The illusion of unity promoted in today’s globalised society, in which communities are being replaced by networks
In today’s networked society, one fundamental fact is evident: concrete communities of people are being replaced by networks (whether we are talking of social networks structured through information technology, or of networks in which concrete, interpersonal relationships are replaced by standardised procedures resulting from a process of excessive institutionalisation). Direct connections, life experiences, and intrapersonal and interpersonal feelings are alienated within a levelling process through which everything is reduced to a flow of information structured via an increasingly impersonal medium. From this perspective, the reality of unity is distorted.
Unity is perceived ideologically in the sense of a levelling unification, a radical homogenisation. What matters pertains to a plane of exteriority, with formalism imposing itself both at the level of thought and of the way of being. In the networked society, the chimera of a unity is promoted, through which a propagandistic aim is pursued to create a single global mind, with a culture that is homogeneous and universal in its implications (the culture of entertainment implemented through technology), with humanity’s orientation exclusively towards earthly matters, humanity being anchored in the spirit of the world.
In this situation, it is easy for superficiality to develop, along with a predilection for the insignificant, which has no relevance on an existential level. In the networks that have replaced communities, what matters has nothing to do with profound aspirations or lofty ideals that transcend the immediate pragmatic and informational. There is neither transcendence nor a soul of the world. Everything becomes mere externality and infantilising entertainment. The current technological system incorporates the ideologies that have helped shape a mindset suited to globalised society, rigorously organising the spirit of the world, manifested through a dissipation towards the external and the superficial.
In the networks that replace communities, what matters has nothing to do with profound aspirations or grand ideals that transcend the immediate practical and informational. There is neither transcendence nor a soul of the world. Everything becomes mere exteriority and infantilising entertainment.
Globalisation based on ideological multiculturalism and economic ultra-liberalism is bringing about a genuine transformation of the human condition, endlessly producing and reproducing the ‘consumer’ type of human being. This is a way of being that replaces true human identity by rejecting existential depth in favour of a deceptive existence centred on the convenience and mediocrity of a consumerist life. The media hyperspace, beyond the chimera of communication it claims to embody, blocks the acceptance of life’s deeper meanings, reducing human aspirations to ideological surrogates, and appropriating the individual’s inner world to the detriment of a life condemned to become pure exteriority.
The values of education and culture rooted in a paradigm of Tradition are replaced, through the mass media, by pseudo-ideals generated by a society characterised by the idolisation of material prosperity, which rejects any call to transcendence. ‘Conquered by the market, fuelled by television, sport or the internet, the world of globalisation is simultaneously experiencing, against the backdrop of a general crisis of the meaning of life, a global educational and cultural disaster – a worrying yet certain symptom of the barbarism of the society of the future. The traditional culture of societies is disappearing or being transformed into spectacle and commodity; humanistic culture is increasingly being supplanted by invasive techno-science and turned into a pseudo-science; instead of serving as a formative transmission, scientific culture is becoming ultra-specialised, whilst all this gives way to the absolute mediocrity of mass and consumer culture, propagated by contemporary electronic media – the most profitable industries in the global economy. Globalisation thus risks becoming the agent of the end of history and the upheaval of human civilisation through the creation of the ‘last man’: the global man, the pure homo economicus – the atomised man who lives solely for production and consumption – stripped of culture, politics, meaning, conscience, religion and any sense of the transcendent. A product of genuine social and ideological engineering, he is the end result of the globalisation of the economy, the dismantling of the political sphere and the widespread destruction of both traditional and modern cultures by the juggernaut of communications, financial speculation and digital technologies”1
The new world constructed at the start of the millennium is the result of the globalised and computerised economy (the fruit of the information revolution), a networked society with fluid relationships between people (dominated by the new capitalism based on neoliberalism) and the virtual culture made possible by advanced mass media technologies. The globalisation of capital and the diversification of institutional powers have enabled the configuration of a new geometry of power.
How might we characterise the culture that embodies the spirit of informatisation? ‘It is a culture of the ephemeral, of the immediate, a culture of decision-making strategies. It is multifaceted, a virtual culture, akin to the visual experience created by computers in cyberspace, which reshapes reality. This is not an illusion, but a material force of information that has the power to have serious implications for the world’s economic and political decisions, as well as for the everyday lives of people connected to this vast network. Networked companies teach us virtual culture, the new cultural code that gives us a specific, concrete position within the network matrix of which we are a part. The spirit of computerisation is the culture of creative deconstruction, accelerated by the speed of optical electronics2".
