The Parallel and Interdependent Political Evolutions in the West and the East: Eusocial Politics ()
1. Introduction
Toward the end of the twentieth century after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, new democracies were emerging throughout Europe, Russia seemed to move toward liberal democracy, and with a more educated and prosperous middle class, China would eventually move toward liberal democracy. Liberal democracy had triumphed. It was the only legitimate form of government. There was no alternative as claimed by political scientist Francis Fukuyama in “The End of History” (Fukuyama, 1992). According to Francis Fukuyama, individual liberal democracy for individual liberty would prevail over all other political systems.
Nearly 30 years later, the global scene is very different. Liberal democracy faces multiple external and internal challenges. Externally, ethnonational autocracies prevail in the Middle East. In the Middle East, tribalization also occurs as described by Sociologist Koert Debeuf in “Tribalization: Why war is coming” (Debeuf, 2019), which describes that the end of globalization is tribalization which brings suffering and chaos in Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq. On the other hand, the strong-handed meritocracy in places such as Singapore is successful. The economic accomplishments of China and Vietnam with market-Leninist system are astonishing.
Internally, liberal democracy faces a challenge from populists who seek to drive a wedge between democracy and liberalism, resulting in illiberal democracy in some former liberal democratic countries and resulting in powerful political forces in many liberal democratic countries. According to William A. Galston (Galston, 2018), populism is the enemy of pluralism, and thus of modern democracy. Imposing the assumption of uniformity on the reality of diversity not only distorts the facts but also elevates the characteristics of some social groups over those of others. To the extent that this occurs, populism becomes a threat to democracy. In short, populism plunges democratic societies into an endless series of moralized zero-sum conflicts; it threatens the rights of minorities; and it enables over-bearing leaders to dismantle the checkpoints on the road to autocracy. According to Péter Krekó, populism in power turns into political tribalism (Krekó, 2021). According to Marlene Wind, tribalization is a global megatrend in today’s world. The election of Donald Trump, the Brexit vote, populist movements like Catalan separatism—together with democratic backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe—are all examples of tribalization (Wind, 2020).
Internally, liberal democracy also has faced the challenges of the financial crisis in 2008 and the pandemic crisis in 2020-2021 largely because of excessive individual liberty in market and human behaviors. The crises force liberal democracy to move toward big government. In December 2020 (Curran et al., 2020) for the pandemic crisis, Bloomberg declares that big government staged a comeback as the social contract between society and the state got rewritten on the fly. It became commonplace for authorities to track where people went and who they met—and to pay their wages when employers couldn’t manage it. In countries where free-market ideas had reigned for decades, safety nets had to be patched up. The liberal democratic countries deal with the pandemic crisis much worse than Singapore, China, and Vietnam.
How do we explain liberal democracy and its challengers in political types? To explain such political types, this paper proposes that the three types of politics are territorial politics based on territorialism from tribal culture with rigid boundary, individualistic politics based on individualism from pastoral-trade culture with flexible boundary, and collectivistic politics based on collectivism from agrarian culture with flexible boundary (Chung, 2020). Populism, tribalism, and ethnonational autocracies belong to territorial politics based on territorialism from tribal culture with rigid boundary to protect the homogeneous ingroup against outgroup. Liberal democracy for individual liberty at the expense of common wellbeing belongs to individualistic politics based on individualism from pastoral-trade culture with flexible boundary. Meritocracy, market-Leninist system, socialism, Marxism, and big government for common wellbeing at the expense of individual liberty belong to collectivistic politics based on collectivism from agrarian culture with flexible boundary as in Table 1.
All three types of politics are the political evolutionary products in different times and places. Now because of global communication and interaction, all three types of politics are on the same global platform, and have to interact with one another. The people in one type of politics feel that the people in the other two types of politics are abnormal and obnoxious, resulting in political conflicts.
This paper proposes the political evolution is through the political transformations in different technological Ages (the New Stone, Bronze, Iron, Industrial, Information, and Intelligence Ages) from technological revolutions. The parallel political evolutions in the individualistic West and the collectivistic East were originated from Greece and China, respectively. In the West, the politics in the
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Table 1. The challenges to liberal democracy.
New Stone Age was territorial hereditary pastoral-trade tribe with rigid boundary; the politics in the Bronze Age was individualistic hereditary nation alliance with flexible boundary; the politics in the Iron Age was individualistic elective mega empire with flexible boundary; the politics in the Industrial Age was individualistic individual liberal democracy with flexible boundary; the politics in the Information Age is individualistic multilateral organization with multifaceted boundary; the politics in the coming Intelligence Age (Makridakis, 2017) will be individualistic eusocial politics with multifaceted boundary.
In the East, the politic in the New Stone Age was territorial hereditary agrarian tribe with rigid boundary; the politics in the Bronze Age was collectivistic hereditary feudal nation with flexible boundary; the politics in the late Bronze/Iron Age was collectivistic civil service mega empire with flexible boundary; the politics in the Industrial Age was collectivist common professional democracy with flexible boundary; the politics in the Information Age is collectivistic multilateral organization with multifaceted boundary; the politics in the coming Intelligence Age will be collectivistic eusocial politics with multifaceted boundary as Table 2 and Figure 1.
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Figure 1. The parallel political evolutions between the West and the East.
As shown in this paper, the politics in the West and the East are different and interdependent. Instead of the hegemony of the West or the East, the best politics as eusocial politics involves the harmony between the West and the East under one earth, one future, and one people to overcome global crises. Section 2 describes the three types of politics including territorial, individualistic, collectivistic politics. Section 3 explains the New Stone Age and the Bronze Age. Section 4 describes the Iron Age. Section 5 describes the Industrial Age. Section 6 explains the Information Age. Section 7 describes the Intelligence Age.
2. The Three Types of Politics: Territorial, Individualistic, and Collectivistic Politics
This section describes the origin of the three types of politics (territorial, individualistic and collectivistic politics) and the major political differences among them.
2.1. The Origin of Politics
This origin of politics is derived from the mental origin and civilizational origin.
2.1.1. The Mental Origin of Politics
The three types of politics are derived from ingroup and outgroup. Ingroups are the groups to which individuals both belong and psychologically identify, while outgroups are those to which individuals do not belong or identify. A person shows favoritism toward ingroup, and shows derogation toward outgroup. Boundary exists between distinctive ingroup and distinctive outgroup (Brewer, 1999).
Such attitudes toward ingroup and outgroup are instinctive, appearing even in babies at few months old. As shown in the Infant Cognition Center at Yale University (Hamlin, Mahajan, & Wynn, 2013), babies prefer the objects (such as dolls) as ingroup objects that have similarities with the babies rather than the objects as outgroup objects that do not have similarities with the babies. Babies also prefer the objects with helpful behavior to the objects with bully behavior. However, babies prefer the doll that bullies another doll that is not like the babies.
Humans were evolved with territorial politics with rigid boundary to separate ingroup and outgroup. On the other hand, chimpanzee and bonobo have fission-fusion society with overlapping social groups in which the social group size and composition change throughout the year with different activities and situations. As a result, they do not have rigid boundary between ingroup and outgroup, resulting in extended ingroup or extended outgroup without rigid boundary. The natural habitats of chimpanzees and bonobos are separated by Congo River. The poor natural habitat where chimpanzees live has much higher resource competition than the rich natural habitat where bonobos live. Therefore, the core politics of chimpanzees is individualism politics adaptive to competition with extended outgroup, while the core politics of bonobos is collectivism politics adaptive to cooperation with extended ingroup. Individualism politics in chimpanzee is shown in a high propensity for proactive aggression and reactive aggression (Wrangham, 2018; Chung, 2020), while collectivism politics in bonobo is shown in a low propensity for proactive aggression and reactive aggression. Compared with chimpanzees and bonobos, humans have a high propensity for proactive aggression like chimpanzees and unlike bonobos, and a low propensity for reactive aggression unlike chimpanzees and like bonobos (Wrangham, 2018). In bonobos, no proactive aggression leading to intergroup killings has been observed (Wilson et al., 2014). Proactive aggression toward conspecifics is accordingly much more common in chimpanzees and humans than in bonobos, where it is infrequent or absent. The highly aggressive behaviors of adult male chimpanzees can be described as male warriors (McDonald et al., 2012). The politics of human, chimpanzee, and bonobo are in Table 3.
2.1.2. The Civilizational Origin of Politics
For humans, the politics based on natural instinct is territorial politics from hunter-gatherer band. In the New Stone Age, the agrarian-pastoral technological revolution split the hunter-gatherer bands into settled agrarian tribes on fertile agrarian land and nomadic pastoral tribe on arid pastoral land. An exchange system grew up between agrarian tribes and pastoral tribes for the products such as hides, wool, milk, meat, horn and bone, and live animals from pastoral tribes for grain, peas, crafts, and tools from agrarian tribes. According to Nisbett et al. (2001), most subsistence research has compared herders and farmers, arguing that the independence and mobility of herding make herding cultures individualistic and that the stability and high labor demands of farming make farming cultures collectivistic. Traders with high mobility, like herders, are also individualistic. Even in the current society, using food production data in the 1970s and in the 1990s, Linghui Tang found that per capita production of milk was positively related to individualism (Tang, 2017).
Johannes C. Buggle documented that societies whose ancestors jointly practiced irrigation agriculture historically with highly collective efforts have stronger collectivist norms today. Framers, particularly, rice farmers, must work together for irrigation, flood control, transportation, and security. This finding holds across countries, sub-national districts within countries, and migrants, and is robust to instrumenting the historical adoption of irrigation by its geographic suitability (Buggle, 2020).
In the Bronze Age, the invention from bronze destroyed the rigid boundary among tribes, resulting in city states or nations with flexible boundary. Individualistic politics prevails in the West originated from Greece (traders), while collectivistic politics prevails in the East originated from China (agriculturalists). Unlike territorial politics which is natural instinct, individualistic politics and collectivistic politics are established institutions reinforced by various rules as in Table 4.
In the study of individualism-collectivism by Hofstede et al. (2010), countries/areas for individualism scores are USA-91, UK-89, France-71, Germany-69, India-48, Japan-46, Russia-39, Hong Kong (China)-25, China-20, Singapore-20, South Korea-18, and Taiwan (China)-17. According to Hofstede, individualistic cultures stress “I” consciousness. The core assumption in a culture like this is that individual is unique and independent of one another. In contrast, collectivistic cultures emphasize “we” consciousness. In a collectivistic culture, people are expected to be interdependent and to conform to the group’s norms and values.
2.2. The Political Differences among Politics
The political differences among politics include political organizations, social rules, production types, universal rights, and overall perspectives.
2.2.1. Political Organizations
Different politics have different political organizations. For territorial politics, the political organization is ingroup against outgroup with rigid boundary which clearly distinguish ingroup from outgroup. A territorial unit always views ingroup favorably and outgroup unfavorably. The passion toward favorable ingroup and the hostility against unfavorably outgroup maintains the political organization. The political organization structure is basically exclusive ingroup organization.
With flexible boundary and extended outgroup, the political organization of individualistic politics is not based on ingroup-outgroup dualism. The political organization is based on the competition among all groups based on majority-rule. The political organization is competitive organization, which evolved into competitive partisan election developed in the West, particularly in Greece.
