by Dr.Ricardo Díez Hochleitner, Honorary President of The Club of Rome

*Editor’s Note: This essay for the Club of Rome Blog is an extract of a speech Dr.Ricardo Díez Hochleitner presented at the International Academic Solemn Session 2012 of The Finish Institute of International Affairs and the Spanish Royal Academy of Economic and Financial Sciences in Helsinki on February 9, 2012.

"Europe as a Queen" - Medival map of Europe from 1472

Europe´s North and South as well as East and West of Europe are called to perform historic priority endeavours. The more so in our most critical times of profound and long-term economic and financial crisis, unless we take soon advantage of it for a sort of global Human Revolution in response to our prime responsibility towards future generations. Such a long term vision of full cooperation and mutual respect among all human beings, needs moreover a simultaneous full respect towards Nature, the global environment, of which our survival and wellbeing fully depends.

The world in these early years of the third millennium is imbued with a feeling of insecurity and anxiety that embraces many major issues, including terrorism and the forces struggling to attain hegemonic power. It also extends to the shameful and scandalous growth of extreme poverty in some countries and even regions. And this feeling is reinforced by a major economic and financial crises, in addition to the severe and ever speedier deterioration of the environment and the conflict between cultures and beliefs. More important, however, and probably the real mean crisis is the moral relativism prevailing in our societies which denotes a growing inconsistency between frequently heralded ethical values, far away from the desirable inspiring roots of our actual activities and behaviours, including the wide-spread corruption. This is certainly no way to face to-days most serious global problems and challenges.

Furthermore, the past few decades have seen a deep and very rapid transformation of society and its surroundings, which is impacting us all, globally, individually, socially and environmentally. Humanity, when guided by selfish arrogance and ignorance, has the capacity to destroy Nature, our habitat, and put an end to our own heritage and existence. On the contrary, when guided by solidarity, wisdom and the principles of democratic community life, mankind improves the quality of life and conserves the environment, consequently enriching also our cultural heritage and knowledge. All this has been subject of profound studies and debates, as well as proclaimed by the Club of Rome over the last 40 years.

Nonetheless, our concerns now must be largely rooted in the profound change inherent in the transition towards a new global society. Globalisation in all areas is an inescapable natural phenomenon that may either serve the selfish interests of a privileged, exploitation-minded-few, or as a framework to extend the goods, rights and duties implicit in democracy, freedom, social justice and sustainable material, social and human justice to men and women everywhere.

In our days, how Europe handles the present economic and financial unrest is of universal importance since the world is still to a large extend Eurocentric, the more so after the successful years of the European Union since its foundation. For much of the past two centuries, capitalism has had a clear narrative for Europe. For a long period of time, Europe’s manufactured products dominated world trade and business. Europeans enjoyed the biggest standards of living. This increase in European growth and wealth seemed to go on indefinitely, but after the Second World War, among other phenomena, Japan industrialised and produced cheaper yet good quality goods. Then, other Asian countries went on into the act rapidly, while Europe lost markets.

In those circumstances, Europeans and particularly Americans opted for the financial markets, inventing new financial products such as short selling of shares and currencies, sub-prime lending, leveraged investments through hedge funds and a multitude of others financial products, continuing apparently to grow and prosper. However, the finance market did not spin off real businesses and hardly created any jobs nor gave great rise to trade. Getting greedy, the system was abused and the market manipulated for greater profits.

As in the East Asian countries earlier, America and Europe is facing now a major economic and financial crisis. The refusal to accept the impoverishment has resulted in the refusal to accept austerity measures. Now, people demonstrate and go on strike against the measures, which simply aggravates matters.

Consequently, there can be no return to the status quo ante. We Europeans have to accept that the days of Eurocentricism are practically over. Europe must look around the world for increasing global solutions and honest wide cooperation.

This is also the best way to help that a balance can be re-established in the inter-relationships between Humanity, Nature, Technologies, Economy, Business activities, Ecology and Cultural values around the world. Moreover, living together in authentic and solid democracies is the only possible avenue for development with a promising future, which means: Sustainable material, social and human development.

