Daring To Hope
by
Bob Goudzwaard
Becoming older (I am now 73) has advantages, not just disadvantages. One of the plusses is that you can scan a larger part of history and perhaps even use your own experiences as an illustration. That is what I will do now, in relation to the theme "Daring to Hope" and to the vision urgently needed to confront present global crises. At first glance it may seem strange to find hope for
today
by going back in
time. But I hope to show that a circuitous path like this can be
meaningful for all of us, especially if we are willing to explore those
personal memories which may have a deeper, general significance. Three Memories
The first memory I will recap dates from the year 1944. 1944 was perhaps the darkest year of the Second World War, and my own country, the Netherlands, was occupied by German troops. I can still feel the hunger I felt then, and even more the fear of the soldiers marching by. Then D-Day came. I vividly recall how my father read the news bulletin of the invasion and shook his head. This, he said, is a hopeless adventure, because the Germans are far too strong. But my mother had a different opinion. Could this invasion by American, Canadian and British troops mark the beginning of the end of the German Empire? In God's world, she said, Nazism will never have the last word. My mother, in other words, trusted that the Lord would one day liberate our country and the Jewish people from this demonic and cruel oppression. She was right!
The second memory comes from one of the visits that Bernard Zylstra, the first president of Toronto's Institute of Christian Studies, and I made to South Africa, at the request of my own university, the Free University of Amsterdam, during the heyday of the Apartheid regime. Bernie and I were so deeply struck by the viciousness and overwhelming power of the Apartheid regime that we seriously doubted whether we could offer any help in breaking down the awful Apartheid ideology. Then came a moment --I will never forget it -- when Dr. Beyers Naude, the great Christian fighter against Apartheid, took us in his old car to visit one of the black leaders. He turned, looked at the two of us sitting in the the back seat of his car, and shouted: "Apartheid, my dear friends, is a beaten enemy!" Imagine: he declared this during the dark climax of Apartheid. On the same visit Bernie Zylstra also asked Dr. Desmond Tutu, the Archbishop who so kindly introduced our book Hope in Troubled Times to its readers, one of his famous pertinent personal questions: "how can you endure the ongoing heavy oppression of the Afrikaner rulers, day after day, without seeing even a glimpse of light?" The Archbishop stood up and said loudly, "Please do not forget that day after day I am upheld by the thousands of prayers of God's people!" Then he sat down. It was unbelievable, this vivid, unshaken faith in the midst of such misery. His words were spoken de profundis, from the depths, to quote Psalm 130. Perhaps you have read Desmond Tutu's Foreword to our book. Remarkably, he speaks from the depths of that same faith even now, inviting all of us today to choose the winning side. The reigning ideologies of our time, he predicts, will ultimately fall, just as Apartheid did! No doubt he writes these words with a deep sense of certainty. What led Beyers Naude and Desmund Tutu to such a deep sense of certainty at the very moment when everything seemed hopeless? That is the question for you and me.
The third and final memory I will recount is the fall of the Berlin Wall. The older among us will share that memory with me. What a strange feeling to see what could not be believed: the raising of the Iron Curtain. It became concrete as the stones of the wall came down, and as people climbed over the wall to embrace each other. I myself simply could not cope with what I saw. We all knew the harshness and cruelty of the Soviet communist empire. What we observed was simply impossible. It was the return of hope, real hope, during the darkest hour of the night, when all human expectations for a better future were at their bleakest, even to the point of dying. Yet a new perspective broke through, radically and powerfully.
Breakthrough of Hope
Why do I relay these three memories? First, there is an obvious similarity between them. They are more than incidental; together they reveal something valuable about the future of all overpowering ideologies. But what is it? I became curious, and perhaps now you have become curious too.
The second reason for recounting these memories is that each of them is related to the presence or breakthrough of hope in the midst of the darkest moments of human history. This hope is not just a matter of praying and waiting for God's intervention. It is more; it is a concrete hope which is clearly able to flare up during the most troubled times. What then is its secret? And might this kind of hope have some significance in the dire circumstances of our time?
What About Today?
Hope in Troubled Times is the title we chose for our book, and I admit that it is risky, almost audacious. 1 If anything is striking about the size and character of today's significant global problems, then it is the extreme stubbornness and profound resistance by which they defy the solutions used to try to solve them. Climate change, for example, is a massive, deeply troubling problem. Of course, much can be done by saving energy and developing new technologies. In and of itself, however, will that actually be enough to stop the rise of global temperature? Consider, for example, that in the last forty years the world's industrial production grew sevenfold, while the global use of fossil fuel energy rose fivefold. 2 This pattern will continue for the next forty or eighty years (think of the economic expansion occurring in China, India and Brazil). Will not such increases more than overtake all of our efforts to save energy, with all of the devastating consequences that will follow? Or take the issue of world poverty. Of course some improvements have been made. But the ongoing impoverishment of people who are already weak is an undeniable fact. To quote from a recent book by Raj Patel, Stuffed and Starved, while one billion people in the world are eating too much, 800 million people still don't get enough to eat. 3 International experts now predict with certainty that the Millennium Goals for 2015 will not be reached.
