The European Dream

by Jeremy Rifkin

  Overcoming the sense of personal isolation and alienation that can accompany an electronically mediated environment requires a new integrative mission powerful enough to be transformative in nature. What’s sorely missing is an overarching reason for why billions of human beings should be increasingly connected. Toward what end? More commerce, greater political participation, increased pleasure, access to information, or just plain curiosity? All the above, while relevant, seem, nonetheless, insufficient to justify why six billion human beings should be connected and mutually embedded in a globalized society. Six billion individual connections, absent any overall unifying purpose, seems a colossal waste of human energy. More important, global connections without any real transcendent purpose risk a narrowing rather than an expanding of human consciousness.

  The good news is that the increasing connectivity of the human race is advancing personal awareness of all the relationships that make up a complex and diverse world. A younger generation is beginning to view the world less as a storehouse of objects to expropriate and possess and more as a labyrinth of relationships to gain access to. While an older generation thought of itself more like property and was preoccupied with “making something out of oneself,” the younger generation is more likely to think of its life as a continually changing process operating in a myriad of network relationships. In an era of global connectedness, the old idea of a fixed, self-contained, autonomous consciousness is giving way to the new notion of the self as an unfolding story whose plot lines and substance are totally dependent on the various characters and events with whom one enters into a relationship. Gergen suggests that “the final stage in this transition to the postmodern is reached when the self vanishes fully into a stage of relatedness.” In a globally connected world, concludes Gergen, “one ceases to believe in a self independent of the relationships in which he or she is embedded . . . thus placing relationships in the central position occupied by the individual self for the last several hundred years of Western history.”30 The Western sense of consciousness comes to resemble the Asian one, although it arrived at its present state by taking a very different journey.

  How, then, will we choose to use our newfound relational consciousness? Barfield and other thinkers suggest that human beings are maturing in their self-development to the point where they can make a personal choice to re-participate with the myriad relationships that make up the biosphere. Our growing involvement in networks, our newfound ability to multitask and operate simultaneously on parallel tracks, our increasing awareness of economic, social, and environmental interdependencies, our search for relatedness and embeddedness, our willingness to accept contradictory realities and multicultural perspectives, and our process-oriented behavior all predispose us to systems thinking. If we can harness systems thinking to a new global ethics that recognizes and acts to prevent cold evil and is dedicated to harmonizing the many relationships that make up the life-sustaining forces of the planet, we will have crossed the divide into a new third stage of human consciousness.

  The key to a successful journey will depend on how deep the reparticipation becomes. Re-participation with the body of nature means intimate engagement in real time, unencumbered by layers of technological barriers. When Barfield talks of re-participation, what he has in mind is a personal reaching out to “the other” in the spirit of deep communion. That kind of relationship can’t be accomplished at a distance in virtual-reality environments. If we simply expand our connections but become increasingly alone and isolated in the process—a world where everyone is e-mailing everyone else but seldom touching up against one another’s being—the relationships become illusory, and our sense of self becomes delusional and more at risk of dissolution. Re-participation, a true reaching out to the other, requires actually being there. One can’t be detached and empathize at the same time.

  The new globalizing technologies do indeed compress space and time and draw the human family together in tighter webs of interdependent relationships. We become more aware of the many connections that make up the larger systems within which we dwell. But if that awareness is not balanced with intimate, face-to-face re-participation with the body of nature, our journey into a new stage of consciousness will be stillborn. Our relational selves will be more of a technological than of a truly human nature, only prolonging the older journey with its fetishization of the death instinct. The life instinct can be rekindled only by really living life, and living life means deep participation in the life of the other that surrounds us.

  As long, then, as we choose detachment from the natural world and occupy ourselves almost exclusively with deadening our environment and expropriating and consuming it in the form of wasteful indulgences and sport, our own lives remain caught up in that death culture. We are reminded of our own death in every destructive act we engage in. How do we experience life if continually surrounded by death and consumed with the thought of death? By choosing deep re-participation with nature, by stewarding the many relationships that nurture life, we surround ourselves with a life-affirming environment. We are constantly reminded of the intrinsic value of life by every empathetic experience we pursue.

  The American and European Dreams

  While all of this might sound a bit esoteric and airy, in the real world where people dream of and act on the kind of life they would like to live and be part of, making choices between the death instinct and life instinct has real and profound consequences for the individual, the human family, and the planet.

  The American Dream is largely caught up in the death instinct. We seek autonomy at all costs. We overconsume, indulge our every appetite, and waste the Earth’s largesse. We put a premium on unrestrained economic growth, reward the powerful and marginalize the vulnerable. We are consumed with protecting our self-interest and have amassed the most powerful military machine in all of history to get what we want and believe we deserve. We consider ourselves a chosen people and, therefore, entitled to more than our fair share of the Earth’s bounty. Sadly, our self-interest is slowly metamorphosing into pure selfishness. We have become a death culture.

