The Sun and the Wind: Two Faces of Globalism

There is an old story from Aesop's Fables about a traveler proceeding along a country road, watched over by the Sun and the Wind who debate which of them has the power to get the traveler to shed his coat. After wagering, the Wind goes first. He progressively escalates his force until gales are howling around the beleaguered traveler. But he only clutches more tightly to his tattered garment, until it is clear he will never let go. It is now the Sun's turn, and as he gradually warms the air the traveler delightedly takes off his coat.

In the last eight years, Americans among others have experienced, first, the intense winds of an emerging globalism and now, in turn, the first rays of its sun. The winds from the growing militancy of the globally marginalized, insisting upon a place at the table, reached their fiercest on 9/11. Not surprisingly, as the folk wisdom told us long ago, one primary result was to have Americans clutch ever tighter to their threatened privilege and to respond with fierce winds of their own.

More recently there has appeared Barack Obama in the most powerful office of the most dominant global player. Not simply a potential sun rising over the American landscape, Obama is -- symbolically at least -- a global son. He is the child of a white middle-American and a Kenyan villager who named him Hussein. He connects to Asian-Americans as a product of Hawaii and Indonesia. Some Jewish-Americans such as retired Congressman and federal judge Abner Mikva suggest he is because of his marginalized background the first Jewish president. His early message of inclusion, cross-cultural dialogue and cross-regional collaboration opens up the possibility of warming connections. To a nation and world that have retreated to separate enclaves of safety after years of vilification, division and violence, the energy of the sun appears to be spreading.

It is by no means inevitable that the Obama sun will continue to shine and allow a new global network of common problem-solving, mutual aid and cultural synthesis to thrive. In fact, ironically, the danger is that the winds of violence have so polarized regions and values that Obama's hand will be forced to respond in kind, in the Middle East and elsewhere. His harsh talk of retributive justice threatens to escalate the gales of militarism and competition for economic and regional dominance.

Regardless of the near-term outcome, the deeper symbolism of these two events will permanently transform the global configuration. The primal violence of 9/11 targeted at the central institutions of Western hegemony by those of vastly, even laughably, inferior resources irreversibly alters the world's calculus of significant players. This shift regarding who has to be counted and whose voices must be heard requires readjustments that existing systems and models of international decision-making are only beginning to comprehend. The more recent ascension of a global child to the world's highest post is nearly as incomprehensible in its long-term implications.

Acting out the folk tale to perfection, Barack tells us that as the power of the sun is unleashed, the result should not be in doubt. But if he blindly refuses to acknowledge that globalism is a dialogue between these two mighty forces, the path will be a long and costly one. These are in fact two faces of a common hunger for global equity.

Citizens of Western democracies would too quickly forget the lesson of their greatest political architect and unyielding analyst, Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes explained in his unparalleled and still immensely timely Leviathan how democratic society in the West was emerging jointly from the power of popular dreams and the vast political disruptions these were causing for established order. In his view, only the political fool would ignore their relation.

The wind is not to be denied, but it can be won over. President Obama's image in his Inaugural Address of the unclenched fist, and his stunning assertion during the campaign that national security requires global education to reduce the spaces where despair festers, are notable beginnings. As he nodded when civil rights hero Rev. Joseph Lowery spoke at the inauguration of turning tanks into tractors, just as swords can be beaten into plowshares, so too can the winds be harnessed to turn turbines and windmills, to sprout gardens where once there were only deserts.

Yet as the winds grow intermittently fiercer, the sun must recognize that its power, its unique power, originates in its ability to disarm and reanimate those clutching tightly to their wounds. It alone can provide release from the tenacious grip of despair, by offering a lighted path to human solidarity far beyond the wind's understanding.

[with special thanks to Ruth Fuerst]

Comments

[Roadblock]

That is not a Chinese folk tale. It is one of the Aesop’s Fables. Go look it up

[cayuse]

Recognizing the fault of America, the US, British and French murder of innocents and Kingdom creation would be a good start to calm the strom you speak of.

The brightness of this new Son of Globalization needs the shine the balance of nature's GOD that belongs to all men of the Earth and not a few Greedy Business Men and their wealthy design on earths resources including man, gold, silver, oil, WMD and soon to be the WIND and SON you speak of.

Living with nature is what the Western Indian brought to mankind, the Eastern Indian brought enlightenment, the Asian gun power and the spices of life, and the Anglo White Man bought the distruction of all of these for his selfish interest.

God Willing your son will rekindle natures potetial for harmony of a healthy earth for man and nature and not the distruction of greed and power.

[Eclectic Radical]

Quoting Hobbes in support of democracy is extremely problematic. Hobbes was an authoritarian who opposed democratic reform and believed that only strict, autocratic, classical monarchy or some similar form of totalitarianism could provide the necessary social order and morality. He believed democracy was anarchy and that the social order and morality could not survive popular government, because people were too evil.

[littleblackcat]

Your comment about the violence of 9/11 being created by people with small resources prompts me to bring to your attention a book written by a man named David Ray Griffin. It is titled A New Pearl Harbor and it makes no accusations. It is instead a compilation of the facts surrounding that day that allowed that violence to take place. I asked myself again and again in the 48 hours that followed the attacks on the towers how on earth could procedures that have been in place for decades and have been followed without hitch for the same time have suddenly gone so wrong in so many places, so many times? No one with any sense can read this book without wondering the same thing.
9/11 didn't "just happen". It was orchestrated, and ALLOWED to happen. I have known about the interception of errant planes by fighter jets since I was 12 years old. I'm 65. The standard operating procedures haven't changed. The people who stood to gain immeasurably by the catastrophy of 9/11 do not have small resources, they have the resources of the richest, most powerful nation on earth at their disposal. Read this book. Can you answer the questions it raises?

[StephenJK]

Full steam ahead to globalization and massive scale exploitation of the lowly worker! Even theft facilitated by the government to gift our monies to the int'l bankers and swindlers of the 21st century. The reverse robin hood scenario now has FULL government sponsorship and we won't have a pot to piss in let alone time to wax poetic about the sun and the wind.

[littleblackcat]

Get out of bed on the wrong side, did you? Read the piece again. Open your mind and THINK. Lack of thinking is what got us in this mess.

[JohnnyBoyyy]

Here, Here LittleBlackCat!

An inquisitive, thinking America would do wonders in leading our leaders to DO THE RIGHT THING. President Obama is a VERY lareg step in the right direction.

And, I still can't believe that only 5 people have committed on this!


This Is Everyone's Time - This Is Everyone's Moment.

Barack Hussein Obama II
President
United States of America

[JohnnyBoyyy]

Although I don't have the knowledge base nor the worldly understanding that you have, Mr. Block, I think you make a dramatic point. You have touched on the essence of the path the world must travel to solve the underlying forces that make our planet a dangerous and unfair place to live for so many.

We, as Americans, can no longer fiercely cling to our "threatened privilege" and ignore those that also deserve a place at the table. Our position as the "dominant global player" bestows upon our nation a certain amount of power and, yes, responsibility to dramatically change how those people demanding a place at the table perceive America and other Western democracies.

I feel, too, that our new President Obama is the "global son" that will make our voices heard and turn the tide ever so slowly toward a more just and compassionate world. No President has ever been handed a nation in worse shape financially, emotionally, and spiritually. But, as you pointed out so eloquently Mr. Block, President Obama is THE most uniquely qualified person to spread the warming energy of the sun across the planet to those who have been waiting so long.

This Is Everyone's Time - This Is Everyone's Moment.

Barack Hussein Obama II
President
United States of America