Think too of the rise of violence. Not only does it flare up in Darfur, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East, but it has also crept into the international scene in a new way. The world's big powers are already engaged in a rat-race to guarantee for themselves future access to the last remaining oil stocks and natural resources of the earth, even under the North Pole. The big powers are on or even over the brink of threatening violence if their so-called vital interests are damaged. Did not Alan Greenspan recently openly declare: of course Iraq is about oil? 4 What then does hope mean in such a turbulent time and in such an uprooted international scene?
Indeed, for many of us our age may be synonymous with the end of hope. More and more people in the West are turning away from today's massive world problems, not so much because they have lost interest but because they feel that these are matters which lie entirely outside of their control.
I have described three memories from the past. How can such memories take on existential significance for us here and now? That hope emerged in times so different from ours. At first glance, it may seem impossible that those events may have any meaning for us today.
Two Conditions
As authors of Hope in Troubled Times we were aware from the beginning that this would be our most significant problem. More precisely, we knew that at least two conditions had to be met before one can translate hope from the past into hope for the present and the future. First, we had to show convincingly that these and similar expressions of hope in the past were not idealistic. On the contrary, underneath them burned an utterly realistic perception of reality, an intuitive sense that in one way or another all ideologies that have dominated national or global history, such as the Nazi ideology, the Apartheid ideology or the Communist ideology, always prepared for, even created for themselves the moment of their own unavoidable collapse. We had to show that ideologies work in that way because of their own internal logic, their own self-generated historical dynamic. Then a second condition had to be met, however. We had to show clearly and convincingly that many, perhaps all, of today's urgent global problems have at their core strong ideological roots, roots which at least partly cause the harshness of today's problems. Incidentally, this also implied that we had to oppose the mainstream popular conviction that we now live at the end of all ideology, as Francis Fukoyama has argued. 5
We felt deeply that only if these two conditions were met could we then can speak of real hope in our troubled times, a hope which is not artificially created but which rests upon clear historical evidence. To prevent possible misunderstanding, this is not a hope which lies outside of a living Christian faith. In fact, the memories I recounted suggest the opposite. But it is a hope that looks primarily to the evolution of reality itself, with a spiritually deepened awareness, just as one found in a Beyers Naude and still finds in a Desmund Tutu.
During our process of thinking and writing our conviction grew that these two conditions can be met. That meant a lot to us, because if they can be met, then they may present a key to open the door of hope, to finding some real solutions to the pressing issues of our time.
The Demise of Ideologies
As to the first condition, I can be relatively brief. We found that historically each ideology that followed its own dynamic course displayed at least five or six developmental phases, beginning with its moment of conceptualization and ending with its last phase, the phase of final breakdown. Each ideology has an absolute goal which it wants to realize at all costs and by all means. What makes the collapse of each significant ideology unavoidable is the fact that absolute goals always require means or instruments to accomplish the goals in practice. We found that the stronger the goal, the stronger the dependency on the means or instruments needed to reach the goal. Sooner or later, however, these means or instruments begin to elude the control of their adherents, as if they have a life of their own. In Communism the Plan became sacrosanct, in Nazism it was the will of the Leader (Führer), and in Apartheid it was the National Party. All of these means morphed into tyrants who or which had to be followed regardless of the consequences. Behind every great ideology therefore burns the fire of some kind of idolatry, which is the necessity to follow unconditionally one's own self-selected deliverers or saviors. However, idols always betray their makers. They always become corrupt, as in the German Götterdämmerung, the Twilight of the Gods. As people become aware of the profound false tyranny of the gods, sooner or later their collapse is unavoidable.
But what about the second condition, namely that our present time is filled with ideologies, with absolute goals, and that they awaken or intensify most of our present urgent global problems? That condition presented us with the greatest burden.