  What do I mean by “death culture”? Simply this. No one, and especially no American, would deny that we are the most voracious consumers in the world. We forget, however, that consumption and death are deeply intertwined. The term “consumption” dates back to the early fourteenth century and has both English and French roots. Originally, to “consume” meant to destroy, to pillage, to subdue, to exhaust. It is a word steeped in violence and until the twentieth century had only negative connotations. Remember that as late as the early 1900s, the medical community and the public referred to tuberculosis as “consumption.” Consumption only metamorphosed into a positive term at the hands of twentieth-century advertisers who began to equate consumption with choice. By the last quarter of the twentieth century, at least in America, consumer choice began to replace representative democracy as the ultimate expression of human freedom, reflecting its new hallowed status.

  Today, Americans consume upwards of a third of the world’s energy and vast amounts of the Earth’s other resources, despite the fact that we make up less than 5 percent of the world’s population. We are fast consuming the Earth’s remaining endowment to feed our near insatiable individual appetites. And what lies below our obsessive, if not pathological, behavior is the frantic desire to live and prosper by killing and consuming everything else around us. Cultural historian Elias Canetti once observed, “Each of us is a King in a field of corpses.”31 If we Americans were to stop and reflect on the sheer number of creatures and Earth’s resources and materials each of us has expropriated and consumed in the course of our lifetime to perpetuate our profligate lifestyles, we would likely be appalled at the carnage. It’s no wonder so many people around the world look at America’s wanton consumption and think of us as a death culture.

  But is that all we are? Some critics of the American experience would argue that there is no more to say on the matter. This is w
hat America has become. But they are wrong. There is another side to the American experience. We open up our country to newcomers. We believe that every human being deserves a second chance in life. We champion the underdog and glorify the person who has overcome life’s adversities to make something out of him-or herself. We believe that everyone is ultimately responsible for his or her own life. We each hold ourselves accountable. It is this other side of our individualism that is still our saving grace. If our sense of personal accountability can be exorcised from the death instinct and put in service to the life instinct, America might again lead the way for the world.

  The unfinished business of the human family is the adoption of a “personal ethics” of accountability to the larger communities of life that make up the living Earth. In the final analysis, a commitment to our fellow human beings, our fellow creatures, and our common biosphere must be personally felt as much as collectively legislated for any real transformation to occur. Ethics flourishes only in a world where everyone feels individually accountable. If we Americans could redirect our deeply held sense of personal responsibility from the more narrow goal of individual material aggrandizement to a more expansive commitment of advancing a global ethics, we might yet be able to remake the American Dream along lines more compatible with the emerging European Dream.

  How likely is such a turnaround in the United States? To begin with, a sizable minority of Americans are already responsive to what we might call “universal ethics.” They exercise personal responsibility and accountability in their consumer behavior, their workplaces, and their communities in ways that reflect the new global consciousness. They are supporters of initiatives that extend universal human rights and that protect the rights of nature and make conscious decisions not to participate in activity that might contribute to cold evil, whether it be in their choice of automobile, dietary preferences, or stock and bond purchases. They have become global citizens.

  But what about the majority of Americans whose sense of personal responsibility rarely extends beyond self-interest or national interest? How do they make the breakthrough to the other side and begin to “think globally and act locally”?

  Surprisingly, the best hope might be within America’s religious community. A great struggle has been going on among theologians as well as in both mainline and Evangelical congregations, the Catholic Church, and Judaism on interpretation of the creation story in the Book of Genesis. At issue is the biblical passage where God says to Adam and Eve,

  Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.32

  For most of Christian history, the concept of dominion has been used to justify the ruthless detachment from and exploitation of the natural world. Now, a new generation of religious scholars and a growing number of believers are beginning to redefine the meaning of “dominion.” They argue that since God created the heavens and the Earth, all of his creation is imbued with intrinsic value. God also gave purpose and order to his creation. Therefore, when human beings attempt to undermine the intrinsic value of nature, or manipulate and redirect its purpose and order to suit their own self-interests, they are acting with hubris and in rebellion against God himself.

  The idea of “dominion” is being redefined to mean “stewardship.” Human beings are to serve as God’s caretakers here on Earth, nurturing rather than exploiting and destroying his creation. In the new religious scheme of things, people are both part of nature and also separate from it. We are part of God’s creation and therefore dependent on all other living things and nonliving things that make up God’s earthly kingdom. At the same time, because human beings are made in God’s image, we have a special responsibility to act as his custodians on Earth and to take care of his creation.

