Towards a Transmodern Transformation of our Global Society:
European challenges and opportunities
In the context of paradigm shift debate of this congress, our approach will be more transversal and inspired by a concrete political and economic research-action experience (1990-99) in one of the most important and influential think tanks of the European Union, the « Forward Studies Unit » of the European Commission, created by Jacques Delors in 1989.
Our starting point is that for the first time in its history, Humanity is confronted with the real possibility of a collective suicide, if we humans do not change radically our economic and political governance. This fact is the powerful motor of the actual transformation Humanity is going through.
As a consequence the modern industrial and capitalist paradigm in which we still are is coming to an end, because it appears incapable to provide us with a solution for our survival. Patriarchal values are also in a deep crisis, because they are not able to provide the right value frame for our survival.
The transmodern view is a new set of values a new paradigm. Here the new top value is Humanity’s survival and thus the need of respect for the environment and social justice. Transmodernity is an entire matrix of values. The first mover of this change has been science. Scientific method has shifted slowly, and we see the very definition of time and space changing in science (Prigogine). This provokes also a deep change in metaphysics, as consciousness becomes what shapes matter (Willis Harman). The role technology, is also shifting as it becomes “demand driven” because it must respond to the world citizen’s demand for a sustainable and fair world.
Politics and economics are changing below the surface. In politics the EU is as a new transmodern political paradigm. It has created this new concept of non-violence between States. And the EU system of non-violence between States is functioning so well that it has become self-evident. This means also that Foreign Policy, Defense and security policies have to be and are reinvented by the EU everyday. But those new policies are not always understood by the States inside the Union, neither by our US allies.
EU is also innovating in Economy, as it has launched the “Lisbon Strategy” which wants to push EU as a global competitive actor in the “Knowledge society” before 2010. This knowledge economy represents a 180° shift. Everything changes: trade, measurements, tools of production, management, structures of power, basic concept of growth and progress. It is a post capitalist society.
Religions are also coming back on the political stage. An important congress organized by the European Commission in 1998, in Brussels came to the conclusion that the main clash is not between religions but rather between conflicting paradigms within each religion and each culture.