Looking to Reality Itself
Allow me to illustrate by telling you something about the problems I personally encountered in analyzing the possible ideological roots of today's global problems related to economy, finance and the environmental crisis. For me the main problem, which I became aware of only gradually, is that it would be irresponsible for me to simply state that the goal of ever-increasing material prosperity has become an absolute goal in already rich western societies, that this ideology was and still is the ideological root of many of our problems, and then look for practical evidence to support this view. Doing that would mean that I would be imposing my own view on an existing concrete reality. That approach would be fraught with risks, not only for me but also for my readers. Instead, I had to follow a much more difficult path, namely to begin not with my own ideas about what was happening in reality, but with reality itself, observed from true and empirically verifiable experiences. This attitude of radical openness to reality is also a matter of faith, and this too became clear to me only gradually. My friend Julio de Santa once wrote that it is the living God Himself Who is somehow working and present in reality. A similar conviction once drove my good friend Bernard Zylstra to try to understand our complex reality as it really is by digging down into its deepest characteristics, because only in that way can one hope to reach a level where spiritual dimensions come to the fore. It is also at that level that the Word of God begins to speak to us unavoidably in reality, perhaps then also beginning to clarify possible ways ahead. It may illuminate actual solutions that have the flavor of real hope.
Economic Paradoxes
It was with this expectation that I began by analyzing the most obvious dimensions of our present social, economic, financial and environmental reality. I started by looking at those dimensions which are usually left unexplained, namely economic realities that have an enigmatic or paradoxical nature. Why does poverty increase even in the richest countries? Why do we observe globally, but again most strongly in the richest countries, an erosion of care, both for people and the environment? What is the origin of the enormous growth of the financial markets in our time, of the expansion of money and of money-derivates, an expansion which eludes every form of control? Why is there so much haste and stress in the most modern societies, even though people in them have far less need to be fast-paced and stressed than people living in poor societies? The prediction in the 1970s had been that, for people in the rich countries, the largest social problem in the 1990s would be the possession of too much leisure time. Do these various real, growing and often painful paradoxes perhaps have common roots, roots which can deepen our understanding of reality itself?
In studying the roots of these and other paradoxes in our time, something becomes increasingly evident. Underneath all of these paradoxes lurk powers and convictions that in one way or another are all based on a reduced view of humankind, the environment and society. They all reflect a dynamist, mechanist or technocratic worldview. Modern men and women often put their ultimate faith in what technology, economy and monetary power will do for them. As soon as they do so, however, they implicitly give permission to these powers to seep into their minds and perceptions. Even the brightest men and women can therefore become caught in a web of illusions which mislead them, illusions which can then close off ways of finding real and lasting solutions to our most pressing global problems.
Consider the paradoxes I mentioned. Poverty today increases mostly in cultures and societies which permit or even applaud material self-acquisition by the already rich (by both persons and countries). Such acquisition usually goes hand in hand with the exclusion of others from the benefits. Care for people and nature easily erodes in a societal context where the most productive sectors of the economy are constantly permitted to take the lead, including in setting the wage and salary standards of the so-called weaker sectors. And if society makes finance and money crucial because of its ongoing greed, sooner or later the financial markets begin to impose their will upon that society. They begin to dominate all real economies and the course of our societies themselves. Indeed, our major problems often have ideological roots, roots which often act as barriers against genuine, hopeful solutions.
Finding Ways Out
But does such an analysis offer concrete hope in our time? We think so, and I will use my remaining time to illustrate, alongside of the last chapter of the book, what ways out become apparent on this basis.
The ways out we suggest are concrete. On the basis of this analysis, it will also not surprise you that they have a spiritual or, more precisely, an anti-ideological component. Our economic problems are not just economic problems. Because they are first and foremost matters of the heart and the mind, of how peoples and societies choose meaning, their roots lie outside of the technical and financial domains. Consequently, real solutions will never reflect new pre-selected ultimate goals which must be achieved at all costs and by all available means. That would again imply that faith in our own will, power and knowledge will do the job. Real solutions have the character of ways out. They orient themselves to walking down a "Way", not to achieving a "Goal". Perhaps we can even say that the practical solutions we need resemble taking steps down a path, first steps down a Way which holds open the promise that the way will widen as we, step by step, move down it. To quote Psalm 119, in the translation of Martin Buber, "I have seen an end to everything, but your Way is very wide". 6
For example, one of our concrete suggestions is to actually follow the directive, already formulated in the Torah, that the permanent indebtedness of the poor is inhuman and ungodly (for only God is eternal), and that repayment of long-standing past debts by the poor countries should no longer be enforced. It is a matter of justice that the prolonged debts of the poorest countries, which now have an intergenerational character, should be cancelled once and for all. This step is more than a matter of justice: it is also a matter of good economy. It can even be seen as a step towards a healed global economy. Such a first step will result in blessings, not only in terms of more economic opportunities for those poor countries themselves, but also of fewer migrant flows to the North and less need for the countries of the South to burden their own environment. Such a first step could then pave the way for a second step: a more enduring cooperation in doing justice and practicing good stewardship between the countries of the North and the willing countries of the South.
