by  Lucian CULDA

1. The globalizing processes depend on the people's interpretative capacities.

2. What error do analysts make when they suggest the human mind cannot control what it has created?

3. The deliberate involvement in the social existence, guided by the good understanding of the globalizing processes, is both possible and necessary.

4. The goals of the security strategies designed by states or 'communities of states' are to be guided so that the strategies do not affect the situation of mankind.

The more attention is given by decision-making centers to the globalization issue and the more decisions are made in order to induce certain paths of action within the globalizing processes, the more powerful, diverse and biased are the reactions. Nevertheless, the manifestations for and against cannot be contributions to the good globalization, as the genuinely good solutions cannot be those resulting from compromise; viable solutions can only result from competent analyses in the area. The contradictory discussions draw attention upon the suitability of some scientific, unbiased analyses.

1. The globalizing processes depend on the people's interpretative capacities

The problem situation is as follows: globalization occurs under circumstances in which people act in ways strongly affected by their limited possibilities of grasping the processes in which they are being involved. Therefore, at all decision-making levels errors will occur, which induce to the social organizations actions bearing contradictory consequences, that harm both the people and their social environment. Consequently, the social existence is a processuality which people maintain in a state far from the equilibrium and evolves to the extent at which improved methods of social information processing become available.

The deliberate interventions meant to orient (guide) the globalization process carried out by centers of political, financial, economic, religious, and last, but not least, cultural power, are also designed and performed in ways affected by the unsatisfactory interpretation of this domain. Both the goals and the ways of intervention express the flaws of the decision-makers' processing possibilities, as well as the fact that many of the latter are still unaware of the dependence of analyses and decisions on the information approaches they are using.

If the above statement is plausible, the following question arises: can the globalization carried out under such circumstances favor mankind?

Many studies have been made and their bottom line is that globalization fosters social polarization, the rise of criminality rate and the increase of social disorder. Such aspects are strong indicators that the solutions designed (put forward) do not fit the actual social organization necessities; they affect the possibilities of maintaining a public order genuinely beneficial for the citizens.

The failures have caused, on the one hand, analyses more focused on the core globalization issues and, on the other, stands to justify these failures. This latter stand has been taken by the author who asks: "Can the human mind control what it has created?" [1] The author's answer is unsatisfactory; it suggests that the reader accept to be living in a world the latter cannot grasp (which cannot be grasped) and, consequently, that it would be wise to mind one's own being.

2. What error do analysts make when they suggest the human mind cannot control what it has created?

Many analysts who have approached the globalization issue these last few years have not distinguished systematically between globalization as a 'natural' process (as a tendency resulting from the increased connection and correlation needs of certain types of actions at the macro-social level) and the globalization scenarios which certain power centers have attempted to implement, hoping globalization will take a shape that will favor them.

Only the analyses distinguishing between the two aspects can be pertinent, as the deliberate interventions in the globalizing processes cannot be overlooked; the latter are ever more complex, exerting systematic pressures on the main aspects by which people influence the situation of mankind. For instance, many media networks are striving to keep people away from the good understanding of the tensions worldwide so that they cannot oppose the globalizing processes of the free-market type, which have caused many of the current polarizations. The interrogations on the scenarios attempting to impose certain developments of the globalizing processes succeed in identifying the origins (sources) of some of the processes inducing tensions in the social organizations, as well as some dysfunctional consequences.[2]

When the analyst does not also investigate the effects of the deliberate interventions in the social existence, he may identify tensioned aspects, dysfunction, insecurity sources for mankind, but will fail to provide that useful information meant to guide people's actions. The human mind can control what it has created, provided the analyses turn into good value what the processing skill has produced in the mean time; the results of the last decades cannot be understood in the limits of the hundred-year old gnoseological methods. Moreover, when the research work is faced with new types of organization or processes, that cannot be pertinently investigated by means of the old methods, conditions and pressures emerge urging to design new interrogation ways.

3. The deliberate involvement in the social existence, guided by the good understanding of the globalizing processes, is both possible and necessary

I maintain globalization is a social process which cannot be achieved 'naturally', because people get involved in it. The guidance of social processes, the ones with globalizing consequences included, depends to a large extent on the ways in which people get involved in any of the types of processes maintaining the social existence. The political, economic, cultural, religious etc. actions foster distinct processes, which maintain specific organizations, and also social organizations deriving from the functioning of the state, market, 'culture', religion - type organizations.

