It seems that Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, the Dalai Lama, and a hippie backpacker were in an airplane that was spinning out of control. There were only three parachutes. President Clinton said, "I'm the leader of the free world, so I'd better take one of the chutes." He did, and leaped out of the plane. Bill Gates then said, "I'm the smartest man in the world, so I'd better take one of the parachutes, too." He took one and jumped out. Finally, the Dalai Lama said to the hippie, "I'm an old man; you have your life ahead of you. Go ahead: You take the last parachute." The hippie replied calmly: "Chill, man. The smartest dude in the world just jumped out of the plane with my backpack."[1]
Here is a parable of globalization - the conflict of politics and economics, religion and humanity. Bill Clinton represents the power of politics in a world in which the United States is the only superpower. Bill Gates embodies the triumph of the free market over all other economic forms, and its potential hazards. The Dalai Lama symbolizes the altruistic spirit of religion - most often missing in our haste to globalize the world. The hippie back-packer is a by-stander, but with a serious stake in all that is happening.
Globalization is a commonplace among us - especially in Rochester where world trade is a staple of our economy. It is the context in which we live, says New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Tom Friedman in The Lexus and the Olive Tree.[2] This unlikely image came to Friedman while riding a bullet train in Japan. Half the world seems intent on building a better Lexus, the Japanese luxury car - obsessed with "modernizing, streamlining and privatizing their economies in order to thrive in the system of globalization."
But the other half seems focused on olive trees, like those on the banks of the Jordan River. "They represent everything that roots us, anchors us, identifies us in this world - whether it be belonging to a family, a community, a tribe, a nation, a religion or, most of all, a place called home."[3]
In this world "only the paranoid survive." Here is the essence of global capitalism - "'creative destruction,' - a perpetual cycle of destroying the old and less efficient product or service and replacing it with new, more efficient ones." Innovation replaces tradition. If the Cold War was sumo wrestling with two Goliaths wrestling while the world watched in apprehension, globalization is more like running a 100 yard dash over and over again. All friends and enemies are now competitors. This conflict between material betterment and cultural values he says, "is the drama of the Lexus and the olive tree."[4]
"Globalization isn't a choice," Friedman says, "It's a reality."[5] He points to a picture taken in Jerusalem on December 29, 1998, as an orthodox Jew places his cellular phone up to the Western Wall so a relative in France can say a prayer at the holy site.[6] In this globalized economy people feel helpless. One Mexican banker told Friedman, "Everyone feels their life is determined by someone outside, and everyone wants to know who is this person? Who is this force? We thought that we were on the path to the First World and suddenly something went wrong. . . . What did we do? We are losing control."[7]
How can we survive in a world without walls, a world in which no one seems to be in charge?
At a recent conference on the Economic Crisis at Home and Abroad, an official of the International Monetary Fund was quoted as saying he was willing to sacrifice a generation to the success of the neo-liberal economic model - in short - globalization. The point is illustrated in the cartoon of an IMF official talking with representatives of poor countries: "If you poor nations want more loans, here's what we want to see - greater balance of trade equilibrium, appropriate currency adjustments ... and an end to subsidized consumption." One asks, "What does all that mean," to which the IMF official responds, "Eat less."[8]
On October 15 the world welcomed its 6 billionth person. There are those, including the Pope and some neo-conservative economists, who celebrate the child's arrival. There are others of us who bemoan the burgeoning population of the earth and doubt its carrying capacity. In the familiar image, "If we could shrink earth's population to a village of 100 people, it would look like this: Six people would possess 59% of the world's wealth, probably five from the United States; Eighty would live in substandard housing, 70 would be unable to read and 50 would suffer from malnutrition."
And it will get worse with bursting populations in the poorest nations. Even Thomas Malthus, the early 19th century British clergyman, worried that overpopulation would lead to famine. He said, "There should be no more people in a country than could enjoy a glass of wine or a piece of beef with their dinner."[9]
More precisely, the World Bank worries about the rising number of the "newly poor," some 200 million more live in poverty now than in 1993, a total of about 1.2 billion. This diminishes the United Nations hopes of cutting worldwide poverty in half by 2020.[10] At the same time world population control plans are stumbling. Such sensitive issues as abortion, contraception, sex education for teenagers, and women's rights are disrupting efforts to stabilize the world's population with sustainable economic development. While 10 billion dollars is currently invested in such efforts $17 billion is required by 2000 and $22 billion by 2015. In the words of one cryptic bumper sticker, "How dense can we get?"