This is not utopian. It becomes a genuine possibility if we in the rich North develop a concrete economic and political willingness to relativize our own material economic growth, breaking with our desire to give priority to the unlimited expansion of all modern markets. Our own market-oriented economic growth is now exceedingly close to a tyrannical idol which must be followed wherever it goes. By contrast, striving together for a blossoming world economy is much closer to the path of shalom. In a blossoming economy, economic fruits include the availability of meaningful work for all, basic economic and social provisions for the weak, and substantial increases in care for global, national and local environments. Loosening the cords and ties of our present ideologies is the heart of every real way out, whether at the macro or micro level.
Pie in the Sky?
But is this not pie in the sky? All of this may look like an effort to convert even the most adamant opponents, such as the governments and banks of the rich countries (as they come together on debt issues, for example, in the so-called Club of Paris). Will they ever undertake a turn? May I remind you of the powerful resistance thrown up by governments and the big banks against the idea of the cancellation of debts only a few years ago. Their resistance remained entrenched until, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the longest human chain in history was formed in the context of the so-called Jubilee campaign. Thousands of people from civil society movements and the churches stood hand-in-hand as they surrounded the G7 meeting in Frankfurt. And that became the place of breakthrough: there the G7 accepted the possibility of debt cancellation, and they agreed to some initial, if modest, implementation. There is indeed hope, but we ourselves have to choose the ways of light instead of the ways of stumbling around or racing through the tunnels of our growing comfortable darkness.
The Periscope Principle
We formulate three tactical principles at the end of the book along these lines. They are the periscope, minesweeper and rope-ladder principles. The heart of the periscope principle is that we badly need, also for ourselves, a broader and deeper view of reality then is possible in a closed rational universe. We compare our current situation to life in a submarine, where life and work are largely oriented to generating speed in the most efficient way. But a submarine needs a periscope to view the horizon, in order for the submariners to see where they are and to become aware of potential dangers. We have the same need today. At this very moment we are at great risk of making ourselves deaf to the cries of people and the suffering of creation, as long as we surrender to the artificial, continuously cultivated illusion that we need to maintain and increase the speed of our own economy and technological development in order to solve the problems. Instead, we need to open up our horizon to what is at stake in reality itself, and from there choose ways of justice, stewardship and compassion. Isn't it remarkable that so many movements today, especially of younger people, have sprouted up which have chosen this as their starting point: to dare, in a time of globalization, to take the ways of peace and care for the poor, and to give concern for the environment priority over our own self-determined economic goals? Inherently these young people often have a deeper insight into true normativity than most richer and older Christians. They follow in their hearts the periscope principle of scoping out a widened horizon of faith and reality.
Choose the Winning Side
Numerous inspiring examples are already available at the micro level. All over the world smaller and larger communities have decided together to voluntarily give priority, in either their production or consumption (or sometimes in both) to meeting real communal and environmental needs rather than personal luxury needs. Step by step, movements such as the Focolare movement have already seen the blessings of such an approach. Similarly, the minesweeper and rope-ladder principles are close to what millions of people around the world already feel and experience. These principles become put into practice wherever people begin to understand that the most exhibitionist forms of power and wealth today are bloated, internally hollow and often on the brink of a collapse of their own making. As a result, they hold no promise for a better future. They have understood that it is far better, to quote Desmond Tutu again, to choose the winning side: the side of oppressed minorities or majorities, the side of threatened forests and coral reefs, the side of cultures and economies which continue to be excluded from any kind of benefit by the greedy. For in the end they will, according to Gods promise, inherit the earth.
-- ENDNOTES --
1. Bob Goudzwaard, Mark Vander Vennen, David Van Heemst, Hope in Troubled Times: A New Vision for Confronting Global Crises, with a Foreword by Desmond Tutu (Grand Rapids, Mich: Baker Publishing Group, 2007).
2. See "The Gospel and Global Climate Change," page 22 and note 6 for the reference.
3. As quoted in Time, October 8, 2007. Raj Patel, Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System (Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2008).
4. See the transcript of a debate between Alan Greenspan and Naomi Kiein entitled "Alan Greenspan vs. Naomi Klein on the Iraq War, Bush's Tax Cuts, Economic Populism, Crony Capitalism and More", Democracy Now, September 24, 2007, retrieved at:
http://www.democracynow.org/2007/9/24/alan_greenspan_vs_naomi_klein_on.
5. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 1993).
6. Psalm 119:96.