In summary: There are many potential major reasons for hope in spite of heavy most serious menaces, to start with and thanks to life in democratic communities, Humanity still has the potential, the world over, to rise above all previous misfortune and miseries if we channel the immense material and especially the spiritual and intellectual resources available to the benefit of a viable, ethical and promising future for all human beings. However, this dilemma cannot be addressed in the simplistic terms of the growth models in use today, regardless of the abundance of well-intentioned but scantly applied Declarations and Resolutions of international scope, such as those about Climate Change (see Rio 92, Kyoto 97, etc.) or those quite diffuse about economy (see G-20, G-77, Davos Economy Forum, etc).

Thus, we need a new growth and development model, cleansed of all manner of excesses, of both the linear optimism of traditional liberals and the catastrophic optimism of amateur and professional revolutionaries; and freed of the candour of extreme rationalism, the arrogance of the scientific approach and the headstrong wilfulness of party politics.

We need a new model able to distinguish between growth and development; able to see that what matters is the human being, each and every human being on the face of the earth. In other words, we need a new and renovated model that springs from the idea that developing is being more, creating more, doing more and sharing more, instead of merely producing more, owning more and consuming more.

To attain this new model we need to acknowledge that development must be sustainable, long-term development, with a social and human dimension, thus the fruit and the miracle of learned men and women.

Today most people know that in order to be wholly human and live in peace, freedom and progress in the twenty first century, we need Education, but we also need to acquire positive habits and attitudes. In order to achieve this, the society we live in, beginning with the family and including private enterprise, governments, foundations, scientific and cultural and educational institutions, must be made to realise that a collective effort is in order, so that each one of us and all of us together can make this dream, this hope, come true.

Nonetheless, only an open and ongoing debate can amass the political will to attain the human and material resources needed, institute the knowledge society and produce men and women in which wisdom — it means the planet’s major resource — has been invested in order to create a pool of high ethical values from which they can draw to contribute to the general and their own personal welfare.

In any case, however, education should never become indoctrination. An objective view of the facts, devoid of prejudice, must be one of the primary goals of education anywhere, and a right and a duty of all citizens of genuine democracies.

Consequently, what we want is education for peace; for implementing participatory democracy in freedom and for progress that provides sustained and sustainable long-term development.

We want education to serve others in the same way, both our nearby and our more distant neighbours, in a spirit of solidarity. Moreover, we want the opportunity to attain full access to knowledge, even the most advanced knowledge to become universalised. This is the opportunity for education and learning that we want for each individual; for the members of every family; for the citizens of every town, every region and of every nation; for the members of any supranational community that may be established; and for the entire planet. The outcome will be world peace and welfare, provided we all honestly endeavour to build a new, fair and viable world order.

Finally and in summary, we are in need of a great Human Revolution not only to curb material poverty but also cultural and moral poverty as well, arising from science, education and culture, assets which are now taking the place of the formerly all-important capital in the creation of wealth. Such a revolution, therefore, entails not only intellectual and moral aspects, but the review as well of specific interests in the structures of political and economic power at all levels. We must attempt to build a new human conscience; an ethical structure for survival and sustainable progress, drawing on the wisdom of all the world’s peoples and cultures to educate in favour of democratic life in community.

Jean Monnet stated in his days that “sovereign nations of the past can at present neither ensure their own progress nor control their own future”. Moreover, when he presented in 1950 the Schuman Declaration to the octogenarian Adenauer, the later recognized that its adoption would end confrontations between Germany and France, although Jean Monnet forcefully added that it moreover would establish the first basic step of the indispensable future World Governance, starting with supranational regional communities.

Notwithstanding, in order to reach such global governance of our multipolar world, free of imperialism and fully based on participatory democracies of civil societies, we should attain as soon as possible the full democratisation of the United Nations (NNUU), starting with a coherent reform of its Charter, in addition to restructure the world economy with a global currency, together with a global, effective and sustainable management of our biosphere.