With flexible boundary and extended ingroup, the political organization of collectivistic politics is based on consensus among all groups. The political organization government is consensual civil service organization, which evolved
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Table 4. The three types of politics.
into consensual professional civil service developed in the East, particularly in China. Competitive election was introduced from the West to China in the 20th century, while civil service was introduced from China to the West in the 19th century (Kazin, Edwards, & Rothman, 2010).
Competitive partisan election and consensual professional civil service are interdependent, as competitive partisan election provides the change in politics, and consensual professional civil service provides experience and stability in politics. Most countries have both in different forms and different proportions between competitive partisan election and consensual professional civil service.
2.2.2. Social Rules
Each politics also has social rule for the political and personal conducts. With rigid boundary, the social rule for territorial politics is rule of boundary to separate ingroup from outgroup. With flexible boundary and independent extended outgroup, the social rule for collectivistic politics is rule of law to control independent outgroups developed in the West, particularly in Greece. With flexible boundary and connective extended ingroup, the social rule for collectivistic politics is rule of relation among connective ingroups developed in the East, particularly in China.
Rule of boundary is instinctive. Rule of relation developed and rule of law have to be learned and enforced. In general, rule of relation is flexible but imprecise, while rule of law is precise but inflexible. The East has well-developed rule of relation, while the West has well-developed rule of law. Rule of relation and rule of law are interdependent as they need each other in different situations and areas. All countries require the mixture of rule of boundary, rule of relation, and rule of law in different proportions and priorities.
2.2.3. Production Types
Settled agriculturalists and nomadic pastoralists-traders developed different production types. The arid pastoral land brought about competitive adventurous production type with high-profit, high risk, and low coordination frequent migration, military plundering, and risky nomadic long-distance trade. The production relation among pastoralists-traders was individualism which required individual independence in adventurous production type. The fertile agrarian land produced cooperative consolidative production type with consolidative, low risk, and high coordination agrarian irrigation and infrastructure. For territorial politics, the production type is protective production type to protect production within rigid boundary.
Using data for 82 countries, James B. Ang shows that the technology adoption as in the competitive adventurous production type strongly correlates with national scores on individualistic cultures (Ang, 2019). The result provides a framework for understanding the underlying causes of the variation in the levels of technological development across countries. According to Johannes C. Buggle, irrigation agriculture also affects economic behavior. Descends of irrigation societies innovate less today, and are more likely to work in routine-intensive occupations as in the cooperative consolidative production type, even when they live outside their ancestral homelands (Buggle, 2020). As a result, the need to act collectively as in irrigation agriculture has contributed to the global divergence of culture and technology into competitive adventurous production type and cooperative consolidative production type.
Adventurous production type is strong in invention, productivity, efficiency, and marketing, whereas consolidative production type is strong in development, supply chain, economy of scale, and ration. The West is strong in adventurous production type, while the East is strong in consolidative production type. Adventurous production type and consolidative production type are complementary and interdependent to each other.
2.2.4. Universal Rights
In the Declaration of Independence, “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Such unalienable rights are basically universal rights applicable to all people. In territorial politics, there is permanent separation between ingroup and outgroup, so to territorial politics, there is no universal rights. Only individualistic politics and collectivistic politics with flexible boundary have universal rights.
The universal rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness derived from John Locke’s life, liberty, and estate can be interpreted as life, liberty, and livelihood. Livelihood involves the happiness of basic human needs in livelihood. Individualistic politics and collectivistic politics have different priority with respect to life, liberty, and livelihood. Individualistic politics is derived from herders-traders who need a lot of freedom to raise animals and to trade in a wide region, and also take considerable risk in terms of life and livelihood to move in a wide region, so liberty matters more than life and livelihood. Collectivistic politics is derived from famers who lives permanently in one restrictive region, and have to work together closely for irrigation, flood control, transportation, and security at the expense of individual liberty, so life and livelihood matter more than liberty.
Presently, universal rights mean human rights. Therefore, to individual liberal democracy derived from individualistic politics, the most important human rights involve liberty (freedom), while to common professional democracy derived from collectivistic politics, the most important human rights involve life and livelihood. In fact, individual liberal democracy does not do well in the protection of life and livelihood as shown in the current pandemic, gun violence, racial violence, and poverty, while common professional democracy does not do well in the protection of political and religious freedoms. They accuse each other of human right violations.
Both individualistic politics and collectivistic politics intend to protect all human rights, but each country must balance life-livelihood and liberty to be adaptive to its politics, culture, and situation. As a result, human rights simply cannot be used to intrude other countries’ sovereignties without considering other countries’ politics, cultures, and situations.
No democratic country wants to be extreme in liberty or in life-livelihood. For example, in the U.S., after the long period of the neglect in life-livelihood since President Ronald Reagent, the U.S. now swings back to life-livelihood at the expense of liberty (Obeidallah, 2021). Liberty and life-livelihood are interdependent to each other as the countermeasure to the extreme.
2.2.5. Overall Perceptions
Westerners and Easterners have different perceptions. Westerners pay attention to the focal object separated from its surrounding based on discrete perception as in individualism, while Easterners attend more broadly to the overall surroundings and to the relations between the object and the field as in collectivism (Nisbett, 2004). One typical way to identify Westerners vs. Easterners is to pair panda, monkey, and banana. Typically, Westerners pair panda and monkey for the same category (animals), while Easterners pair monkey and banana for the relationship (monkey eats banana). Individualism in the West and collectivism in the East do not think alike.
The two different perceptions affect the patterns of definition developed or drawn on by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in Greece and by Confucius and Laozi in China. According to Xiaosui Xiao, generally speaking, the Platonic and Aristotelian patterns of definition lead to a concept that is single-faceted in character, that is, the concept has only one true and proper definition (Xiao, 2008). In the Chinese classics, however, such a single-faceted concept is rarely found. Almost all of the important Chinese concepts are multifaceted, associated concurrently with many different definitions under different circumstances (fields). The single-faceted concept and the multifaceted concept each has advantages and disadvantages. Having the intention and extension of a concept fixed through the genus-species and genus-differentiae methods of definition is a way of creating the impression of precision. The Greek patterns of definition suggest a logical and scientific way of understanding. A multifaceted concept, in contrast, has the great ability and possibility of being adaptable to changing situations. It is a “living metaphor” and permeable to new definitions and interpretations.
Politically, single-faceted categorical perception prefers “one way” politics, while multi-faceted relational perception prefers “both ways” politics. As a result, the overall perspectives for individualistic politics and collectivistic politics are single-faceted categorical perspective and multi-faceted relational perspective. Both perspectives are interdependent as the countermeasure to the extreme. The political differences among politics are listed in Table 5.
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Table 5. The political differences among politics.
3. The New Stone Age and the Bronze Age: Tribalization and Nationalization
3.1. The Civilizational Shifts
The New Stone (Neolithic) Age began about 12,000 years ago by the first developments of farming appeared in Near East. In the New Stone Age, the agrarian-pastoral technological revolution split the hunter-gatherer bands into settled agrarian tribes on fertile agrarian land and nomadic pastoral tribe on arid pastoral land. Most of the time, relations between settled agriculturalists and nomadic pastoralists-traders were harmonious with rigid boundary with travelling traders between the two groups. The large differences in lifestyles and lands allowed settled agriculturalists and nomadic pastoralists-traders to stay in separate places peacefully without mixing for a very long time. With rigid boundary between agriculturalists and pastoralists-traders, the politics was territorial politics. The political type was tribalism ruled by tribal chiefs in terms of hereditary monarchy. The civilizational shift is from small band to large tribe with rigid boundary.
Herders, traders, and farmers were separated and interdependent. Herders needed agricultural products such as grains from farmers, farmers needed horses, dairy, meat, and wools from herders, traders needed goods from farmers and herders to trade, and herders and farmers needed traders to sell and buy goods.
The bronze technological revolution led to the invention of vehicles with spoked wheels for long-distant battle and chariots for effective weapon which effectively destroyed the boundary between the agrarian tribe and the pastoral tribe resulting in the transformation from split tribes into nations consisting of both pastoral tribes and agrarian tribes (Chung, 2020). The result is the formation of nation consisting of different tribes with flexible boundary. The civilizational shift is from tribe with rigid boundary to nation with flexible boundary. The dominant politics in each nation could be pastoral, trade, or agrarian. As in tribes, pastoral nation, trade nation, and agrarian nation were interdependent.
3.2. Political Organization
The New Stone Age and the Bronze Age can be described by political organization and social rule. In terms of political organization, Greece and China had different political organizations in the New Stone Age and the Bronze Age.
3.2.1. Greece: Tribe and City States
Greece is a peninsula with scattered numerous islands. The Greek mainland is rugged and arid which could not have a good crop production, so the agriculture in terms of foods from the rugged arid land could not support a large population. To support a large population, Greece was dependent on imported foods. The impact of limited crop production was offset by Greece’s position in the Mediterranean to control over some of the most crucial seaports and trade routes. Greece’s main exports were olive oil and wine. Imports included grains and pork from various locations. The economy of Greece was defined largely by trade. Traders were independent. The economy of trade produced individualism. In the Greek mainland, tribes or cities which were separated by steep and rugged mountains or sea were fairly independent from one another. The geography of Greece also created individualism.
In 9000-8500 years ago, agriculturalists from the Near East entered the Greek peninsula from Anatolia by island-hopping through the Aegean Sea to start the New Stone Age. The political system in the New Stone Age was territorial hereditary monarchy from the trade tribes with rigid boundary.
The Cycladic culture who spoke Indo-European language as the proto-Greek language arrived in Greece about 3200 BCE in the early Bronze Age which transformed rigid boundary into flexible boundary. The Minoan civilization originated in Crete arrived in Greece in the middle Bronze Age. The Helladic culture replaced the Minoan civilization in the late Bronze Age. The Mycenaean civilization was the last of the Helladic culture until 1100 BCE when the Bronze Age collapsed. The political system was individualistic hereditary monarchy from individualistic city states with flexible boundary. The production type adaptable to individualistic city states in trade society was competitive adventurous production type.
3.2.2. China: Tribe and Feudal System
The cradle of Chinese civilization is the Yellow River, which is a source of rich fertile soil and irrigation water. Unlike the Greek mainland, the Yellow River Valley had a good crop production that could support a large population of people. It did not need importing food, but it needed the collective efforts from different tribes along the river to manage the river in terms of irrigation, transportation, and flood control. In about 2100 BCE, tribal leaders came together to try to solve the problem of flood that wiped out their villages and crops. Da Yu, or Yu the Great who created systems to control the floods became the first Emperor of the first Dynasty as the Xia Dynasty. The collective efforts for food production were important for irrigation agriculture. The economy of irrigation agriculture produced collectivism in China.
The long Yellow River also connected various tribes along the river and the branches. The irrigation agriculture economy and the long river geography created collectivism for the concept of one China along the Yellow River and the branches, in contrast to individualism among various separated independent city states in the Greek mainland. In China, rivers and canals (such as the Grand Canal) have been important for collectivistic agriculture in terms of irrigation, transportation, and flood control, while in Greece, seas have been important for individualistic trade.
