welcome
Who are you? What is this magazine about? Why would I want to spend some of my valuable time and money reading it?
Dear Reader: We are people like you, passionate about life, the arts and ideas that make a difference; we like the playful and thoughtful interaction of words, music and images; we care about the preservation and transmission of culture and the environment; we are both worried and hopeful about the current state of the world; we think positively but not naively about technology and innovation and we want to reconnect science and the humanities for the service of mankind. Like you, we do not want to live in a world where people are told to get into a compartment and stay put. We want to move around squares and look behind boxes, and that is what we have been doing for most of our lives. We love mingling with challenging 2
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minds and kindred spirits, no matter if they lived hundreds of years ago, or today, or are still to be born. We are not afraid to travel in space and time in the pursuit of knowledge. In a way, this magazine is a time- machine and we want you to come with us for a ride, forward to the past and back to the proverbial future, but never losing sight of the present. Maybe our shared passions and goals amount to squaring the circle. Well, that is precisely what people we admire have been trying to do for ages, from the Greek philosophers to the Alchemists in the Middle Ages or even Michelangelo and his fellow geniuses in the Renaissance, all the way down to our times. Do not misunderstand us. For us, Squaring the Circle does not mean combining ciphers and letters in order to ďŹ nd any kind of arcane philosophical stone. It is not about resurrecting old rituals or founding new
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welcome
© GANDALF’S GALLERY/CC
— The Courtyard of a Renaissance Palace, Hendrick van Steenwyck the Younger, 1610. The National Gallery, London.
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© SCHLAIER/CC
provocative and visionary minds in the first half of the XXth century. Charles Dickens’ home museum and Bertrand Russell´s former apartments are not far from there and it is just a few minutes away from the British Museum, the Warburg Institute, the School of Oriental and African Studies and some of the best bookshops in London, like the London Literary Magazine´s Bookshop or Arthur Probsthain´s, not to talk of the legendary high tea served in the adjacent Russell Hotel or the very fine and homely Asian restaurants that have sprouted around the area. It was while having a delightful okonomiyaki in one of them when the title and the general outlook of the magazine suddenly came to our minds. We called it a perfect match between East and West, one of the themes we want to highlight in our endeavours.
— Bloomsbury Square, London.
religions. It is about trying to bring together what was once divided: Man, Mind and Nature. It is an attempt that springs from an unabashed Western humanistic standpoint but that encompasses every variety of mankind´s experience - no matter its geographical or chronological expression- provided that it passes three tests:
does it enlarge man’s capacities of mind and spirit?, does it help us to find our harmonious place in Nature and the Cosmos?, and last but not least: does it make us better? Though we had been toying with it for a while, the actual idea for creating this magazine occurred to us on a winter afternoon, in January 2017, after a walk around Bloomsbury Square in London, a place known for having gathered some of the most brilliant, 4
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We then reconvened our meetings some weeks later in our usual coffee shop in Madrid, El Pabellón del Espejo, at Columbus Square, and the project started to take shape all the way up and down to this Issue 1. It was not that difficult, for our minds usually work in sync and complement each other quite well. We had met years before in Madrid during some informal seminars on foreign policy organized by Marcelino Oreja, a senior Spanish statesman, former European Commissioner and Minister of Foreign Affairs in the early times of Spain´s democratic transition. After the seminars ended we kept on meeting in different places around the world, wherever our respective professions took us, sharing ideas and projects on the move, like a book on the Geopolitics of Energy in the Arctic or a biography of Thomas Jefferson, a man we both admire as a human embodiment, with all his contradictions, of Classic and Revolutionary Times. From that winter walk around Bloomsbury Square to this precise moment it was all about finding a good design to showcase our vision and embarking some fellow travelers on what we hope will become an expanding community of dwellers, passersby and onlookers, all rightful inhabitants of this Global Square. We would like to consider you as one of us. Welcome, then, to The Global Square.And now let us say a word about the design, which is very closely intertwined with the contents of the magazine. We like Joseph Cornell´s work. He was a New York City artist, shy and reclusive, who made boxes full of miscellaneous objects he found in his frequent perambulations. The
welcome
objects are thus enclosed, but arranged in ways that are suggestive of all kind of unsuspected wonders and journeys of the mind. Some of his collages remind us of those Advent Calendars so usual in the Germanic world where every December day is marked on a lid that has to be open to discover a treat. So we thought that our cover could resemble a kind of imaginary Joseph Cornell´s Advent Calendar in which every reader could get in, move around and look behind to find a surprise to his or her liking in each box.
