Cosmopolitanism, It's Not Just About Being Chic Anymore

First Delivered at the UU Church of Brevard

Sunday, May 10, 2009 

This sermon was inspired by the book Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers by Kwame Anthony Appiah. All page number attributions refer to the 2006 paperback edition by W.W. Norton & Company.

 

Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time there was this planet. And on this planet lived in small bands of people relatively isolated from one another, but encountering one another from time to time. These tribes lived mostly by hunting and gathering with a little bit of agriculture thrown in. Then they discovered authoritarian agriculture and began to increase their population. These isolated tribes became less so as more and more agriculturalists experienced the equation of more food equals more people. And more people. And more people. Some of these people began to have a little time on their hands so advancements in technology picked up a head of steam and low and behold this planet now holds billions and billions of people who can pretty much touch base with any other of the billions and billions of people at virtually any time. Times had changed.

Yes of course I am talking about Earth and human beings. In our tribal origins we did know about other tribes, but our affect on other people was limited and quite local. Today we can seriously imagine contacting any one of the billions of people almost anywhere on earth. That means that each one of us has the potential for affecting far more people than we would ever have had at any time in our human history. Radio, television, telephone, and the internet have given us the opportunity to not only affect others, but to learn about other people as well.

We have to be careful though. We can affect others in positive and negative ways. And this is exclusive of our intentions. Our communication and behavior can have horrible consequences not just out of malice, but due to negligence or ignorance.

Each person you know about and can affect is someone to whom you have responsibilities. Think about that very carefully. Each person you know about and can affect is someone to whom you have responsibilities. Wow! That is quite an opportunity, a challenge and a burden. Do any of us really give that conscious attention when we are writing a letter to a local paper that will be published online or even just sharing a thought with a friend who passes on our idea in a telephone call to a friend in Singapore?

The philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah addresses this challenge in his book, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. If I am not mistaken, he seems to prefer the term cosmopolitanism over globalization or multiculturalism because of the political and economic baggage associated with those words. A cosmopolitan is a citizen of the cosmos, not a snooty jet setter or a mix of vodka, cointreau and cranberry juice. Cosmopolitanism encourages us to strike a balance between our local loyalties and regard for all humankind.

We may know people who have great affection for human beings and advocate for human rights, but are not terribly kind to their own families. This is nothing new. Thomas Carlyle once said of the Marquis de Mirabeau, “friend of men, and enemy of almost every man he had to do with.” Edmund Burke said of Jean-Jaqcque Rousseau, “A lover of his kind, but a hater of his kindred.”(xvi)

On the other hand, history is littered with examples of people who are blindly loyal to one segment of humanity at the expense of the rights of all human beings. Adolph Hitler serving as a glaring example. Appiah asserts “the one thought that cosmopolitans share is that no local loyalty can ever justify forgetting that each human being has responsibilities to every other.” (xvi)

We’re going to take a few detours this morning before we come back around to these responsibilities I’ve only just begun to mention.

I’m going to stop for a moment and ask everyone here a few questions. Raise your hands if you are comfortable doing so.

• Who here was born outside of the United States?
• Who has lived abroad?
• Who has traveled abroad?
• Who knows a foreign language? You don’t have to be fluent, just enough to get you from one end of the country to another without insulting someone’s mother.
• Who has parents from two entirely different cultures?
• Who has parents from two different religions?
• Who was raised bilingual?
• Who has a partner from a different culture?
• Who has a partner raised in a different religion?
• Who is raising bilingual children?
• Who had a pen pal in another country when you were a child? I mean snail mail.
• Who corresponds with someone in another country with someone frequency today?  In the Americas? Europe? Asia? Africa? Australia? Antarctica?

As I suspected, I do not believe there is a single person in this room who did not raise his or her hand at least once. I also noticed a higher percentage of hands when the questions had to do with the present and the future rather than the past.

One of the topics that springs to mind when we think about our global community and the ease with which we interact is the affect of all this exposure, communication, commerce, etc. on language and culture. Some people are concerned with globalization making us too similar to one another and even protest what they call cultural imperialism. It is true that languages are disappearing within a generation, the best and the worst Hollywood can produce is broadcast on every continent, and people are wearing blue jeans just about everywhere. However, as Appiah points out with respect to television programming, the research doesn’t support the concern. Researchers have learned that if there is a local show, many people prefer it to something come from another country or culture. They have also noted that how people respond to American shows depends upon their own cultural context. I was intrigued by one example where “Dutch viewers of Dallas saw not the pleasures of conspicuous consumption among the super-rich—the messages the theorists of “cultural imperialism” find in every episode—but a reminder that money and power don’t protect you from tragedy. Israeli Arabs saw a program that confirmed that woman abused by their husbands should return to their fathers. Mexican telenovelas remind Ghanaian women that, where sex is at issue, men are not to be trusted. If the telenovelas tried to tell them otherwise, they wouldn’t believe it.” (109-111)

“Western dress” for lack of a better phrase has become globalized in the world of business, but not entirely. None of us find it terribly odd to see Arab leaders and businessmen wearing robes or Indian women in a salwaar kameez or sari. Kilts are more popular than ever, though I’m not sure how traditional those are considering their popularity arose in the Victorian era. Yes, the kilts in the movie Braveheart were utterly anachronistic, but then what wasn’t? Regional and cultural dress is based on practicality relative to the environment and the culture, so here we see Florida office attire where casual Friday means you can wear your flip flops. Though in Jamie’s office I have to admit, his boss wears flip flops every day. Festival garb is always in native costume and I suspect always will be.