In China, the New Stone Age civilizations originated at various cultural centers along both the Yellow River and Yangtze River in about 10,000 BCE. The culture center in the Central Plain (Zhongyuan) in the middle section of the Yellow River has the longest continuous history. The political system in the New Stone Age was territorial hereditary monarchy with rigid boundary.
The Bronze Age destroyed the rigid boundary to form collectivistic hereditary monarchy. The first dynasty in the Bronze Age is the Xia Dynasty (2070-1600 BCE) whose capital was Luoyang in the Central Plain. The dynasty was founded by Yu the Great who worked relentlessly for 13 years to control the flooding of the Yellow River. He was so focused on his work that it was said he did not return home once in all those years, even though he seemed to have passed by his house on at least three occasions, and this dedication to public welfare at the expense of personal welfare inspired others to follow him. Yu the Great exemplifies collectivism for agrarian society. Different tribes were unified under Yu the Great to form a decentralized hereditary monarchy, because a unified agrarian society had tremendous advantages in terms of collaborative irrigation, transportation, and flood control for collectivistic cooperative consolidative production type. An agrarian society is not adaptable to individualistic competitive adventurous production type as in Greek trade society in competitive city states. The aristocracy and the elite lived in urban clusters while the peasants remained largely lived in rural areas.
The extravagance of the Xia court and the resultant burden on the populace led to the uprising, resulting in the new dynasty, the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BCE) in the same Yellow River Valley. Writing started to appear in the Shang Dynasty. The administration of the king was based primarily on kinship alliances, generational status, and personal charisma. It was a decentralized collectivistic monarchy as decentralized feudalism based on the ruling class consisting of the Son of Heaven (king) and nobles, and the lower class consisting of commoners.
The effective control over distance by feudalism was relatively weak. The people worshipped many gods with one supreme god, Shangti, as head of the pantheon. Shangti was considered “the great ancestor” who presided over victory in war, agriculture, the weather, and good government. The people interacted with immediate intercessors for their needs, resulting in the practice of ancestor worship. The king served as chief official and mediator between the living and the dead and his rule was considered ordained by Shangti.
The Zhou dynasty (1046-256 BCE) replaced the Shang Dynasty after the king of Shang killed his older brother unjustly. The Mandate of Heaven was invoked by King Wu of Zhou to legitimize the revolt as he felt the Shang had forfeited the mandate between the monarchy and Shangti. The Mandate of Heaven literally means “Heaven’s will” which embodies the Shangti’s blessing on a just ruler as a good steward of the lands. The Mandate of Heaven does not require a legitimate ruler to be of noble birth but how well that person can rule. It was how Zhou could replace Shang.
The Zhou consists of the Western Zhou (1046-771 BCE) and the Eastern Zhou (771-256 BCE). The Western Zhou formalized the feudal system from the Shang. The Zhou kings granted their clan relatives and fellow warriors as vassals for certain regions. They became the de facto rulers of the regions. This created large numbers of local domains, which became autonomous states. The rulers of these vassal states had a political obligation to pay homage to the king. For about two centuries the Western Zhou enjoyed stability and peace. The southern expansion was successful, and the northern expansion worked to keep the nomads away from the Chinese areas. The political system was collectivistic hereditary monarchy from decentralized feudal system with flexible boundary. The production type is cooperative consolidative production type.
3.3. The Social Rule: Rule of Law and Rule of Relation
The New Stone Age and the Bronze Age can be described by political organization and social rule. In terms of social order, Greece and China had different social rules in the New Stone Age and the Bronze Age.
3.3.1. Social Rule for the New Stone Age
In the early pre-civilized society, the social rule depended on the instinctive social brain and the instinctive mental immune system. Such social instinct for social rule is called conscience. After the Agricultural Revolution, a large orderly civilized tribe with rigid boundary has territorial politics and rule of boundary enforced by boundary system to separate ingroup and outgroup where individuals in ingroup are good, and individuals in outgroup are bad. As a result, in rule of boundary, rule for ingroup is different from rule for outgroup. Rule for ingroup is rule of moralized relational based on the explicit, standardized, and rational morality for instinctive intragroup relation including commitment for family, reciprocity for alliance, interdependence for division of labor, and generativity for multigeneration. The totality of morality is love which is to connect to all individuals (in the past, present, and future) in the ingroup. Moralized relational rule deals with connective and related individuals in ingroup, and is enforced by honor and shame for the fulfillment and unfulfillment, respectively, of relational rule. Shame in moralized relational rule relates to reactive aggression toward the ingroup, and the aggressor (judge) has connection with the individual (sinner) in shame (humiliation). Moralized relational rule is enforced by reactive aggression. The enforcement agent is the manner system for relation in terms of rites, etiquette, and customs among individuals in ingroup to reinforce relation, and each individual in the manner system is relational with pre-existing relation.
Rule for outgroup is rule of law as legalized contract rule including contracts among traders from different tribes and treaties among the chiefs of different tribes. Such legalized contract rule is basically arbitrary contract. Legalized contract rule deals with discrete and independent individuals, and is enforced by reward and punishment for observation and violation, respectively, of legalized contract rule. Punishment in legalized contract rule relates to proactive aggression toward outgroup, and the aggressor (judge) has no connection with the individual (violator) in punishment. Legalized contract rule is enforced by proactive aggression. The enforcement agent is the legal system for legalized contract rule, and each individual in the legal system is independent without pre-existing relation.
3.3.2. Social Rule for the Bronze Age
The Bronze Age changed rigid boundary into flexible boundary, and transformed territorial politics into collectivistic politics with extended ingroup or individualistic politics with extended outgroup. Individualistic politics required rule of law. An early written rule of law was the Code of Hammurabi the Code of Hammurabi which was carved from a single, four-ton slab of diorite, dating from 1750 BCE. Hammurabi, the King of Babylon (1894-1595 BCE) originally from the Amorites, a semi-nomadic tribe in western Syria, needed to unite his disparate realm, and decided to establish common rules of conduct, commerce, and devotion to the king under a system overseen by judges. Hammurabi’s Code provides some of the earliest examples of the laws of retribution, sometimes better known as “an eye for an eye.” The 282 edicts are all written in if-then form. The legal code predated but bore striking parallels to the laws outlined in the Hebrew Old Testament.
During the Bronze Age, the individualistic Greeks had no official laws or punishments. If you murdered someone that persons family had the right to kill you back. Rule of law was established in Greece during the Iron Age. In collectivistic China, during the Bronze Age, rule of relation was used to enforce various family and social relations. During the Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age, rule of relation was formalized by Confucianism.
4. The Iron Age: Mega Empire
4.1. The Civilizational Shift: Mega Empire
The Iron Age (the Iron Revolution) started between 1200BCE and 600BCE, depending on the region. Iron is tougher and lighter than bronze and was used to make much better sharp objects like spears, swords, and sharp tools than bronze. The source for iron was much more abundant than bronze. The state with iron technology was strong enough with enough destructive power of iron weapons to form mega nations such as mega empires. The earliest mega centralized empires were the neo-Assyrian empire (934-609 BCE) and neo-Babylonian empire (612-539 BCE). In some regions, such as China, the late bronze period and the early iron period were overlapped, so mega empires were formed in the late bronze period, and completely solidified in the iron period. The civilizational shift is from nation to mega empire.
4.2. The Political Organizations
The Iron Age can be described by political organization and social rule. In terms of political organizations, Greece and China had different political organizations in the Iron Age.
4.2.1. Greece: Competitive Election
In the half-century between 1200 and 1150 BCE, the Mycenaean kingdoms collapsed as a part of the violent late Bronze Age collapse from the late Bronze Age to the early Iron Age in the Near East, Anatolia, the Aegean region, North Africa, the Caucasus, the Balkans, and the Eastern Mediterranean. Upon the invasion of the tribe of the Dorians from northern Europe, the palace economy of individualistic hereditary monarchy in the Mycenaean kingdoms was transformed into the small isolated village cultures of the Greek Dark Ages (1100-800 BCE).
The Greek Dark Ages lasted roughly 400 years and ended with the establishment of Archaic Greece (800-510 BCE). Greece was divided into many small self-governing city states separated by the sea or mountain ranges. In the Orient, mega empires such as the neo-Assyrian empire and neo-Babylonian empire appeared with the civilizational shift from nations to mega empires. The Archaic period was the Orientalizing period, when Greece adopted significant amounts of cultural elements from mega empires in the Orient, in art as well as in religion and mythology to adopt the elements in the civilizational shift from nations to mega empires.
The Archaic period was followed by the Classical period (510-323 BCE) which refers to the period between the Persian Wars at the beginning of the fifth century BCE and the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE. Two major wars in this period were the Persian Wars (499-449 BC) against the mega Persian Empire and the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE) among the city states in Greece. The Peloponnesian War ended with the defeat of Athens by Spartan in 404 BCE. By the second half of in the fourth century BCE, disorder reigned within the former Athenian empire. This disorder allowed the conquest of Greece by the Macedonian kings Philip II and his son, Alexander the Great who build a mega empire. The death of Alexander the Great resulted in the end of the classical period and the beginning of the Hellenistic period (323-146 BCE).
Without a clear line of succession after Alexander the Great, his strongest generals divided it up into several vast kingdoms. The mutual cultural exchanges between Greek culture and local cultures took place in these vast kingdoms. Ruler-cults became common as Hellenistic kings and queens to be worshipped alongside local gods (Shipley, 2000).
The Hellenistic period was followed by the Roman Greece period (146 BCE-324 AD) starting from the Roman conquest of Greece. The Greek colonies and mainland Greece were invaded gradually by Rome. In 86 BCE, Athens fell to a siege by Roman troops. Romans respected and indeed emulated many aspects of Greek culture. Roman artists copied sculptures, paintings, and architectures from Greece. The Greek culture dominated the Roman Greece period (Alcock, 1993).
Between about 800 BCE and 650 BCE, most Greek city-states were ruled by a small group of men. These men were called oligarchs, and they often ruled like kings who shared power together. From about 650 BCE to 500 BCE, in some Greek city-states, some leaders overthrow kings or oligarchs to become tyrants. Later, the people in many city-states revolted and used their strength in numbers to throw the tyrant out of power. By 500 BCE, a new form of government was created in the city-state of Athens. This type of government, called upper class democracy, gave all of the power to the upper class men excluding women, slaves, and poor people. This type of government lasted into the year 400 BCE. In an upper class democracy government, the upper class men rule by voting. Athens created orderly competitive election.
The Roman Republic (509-27 BCE) combined both tyranny and democracy. The Republic was divided into the three basic parts including elected non-hereditary magistrates, a Senate to advise and consent, and popular assemblies. Instead of a king, and to guard against despotism, the Republic chose two consuls as executive magistrates appointed by the popular assembly. The two consuls represented tyranny. The Senate served as an advisory body to the consuls. Throughout most of its existence, the Roman Senate remained the domain of the wealthy. It was the embodiment of oligarchy, a lawmaking body governed by the aristocracy. The democratic part of Roman government was in the form of assemblies, in which the Roman people directly elected executive magistrates. The Roman Republic served as a direct model of government for the writers of the American constitution. The political system was individualistic elective monarchy/upper class.