The real struggle for power is now shifting towards the realm of culture and religion. “In the age of informatisation, battles for power are cultural battles. They take place first and foremost in the media sphere. Power, understood as the capacity to impose a certain behaviour, lies in the information network, in the alteration and manipulation of the symbols that link social actors, institutions and cultural movements... Culture as a source of power and power as a source of capital are the foundations of the new social hierarchy in the information age’3
In our world, the true stakes of our existence have shifted into the realm of the imaginary and virtual culture. Whoever manages to win the battle on this terrain is the true victor, for what shapes not only our behaviours but also our innermost impulses, our most hidden thoughts—not yet chained to the form of discursive reasoning—now takes place within an imaginary realm accessible to computer technology. And, of course, throughout history there have been various ways of accessing and manipulating the collective imagination. However, what is new in today’s networked society is that, owing to contemporary technological possibilities and computerisation, the connection, access and manipulation of our minds within an imaginary realm of virtual culture is now global in scope.
...what is new in today’s networked society is that, owing to contemporary technological possibilities and computerisation, the connection, access and manipulation of our minds within the imaginary realm of virtual culture now takes on a global character.
This has a fundamental consequence for interpersonal relationships. ‘With the information paradigm, space as a flow replaces space as a place, and the chronological time of the clock is replaced by a timeless time: history loses its rhythm. Under these conditions, virtuality becomes reality itself, with symbols no longer mere metaphors but lived realities. This is not merely a matter of the dominance of the electronic mass media, even though it is an indispensable tool of the new virtual culture, but rather a fluidisation of space and an annihilation of temporality, which are essential frameworks for human experience. By altering the nature of these realities, virtual culture fundamentally replaces the human experience as we have known it with one that is qualitatively different from anything experienced before. On the one hand, the dominant functions and values of society operate in simultaneity and spatial non-contingency, along information flows that elude any concrete, localised experience. On the other hand, these dominant values and interests are developed without reference to the past or the future, within the timelessness of computer networks or electronic media where all expressions are either instantaneous or lack a predictable sequence. All expressions from all times and all spaces intermingle within a single, constantly reconfigured hypertext, and they are communicated everywhere, regardless of the moment. Virtuality tends to become our reality because it unfolds within these symbolised systems that are without place and without duration’4
Given the characteristics of this new mode of existence within network society—a reticular environment in which intrapersonal and interpersonal life is diluted in its authenticity—it is easy to distort the true meaning of unity. Unity no longer stems from actual life, from unmediated experience, but from the surrogates imposed by the fantasies and chimeras of an environment in which everything becomes mediated, existence being rendered artificial. Unity becomes an artificial construct that integrates, in a dissolving manner, various ideological projections of identity, thereby nullifying specificities and distinctions. In the effort to unify the world, the aim is to achieve an artificial unity that dispenses with the soul of the world, with its transcendent foundation which ensures its organic unity. It is particularly important in such a context to bear witness to the profound foundations of the unity of faith, as lived out in the life of the Church.
Jesus Christ – the foundation of the Church’s unity of faith
The Church of Christ seeks the unity of the whole world and the transfiguration of all creation, but beginning with the inner unification of the human person. A collection of divided people cannot form a united world. Sin, first and foremost, signified an ontological fracture in human nature, producing various inner fragmentations which led to outward dispersion. The sequence of the fallen human life must be transcended, leading to the wholeness of the spiritual human being. But the restoration of the original wholeness and the effort expended in attaining spiritual fulfilment entail, first and foremost, an inner unification and, subsequently, an outer unity.
The division wrought by sin in the human heart and mind both produces and intensifies—whilst at the same time transcending—any external division. The ideology of globalisation, by seeking external unification through the creation of a vast, impersonal computerised network, strikes a deep blow to the dignity of the Christian person as affirmed by Christianity. ‘The globalisation promoted by the new world order is merely a deceptive façade of universality. Whilst it appears to unite people externally or to foster mutual closeness between them, to remove the barriers separating them and to facilitate communication, in reality it leads to the transformation of peoples into masses of individuals, the levelling of cultures, the mixing of religions, the homogenisation of people’s appearance and behaviour, and the Americanisation of the way of life. The culmination of this negative process is the annihilation of the human person and even of the very truth about the person’5”.