What I find somewhat amusing about those concerned with cultural imperialism is how some are content to preserve traditional cultures by force. If economic and political oppression is wrong, and it is, cultural oppression is wrong too. But I think that denying a tribe, clan, community, ethnicity, nation their right to choose how their culture will adapt and evolve is oppressive. We can and should preserve dying languages for academic study, but we shouldn’t force a group of people to use a dying language simply because their ancestors used it if they find Spanish, English, or Dutch more useful. We can and should preserve native cultures for the enrichment of our mutual knowledge of human history and humankind, but we shouldn’t force or expect people to behave or dress in certain ways because we want them to. We resist these changes because we are witnesses to the change and perhaps because we feel partly responsible, however, I don’t think anyone in here thinks we should resurrect the Etruscans and the Kurgans for the sake of cultural diversity. Their time has come and gone. As Appiah says, “A tenable cosmopolitanism tempers a respect for difference with a respect for actual human beings.” (113)

Do you know who I think was an absolutely stellar example of cosmopolitanism, excusing the pun when I tell you his name? Gene Roddenberry. The original Star Trek series has grown even campier and cornier in our eyes since it first premiered as our entertainment expectations have evolved with the production technology and special effects. Star Trek put us in a future where mankind had already worked together to solve our most pressing problems. We had survived and it was through human effort.

Star Trek had the first interracial kiss on television. Roddenberry stubbornly resisted the effort of network execs to put a Christian chaplain on the crew of the Enterprise. It would be ludicrous, he argued, to pretend that all other religions would have become obliterated by this point, or that such a cosmopolitan people would impose one group's religion on all the rest of the crew.

What I really like is that although he set the storyline in the 24th century, on a unified Earth in contact with extraterrestrial life, he didn’t render his human characters as bland and undifferentiated. The characters were Asian, Russian, African, and Scottish complete with traditional names. Even the American characters were regionalized with one from Iowa and the other clearly a southerner showing us it is possible to maintain local alliances and allegiances while being a citizen of the world.

He literally carried cosmopolitanism to its logical extremes by showing how humans might interact with other sentient beings in our cosmos.  Listen to what developed in the course of this entertainment franchise.

“As the right of each sentient species to live in accordance with its normal cultural evolution is considered sacred, no Starfleet personnel may interfere with the normal and healthy development of alien life and culture. Such interference includes introducing superior knowledge, strength, or technology to a world whose society is incapable of handling such advantages wisely. Starfleet personnel may not violate this Prime Directive, even to save their lives and/or their ship, unless they are acting to right an earlier violation or an accidental contamination of said culture. This directive takes precedence over any and all other considerations, and carries with it the highest moral obligation.”

I’ve mentioned culture a bit, and here we have the word mentioned twice in a fictional Prime Directive, but I haven’t really said what it is. We use it in many different ways, sometimes interchangeably with the word “society” or perhaps “the arts” or even a broad education coupled with class distinction as in “that person has culture.” I like this definition, “Culture is whatever people make and invest with significance through the exercise of their human creativity.” (118) So culture is synonymous with aspects of our society, but it isn’t culture that necessarily dictates to us, we create our culture.

If anyone doubts how important the artifacts a culture produces need only look to familiar iconic landmarks. The movie trailers and the movie I saw on Friday morning depicted the destruction of the Golden Gate Bridge, the pyramids in Egypt and a spectacular fall of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Of course we all mourned the loss of life on September 11, 2001, but the collapse of the World Trade Centers evoked a depth of emotion many of us probably never imagined. They were symbols of our accomplishment and financial prowess as a society. The international outcry when the Taliban destroyed ancient Buddhist statues in Afghanistan outstripped any protest over how they had been treating women under their rule.

The amount of conflict that exists regarding national treasures and cultural antiquities should come as no surprise. As a natural history and art museum lover and an arm chair archaeology buff I am fascinated by the on-going legal wranglings in the art and antiquities trade. Modern nation states go to great lengths to lay claim to artifacts created long before their political existence, but found within their borders. Are the Etruscans and the Romans Italian? Are the Vikings Norwegian, Scandinavian or Danish? Is the United States entitled to lay claim to Native American finds? Here is a question that has generated a great deal of controversy. Why should the British Museum in London have possession of the Parthenon sculptures, the Elgin Marbles?  The Greek government has long been seeking the return of its cultural treasures, which were removed in the early nineteenth century by foreign ambassador Lord Elgin and installed in the British Museum. Forgetting the legal wrangling over a supposed receipt, are these ancient Athenian sculptures Greek or human? Should we repatriate dislodged treasures or should all of these ancient cultures be preserved and enjoyed in the domain of humankind in general regardless of national borders, leaving their care and preservation to institutions best equipped to do just that?