4.2.2. China: Consensual Civil Service
In 771 BCE, the king of the Zhou was killed by invading nomads, resulting in the Eastern Zhou. During the Eastern Zhou dynasty (771-256 BCE) in the late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age, the vassal states developed into their own kingdoms, reducing the Eastern Zhou dynasty to merely an empty name. The Eastern Zhou consists of the Spring and Autumn period (772-476 BCE) and the Warring States period (475-221 BCE). During the Spring and Autumn period, The feudal structure and kinship ties fell apart, the feudal-kinship system gradually declined and disappeared, resulting in hundreds of states The demise of feudal-kinship system produced the rise of civil service (bureaucracy) based on the combination of non-hereditary merit and seniority. The prefecture system with civil service was developed in some states. In one state, several dozen prefects had limited authority and tenure, and were functionary, in contrast to the feudal practice. Prefects were often required to submit annual reports to the court so that the ruler could judge their performance.
The chaotic Spring and Autumn period led to the Warring States period in which seven states (Chu, Han, Qi, Qin, Wei, Yan, and Zhao) fought with each other for control. None of the seven states were confident in claiming the Mandate of Heaven still held by the Zhou of Luoyang. During the periods of the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States, the Hundred Schools of Thought of Chinese philosophy blossomed, and such influential intellectual movements as Confucianism, Daoism, Legalism, and Mohism were founded to find solutions to the changing and chaotic political world. Confucianism favored the return to the idealistic feudal system in the Western Zhou under rule of relation, while Legalism favored civil service under rule of law.
In Qin, a statesman, Shang Yang, a great believer in efficiency and law, had recast the Qin understanding of warfare to focus on victory at any cost. Ying Zheng, King of Qin. utilizing Shang’s directives, and with an army of considerable size using iron weapons and driving chariots, defeated all other states, and proclaimed himself Shi Huangdi (First Emperor) of the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BCE).
To unify China under his centralized rule, Shi Huangdi abolished the feudal system, and formalized the prefectural system with the establishment of thirty-six prefectures and a rotational system for appointing local officials. The prefectural system gave more power to the central government. The prefectural system became the predecessor for China. To defend the northern border, he ordered the building of a 3000 miles Great Wall along the northern border of his kingdom from the boundaries of Korea in the east to the Ordos Desert in the west (Scarre and Fagan, 2011). He also strengthened the infrastructure through road building and canal construction for transportation. He standardized measurement, the legal code, the written language, and currency of China. He promoted the Legalism developed by Shang Yang, and suppressed all other philosophies. After his death in 210 BCE, his son could not stop a widespread rebellion, and the Qin Dynasty quickly collapsed.
The Han Dynasty (206 BCE-220 AD) began with the accession of Liu-Bang. The Han Dynasty is a golden age in Chinese history with a long period of stability and prosperity. Initially, Emperors Wen and Jing practiced laissez-faire policies in accordance with Daoism to recover from the excess of the Qin Dynasty. The ambitious Emperor Wu brought the empire to its zenith. To consolidate his power, Confucianism, which emphasizes stable and orderly rule of relation adaptable to agrarian society, was established as the guiding philosophical thoughts and moral principles of the empire. Rule of law from the Qin was used to supplement Confucian rule of relation. Since Confucianism favored the feudal system in the Western Zhou, the Han incorporated the feudal system into the prefectural system with civil service by parcel out land to the relatives of the Zhou. Imperial Universities were established to support its study and training in Confucianism which became a key qualification for civil service.
The Chinese civil service system gave the Chinese empire stability for more than 2000 years and provided one of the major outlets for social mobility in Chinese society. The first centralized Chinese civil service system was established in the Qin based on recommendations by local officials. In 124 BCE, under the reign of the Han Wudi, an imperial university was established to train and test officials in the techniques of Confucian government. There were a total of 12 grades in the Han civil service, ranging from that of clerk to the most senior minister of state. Promotion could be achieved from one grade of the service to the next, and in theory a man could rise from the humblest to the highest post.
The Sui dynasty (581-618) began establishing an examination system, based upon the Confucian Classical curriculum, to draw scholars into the civil service system from the southern and northeastern elites who had preserved traditions of Confucian learning. The Tang dynasty (618-907) created a system of local schools where scholars could pursue their studies and competed in the civil service examination which tested a candidate’s knowledge of the Confucian Classics. By the end of the Tang dynasty, the old aristocracy was destroyed, and its power was taken by the nonhereditary scholar-gentry. The civil service system expanded to what many consider its highest point during the Song dynasty (960-1279). Public schools were established throughout the country to help the talented but indigent students.
Some countries in the East Asia adopted Chinese civil service system through examination. As a result, the emphasis in education continues today in China, Singapore, and the other East Asian countries. For examples, to test gathering and applying knowledge, the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international assessment that measures 15-year-old students’ reading, mathematics, and science literacy every three years. In PISA 2018 (OECD, 2019b), children from the East Asian countries were ranked high in all three subjects. The top five in Mathematics are China, Singapore, Macao China, Hong Kong China, and Chinese Taipei.
For more than hundred years, the West has incorporated the civil service system from China. The instability in chaotic competitive election in individual liberal democracy can be minimized by meritocratic professional civil service. The first European power to implement a successful meritocratic civil service was the British Empire, in their administration of India: “company managers hired and promoted employees based on competitive examinations in order to prevent corruption and favoritism” (Kazin, Edwards, & Rothman, 2010). In 1883, the system of appointments to the United States Federal Bureaucracy was revamped by the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, partially based on the British meritocratic civil service that had been established years earlier. The act stipulated that government jobs should be awarded on the basis of merit, through competitive exams, rather than ties to politicians or political affiliation.
4.3. The Social Rules: Rule of Law and Rule of Relation
The rise of the mega empires destroyed tribal territorial and hierarchical boundaries, and produced the great rational thinkers in the Axial Age to establish the new rational social rules for the mega empires. The great rational thinkers include Confucius and Laozi in China, and Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in Greece. They replaced territorial politics with rigid territorial by individualistic politics and collectivistic politics with flexible boundary. In the West, the great rational thinkers based on individualistic politics produced rule of law with flexible boundaries. As a result, rule of law deals with the extended outgroup among individualistic and independent individuals with flexible boundary. No one is beyond and above rule of law enforced by reward and punishment for observation and violation, respectively, of rule of law.
In Athens, Greece, all citizens had the right to bring both private and public matters before the courts maintained by magistrates and jurors from peers. The Athenian legal system appears to have worked efficiently. The commercial law in Athens introduced the principle of binding and enforceable contracts among equal citizens, and helped to make Athens the region’s center for trade. Aristotle recognized that the rule of law required the separation of powers, including legislative branch to make the rule of law, the executive branch to enforce the rule of law, and the judicial branch where individual judges base their decisions solely on facts and law of individual cases independently of either the executive or legislative powers. This separation of powers for the rule of law served as a direct model of government for the writers of the American constitution.
In the East, the great rational thinkers based on collectivistic politics produced rule of relation with flexible boundary. As a result, rule of relation deals with the extended ingroup among collectivistic and related individuals with flexible boundary. No one is beyond and above rule of relation enforced by honor and shame for the fulfillment and unfulfillment, respectively, of rule of relation. In Confucianism, individuals are not individualistic and independent, and all individuals are in relations with other people. The five relationships in the extended ingroup are the relationships of ruler to subject, parent to child, husband to wife, elder sibling to younger sibling, and friend to friend. Politics is expressed as harmony. “In practicing the rules of propriety, it is harmony that is prized” (Analects 1: 12).
In addition to rule of relation, China also has established rule of law (Head and Wang, 2005) and rule of professionalism (meritocracy) for thousands years. Rule of professionalism is based on education and standardized qualification. As a result, China has the centralization of civil service based on rule of relation to serve people, rule of law to govern people, and rule of professionalism to protect and enhance people’s lives-livelihoods.
5. The Industrial Age: Democratic Nation
5.1. The Civilizational Shift: Democratic Nation
The Industrial Revolution contains two stages. The first industrial revolution began in Britain in the late 18th century. It was centered on textiles, steam power, and iron. The second industrial revolution was between 1870 and 1914 after the civil war in America. It was centered on steel, railroads, petroleum, chemicals, and electricity.
The Industrial Revolution brought about affluence and education to all people including poor people, women, and minorities who had little wealth and education before the Industrial Revolution. In the Industrial Revolution, the dramatic increase in productivity lifted most people from poverty. The Industrial Revolution allows and requires all individuals to be educated. As a result, all people with affluence and education demand the participation in government. Derived from the ancient Greek “demokratia”, democracy literally means that power (kratos) belongs to the common people (demos). In democracy, power belongs to the common people instead of dictators, inherited kings-queens, inherited aristocrats, and rich people. The civilizational shift in the Industrial Age is from mega empire to democracy for all people. Democracy does not mean individual liberal democracy only.
5.2. The Political Organizations: Individual Liberal Democracy, Common Professional Democracy, and Territorial Ingroup Democracy
During the 18th century, the Age of Enlightenment centered on reason as the primary source of knowledge dominated the world of ideas in Europe. The ideas, such as nationalism, liberalism, and socialism of the Enlightenment undermined the authority of the monarchy and the Church, and paved the way for the political revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries in the Industrial Age with different types of political organization.
5.2.1. Individual Liberal Democracy for Individual Liberty
The fundamental principle in individualistic politic for all people is individual liberty. In the Age of Enlightenment, liberalism sought to liberate individuals from the authoritarian restrains of hereditary privilege, state religion, absolute monarchy, and the divine right of kings. Liberalism based on Enlightenment principles held that people should have liberty as much as possible from government restraint. Philosopher John Locke is often credited with founding liberalism based on the social contract which provides each person a natural right to life, liberty, and property.
The Glorious Revolution of 1688, the American Revolution of 1776, and the French Revolution of 1789 used liberalism to justify the revolutions against authoritarian tyrannies. Liberal economy is the individual-controlled economy to promote liberty. Liberal economy involves free markets and private ownership of capital assets. Liberal economy opposes non-liberal economies, such as socialist economy, planned economy, and protectionism. The economic liberty is expressed in the laissez-faire doctrine by the Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith. According to Smith, competition in free trade benefits all parties, because competition leads to the production of more and better goods at lower prices. Any other arrangement, whether state control or monopoly, must lead to regimentation, exploitation, and economic stagnation.
The democracy to achieve individual liberty is based on individualistic politics. The political organization for individualistic politics is domination. The political organization government for individualistic politics is dominative organization. In individual liberal democracy, the dominative organization is derived from the domination of the majority by competitive election among competitive multiple parties. Individual liberties of minority are protected. In America, the government organization is derived from the separation of dominations (powers) among the three branches of government to achieve the balance of domination (power). Different individual liberal democratic countries have different combinations of the elective system and the civil service system. The civil service systems in Japan and France are stronger than the civil service system in America.
Education in the West emphasizes individual liberty, expression, competitiveness, and creativity. In some countries, individual liberty to own guns is much more important than common wellbeing of people. With individualistic education, it is natural to have individual liberal democracy for individual liberty. As long as individual liberty is for all people instead of only the ingroup people, and majority rule in free and fair election is respected, individual liberal democracy with flexible boundary in the individualistic West can work well in peacetime.