If the above statement is correct, a new question arises: can people get involved in the globalizing processes so that they have a positive influence on the latter, not to induce any longer processes which affect the people's social and biotic environment? In the present study, which is only a preliminary one, meant to invite as many research workers as possible to contribute to clarifying the issue and to designing genuinely viable solutions, I am focussing especially on measures which can be sources of some very dangerous developments. They are the ones to be avoided. But the answer to the question above is definitely affirmative. The prerequisite of positive involvement is primarily a moral one; we should be willing that mankind be a favorable place for everybody.

4. The goals of the security strategies designed by states or 'communities of states' are to be guided so that the strategies do not affect the situation of mankind

The security strategies have been designed to favor the centers of power implementing them, so that they result in social developments (be they political, economic, financial, …) considered favorable, beneficial for one's own social organization, without considering their consequences for mankind or for the area in which the strategy is to be implemented. Such developments are taken into account only when people are aware of their long or medium-term importance for the decision-maker too.

Depending on the nature of the strategy, the latter's author usually seeks to maximize some results, to meet the goals considered important for the decision-maker and the area meant to be managed, sometimes (if the case be) prejudicially to others, if they stand in their way. As the chronological analysis of the issue reveals, when the political strategies, called 'security-related' or not, are meant to be efficient, they are expansionist, seeking explicit control of certain 'territories' in order to use their resources or to turn them into support areas in case of military conflicts. The political strategies are defensive only when they seek to avoid involving their own states and economies in foreign spheres of occupation (influence).

Can the confrontation among such strategies and the chain consequences they cause contribute to positive globalization? The plausible answer is negative at least for two reasons:

- in a world in course of globalization, the actions detrimental to others do not have only local consequences, but also affect the situation of mankind;
- the denser the globalizing connections, the more so should each decision-maker not do something which might affect the situation of mankind.

If we accept the globalizing processes occur as expressions and effects of diversifying the connections and increasing the latter's density, and they must be supported by measures favoring them, the following statement is righteous: the design of the social strategies in the traditional manners, that overlook the consequences of their implementation on the encompassing environment and on a third party, becomes incompatible with the globalizing processes.

If the state of the social existence has to be taken care of by all 'social actors', not only are the strategies that foster conflict ever more dangerous, but it is also necessary (and the need will be grater in the future) to design new kinds of strategies, which are authentically security-related.

It does not take a very detailed analysis to realize the issue under discussion deserves special attention. The higher density of the social relationships and connections at the trans-national level causes every action affecting them to be undesirable from the social viewpoint.

It is useful now to draw a comparison. The strategies used by power centers are similar to those used by chess players: the latter play by thinking it natural that victory should be detrimental to 'the partner'. But the social existence, likewise the biotic one, does not stand comparison with a chessboard; the actions taken by the partners worldwide are pertinent if, while everybody is seeking to meet their own needs, they avoid 'polluting' the planet and endeavor to amend the rules of the social game so that there is room for all partners, and some of them, when upset or desperate, could not impede upon the game to go on.

At any time on the evolutionary scale of mankind, the actions designed in the prejudice of others have not proved to be sources of positive developments, as they could not have favored social connections and consequences equally beneficial to those targeted at by the expansionist or aggressive strategies. But in case the connections were few and mainly local in scope, or the emergence of continental or worldwide chain consequences was less probable, the confrontations were also local and the negative consequences they fostered could not spill over at the planetary scale.

When the decisions led to actions with negative consequences, be they unintentional, such consequences could not be too serious if the encompassing processualities had enough possibilities to amend, locate and annihilate them in time. For instance, in the previous centuries the disruptions of the ecological balance occurred at a pace which made it possible for nature to reconstruct before other unbalance came in; the damage caused by invasions and armed conflicts affected only the confronting social organizations and in ways which favored demographic and social recovery after the conflict had come to an end.

In the 20th century the situation changed dramatically, as the effects of the expansionist and aggressive strategies had become increasingly serious by including more comprehensive actions and by being designed to allow the use of more and more sophisticated weapons, as a result of more efficient theories.

