a liberal democracy, who don't allow the government to be oppressive. So, I don't see a serious dilemma between non-violence and human rights that make pursuing both of the incompatible.

I think the key is that Western governments need to put universal human rights ahead of other policy goals, in terms of priority. I don't know what is going on behind the scenes in diplomacy, but the serious pressure from powerful Western countries should surely have some impacts. However, the West is lenient, or even favourable towards a brutal regime that is pro-West (i.e. Saudi Arabia). For most governments, the ideal of human rights doesn't seem to be an end in itself, but just a (still legitimate) excuse to denounce anti-West governments. And now, the United States, which once inspired the world with its ideals in the Declaration of Independence and the Constutition, is showing the model of torture and human rights abuses to the world.

Finally, as an author of the media analysis blog, I can't stress enough the importance of media in promoting human rights. When the TV programmes people are getting from America tell them how to be nasty and torturous to each other, how to invade privacy of others, how to objectify women, and a horrible form of democracy in which voting is based on each one's selfish interests not principles or policies, it is hard to expect human rights to be truly universal...

5. What do you think will be the next phase of human evolution?

It is such a grand question that I'm not really confident to answer. But it is indeed an important thing to think about the world in long-term (though we may all be dead...). I don't really have knowledge to argue it scientifically/genetically, and I don't really feel like drawing the map of doom-and-gloom destruction-of-the-world type of future. So, I propose, somewhat optimistically, that the next phase of human evolution will be the end of industrialisation.

It seems to me that what's happening now is, that we have amazing productive capacity, so firms can produce more than necessary. But we already have what we need, and we don't need more stuff firms have capacity to produce. So businesses create false needs through advertising and manipulation by making people buy extra goods they produce. And as businesses produce more, we have to work more. So now something bizarre seems to be going on... though we can be working less because productive capacity has gone up, but instead we are working even longer to produce goods we don't really need, and we even create false demands by advertising to sell them, leaving carbon and toxic footprints. It seems that only business owners, investors and advertising agencies are benefiting from this massive waste of resources.

Capitalism is brilliant at increasing production, though it doesn't do a very good job in distributing that equally or deciding what to produce. With the Industrial Revolution, capitalism has indeed raised our standard of living dramatically. I think it's great that we have efficient production of resources and increased productive capacity; the issue is how we use it. We can use the increased capacity to be working less and spending extra time to enrich our mind, or increase overseas aid and make the world's income distribution more equitable, but late capitalism just functions to endlessly produce, produce and produce. One major flaw of capitalism is pictured in the concept of GDP which underlines the entire structure of capitalism, which counts military expenditure while not counting domestic activities performed within households, (in some countries it comprises 40% of the entire production, and mostly performed by women) nature and health, as a Kiwi economist Marilyn Waring critiqued in her groundbreaking work 'Counting for Nothing'.

Though I don't really think that capitalism is going to see a sudden death in a foreseeable future, the nature of it will change and the paradigm will shift. Karl Marx envisioned communism after capitalism; the modern implications of his words are not about the failed attempts of variant kinds of fascism/totalitarianism committed under the stolen name of 'communism' in the past, these are about future. I don't know if communism is the answer. I don't agree with dictatorship of the proletarians, any kind of dictatorship corrupts. But the twentieth century saw some of his ideas realised, in forms of social democracy; though it is facing backlash in recent two decades. And the current global enthusiasm for green lifestyle, increasing support for fair trade and 'slow life', Green change to capitalism seems to be likely. Considering feudalism that once looked almighty is dead now, and the speed of progress that various social movements have achieved, nothing can rule out the possibility of a radical change, though it might seem implausible at the moment.