5.2.2. Common Professional Democracy for Common Wellbeing
In the West, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) also argued in favor of the concept of a social contract to check self-interest. In Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “The Social Contract”, Rousseau (1712-1778) argued against the idea of class divisions in society and the idea that people should be guided by self-interest alone. Instead, he believed that each individual has a social contract with the rest of the people in society that requires them to consider the collective-interest of the group. Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) in France created the term “socialism” as a contrast to liberalism which failed to address poverty, social oppression, and gross inequalities in wealth social concerns during the Industrial Revolution in Europe. To achieve equality, he presented socialism based on the shared state ownership of resources as an alternative to liberalism. Socialism is for common wellbeing of all people who share ownership of resources.
Karl Marx (1818-1883) (Marx, 1990) witnessed and expressed concern for the horrible working conditions of the early Industrial Revolution. Marx argued that working-class people should unite and collectively own and operate the businesses to avoid being exploited by the wealthy owners of the time. According to Karl Marx, the five modes (stages) of production based on dialectic progress are tribal band as primitive communism mode, slavery mode ruled by patricians over plebeians, feudalism mode ruled by aristocrats over bourgeoisies, capitalism mode ruled by capitalists (bourgeoisies) over proletariats, and communism mode ruled by proletariats without class conflict. Communism is for common wellbeing of all classless people.
The democracy to achieve common wellbeing is based on collectivistic politics. The democracy is common professional democracy for common wellbeing. The political organization for collectivistic politics is consensus. The political organization government for collectivistic politics is the consensual organization based on civil service system. The consensual organization based on civil service system is not dominative based on the domination of the majority from competitive election among competitive multiple political parties. The consensual organization based on civil service system is based on the consensus of one political party which is in charge of the civil service system through the universal professional qualification for all people.
In Marxism, the final mode is classless communism, but Marx did not provide much guidance for how a society would operate without property, class, and state. The Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin produced common professional democracy for common wellbeing based on the civil service system under communist party. The economy was the professionally planned cooperative economy. The Soviet Union had a well-developed system of professionals based on division of professional in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Europe. By the 1950s, the Soviet Union rapidly evolved from a mainly agrarian society into a major industrial power (Davies, 1998). In terms of GDP, the Soviet Union maintained itself as the second largest economy for much of the Cold War until 1988. Common professional democracy in the USSR reached to the peak under Leonid Brezhnev (general secretary 1964-1982).
The collectivistic political system of common professional democracy fits well the Chinese traditional collectivistic politics. As a result, the People Republic of China has adopted common professional democracy with Chinese characteristics which has worked out quite well. In China as a large country, individual liberal democracy failed and created chaos for nearly fifty years before the People Republic of China. Initially, China basically followed the Soviet Union. Since the opening and reform in 1978, China has been open the West and reformed centrally controlled economy (Vogel, 2011). Consequently, according to the World Bank, more than 850 million Chinese people have been lifted out of extreme poverty; China’s poverty rate fell from 88 percent in 1981 to 0.7 percent in 2015 (The World Bank, 2018). In China now, the private sector accounts for more than two-thirds of the economy and 90 percent of Chinese exports (43 percent of which are from foreign-owned firms) (Shan, 2019).
The East is basically collectivistic. According to Hundt and Uttam, in the East, Japan with the third largest economy in the world is basically collectivistic under the strong influence of Confucianism, and most of the South and East Asian countries are collectivistic (Hundt & Uttam, 2017).
Education in collectivistic politics emphasizes collective identity, relation, cooperation, professionalism, and consensus. With collectivistic education, it is natural to have common professional democracy for common wellbeing. As long as common wellbeing is for all people, and professionalism in the civil service system is maintained, common professional democracy with flexible boundary in collectivistic politics can work well particularly during crisis.
5.2.3. Territorial Ingroup Democracy for Ingroup
In the Industrial Age, industrial production and commerce favor flexible boundary, so individual liberal democracy and common professional democracy with flexible boundary prevailed over territorial ingroup democracy with rigid boundary. However, in some countries, the people whose lives were under attack by globalization and pluralism with flexible boundary were prone to accept territorial ingroup democracy to maintain rigid boundary and rejected pluralism (Fisher, 2018). The political organization is maintained by ingroup against outgroup, and social rule is rule of boundary.
About one hundred years ago, the globalization in war was the World War I. In the global war as the World War I, the declining country as the loser was Germany which also contained vibrant minority ethnics groups. As a result, Nazi Germany as territorial ingroup democracy which was elected democratically overthrew individual liberal democracy. Nazi Germany (1933-1945) considered Germanic peoples as the master race, the purest branch of the Aryan race, and considered all other races as inferior races in the pure ingroup-outgroup dualism. Jews and Romani people were killed. Nazi Germany was defeated, simply because such rigid boundary internationally and domestically was unworkable. The three democracies are listed in Table 6.
5.3. The Cold War
After the World War II, under individualistic politics, the nations formed the alliance of individual liberal democracy under the leadership of the U.S., while for under collectivistic politics, the nations formed the alliance of common professional democracy under the leadership of the USSR. The inevitable confrontation of these two democratic nation blocs without actual direct war constituted the Cold War (1947-1991) from the 1947 Truman Doctrine to the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union. Both democratic blocs fought proxy wars outside of the U.S. and the USSR.
In Europe, the liberal democratic bloc created the NATO military alliance in 1949, and the professional democratic bloc formed the Warsaw Pact military alliance in 1955. In Asia, the liberal democratic bloc established various bilateral
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Table 6. The three democracies and international relations.
military treaties to contain the professional democratic bloc. The doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD) by nuclear weapon discouraged the initial direct attack from either bloc. The conflicts took place in the proxy wars, such as the 1950-1953 Korean War, the 1956 Suez Crisis, the Berlin Crisis of 1961 and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and the 1960s-70s Vietnam War. The competitions took place in the nuclear arsenal development, the conventional military deployment, psychological warfare, propaganda campaigns, espionage, far-reaching embargoes, rivalry at sports events, and the Space Race. In terms of economy, the liberal democratic bloc with adventurous production type had the strength in invention, productivity, efficiency, and marketing, while the professional democratic bloc with consolidative production type had the strength in development, supply chain, economy of scale, and ration.
6. The Information Age: Multilateral Organization
6.1. The Civilizational Shift: Multilateral Organization
The Information Revolution (Orton, 2009) occurred in the second half of the 20th century with the proliferation of digital computers, digital record, personal computers, the internet, and information and communications technology. Development of technologies (such as computers, digital communication, and microchips) led to dramatic reduction in the cost of obtaining, processing, storing, and transmitting information in all forms (text, graphics, audio, and video). The Information Revolution also combines robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, quantum computing, biotechnology, the Internet of Things (IoT), decentralized consensus, 3D printing, and autonomous vehicles.
The information technology provides the efficient and fast globalization of information to establish globalized corporations and organizations. The civilizational shift involves the shift from nations to global multilateral organizations for various purposes among nations.
6.2. The End of the Cold War
The information technology in the liberal democratic bloc advanced much faster than the information technology in the professional democratic bloc. The ability of the Soviet Government to maintain power was always based upon its ability to provide a decent standard of living through economic growth. Based on consolidative production type with the strength in development, supply chain, economy of scale, and ration, the Soviet Union saw a relatively high rate of economic growth during the period from 1950’s till early 1970’s.
Starting from late 1960’s, the Soviet Union faced systematic economic problems. Soviet Union was becoming increasingly urbanized and richer leading to increase in demand for food and other consumer products. The economy became too large and complex for consolidative production type without adventurous production type with the strength in invention, productivity, efficiency, and marketing. As a result, the USSR was uninventive in new information technology, unproductive, inefficient, and unresponsive to market. The Soviet uninventive, unproductive, inefficient, and unresponsive economy started to slow down in early 1970’s.
In 1970’s to 1980’s, a two-decade of oil boom allowed the USSR to maintain its economy. However, Leonid Brezhnev squandered the profits from a two-decade oil boom on an arms race with the United States, neglecting a golden opportunity to raise standards of living and to modify consolidative production type with adventurous production type. The primary exports were commodities (mainly oil) for the import of advanced equipment for Industry and grains. After the oil boom, the economy without enough income from oil was in trouble before Mikhail Gorbachev had arrived (Gaidar, 2007) Gorbachev’s chaotic transformation of consolidative production type into adventurous production type by glasnost (“openness”) and perestroika (“restructuring”) accelerated the downfall of politics and economy. Basically, the USSR was not ready for such fast transformation from collectivistic politic with consolidative production type to individualistic politics with adventurous production type. On Christmas Day 1991, Gorbachev shocked the world by announcing the dissolution of the Soviet Union and his resignation from its top post. The dissolution of the Soviet Union ended the Cold War and the Cold War Boundary.
6.3. The Post-Cold War Era
The post-Cold War Era started with the dominance of individual liberal democracy and capitalism with adventurous production type through the strength in invention, productivity, efficiency, and market. Individual liberal democracy and capitalism were the only legitimate forms of politics and economy. There was no alternative as claimed by political scientist Francis Fukuyama in “The End of History” (Fukuyama, 1992). As a result, in the last decade of the twenty century, the post-Cold War Era started with the rapid expansion of liberal democratic influence to form the individualistic liberal world order of the West. The collectivistic professional world order of the East from common professional democracy with consolidative production type faced demise. The balance of powers between individualistic politics and collectivistic politics during the Cold War has shifted heavily toward individualistic politics in both international policy and domestic policy during the post-Cold War Era.
The twenty-first century turns out to be quite eventful for the individual liberal democracy. Individual liberal democracy faced the terrorism crisis in 2001 and the subsequent long destructive war in the Middle East, the disastrous financial crisis in 2008, the devastating pandemic crisis in 2020-2021, and the disturbing populism crisis on January 6, 2021. Why did these crises happen to individual liberal democracy? How did these crises affect common professional democracy? How did individual liberal democracy and common professional democracy response to such crises? What are the origins, responses, and preventions of these crises?
6.3.1. Terrorism Crisis
Terrorism is the intentional violence for political or religious purposes against non-combatants (Fortna, 2015). The end of the Cold War provided a dividend in terms of reduced transnational and domestic terrorism (Enders and Sandler, 1999). In 2001, the terrorists of 9/11 were from Al-Qaeda which was established in Afghanistan in 1988 the year that the USSR withdrew from Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda took the advantage of the weakliness of the USSR. Otherwise, Al-Qaeda would have not been established. Therefore, the origin of the post-Cold War terrorism from the Middle East is due to the weakliness and collapse of the USSR.
In the post-Cold War Era before 2004, the numbers of attacks in non-conflicting countries and conflicting countries were about the same. The numbers of global terrorist attacks rose dramatically after 2004: There were just over 1000 in 2004, but almost 17,000 in 2014 (Zeigler and Smith, 2017). After 2004, the attacks in countries experiencing conflict started to far outpace attacks in non-conflict countries. This coincides with expanding wars in Iraq and Afghanistan after 2003 and turmoil related to the Arab Spring for liberal democracy after 2011. After 2004, the turmoil produced rapid increase in the numbers of terrorist attacks and the tremendous divergence in the numbers of terrorist attacks between conflicting nations and non-conflicting nations. The disastrous civil wars and terrorism have produced the suffering failed states in the Middle East and the serious refugee problems in Europe. The expected liberal democracy in the Middle East failed as the Middle East was not ready for liberal democracy.
