CONSCIOUSNESS IN TRANSITION Algis Mickunas Ohio University
Introduction Current civilizations, and the various cultures within them, are both in confrontations and in transitions. Some civilizations, by way of their cultures, attempt to master both the confrontations and the transitions in various ways. Some cultures are used to reclaim the past. Other cultures trace the possibilities of constant transformations. Although it may seem that those two cultural modalities can live side by side, if we transform them as traces of civilizational consciousness it might turn out that they will be in confrontation which each other. The task of this venture is to investigate the contemporary events from political, mythical, economic, and technological cultures, yet cultures that trace incompatible civilizational modes of awareness. It might turn out to be the case that groups of peoples living in the same geographic regions and claiming to be of the same nationality, at the level of civilization they might belong to an entirely another civilizational consciousness morphology. For example, persons of scientific enlightenment and rationalism, although living in China, belong to Greco–Roman civilization while fundamentalist Christians, living in the west, might belong to Middle–Eastern civilization. In this sense, the civilizational phenomena as basic ways of awareness are neither derivable from nor reducible to particular nationality or geographical site. We suspect that the research we propose is most relevant in face of the current globalization of various cultural exports and imports. It is the case that globalization and by extension universalization are claims made by every civilization. This is to say, at a very basic level of awareness, which we call civilizational there seem to be the phenomena that encompass everything. Greco–Roman materialism and rationalism, up to day, claims that all peoples must follow this mode of awareness in order to be realistic and open. But a Hindu claims the same universality and encompassment: the founding text of our civilization includes all humanity. In this sense, there appears to be no room for the Other. Each civilizational awareness will confront the Other with an effort to subsume the Other under its own logic. This is a moment of confrontation, since the Other will be regarded as irrational, immoral, primitive, or mystical. Each civilization, as consciousness morphology, will interpret the Others and attempt to locate them within its own parameters as inferior, less than human, and even demonic. If the civilizational modes of awareness are irreconcilable, there arise confrontations that may lead to mutual destruction. We have holy wars and racial genocide, we exert efforts to reeducate the Others, to make them sane, to convert them to true beliefs, and do so for the good, the salvation, the enlightenment of the Others. Thus, if we bring them better material life, medicine, etc., we are doing them a favor despite the fact that we are destroying their way of understanding. In turn if we bring them faith and salvation even if they resist, we can baptize them and send them to heaven. Regardless of what cultural means or expressions are employed, such means will have to be regarded as traces of civilizational consciousness by which one civilization will elevate itself and demean the others. At one level there seems to be a transcultural and intercultural communication and even exchange of modes of thinking creating various technical, esthetic, and pedagogical uses, yet these very uses will not be regarded in the same way. One will regard these uses as traces of material, pragmatic, or rational civilization, while the other