  Each and every person, in the Christian eschatology, is endowed with free will. One can use that free will and choose to be redeemed by accepting Christ as Lord. If one makes that choice, however, it also requires him or her to tend God’s garden. Here we have a Christian version of Barfield’s third stage of consciousness—that is, each person is called upon to make a self-aware choice to accept Christ and, by so doing, to participate in deep communion with the whole of God’s creation.

  Although the new interpretation of Genesis has been steadily gaining support across the American religious community, it has not yet become a centerpiece of American religious life. Were that to happen, however, millions of Americans might find themselves on the cusp of a new global consciousness. One’s unconditional love for a suffering Christ would include one’s unconditional love for his creation—a potentially powerful new religious story that could bring those of faith to a new commitment to the Earth and all of its inhabitants. I’d caution, however, that there is still a long way to go from rhetorical reinterpretation of the Genesis story to active personal commitment on the part of millions of Americans to live their lives in a way that reflects a moral responsibility for preventing cold evil and acting on behalf of the biosphere. It’s still too early to suggest that the American Dream might undergo a true metamorphosis and give rise to a universal ethics.

  The European Dream, by contrast, has all the right markings to claim the moral high ground on the journey toward a third stage of human consciousness. Europeans have laid out a visionary roadmap to a new promised land, one dedicated to re-affirming the life instinct and the Earth’s indivisibility. I have no doubt of European sincerity in this regard, at least among the elite, the well educated, and the young generation of middle-class standard-bearers of a united Europe. The Europeans I have come to know do have a dream. They want to live in a world where everyone is included and no one is left by the wayside. According to a Pew survey conducted in 2003, solid majorities in every European country say they “believe it is more important for government to ensure that no one is in need, than it is for individuals to be free to pursue goals without government interference.”33 Only in America, among all of the populations of the wealthy nations of the world, does a majority—58 percent—of the people say they care more about personal freedom to pursue goals without government interference, while only 34 percent say it’s more important for the government “to take an activist approach to guaranteeing that no one is in need.”34 Similarly, when it comes to extending help to the poor in countries other than one’s own, a Gallup poll conducted in 2002 reports that nearly 70 percent of all Europeans believe that more financial help should be given to poorer nations, while nearly half of all Americans believe rich countries are already giving too much.35

  Europeans also want to be globally connected without losing their sense of cultural identity and locality. They find their freedom in relationships, not in autonomy. They seek to live a good quality of life in the here and now, which for them means also living in a sustainable relationship with the Earth to protect the interests of those who will come later. Eight out of ten Europeans say they are happy with their lives, and when asked what they believe to be the most important legacy of the twentieth century, 58 percent of Europeans picked their quality of life, putting it second only to freedom in a list of eleven legacies. At the same time, 69 percent of European citizens believe that environmental protection is an immediate and urgent problem. In stark contrast, only one in four Americans are anxious about the environment. Even more interesting, 56 percent of Europeans say “it is necessary to fundamentally change our way of life and development if we want to halt the deterioration of the environment,”36 making them the most avid supporters of sustainable development of any people in the world.

  Europeans work to live, rather than live to work. Although jobs are essential to their lives, they aren’t sufficient to define their existence. Europeans put deep play, social capital, and social cohesion above career. When asked what values are extremely or very important to them, 95 percent of Europeans put helping others at the top of their list of priorities. Ninety-two p
ercent said it was extremely or very important to value people for who they are, 84 percent said they put a high value on being involved in creating a better society, 79 percent valued putting more time and effort into personal development, while less than half (49 percent) said it was extremely or very important to make a lot of money, putting financial success dead last of the eight values ranked in the survey.37

  Europeans champion universal human rights and the rights of nature and are willing to subject themselves to codes of enforcement. They want to live in a world of peace and harmony, and, for the most part, they support a foreign policy and environmental policy to advance that end.

  But I’m not sure how thick the European Dream is. Is Europe’s commitment to cultural diversity and peaceful coexistence substantial enough to withstand the kind of terrorist attacks that we experienced on 9/11 or that Spain experienced on 3/11? Would Europeans remain committed to the principles of inclusivity and sustainable development were the world economy to plunge into a deep and prolonged downturn, maybe even a global depression? Would Europeans have the patience to continue sporting an open, process-oriented form of multilevel governance if they were facing social upheaval and riots in the streets? These are the kinds of tough challenges that test the mettle of a people and the vitality and viability of their dream. Regardless of what others might think about America, the American Dream has stood the test, in good times and bad. We never lost hope in our dream until very recently, even in the darkest hours. Will Europeans be able to say the same about their own nascent dream?