The response of the U.S. to the terrorist attack on 9/11 was moving to collectivistic politics, such as the Patriot Act, at the expense to individualistic politics to deal with the crisis. A major player in the Patriot Act was the National Security Agency (NSA) which gathered mass digital phone data from phone companies with permission from a federal court. The NSA became the professional arm of the Patriot Act to do digital surveillance and analysis to supplement people’s surveillance and analysis which were often unprofessional and intrusive. Such digital surveillance and analysis allowed the Patriot Act to detect and break terrorists’ networks and acts quietly, precisely, efficiently, and professionally. In 2004 testimony before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, FBI Director Robert Mueller said, “the Patriot Act has proved extraordinarily beneficial in the war on terrorism and has changed the way the FBI does business. Many of our counterterrorism successes, in fact, are the direct results of provisions included in the Act.” Consequently, the Patriot Act turned individual liberal democracy for individual liberty into common professional democracy for common wellbeing.
Terrorists also attacked the other countries such as Russia and China. The separatists-terrorists from Chechnya attacked the theater in Moscow on 23 October 2002 that involved 850 hostages and ended with the deaths of at least 170 people. The separatist movement in Chechnya was established in 1991. Again the origin of the separatists-terrorists from Chechnya was derived from the weakliness and collapse of the USSR.
According to the report, “The Seventh Stage of Terrorism in China”, from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point (Gohel, 2014), the Uyghur terrorists had the similar origin as al-Qa’ida. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, returning Uyghurs from Kashgar, Xinjiang who had fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan were emboldened by the Soviets’ departure and believed that they could also weaken Chinese rule in Xinjiang through violence. These issues came to a head in April 1990 when a violent and bloody uprising started in the county near Kashgar in Xinjiang. Since that time Kashgar has played an important role for a variety of anti-state Uighur militants. For example, Kashgar was the scene of one of the biggest attacks in China when on August 4, 2008, two men crashed a dump truck into a group of police officers before throwing five homemade explosive devices into their barracks. Sixteen policemen were killed and 16 injured in the attack. The incident occurred four days before the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Beijing. On March 1, 2014, A Uighur gang of eight knife-wielding attackers targeted commuters at the Kunming Railway Station in Yunnan province, China killing 31 and injuring 141. The report concludes that Uighur extremism is no longer confined to Xinjiang alone. It has now become a nationwide Chinese problem following the terrorist attacks that took place in the country in 2013 and 2014. These attacks are symptomatic of new trends in Uighur militancy. The reality is that there is an active Uighur terrorist movement that has developed an ideological agenda that is not dissimilar to that espoused by al-Qa’ida, and that has the ability for small cells to conduct operations throughout China.
The terrorists were led by the Turkistan Islamic Party (formerly the East Turkestan Islamic Movement) which has been designated a terrorist organization by Russia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States (U.S. Department of State, 2017), and the United Nations (Clark and Kan, 2017) which calls Uighur foreign fighters as an underexamined Jihadist challenge. Before the terrorist attack, Uyghurs were treated fairly and freely with their own schools in Uyghur language which was much different from the U.S. that uses only English as the primary language in education. After the terrorist attack, due to the severe problem of separatism-terrorism, the reform in the education was necessary, and potential Xinjiang separatists and terrorists were educated with the special vocation-diversity education program consisting of vocation training and diversity training to improve their employment opportunities and to change their extremism. The vocation-diversity education program trains the students to live a pluralistic industrial society to prevent separatism-terrorism in the changing society from a homogeneous pastoral-agrarian society to a more prosperous pluralistic industrial society.
Similarly, in U.S., the widespread diversity training trains the law enforcement officials to work in a pluralistic society to prevent discrimination-abuse in the changing society toward increasingly a pluralistic non-White majority society. The vocation-diversity education program in troublesome Xinjiang and the diversity training in troublesome U.S. law enforcement are beneficial to the changing societies. The short-term vocation-diversity education program is successful to prevent separatism-terrorism and in Xinjiang as the diversity training prevents discrimination-abuse in the U.S.
Both Xinjiang people in China and the law enforcement officials in the U.S. continue to keep vigilance against separatism-terrorism and discrimination-abuse, respectively, especially through effective video surveillance in the dangerous areas in Xinjiang and on the police cars-uniforms in the U.S., which are very useful to catch police discrimination-abuse. With the vocation-diversity education program in Xinjiang, the diversity training in the U.S. law enforcement officials, and the video surveillance in both places, both China and the U.S. want to prevent racial violence from few misguided people, such as Derek Chauvin, who have caused widespread social disorders. All nations must work together and learn from one another to prevent racial violence in the changing societies. All nations must be measured equally and truthfully without double standard and disinformation to avoid hypocrisy and discrimination.
No democratic country for all people wants terrorist attack and violent ethnic conflict. As a democratic country for all people, China prevents terrorist attack and violent ethnic conflict from the international recognized terrorist organization in the last three years to maintain the human rights of life, livelihood, and liberty under Chinese rule of law for the people in Xinjiang. No Xinjiang terrorists and troublemaking supremacists to cause terrorism and ethnic conflict are allowed in Xinjiang. Xinjiang now is increasingly becoming a much more peaceful and prosperous industrial society through a successful transition.
Most Muslim nations (Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the UAE, and Yemen) in the Middle East understand and support publicly in the United Nations the Chinese policy in Xinjiang. No Muslim country outside of Europe, no Middle Eastern country, no African country, and only one Asian country oppose publicly the Chinese policy in Xinjiang in contrast to the public opposition from the arrogant West with double standard and disinformation without considering Chinese culture, situation, and politics (Putz, 2020). With the support of most Muslim Middle Eastern countries (at the original site of Islam) on the Chinese policy in Xinjiang, the Western accusation of the cultural and religious genocide on Muslim Uyghur people is unbelievable. It is as unbelievable as the support of Israel (at the original site of Judaism) on the Nazi German policy of Holocaust on Judaist Jews in Europe. In fact, the review of the World Bank did not substantiate the allegations in connection with the Xinjiang Technical and Vocational Education and Training Project (The World Bank, 2019). The real reasons to use the double standard and the misinformation as the accusation are many from simple ignorance of Chinese culture, situation, and politics to malicious imperialistic intrusion to Chinese sovereignty in Xinjiang. The hypocritical, discriminatory, and imperialistic attacks on China in numerous issues have increased drastically the hate crimes toward Asian descendants in the world, particularly in the U.S. (Hauser, 2021). The disinformation of Gulf of Tonkin incident started the Vietnam War expansion in 1964, and the disinformation of the weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) started the Iraq War in 2003, but hopefully the disinformation and double standard about Xinjiang will not start the new Cold War against China in 2021. Increasingly, the truth without double standard and disinformation comes out, such as from the cotton trade body Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) (Reuters Staff, 2021).
Of course, the Muslim countries in the Middle East and South Asia understand very well how the West has intruded their sovereignties to produce devastating human tragedy. The recent disaster in the Middle East was started by the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and the Arab Spring to promote liberal democracy, resulting in the horrible violation of the human rights of life-livelihood in the Middle East and South Asia and the terrible waste of $6.4 trillion war spending by the U.S (Crawford, 2019). (In today’s dollars, World War II cost the U.S. $4.1 trillion much less than $6.4 trillion in the Middle East and South Asia.) In 2018, the estimated number of war deaths in Afghanistan is 147, 000, and in Iraq is 268,000 to 295,000 (Crawford, 2018). In 2016, The UN special envoy for Syria estimated that 400, 000 people have been killed throughout the past five years of civil war (Aljazeer, 2016). According to World Vision, about 5.6 million Syrians are refugees, and another 6.1 million people are displaced within Syria (World Vision, 2021). Muslim lives and livelihoods matter. The Middle East and South Asia are much worse than before the intrusion by the West. Meanwhile, with $6.4 trillion wasted in the wars in the Middle East and South Asia, the infrastructure in the U.S. falls behind other countries in terms of infrastructure quality (Brennan, 2019; DePetris, 2021).
Xinjiang is not and will never be another Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, or Libya by the intrusion of the West. What happen to the Middle Eastern and South Asian countries is tragic enough. No other parts of the world should suffer any more from this tragedy by the intrusions of imperialists. In the 19th century, the Western imperialists colonized and oppressed almost all countries in the world. To prevent the repetition of such human tragedy in the future, Columbus Day (the second Monday of October) will be Anti-imperialism Day (History.Com, 2020; Nittle, 2021) to remember the Native Americans, Native Australians, colonized Africans, American slaves, colonized Asians, and people in invaded Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya to suffer and lose their lives by the intrusions of imperialists. According to UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield from the U.S., as the original sin of slavery weaved white supremacy into the U.S. founding documents and principles (Manns, 2021), the original sin of imperialism weaved white supremacy into the Columbus’s first day in a foreign country (the New World) when he ordered six of the natives to be seized, writing in his journal that he believed they would be good servants (History.Com, 2020). As a result, the original sins of both slavery and imperialism weaved supremacists’ supremacies into the founding principles of supremacists.
As Independence Day starts the democracy of people, Anti-imperialism Day starts the democracy of sovereign nations. As Americans in America declare independence from despotic intrusion on Independence Day, sovereign nations in the world declare independence from imperialistic intrusion on Anti-imperialism Day. As all people are created equal with certain unalienable Rights away from despotic intrusion, all sovereign nations are created equal with unalienable sovereignties away from imperialistic intrusion. As people must respect one another’s Rights, all sovereign nations must respect one another’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. As all Americans want R-E-S-P-E-C-T, all sovereign nations want R-E-S-P-E-C-T. As all Americans want to breathe to be alive, all sovereign nations want to breathe to keep their sovereignties alive. Native American lives matter. Black lives matter. National sovereignties matter. Racism and imperialism will not win the future. All Americans and all sovereign nations will. As white supremacists hate the rise of minority groups, imperialistic supremacists hate the rise of developing sovereign nations. Nevertheless, the future will belong to all Americans and all sovereign nations. All people and all sovereign nations have to prove that democracies for all people and for all sovereign nations work to overcome racism and imperialism.
According to Article 2(1) and 2(4) of Charter of the United Nations (The United Nations, 2021a), (1) The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members, and (4) All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations. The intrusions of national sovereignties by imperialists are harmful to the world peace. As white supremacy is terrorism, imperialistic supremacy is terrorism. The world peace matters. Divisive imperialism, ultimately, hurts the ability of all sovereign nations to work together to overcome the severe global crises, such as pandemic, climate, inequality, and poverty crises, which are now recognized by all sovereign nations in the world. It is a golden opportunity for all sovereign nations to respect one another and to work together for the common future free of the global crises. The future of the world matters.