This at a time when foreign aid to developing nations from Western countries, including the United States, is falling. This at a time when our nation will not even pay its United Nations dues because a cabal of conservatives led by Jesse Helms will not support population policies which include abortion. Then last week we saw the scuttling of the treaty prohibiting nuclear testing. We are fast losing what moral credibility we had. We have yielded to one reactionary senator and his friends the power to thwart policies utterly necessary for global peace and justice. Jesse Helms is the one of the most dangerous men in the world.
Globalization goes unchallenged - as if we were helpless pawns before an inexorable and all-powerful god. Propelled by economic forces which see only the bottom line, we move money around the globe with the push of a button - uprooting millions of people the button pushers never see.
Take Phil Knight of the Nike Corporation. Forbes Magazine, hardly a publication of bleeding-heart liberals, pointed out that the typical Nike worker is an Asian girl or woman working in a sweatshop for less than $10 a week. The magazine commented: "An unrepentant Phil Knight blasts his sweatshop critics: 'This isn't an issue that should even be on the political agenda today. It's just a sound bite of globalization.'"[11]
What has globalization to do with you and me? It may be inevitable - we live in an interdependent world; it may bring benefits to many people - and unquestionably it has raised the global standard of living for millions; it may be an impersonal power over which we have no control - and it can strip us of our spiritual sensibilities.
When the world is dominated by the bottom line; when profits transcend people, when the world's poor increase and grow poorer; when the three richest officers of Microsoft - Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Steve Ballmer - have more assets, nearly $140 billion, than the combined gross national product of the 43 least-developed countries and their 600 million people, something is very wrong.[12]
But we may be persuaded that the world cannot be any other way. Perhaps we should allow the rich to become richer and let the devil take the hindmost. Perhaps we should let wealthy nations get wealthier with no regard for the poorest ones. After all, we can defend ourselves from them. They cannot take our wealth away from us. It may be that social responsibility is quite simply inefficient in a global free market. As one observer puts it, "In the world of big money and multimillion-dollar compensation packages, greed is a worker who wants a living wage."[13]
There is a biblical warrant for moral and spiritual concern. In the Hebrew scriptures we find the concept of the Jubilee Year. Every 50 years the people were supposed to go back to their original lands - debts were to be forgiven - everyone was to be given a fresh start. It grew out of the idea that some had become too rich - some too poor - and Yahweh wanted to level the playing field. However, there is no evidence the Hebrew people ever followed this imperative from the Book of Leviticus.
But for me it does raise an ethical standard I find appealing. It's a little like the way the National Football League keeps the game interesting and competitive. When they draft players out of college, the teams with the worst records get to pick first and sign the best players. Also, the teams with the worst records tend to have an easier schedule the following year, and the best teams are matched against each other. Why? Because without this attempt at parity the best and richest teams in the largest markets would almost always win, while the poorest teams in the smallest markets would almost always lose. The game would lose its appeal.
Clearly it is hazardous to apply the policies of professional football to the world economy, but there is moral justification for what some religious leaders have advocated: a Jubilee Year in which the debts of poor Third World nations would be forgiven - all or in part. That is a serious policy debate in our own nation and among the richest nations. When loans are called in, poor nations often try to pay them back by balancing their budgets on the backs of the poor and the powerless. We impose "structural adjustments" - cutting government spending - which of course affects their poorest citizens.
This rush to globalization in spite of the consequences has more than economic consequences. It has spiritual implications as well. In our world it is quite clear that homo faber - humans as workers - has triumphed over homo spiritus - humans as spiritual beings. What I think we lack as a people - even those of us who are Unitarian Universalists - is a global consciousness to inform our global village. Our Universalist forbears believed in the Universal Fatherhood of God and the universal Brotherhood of Man. We has eschewed these gender exclusive concepts for good reason, but our commitment - spiritually - to what I call the Beloved Community of Earth - has been spotty.
Antoinne de St. Exupery's Little Prince illustrates the obsession with economic globalization at the expense of all else. You will recall the Little Prince travels from planet to planet to add to his knowledge. On one planet he finds a man who spends all of his time counting and has reached the number of five hundred and one million.