The reason I bring up this issue at all is because it gets to the heart of cosmopolitanism. It’s most salient aspect is its ethical implications—how a cosmopolitan mindset affects our decision-making and inspires action. Last month I brought in the topic of evolutionary psychology and that has a bit of a role to play here as well. This time it is the idea that we are more inspired to assist in the survival of those who share the greatest percentage of our genetic makeup than we are to assist those who share lesser and lesser percentages. Are you familiar with the old and getting somewhat trite hypothetical ethical challenge of two people drowning where one is your child and the other is a complete stranger and you are asked which person you try to save?

The response is sometimes posited as a no-win situation by making any person look like a total cad for allowing a fellow human being to die regardless of whether that individual is related to you or not. I think it’s disingenuous and seeks to impose a guilt or shame on someone that is entirely undeserved.

Unitarian Universalism is at heart an affirmation of cosmopolitanism and forces us to ask important questions of ourselves. Listen to the words of some of our principles:

• The inherent dignity and worth of every person;
• Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
• Acceptance of one another
• The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
• The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;

Is it any wonder we struggle with these principles since they ask us to reach out globally when we have our hands full with our own families and our own communities. I know individuals who have virtually become paralyzed by indecision because they are wracked with guilt. They cannot enjoy a movie because they money they would have spent on the ticket could have gone to feed a hungry child for a week in Africa. I know individuals who are living in a repressed tension with their values and principles. They ignore the plight of others and therefore refuse to engage in any social action projects because they will be reminded that what they do is too minor to make any real impact.

Both cases are missing the bigger picture out of fear of a skewed version of the bigger picture. Yes, the money we spend on a movie ticket could have been used in other ways, for more altruistic means. Yes, the things we do as individuals rarely go far towards improving the lives of everyone on this planet. But this ignores what I consider to be an important aspect about being human and life in general. Balance.

That’s really what cosmopolitanism is all about—recognizing, respecting and embracing the challenge of balancing our local and global responsibilities. Realistically evaluating what we can do and say to positively impact the lives of those we can affect even now that this number has grown exponentially. Now this is not an excuse to avoid stretching ourselves and engaging with our communities more than we already are. It is not license to shrug and say, “well since I can’t address this need which I care about deeply, I’m not going to bother trying to address that need which is within my capacity but doesn’t excite me quite as much so I’ll just go watch another episode of Law & Order.”

I’d like all of us to give serious thought to the following question. “Why am I here?” Say it in your mind, “Why am I here?” This is not a question of existential angst, I want you to ask yourself, “Why am I here—at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Brevard?” What needs am I trying to fulfill? Am I engaged fully in the life of the church so that I can satisfy my needs? If not, what is preventing me from full participation?

Membership, but not passive participation, active membership is a golden opportunity for spiritual maturity, which is rarely possible in isolation. Consider the concluding words of our vision statement.

Our Vision is to cultivate a sanctuary for diverse beliefs, committed to providing peace and love, personal spiritual growth, and service to the larger community.

Fantastic vision. What are you doing with it? Not what are we doing with it, which is an important question, but what are you doing to make this vision more than just that, a vision?

Sitting beside someone in church twice, maybe three times a month expecting spiritual growth is like taking a medication prescribed for daily use twice a week and expecting it to make you better. Carrying this analogy even further, just taking a medication and not altering unhealthy lifestyle choices isn’t going to improve your physical health as much as it could with better nutrition and more exercise.

Many of you are probably familiar with the adage, “think globally, act locally.” That is ethics in a world of strangers. It’s a ripple effect. No, you can’t do much, but you can do something. And if as many people as possible change their priorities just a little and actually answer the call to serve others, their actions have a ripple effect that is absolutely incalculable. I know we all have different passions and very busy lives, I think I cease to exist as a discrete human being during soccer season. But we must come together as the constituents of UUCB, identify how we can be a force for good in our community and all of us take as active a role as is possible for each of us. We must act on our congregational vision or we fail as citizens of the cosmos.

Copyright © 2009

Ann Fuller, May 2009

 

• Up • Without Beauty, Life is Beastly • Who We Are • Non-Theist Ministry • Earth Day Vacation • I'm Getting To That Age • Holy Days, Holidays and Obvservances • Grammar and Spirituality • UU Parenting 101 • Where Angels Fear to Tread • What I've Learned From Facebook • Cosmopolitanism, It's Not Just About Being Chic Anymore • Should We Value Equality? • Why I Chose to be Heterosexual • He is Well Paid That is Well Satisfied • The Ex-Gay Movement • 2007 Sermons • 2006 Sermons •