Agora; examples of Cosmopolitan Biographies
Since our project is quite comprehensive in scope, we have created our own boxes within the Square, each one devoted to a general area of knowledge. Thus we came with eleven boxes (though the number could be changed as we evolve) that will correspond to regular features in our magazine: on geopolitics and current affairs in Mackinder´s Armchair; the humanities, science and innovation in The Curiosity Cabinet; environmental issues in The Green Rotunda; philosophical enquires taken to the edge in Ludwig´s Hut; law, politics and the public good in the Global
the vision and perspective that will inspire their
appealing to our sense of wonder and adventure; the varieties of creative expression in the Global Arcade; experiencing The Lost Art of Travel; literary criticism related to topics of relevance in Reading is Living; encounters with extraordinary people in Conversations and Disputations and the meeting between East and West On a Namban Byobu. Every section will have at least one extended essay per issue. The topics of those essays will vary, but not presentation: cultured, yet accessible with a degree of effort; seriously ironic and always connecting apparently disparate threads of facts and thoughts.
And now, come with us, let us take a walk around the Global Square and look behind each box. O
— Joseph Cornell, Solomon Islands (fragment), 1940-42.
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interviews
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conversations & disputations
PARAG KHANNA
ON HYBRID REALITIES AND CONNECTOGRAPHY Luis Francisco Martínez Montes
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interviews
B
orn in India and educated in ree con nents, Parag Khanna is a cosmopolitan globetro er wi a roving sensor and an analy cal mind to spot and en transform disparate data into strategic visions and bestselling b ks. When he is not on e news or scou ng around e world in search of new trends and big ideas he keeps busy lecturing in e Centre on Asia and Globaliza on at e Lee Kuan Yew Sch l of Public Policy, in Singapore. Toge er wi his wife, Ayesha, he was also a co-founder of e Hybrid Reality Ins tute, envisioning e co-evolu on of humans and technology as a challenge and oppo unity ra er an a reat. One of e editors of TGSM met him in Madrid in 2009 when he was presen ng e Spanish edi on of an earlier essay – The Second World: Empires and Influence in e New Global Order- at e Rafael del Pino Founda on. Eight years and several ousand miles later, e au or is introducing ano er of his successful b ks to a Spanish-speaking audience: Connectography: Mapping e Future of Global Civilisa on (recently published in Spanish by Planeta de los Libros). TGSM converses wi Parag Khanna about his current and future projects:
—LIKE US, you love maps and it shows in your books. In Connectography maps based on political geography are superseded by functional maps showing connectivity networks with lines representing not borders, but physical and digital infrastructure crisscrossing continents and oceans and creating truly astonishing images, the question then is to what extent are these functional maps present in the visual and mind fields of voters and decision-makers? With Brexit and all sorts of nativist and protectionist tendencies looming large on our political landscapes it seems that we need another revolution in the way we perceive and represent the world akin to the one provided in the past by the likes of Ptolemy or Mercator, are we ready for it? —The very purpose of the functional maps of CONNECTOGRAPHY is to provide the navigational utility that the great medieval cartographers did. Today, however, we need to do more than just navigate nature but
THERE IS NO GLOBAL HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE, AND THE UNITED NATIONS IS ALMOST POWERLESS
infrastructure. We have to navigate through our dense volumes of connectivity. This is why the maps are not only in the book but also online and regularly updated as new high-speed railways, pipelines and fiber-optic cables are laid down. Part of the reason we have these fringe populist movements is that Western publics are blind and ignorant as to the extent to which their own prosperity depends on trade and investment connectivity. If they saw it on their maps, perhaps they would not vote for Brexit or right-wing parties. In this way, maps are part
of our fundamental education as citizens. Note that the populist antiglobalization backlash in the West is indeed only in a few small Western countries; it is not a worldwide phenomenon. —”Connectivity is destiny” (…) “the arc of history is long, but it bends toward connectivity” are some of your mottos of choice. At the beginning of your book you envision a trip around the world without getting on a plane and mostly by road or railway tracks across landmasses and even through bridges or tunnels linking continents that are GLOBAL SQUARE|
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interviews
FEDERICO MAYOR ZARAGOZA
LA EDUCACIÓN EN UN CONTEXTO GLOBAL por
Nicolás Pérez López-Ibor / TGSM
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Diego Puerta
interviews
T
enemos el placer de visitar a D. Federico Mayor Zaragoza, quién nos recibe en la sede de la Fundación Ramón Areces, dónde es Presidente del Consejo Científico. Con Federico Mayor abordamos los temas rela vos a las relaciones internacionales y a la educación en un contexto global. An guo Director General de la UNESCO y ex Ministro de la transición polí ca de España, es una de las voces más autorizadas a nivel mundial en el indispensable binomio paz-educación. Su visión de los problemas internacionales ene siempre, inevitablemente esa orientación desde el dialogo, la paz, la c peración internacional y el sistema educa vo.