According to President Obama in his speech at Cairo University on June 4, 2009, there must be a sustained effort to listen to each other; to learn from each other; to respect one another; and to seek common ground (Obama, 2009). He received a Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, 2009. President Carter told a church congregation at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown of Plains, Georgia in 2019, “Since 1979, do you know how many times China has been at war with anybody? None. And we have stayed at war.” Carter said, “The U.S. has only enjoyed 16 years of peace in its 242-year history, making the country “the most warlike nation in the history of the world, because of America’s tendency to force other nations to “adopt our American principles” (Brennan, 2019). He received a Nobel Peace Prize on October 11, 2002.
6.3.2. Financial Crisis
The cause of the financial crisis in 2008 is the risky US subprime mortgage to normally unqualified people for the booming housing market in the early- to mid-2000s. The US mortgage companies sold these risky mortgage bundles as the popular mortgage-backed securities on to banks around the world. When the booming housing market ended, people could not pay their mortgages which depressed the values of the mortgage-backed securities. Esteemed institutions such as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers collapsed. The stock market dived and eventually crashed in September 2008 to ultimately lose more than half its value, resulting in the financial crisis.
The prevalence of the risky US subprime mortgage to normally unqualified people who were usually poor people was related to the gross income inequality in the U.S. under individualistic politics during the post-Cold War Era. According Sturn and van Treeck in “The Role of Income Inequality as a Cause of the Great Recession and Global Imbalances” (Sturn and van Treeck, 2013), as the benefits of rising income over the past decades were confined to a relatively small group of households at the top of the income distribution, the consumption of the lower- and middle income groups was largely financed through rising credit rather than rising incomes. This process was facilitated by government action, both directly through credit promotion policies and indirectly through the deregulation of the financial sector. But with the downturn in the housing market and the subprime mortgage crisis starting in 2007, the over indebtedness of the US personal sector finally became apparent and the debt-financed private demand expansion came to an end, resulting in the financial crisis.
The response to the financial crisis was to move to collectivistic politics, such as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and the Troubled Asset Recovery Program (TARP), with collective plan economy at the expense of market economy. In February 2009, the cover of Newsweek announced, “WE ARE ALL SOCIALISTS NOW” (Meacham, 2009). Canada’s Financial Post also proclaimed, “Bailout Marks Karl Marx’s Comeback” (Masse, 2008).
On October 24, 1929 (Black Thursday), the stock market crashed for the same reason of inequality as the financial crisis in 2008. For this reason, October 24 (Black Thursday) will be Anti-inequality Day to remind people the danger of gross inequality to all people, rich and poor. The eradication of poverty is critical for all nations. The minimum wages for adults should be living wages. According to the report from OECD, almost half of all jobs could be wiped out or radically altered in the next two decades due to automation (OECD, 2019a). The report is the latest OECD warning about risks to governments in advanced economies, which have already manifested themselves in a surge of support for populist political leaders. The report has highlighted a squeeze on the middle class, future jobs losses from technology and a widespread dissatisfaction in rich countries. The report recommends more training and urges governments to extend protections to workers in the “grey zone”, where a blurring of employment and self-employment often comes with a lack of rights (Horobin, 2019).
6.3.3. Pandemic Crisis
The COVID-19 broke out in Wuhan, China in January, 2020. At least one third of the people who are infected with the virus do not develop noticeable symptoms, but they still can spread the disease (Oran & Eric, 2021). The virus of COVID-19, therefore, has been spread often unknowingly. As a result, COVID-19 is difficult to control. Without knowing the nature of COVID-19, COVID-19 quickly spread mostly in Wuhan and few in other cities in China in January, 2020. In late January 2020, the Chinese government decided to lock down this city of 11 million people in Wuhan and other cities in China, to gather all necessary resources together, and to follow the experts’ advices to make all necessary steps to cure and to stop COVID-19. Wuhan had about 80, 000 confirmed cases within about three months, killing about 3000 people. By the beginning of April, the Chinese government limited the spread of the virus to the point where they felt comfortable opening up Wuhan once again. Since then, COVID-19 has not been widespread in China, resulting in the quick recovery of economy (Uretsky, 2020). The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a pandemic in March 2020. By April 12, 2021, more than 136 million cases have been confirmed globally, with more than 2.9 million deaths attributed to COVID-19 globally (Johns Hopkins University, 2021a).
Tomasz Mickiewicz, Jun Du, and Oleksandr Shepotylo show that there is a correlation between COVID-related deaths per capita and countries’ individualism scores (Mickiewicz, Du, and Shepotylo, 2020). For an example, both individualistic UK and collectivistic Japan are liberal democratic with highly developed economies, but Japan has an older population than the UK, resulting in likely worse Japanese COVID-19 outcomes. Yet Japan scores much better. By April 12, 2021, the death rates were 191.51 for the UK, 171.80 for the USA, 7.40 for Japan, 3.43 for South Korea, 0.53 Singapore, 0.35 for China, 0.05 for Taiwan (China), and 0.04 for Vietnam per 100,000 people (Johns Hopkins University, 2021b). Basically, the countries/areas under strong influence of collectivistic Confucianism have formed the “Confucian COVID-19 Safe Zone” which includes China, Taiwan (China), Hong Kong (China), Macao (China), Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and Singapore, in contrast to the “Western COVID-19 Hazardous Zone” for the individualistic Western countries. The Confucian COVID-19 Safe Zone and the Western COVID-19 Hazardous Zone manifest clearly that the human right of life in East (China) is (171.80/0.35=) 490.08 times of the human right of life in the West (the U.S.) for now. Human lives matter in the East or the West.
According to the article “How Delays and Unheeded Warnings Hindered New York’s Virus Fight” by J. David Goodman from New York Times, despite the Chinese early warning and the early Chinese demonstration of effective method to stop COVID-19, Americans in March mismanaged the outbreak at the beginning of the outbreak in New York (Goodman, 2020). For example, New York City, at the start of the outbreak, relied on 50 disease detectives to trace the rapidly rising cases of unconnected infected people, city officials said. By comparison, in Wuhan, China, where the pandemic began, more than 9000 such workers were deployed. New York City added to its original 50 only after the outbreak began to accelerate. The same mismanagement has happened in other American cities. In addition, many Americans reject the prevention methods of wearing masks and social distancing.
The result from the mismanagement and the rejection of the prevention methods is disastrous that the U. S. has been ranked number one in the world in both confirmed cases and deaths by wide margins. By April 12, 2021, there are more than 562,000 Americans (more than the number of Americans killed in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan combined) have tragically lost their lives in the violation of the human right of life (Johns Hopkins University, 2021b), in the sharp contrast to the protection of the human right of life in the “Confucian COVID-19 Safe Zone”. American lives matter.
It is just so unbelievably hypocritical for some people to attack some countries’ human right violations and alleged mistakes, while ignore 562,000 deaths in the violation of the human right of life derived from the mismanagement and the rejection of the prevention methods, and ignore the terrible records of aggressive war deaths, police killings, and gun killings in the violation of the human right of life. Jesus said, “You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye” (Matthew 7: 5). In other words, Jesus said, “You hypocrite, before you take the plank out of your own eye, you won't have the qualification to remove the speck from your brother’s eye”. Your brother won't care about your moral supremacy. Jesus said, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a child of hell as you are (Matthew 23: 15)”.
Recently, the response of the federal government has changed to the approach of collectivistic common professional democracy that follows the advices of professionals. The daily confirmed cases and deaths in the U.S. have gone down. However, the pandemic is not over, and the new more infectious variants and the failure to keep vigilance have caused the new waves of confirmed cases and deaths.
April 8, 2020 will be remembered as Liberation Day when Wuhan was liberated after 76 days of the heroic effort by the people inside and outside of Wuhan to overcome the horrible pandemic (Kuo and Yang, 2020) as shown in the documentary film “76 Days” (Gao, 2020). Foods, materials, medical workers, and other workers from all over China came to help Wuhan. Together people can be liberated from natural disasters as in Wuhan liberation. People in the world should be united to overcome this global natural disaster. Division among people only prolongs the global natural disaster.
6.3.4. Populism Crisis
On January 6, 2021, thousands of violent populist extremists stormed the Capitol building housing the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, supposedly to pressure legislators to overturn the presidential election results (Viala-Gaudefroy, 2021). The assault on the hallowed symbol of American democracy was a physical manifestation of an assault on democracy itself. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer on January 6 delivered a statement before a reconvened session of Congress after the incursion. He said, “Unfortunately, we can now add January 6, 2021, to that very short list of dates in American history that will live forever in infamy” (U.S. News, 2021). By early March, investigators for the District of Columbia identified over 540 suspects and arrested 275 to date in connection with the Capitol siege (BBC, 2021). About 90% of those arrested have been non-Hispanic Whites.
Populism is a political approach that strives to appeal to “the people” who feel that their concerns are disregarded by “the elite”. Therefore, populism involves a rigid boundary between “the people” as ingroup and “the elite” as outgroup in terms of territorial politics with rigid boundary for ingroup against outgroup. The people whose lives are under attack by globalization and pluralism with flexible boundary are prone to accept territorial ingroup democracy to maintain rigid boundary and reject pluralism (Fisher, 2018). As of 2017, non-Hispanic Whites make up 60.7% of the country’s population. It’s expected to fall below 50% by 2045 as a result of immigration and low birth rates (Frey, 2018). The attitude of anti-immigration and anti-pluralism of the populists is a product of their fear of becoming a numerical minority (Ayoob, 2021).
The fast rise and the large-scale demonstrations of the populists are possible through the internet, particularly by social media to generate the digit echo chambers isolated from other sources of information. It was only through social media that such angers of populists about ingroup (the people) against outgroup (the elite) were translated into mass action as described in “Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age” by Manuel Castells (Castells, 2015).
In 1997, the United Kingdom returned sovereignty over the British Dependent Territory of Hong Kong to China after 156 years of British-Japanese colonial rule (1841-1997) resulted from the defeat of China in the Opium Wars which was started by the Chinese rejection of the illegal opium trade from the UK. China has formed the special administrative region (SAR) of Hong Kong, which continues to maintain governing and economic systems separate from those of mainland China under one country, two systems.
After 1997, Hong Kong has become more prosperous. Many observers look back to 2012, when the Hong Kong government (SAR) attempted to insert “moral and national education” into the colonial curriculum of local schools as a turning point for the rise of the localism, the predecessor of populism (Time Out Hong Kong, 2015). At the same time, Hongkongers felt threaten increasingly by the increasing number of mainland immigrants and tourists and the increasing connections with mainland systems in the same way as majority non-Hispanic Whites in the U.S. feel threaten by the increasingly larger minority. With the prevalence of social media, Hongkongers increasingly turned to populism as ingroup (Hongkongers) against outgroup (mainlanders) (Sheng and Geng, 2019; Lam-Knott, 2020). Most young people in Hong Kong did not identify themselves as Chinese (Cheng, 2019). Some Hong Kong populists even waved the Hong Kong colonial flag under the British colonial rule as the some white supremacists waved the Confederate flag of the South in the U.S.
The populist extremists stormed and damaged the Legislative Council Complex in Hong Kong on July 1, 2019 in the same way as the populist extremists stormed and damaged the Capitol building housing the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on January 6, 2021 (Ng, Lum, and Xinqi, 2019). Hong Kong protesters did not identify themselves as Chinese (Fung, 2019). Hong Kong was in chaos with demonstrations and violent destructive acts against people and properties by the very young populists almost daily, and the economy went down rapidly. Finally, the Hong Kong government started to crack down on populist extremism in June 2020 through the national security law to tear down populism as that populism for independent Hong Kong is incompatible to one country two systems, and is unrealistic (Lam and Chung, 2020; Lam-Knott, 2020). Since then, the society has been peaceful, and the economy looks promising with the rising global financial center in Hong Kong (Yiu, 2021) and the rising Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Zone under one country two systems.