The dignity of the human person and of the whole of creation is bestowed by Christ, the source of the world’s true unity. The vocation of the unification and unity of creation is realised in the Church of Christ, within which a new way of existence is experienced that transcends the external and internal division caused by sin. Christianity signifies the power of the Holy Spirit embodied in the Church of Christ, which, first lived out within the individual, subsequently pours forth into the holy communion practised ecclesially. The ecclesial way of life demands a constant striving to attain the spirit of life in Christ. God’s grace enables us, within the Church, to live in the same mind and the same spirit. This ecclesial consciousness was strikingly evident in the early Christian communities, ‘…for there was one heart and one soul among them…’ (Acts of the Apostles 4:32). Unfortunately, today, the words of Saint Paul the Apostle, which show us that in Christ ‘…there is neither male nor female, neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all’ (Galatians 3:28) have been turned into ideological slogans that legitimise a levelling of existence divorced from the unity of life lived in Christ.
Only by anchoring ourselves in the spiritual life in Christ, renewed in a concrete and everyday way, can we overcome our own selfishness and realise the true unity of the world. ‘Where Christ is, there is unity, for where Christ is, there is the love that seeks to embrace all within Himself and to present them to the Father. Unity, therefore, can only be attained by being rooted in Christ, Who is the Word of God made accessible to us through the Incarnation, so that He may reunite us all in His unity. Division is the sign of straying from this unchanging and unifying foundation, of clinging to the changing and varied transience as if it were the sole reality. Division is the struggle of all against all for singular and transient things, or the struggle of each against many to seize as much as possible of the things that are rightfully theirs as well. But whoever lives in Christ—as God made accessible to us through the infinity of love that embraces us all— feels rooted in Him and united with all others; feels at home, together with all those who are likewise rooted in Him, in the same home which is theirs as well. Whoever feels at home in God whilst still living in this world no longer feels lonely, for they recognise the world as God’s, and it has become transparent to them, and through its transparency, sees God; sees the reasons for all things gathered into an undifferentiated unity in Christ, the divine Logos with whom he is united’6”.
The unification of the world in Christ is experienced first and foremost in the fullness of the spiritual man, the saint who, in his sacrificial love for the world, bears its weaknesses and sufferings. Spiritual joy in this age is always a joy crucified by the sufferings of one’s fellow human beings who are estranged from God. The tragedy of this world is felt more keenly by the spiritual person, who knows that man’s true lack stems from the absence of life in Christ. In the spiritual person’s prayer for the whole world, we find evidence of true love, purified through spiritual struggle and tears of repentance.
The tragedy of this world is felt more keenly by the spiritual person who knows that man’s true deficiency stems from the absence of life in Christ.
For the spiritual person, our neighbour is our very life, and their love can come only from true prayer for the whole world, including our enemies. Saint Silouan the Athonite is a contemporary example of all-unifying love lived through the Holy Spirit in Christ, of an experience in which humility becomes the humility of Christ and personal prayer is the prayer of the Holy Spirit within us, expressed in unutterable groans. Saint Silouan’s testimony speaks volumes in this regard: ‘In our time, peoples have strayed from the right path; people have become unmerciful; they have all grown hard-hearted. There is no longer any love. That is why they no longer feel God’s love for them. Because of the hardness of their hearts, people think that God is just like themselves, and often they even lose their faith in God entirely. Ah! If it were possible, I would show them the Lord and say to them: ‘Look! Here is the Lord!’ In the face of His love, the human soul melts like wax. But this love cannot be discovered by the mind alone; it is known through the Holy Spirit. Lord, grant that I may shed tears for myself and for the whole world, so that the nations may come to know You and live eternally with You! Lord, make us worthy of the gift of Your humble Holy Spirit, that we may understand Your glory. My soul suffers and sheds rivers of tears. I have compassion for those who do not know the sweetness of a broken heart, and my soul has but one great desire: that the Lord’s mercy may be with all people, that the whole world may know with what love the Lord loves us7
The prophetic vocation of the Church – a highly topical reality through which the risk of aligning ecclesial unity with the worldly spirit of ideologically promoted unification can be overcome
The witness of Orthodoxy in the contemporary world must spring from the spiritual experience of its own Tradition, and it must not seek the external and artificial unification of humanity, thereby remaining captive to the ideological frameworks of globalisation. A focus on external activism risks subsuming the Church’s efforts to the creation of a deceptive unity of the world, built upon the arrogance of the impersonal system proposed by globalisation. The true dignity of the person is realised through metanoia and inner stillness, which are the authentic criteria for validating love for the world.
