NEWS STORY: Religious, cultural leaders urge new ethic for globalizing world

c. 1998 Religion News Service PRAGUE, Czech Republic _ Suddenly, globalization doesn’t look so good after all, and the invisible hand of the marketplace has proven itself unable to handle the traumatic integration of the world economy. That, at any rate, was the consensus of participants this week at a gathering here of political, religious […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

PRAGUE, Czech Republic _ Suddenly, globalization doesn’t look so good after all, and the invisible hand of the marketplace has proven itself unable to handle the traumatic integration of the world economy.

That, at any rate, was the consensus of participants this week at a gathering here of political, religious and cultural elites from around the world.


With the economic crises of Asia and Russia now threatening the West, even the most hard-line pragmatists agreed with Swiss theologian Hans Kung’s call for a universal set of values. “Global markets, without having some kind of ethical basis, are dangerous,”said Kung.”Some of the turmoil we’ve got now in financial markets is due to the fact that a few people believed you can have world economics without also having a world ethic.” Over the past year, currencies throughout Asia and in Russia have collapsed, sending those nations into deep recessions, toppling governments, causing riots in Indonesia and shaking the American and European financial markets.

This growing crisis gave new urgency to the second annual Forum 2000 conference, hosted by Vaclav Havel, the philosopher-president of this Central European republic. In the rarified atmosphere of historic Prague Castle, academics and spiritual leaders met with such political players as U.S. first lady Hillary Clinton and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, discussing everything from the finer points of theology to the role of the International Monetary Fund.

Kissinger, despite his reputation as the ultimate Machiavellian of modern American politics, said globalization is doomed if left to the control of currency speculators and multinational firms.”I have been uneasy for years about this view of a global economy in which people are asked to accept suffering for the efficacy of an abstract market,”said Kissinger, who said the IMF’s bailout programs have only worsened the situation.”The global economic crisis has become so severe because the technical economists have treated it without regard for the political and moral capacities of the people that were involved,”he said.

Tun Daim Zainuddin, minister of special functions of Malaysia, defended his nation’s imposition of strict new currency controls.

Zainuddin said Malaysia saw its currency sink last year after it lifted too many regulations under the advice of international agencies”that preached the virtues of free capital flows but neglected to warn about the dangers of fickle investor sentiments.” He spoke critically of”many in the West who, with glee and relish, celebrated”their windfall profits from Asia’s currency collapses before realizing they, too, could suffer in a looming world recession.

The American first lady said globalization is”in and of itself neither a good nor an evil,”but added it could succeed only with a balance of government, economics and a civil society with access to education, health care and financial credit.”I’ve met people whose lives were transformed by something as simple as a loan of $15″in developing countries, she said, urging large institutions to be sure they are not neglecting such small aid programs”in the great sweep of a global economy.” She said a small but vocal American constituency, fearful the””United Nations is invading the United States with black helicopters,”is prompting the Republican-led Congress toward isolationist stances. Only reluctantly, she lamented, did Congress approve new funding for the IMF to help address the financial crisis.

Another crisis _ Kosovo _ also dominated the discussion as NATO prepared for possible air raids on Yugoslavia. Kissinger saw little point in bombing a region torn by an ancient conflict in which Orthodox Christian Serbs are accused of massacring Muslim Albanians.


But Egyptian Sheikh Fawzy Fadel El Zefzaf refused to accept the characterization of the conflict as religious.”If the Serbs were real Christians, these crimes could not be committed,”he said.

Religious leaders wearing a kaleidoscope of colorful robes led a candlelight service Monday night, where the vast Gothic vaults of St. Vitus Cathedral echoed with their pledges of peace and their denunciations of religiously justified violence.

Referring to the Marxist idea of religion as the”opiate of the people,”Rabbi Albert Friedlander of Westminster Synagogue in London, said religion actually enables one”to feel the pain and sufferings of the world”and to reach out to help.”Peace is not only a state without war,”said Roman Catholic Bishop Vaclav Maly of Prague, who with Havel was a leader of the 1989 Velvet Revolution that toppled Communism.”It is not only a development of large visions. We know how large visions in this century have failed. Peace starts in the hearts of man.” He said rather than seeing other people as enemies, we should see them as”an enrichment of our point of view.” Karan Singh, an Indian statesman and scholar, called for”a creative reinterpretation of great religious texts if religion is to live up to its name as a force that unites, rather than one of crusades and jihads.” Singh said globalization is prefigured in the ancient Indian scriptures, the Vedas, which say”the world is family.”But he also listed globalization’s downsides: the spread of terrorism, drugs, sexually transmitted diseases, ultra-consumerism”and a curious obsession with death, disaster and dinosaurs”in popular culture.

The ailing Havel _ playwright and hero of the 1989 Velvet Revolution _ was unusually quiet at this year’s forum. But at the outset, he said he hoped to make Prague a”crossroads of thought”after centuries of being the flashpoint of war.

Kissinger paid tribute to Havel, saying the Czech president disproves the notion that the callings of intellectuals and statesmen are fundamentally different.”Great statesmen require moral conviction,”Kissinger said.

DEA END SMITH

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