"Five hundred and one million what?" asks the Little Prince.
The man, annoyed at the interruption, answers, "Millions of those little objects which one sometimes sees in the sky."
"Flies?" asks the little prince.
"Oh, no,' says the man. "Little golden objects that set lazy men to idle dreaming."
"Ah, you mean the stars?" says the little prince. "And what do you do with five hundred millions of stars?"
The man explains that he writes the number on a little paper and then puts the paper in a drawer and locks it. "I am concerned with matters of consequence: I am accurate."
The little prince is puzzled. For what is of consequence to the little prince is a flower that he waters every day and three volcanoes that he cleans out every week, since he is of use to the flower and of use to the volcanoes. And these, he announces to the man, are true matters of consequence.
We are quite happy to travel the globe - visit fascinating places - meet interesting people, but does this increase our sense of responsibility for the welfare of the have-nots of the world? Can we identify with those who did not have the good fortune to be born into this land of milk and honey? Are we concerned about policies followed by our government which has major impact on millions - if not billions of people - around the globe? Have we studied the impact, for example, of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement?
What brought this policy abstraction home to me was my visit to the foreign-owned factories called Maquiladoras of northern Mexico, where I met Martha Ojeda, Executive Director of the Committee for Justice in the Maquiladoras. In November of 1997 Martha took me and a delegation from the Labor Religion Coalition of New York State on a tour of the Texas-Mexican border. We observed those gleaming factories owned by U.S. and wealthy nations, but we visited the colonias where the workers live in slum-like conditions.
Martha was fired again and again as she tried to organize a union. It is very hard to organize there because the agreement favors multinational corporations over the workers and the environment. NAFTA is no abstract policy issue to me - it is what my government is helping to do to the poor people of our neighbor to the south. Martha was here recently to give us first-hand information about the exploitation of workers by wealthy foreigners. When you have been with Martha for a time, you begin to develop a global moral consciousness that does not allow you to simply accept the policies of your government.
Then just last Friday evening I heard Cathy Kelly, brought here by our Iraq and Gulf Affairs Task Force. She has made repeated visits to Iraq to observe what is happening to the people as a result of our continued bombing, but even more devastating are the economic sanctions imposed on that nation. She reminded us that there is more than one person in Iraq. While we are fixated on removing Saddam Hussein from power, we have forgotten the horrific consequences for the people who are unable to acquire adequate food and medical supplies. She brought home to me the forgotten equation in American foreign policy - its impact on ordinary people.
And we know the work of Jody Williams, who with the opposition of the Big Five major powers, got an international ban on landmines - a treaty the U.S. refuses to sign. In winning the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize she reminds us of the power of one person with conviction.
We desperately need in this country to break out of the parochial walls of our powerful nation to see the world as others see it - to get a God's eye view of the world - in all its tragedy and wonder. The late David Rhys Williams, Minister Emeritus of this congregation, said it well when he wrote: "We are joined together by a mystic oneness whose source we may never know, but whose reality we can never doubt . . . We are our neighbor's keeper, because that neighbor is but our larger self . . . . Behold, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, because thy neighbor is thyself."[14]
A Jewish parable points to our mission: Two rabbinical students were debating when exactly the day begins. One claimed that the day started when a person could see a tree in the distance, and could tell if it were an oak or a fig tree. "No," the other replied. "The day begins when you see an animal in the distance, and can determine if it is a sheep or a goat."" The two students argued strenuously, and then decided to consult a rabbi. "You both have it wrong," the rabbi answered. "When you see a man in the distance, and you cannot tell if he is an Israeli or a Palestinian, but you are willing to claim him your brother, and when you see a woman in the distance and you cannot tell whether she is a Jew or a Muslim, but you are willing to call her your sister, that is when the day begins."[15]
We are all in an airplane which is at times dangerously out of control. There are a limited number of parachutes. I pray that we can make more intelligent and compassionate choices that the figures in my little parable of globalization.
Poet Adrienne Rich poses our challenge as global citizens - as universalists.
"My heart is moved by all I cannot save
so much has been lost
I must cast my lot with those who,
age after age,
perversely
with no apparent power,
reconstitute the world."[16]
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