In the bio-physical area, the disorganizing consequences of some people's recklessness are increasingly complex and occur at existence levels more remote from those accessible to the human being, who can perceive 'reality' only empirically:

- the natural feed-back possibility is lower and lower, because the amending processes presuppose connections among several existential levels, and by this slower paces and longer terms, but the destructive actions are too frequent and manifest at levels at which the amending processes are more complicated. For instance, the chemical aggression is more harmful than the mechanical one, and the one performed at the micro-physical and micro-biotic levels is even more harmful than the chemical one.
- the aggressions at the micro level affect the amending possibilities not only at this level, as the disorganizing processes they cause harm also the feed-back possibilities at the encompassing levels.

There are indicators that the bio-organization can no longer perform corrections in due time, that the pace and complexity of distortions are higher than the biotic mega-organization's capacities to normalize the supporting processes.

Are there also indicators that even the social existence can no longer manage to perform correcting processes? The answer is affirmative at least because the socializing processes with deviant consequences are more frequent and the behavioral deviance has ever more serious forms, being a source of many critical social situations.

Moreover, the aspects put forward in the study Pertinent criteria to assess the people's social situation and their relevance to security strategies' design reveals alterations of the public social processes which, if overlooked or neglected, can draw mankind closer to stages at which the disorganizing processes jeopardizing the people's social existence may become irreversible.

The aspects invoked are enough to notice that the security strategies should be given thorough reconsideration. They should derive from a new set of goals and become genuine contributions to the security of mankind, not just of certain communities in prejudice of others. Two prerequisites arise:

- the scientific research should be involved in investigating the issue and make its results public knowledge, so that people become aware of the real dangers;
- the compliance to the globalization constraints (seen as a process which pushes the social existence into a new development stage) should be accepted as a methodological rule in each decision to be made, especially in political as well as economic decisions.

It is necessary to take into account that many of the situations which are now insecurity sources derive from decision errors, whose disorganizing consequences have been developing since the previous decades and will continue to do so in the decades to come. Only by accepting the new interpretative approach, the one derived from focussing on the people's situation, on the human social existence, does it become obvious that the decisions which overlook mega-existence cannot be pertinent and can engender genuine insecurity-providing developments both for the people and mankind.

The kinds of situations that are to be settled right now are of a different nature from those related to the security strategies derived from focussing on one's interests while overlooking the others' as well as everybody's sharing the same social existence, whose situation determines everybody's condition.

Therefore, when this interpretative approach is adopted, it becomes obvious that the security strategies designed so far in expansionist ways have been in fact insecurity providers. The aggressors, even when winning, have gradually become victims of some of their 'victories' ' consequences. But in order that such processes can be perceived, one should analyze them without bias towards any of the parties and from the perspective of the consequences they might have for mankind.

If the analysis method is right, we may conclude that the good globalization cannot be reached till we put an end to the disorganizing consequences of the previous human errors. They manifest on an increasingly larger scale, so that by overlooking or underestimating them we may delay the advent of globalization; if amending strategies are not adopted, regress is likely to occur which may render the correcting interventions impossible, inefficient, or belated.

The genetic organizations' dysfunction in all species may be speeded up by the inevitable connections among the disorganizing processes metabolically maintained. Moreover, the specificity loss between male and female genders, if the above hypothesis is correct, can reach dangerous dimensions not only with the human species.

Taking into account the new sources of insecurity, it becomes obvious why the security strategies we are supporting are different from the previous ones; if the national and trans-national decision-making centers assume the task of dramatically cutting off the disorganizing processes caused by the social actions which jeopardize both the biotic mega-organization and the social existence, the prerequisite, which is not sufficient, would be to support the development of the theoretical research so that people can get in due course the satisfactory interpretation of mega-existence.

The midway theories have proven to be traps, as long as people hurried to use them without benefiting from the opportunity to interpret unitarily the whole range of possibilities the latter foster, including the ones derived every time from the theoretical limits and flaws.

This topic is an intricate one, as it undoubtedly encompasses many unknowns, so that an exchange of ideas and information is desirable among as many experts and people genuinely interested in the fate of mankind as possible. As for me, I am ready to participate in such debates which might help us better grasp this issue which needs a solution, and to host productive analyses on this site.

NOTES

[1] Zigmunt Bauman, The Liquid Modernity. Antet XX Press, 2000.

[2] Hans - Peter Martin & Harald Schumann. The Globalization Trap, an Attack on Democracy and Welfare. The Economic Press, Bucharest, 1998.