The spiritual tradition does not encourage ascetic achievements carried out on a personal level, separate from the communal life lived within the Church. The mindset of the contemporary world, distorted by an excessive activism reduced to the horizontal plane of existence, can easily label a believer’s withdrawal from the world (such as that of Saint Silouan) as an act of selfishness. But withdrawal does not mean contempt for the world; on the contrary, it is the framework for attaining spiritual hesychia, which is manifested through embracing the world in a spirit of prayer.
The spiritual experience of Orthodoxy bears witness to the fact that the ascetic endeavours of a solitary ascetic are always connected to the ecclesial ministry present within the Church, where, in an eschatological manner, the profound aspiration that God may be all in all is lived out. ‘Thus, the solitary prayer and fasts of the hermit, his all-night vigils in his cell or cave, his solitude and self-denial, and his attentive vigilance over the stirrings of his heart, are all undertaken in the search for that very place of glory and divine indwelling, which he discovers to be already present at the church’s altar. For this reason, he comes to church and to its Liturgy to be assured and renewed in his vocation, to nourish its fulfilment and perfection in Christ, and thus to be able to continue helping it to be born within his heart. He knows, like the great third-century bishop, Saint Cyprian of Carthage, that a single Christian is not merely a Christian, for he is part of a body that draws its life from a living torrent flowing through the millennia, the river of life that flows from the throne of God and of the Lamb (Revelation 22:1)’8.
Christian universality represents the truth in the face of the chimera of ideological globalisation. Christianity affirms the vocation of all creation to be eschatologically united with Christ. Given that there is a risk that the Church’s mission might be equated with high performance in the spirit of today’s society’s logic of efficiency, in order to align with the demands of contemporary activism, it is essential to affirm that ecclesial institutions do not serve merely historical opportunities (however grand they may be), but serve beyond history, through the eschatological fulfilment of the world in Christ.
Ecclesial institutions, too, reveal the prophetic character of the Church. ‘All ecclesial institutions must find their justification in relation to something ultimate, not merely to a historical opportunity. There are, of course, ministers called to serve temporal historical needs, but they cannot claim ecclesial status in a fundamentally structural sense. History can never be a sufficient justification for a truly ecclesial institution, whether it be with reference to tradition, apostolic succession, scriptural foundation or current historical needs. The Holy Spirit guides beyond history and not against it, of course, although He may often have to set Himself against history as it actually is, through the prophetic work of the priesthood. By virtue of being eschatologically conditioned, ecclesial institutions become sacramental in the sense of being situated within the dialectic between history and eschatology, between what already exists and what is yet to come. They thus lose their self-sufficiency, their individualistic nature, and exist in an epiclectic manner; that is to say, they are constantly dependent on their effectiveness in prayer, on the prayer of the community. It is not in history that ecclesial institutions find their certainty, but in their continuous dependence on the Holy Spirit. It is He alone who makes them sacramental, that is, iconic in the language of Orthodox theology”9.
The prophetic dimension of Christ’s ecclesia saves the Church from any historicist tendency, which tendentiously seeks to reduce it to a mere social institution, one among many. Without evading history, the Church is present in history, yet affirms the eschatological fulfilment of history in Christ through the Holy Spirit. In this sense, the Church is profoundly universal, ecumenical, and open to true unity in Christ, which does not negate the identity and distinctions of the person.
The prophetic dimension of Christ’s ecclesia saves the Church from any historicist tendency which, in a biased manner, seeks to reduce it to a mere social institution, one among many.
The conditions of contemporary society encourage a distortion of the Church’s authentic meaning by obscuring its prophetic nature, which emphasises the eschatological character of the ecclesia. Affirming the eschatological meaning of the Church is all the more relevant today, as the contemporary world gropes ever more in the darkness of pragmatic conceptions that value only the immediate. First and foremost, the Church is called to sanctify people, to be the vehicle through which the eschatological meaning of all creation is fulfilled: its transfiguration. The holy relics are a clear expression of the Church’s eschatological role. They show that the transfiguration of humanity and of matter begins right here. A Church rigidified by the fixed frameworks of bureaucratic institutionalism (understood as a reality in itself, without eschatological underpinnings), which no longer produces holy relics, has abdicated its eschatological vocation. In today’s public opinion, there is a tendency to view the Church as an institution with an important role in social life. Much emphasis is placed on the Church’s involvement in the complex issues facing society, with a view to ensuring social consensus and defusing certain conflicts. From this perspective, even some atheists regard the Church’s presence in social life as beneficial and make use of it to further their own interests.