— POR SU FORMACIÓN, es usted científico, pero su biografía ha transcurrido en buena medida en el mundo de la política. ¿Qué ha aprendido el científico del político, y viceversa? —El científico ha transmitido al político el rigor, el conocimiento de la realidad en profundidad. El político, la responsabilidad, la escucha, la igual dignidad. — Fue Director General de la UNESCO y Ministro de Educación y Ciencia en España, ha dedicado gran parte de su vida al mundo de la educación y de la cultura y en la actualidad dirige la Fundación Cultura de Paz. ¿Qué lecciones ha extraído de esta trayectoria? Libertad, participación, pleno ejercicio de las facultades distintivas de la especie humana (pensar, imaginar, anticipar, innovar, ¡crear!) para hacer posible la transición histórica de la fuerza a la palabra. — ¿Qué atributos debe tener un líder en nuestra sociedad? —Guiarse por unos “principios democráticos” –como establece
lúcidamente la Constitución de la UNESCO en su preámbulo- y actuar con resolución y firmeza. Y aprender a emprender: al “sapere aude” de Horacio, al atrévete a saber hay que añadir el saber atreverse, ya que si bien el riesgo sin conocimiento es peligroso, el conocimiento sin riesgo es inútil. — ¿Está de acuerdo con George Steiner cuando nos recuerda que la cultura no nos exime de caer en la barbarie? Después de todo, el nazismo surgió en un país culturalmente avanzado y hoy vemos el resurgir de movimientos populistas y xenófobos en el mismo corazón de Europa. —La cultura como comportamiento cotidiano basado en unos valores éticos sí que nos exime. La cultura como libertad, el gran don. Nunca actuar al dictado de nadie. Tolerancia cero con el supremacismo y el dogmatismo. Los movimientos xenófobos surgen de la incultura, de la dependencia, de la ofuscación. El neoliberalismo ha marginado al multilateralismo democrático y la plutocracia (G7, G8, G20) deriva en la animadversión y el terror.
Over the years • Nació en Barcelona, en 1934. • Doctor en Farmacia por la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 1958. • 1963, Catedrático de Bioquímica de la Facultad de Farmacia de la Universidad de Granada, de la que fue Rector (1968-1972). • Catedrático de Bioquímica en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 1973-2004. • Co-fundador del Centro de Biología Molecular “Severo Ochoa”. • Ministro de Educación y Ciencia del Gobierno español, 1981-1982. • Diputado del Parlamento Europeo, 1987. • Director General de la UNESCO, 1987-1999. • Presidente del “European Research Council Expert Group”, 2002-2005. • Co-Presidente del Grupo de Alto Nivel para la Alianza de Civilizaciones, 2005-2006. • Presidente de “Initiative for Science en Europe”, 2007-2010) • Presidente Consejo Directivo de la Agencia de Noticias IPS, 2008-2012. • Presidente Comisión Internacional contra la Pena de Muerte, 2010-2017. • Presidente Consejo de Participación del Espacio Natural de Sierra Nevada, 2011-2017. • En 1999 creó la Fundación Cultura de Paz, de la que es Presidente. • En febrero de 2016, Co-Presidente del Instituto Universitario de Derechos Humanos, Democracia y Cultura de Paz y no Violencia (DEMOSPAZ).
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