The prophetic mission must be proclaimed all the more in a world dominated by a consumerist mindset imposed ideologically on a global scale. “More than ever, the Church must assume its role of being, in Christ, the light of the world and carry the banner of its prophetic mission in a secularised world that has lost the sense of divine transcendence, so that it may move forward with the world, in the struggle against hostile forces, towards the new heaven and the new earth of the Kingdom of God, through the power of the cross and the resurrection of Christ’10”.
Through the spiritual life, every person becomes universal and opens themselves authentically to the unity of the world perfected in Christ. “Every human being and the whole world, in accordance with the extent of their free acceptance and adoption of the mind of Christ, participate in the building up of Christian universality. Through humility and love, which are the two sides of the same reality, man acts universally and becomes a cosmic being. Christian universality is not realised in supernatural or extra-historical realms, but within man and within history, through endeavour and self-sacrifice. Through humility and kenotic ascent towards the apex of the inverted pyramid of the world’s being, man and his entire life open themselves up to uncreated life and to the Kingdom of Heaven. The human person becomes universal and experiences universality not only locally but also temporally, taking an interest in and praying for the whole world and all creation from the perspective of their diachronic existence11”.
Note
The last two sections of this text constitute an update and revision of part of the study ‘Globalisation – a distortion of the unification of the world in Christ’, which I published in the collective volume The Church in the Age of Globalisation, pp. 434–455, published by Reîntregirea, Alba Iulia, 2003.
- 1
Deacon Prof. Dr Ioan I. Ică Jr., ‘Globalisation – Changes and Challenges’, in The Social Thought of the Church, p. 485.
- 2
M. Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, p. 199.
- 3
Manuel Castells, Fin de millénaire, Fayard, Paris, 1999, p. 411.
- 4
M. Castells, Fin de millénaire, p. 414.
- 5
Georgios Mantzaridis, Globalisation and Universality, translated by Rev. Prof. Dr Vasile Răducă, Bizantină Publishers, Bucharest, 2002, p. 6.
- 6
Rev. Prof. Dr Dumitru Stăniloae, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Volume II, EIBMBOR, Bucharest, 1997. The presentation of the Church as an icon of the visible and invisible world, as well as the understanding of God as the Icon of His Church, is found in the patristic tradition. St Maximus the Confessor likens God’s work of unifying creation with Himself through uncreated grace to the realisation of the world’s unity in Christ, accomplished within the Church. ‘In the same way, the holy Church of God is revealed to us, doing the same things with us as God does, imitating Him just as an icon imitates its model. For there are many, and innumerable in number, who belong to it and are reborn and recreated in the Spirit: men, women and children, distinct and very different in gender and appearance, by nation and language, by way of life, age, opinions, trades, appearances, manners and aptitudes, by learning and occupation, by fate, character and habits. Yet to all, the Church bestows equally a single divine form and designation, namely, existence and the name of Christ; and a single, undivided relationship through faith, simple and without parts, which does not allow the many and innumerable relationships of each individual to be known, nor even that they exist, because of the universal reference and concentration of all towards it. On this basis, none is in the least separated by anything from what is common to all, so as to exist of its own accord. All exist together with one another and are united through the one grace and the one simple and undivided power of faith
- 7
The Venerable Silouan the Athonite, Between the Hell of Despair and the Hell of Humility, translated by Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Ică, Deisis Publishers, Alba Iulia, 1994, p. 149.
- 8
Hieromonk Alexander Golitzin, Mystagogy, translated by Deacon Prof. Dr Ioan I. Ică Jr., Deisis Publishing House, Sibiu, 1998.
- 9
Ioannis Zizioulas, Ecclesial Being, translated by Fr. Aurel Nae, Bizantină Publishing House, Bucharest, 1994, p. 154.
- 10
Rev. Prof. Dr Dumitru Popescu, The Man Without Roots, Nemira Publishers, Bucharest, 2001, p. 90.
- 11
Georgios Mantzaridis, op. cit., pp. 28–29.