No democratic country for all people wants divisive populism to dominate its politics. As a democratic country for all people, China prevents the domination of divisive populism to cause ethnic conflict in Hong Kong in order to provide democracy for all people under Chinese rule of law and under one country two systems. No troublemaking Hong Kong supremacists to cause ethnic conflict are allowed in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong is not and will never be another Lebanon, a former vibrant country that hurtles towards collapse by ethnic conflict (Nakhoul and El Dahan, 2021). One collapsing Lebanon is tragic enough. No other parts of the world should suffer any more from this tragedy of ethnic conflict. To prevent the tragedy of ethnic conflict in the future, the Day of Reconciliation (December 16) a public holiday in South Africa since 1995 will be Ethnic Reconciliation Day to follow Nelson Mandela’s noble example of ethnic reconciliation to bring hostile ethnic groups together. No more ethnic conflict. Populistic supremacists will not win the future. Both liberal democracy and professional democracy for all people will. The future will belong to both liberal democracy and professional democracy for all people. We have to prove that both liberal democracy and professional democracy for all people still work.
6.3.5. Decoupling Crisis
Some populists in the West actively push for the economic decoupling from the East in general and China in particular. Such economic decoupling will create the decoupling crisis. The U.S. economy could lose more than $1 trillion worth of production and long-term global competitiveness if the White House pursues a sharp separation with China, according to a report released February 13, 2021 by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Rhodium Group (Cheng, 2021). It is simply difficult to decouple after about sixty years of active trade between the West for adventurous production type and the East for consolidative production type.
The extensive trade and investment between the West represented by the European Union and North America and the East represented by the East and South Asian countries started from 1960’s. Before 1960’s, the West was much more advanced in industry than the East, and had both adventurous production type and consolidative production type. The West, particularly America has outsourced the low-profit consolidative production type (development, supply chain, economy of scale, and ration) to the East, and kept the high-profit adventurous production type (invention, productivity, efficiency, and marketing) in the West. The West imports the consolidative production products which require low-profit development, supply chain, economy of scale, and ration from the East. The East imports the high-profit adventurous production products and services which require invention, productivity, efficiency, and marketing from the West. Both sides have grown economically from the trade and investment.
After about sixty years of such extensive globalization, the West becomes very strong in adventurous production type and deficient in consolidative production type, while the East becomes very strong in consolidative production type and deficient in adventurous production type. For example, in terms of the university education as shown in Best Global Universities Rankings by U.S. News & World Report (U.S. News & World Report, 2021), America has many top 10 universities in science, while China has many top 10 universities in engineering. The education in the West aims for adventurous production type, while the education in the East aims for consolidative production type. The individualistic West depends on the collectivistic East for the products from low-profit development, supply chain, economy of scale, and ration, while the East depends on the West for the products from high-profit invention, productivity, efficiency, and marketing. The result is the interdependent individualism-collectivism. In fact, the interdependent coexistence of adventurous production type and consolidative production type already exists in “Chimerica” to describe the symbiotic relationship between China and the United States according to Niall Ferguson (Ferguson, 2008). For example, during the COVID-19 crisis, the West has to rely on the East with development, supply chain, economy of scale, and ration to mass produce the products for medical protection equipment. At the same time, the East has to rely on the West for the products and services in the most advanced technology. The West cannot deal with the consolidative production type well in the same way as the West cannot deal with the pandemic well.
The decoupling between the East and the West will force the East to redirect the resource from easy and competitive consolidative production type to difficult and noncompetitive adventurous production type, and the West to redirect the resource from easy and competitive adventurous production type to difficult and noncompetitive consolidative production type, resulting in inflation and terrible waste in resource in the long term (Wolverson, 2021). In the short term, economic decoupling between the East and the West will create global economic crisis, especially after the economic downturn from the pandemic crisis. The West and the East have to learn interdependence.
Currently, globalization rebounds after the COVID-19 carnage (Pandey, 2020). International commerce has rallied since the second quarter of 2020, and is expected to thrive amid an obsession with low costs. Deglobalization from so-called reshoring has not happened (Wolverson, 2021). On the contrary, global trade is witnessing a spectacular rebound, led by massive demand for its protective gear and work-from-home tech products from the East Asia. World Trade Organization Chief Economist Robert Koopman told Deutsche Welle (Pandey, 2020) “Countries recognize that having a diverse supply chain is a good thing and that being able to draw upon the capabilities and expertise of other countries and their resources can help you solve your problem”.
6.3.6. The Origins, Responses, and Preventions of the Crises
The origin of the terrorism crisis is chaos such as the collapse of the USSR and the civil wars in the Middle East. The proper response is collectivistic politics at the expense of individual liberty such as the Patriot Act. The prevention of terrorism is stable governments with different stable governments for different politics and cultures. The origin of the financial crisis is gross income inequality which is an intrinsic problem in individualistic politics. The proper response is collectivistic politics at the expense of individual liberty such as the Troubled Asset Recovery Program. The prevention is income equality. The origin of the pandemic crisis is nature. The proper response is collectivistic politic for the preventive measures at the expense of individual liberty. The prevention is good public health system. The origin of the populism crisis is human territorial instinct. The proper response is to minimize populist extremism. The prevention is education to learn flexible boundary. The origin of the decoupling crisis is populism. The response is to minimize populism. The prevention of the decoupling crisis is to learn interdependence. The origins, responses, and preventions of the crises are listed in Table 7.
6.4. Multilateral Organizations
The post-Cold War crises show the reality and the need for the coexistence, balance, and interdependence among individualistic and collectivistic politics.
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Table 7. The origins, responses, and preventions of the crises.
Without the rigid geopolitical Cold War Boundary, information technology has transformed single faceted boundary based on only one politics into multifaceted boundary based on individualistic and collectivistic boundaries. Therefore, one nation has individualistic boundary in trade, and collectivistic boundary in religion, culture, and environment. Within a boundary, three or more nations can form individualistic (e.g. WTO) and collectivistic (e.g. WHO) multilateral organizations which overlap one another. The civilization shift in the Information Age is from democratic nation with single faceted boundary to multilateral organization with multifaceted boundary. The politics in the Information Age is multilateral organization.
The three interrelated international relations are multilateralism, bilateralism, and unilateralism. In simple terms of quantity: unilateralism is based on one state, bilateralism is based on two, and multilateralism has three or more (Keohane, 1990). In terms of quality-based definition, multilateralism needs the three principles consisting of an indivisibility of interests among participants, a commitment to diffuse reciprocity, and a system of dispute settlement intended to enforce a particular mode of behavior (Ruggie, 1993). The three principles constitute an “ideal multilateral organization”. Many multilateral organizations since World War II have not always fully conformed to all three principles. Such ideal multilateral organizations undoubtedly have played a significant role in shaping the international system. The WTO is a good example of ideal multilateral organization.
In the civilizational shifts, hereditary nations in the Bronze Age were united by mega empires in the Iron Age, mega empires were broken down into democratic nations in the Industrial Age, and democratic nations are united again into multilateral organizations in the Information Age. According to Robert Cooper in “The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-first Century”, (Cooper, 2003), democratic nations in the Industrial Age represent so-called “modern” states that seek to strengthen their national independence and to pursue national interest in an old-fashioned but ultimately war-prone way. Multilateral organizations in the Information Age represent so-called “postmodern states”, such as the EU that accept a high level of international integration and are more concerned with the well-being of citizens than the pursuit of national grandeur. Cooper argues that the EU model is the way that the world has to move. The European peace and the transatlantic relationship after the Second World War are seen as “the only example of a lasting peace among nations”. In the EU, the nation system is “collapsing into greater order rather than disorder”.
Thus, despite the perceived decline in the relative power of the United States after the 1970s, the multilateral institutions that the United States played the primary role in creating, such as NATO and the GATT (and, subsequently, the WTO), showed little sign of decline during that same period and continued to play an important role in shaping the international system.
6.4.1. Individualistic Multilateral Organizations
There are individualistic and collectivistic multilateral organizations. Individualistic multilateral organizations include the multilateral organizations for competitive international trades and for international advancement of human rights. People have been trading goods locally and regionally, but as of the 1st century BCE, remarkably, for the first time in history, luxury products from China started to appear in Rome on the other edge of the Eurasian continent by thousands of miles along the Silk Road to start the global trade (Vanham, 2019). According the World Bank, global trade is an engine of growth that creates better jobs, reduces poverty, and increases economic opportunity (The World Bank, 2020b). Recent research shows that trade liberalization increases economic growth by an average by 1.0 to 1.5 percentage points, resulting in 10 to 20 percent higher income after a decade. Trade has increased incomes by 24 percent globally since 1990, and 50 percent for the poorest 40 percent of the population. As a result, since 1990, over one billion people have moved out of poverty because of economic growth underpinned by better trade practices.
The multilateral world organization for trade is the World Trade Organization (WTO) which was created on 1 January, 1995 as the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT, 1947-1994). Whereas the GATT mainly dealt with trade in goods, the WTO and its agreements also cover trade in services and intellectual property as well as new procedures for the settlement of disputes. The WTO’s membership has expanded to 164 members, representing over 98% of international trade. Under the WTO from 1990s and 2000s, the world was in hyper-globalization that drove the global export-to-GDP ratio from 15% to 25% over the two decades leading up to the 2008 global financial crisis.
International advancement of individual human rights is important. According to the Charter of the United Nations, protecting human rights is a prime purpose. Its foundation is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was written mostly by American government, and was adopted by the General Assembly in 1948 (Roosevelt et al., 2001). The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights were adopted in 1966, and were enforced in 1976 for additional human rights under international law. The United Nations Human Rights Council is the key multilateral organization to uphold these agreements for human rights, deals with human rights violations, and draws up recommendations for the further development of international law in the field of human rights.
Both individual liberal democracy of individualistic politics and common professional democracy of collectivistic politics intend to protect human rights of their citizens. However, different politics and situations have different ways to protect different types of human rights.
As shown in Section 2.2., the West has inherited herder-trader politics, and the East has the inherited farmer politics. To farmers, such as rice farmers, the cooperation among people is necessary existentially for irrigation, flood control, transportation, and protection at the expense of individual liberty. Chaos resulted from the lack of cooperation destroys rice farms, resulting in famine in the violation of the human rights of life and livelihood. As a result, to rice farmers, the protection of the human rights of life and livelihood requires the prevention of chaos. In the East for common professional democracy from inherited farmer politics, any unnecessary and gross chaos in religion, politics and economy cause the violations of the human rights of life and livelihood. To minimize chaos in the East, common professional democracy tolerates a moderate level of restriction.
On the other hand, herders and traders need a lot of freedom to raise animals and to trade in a wide region, and also take considerable risk in terms of life and livelihood to move in a wide region, so liberty matters more than life and livelihood. The protection of liberty requires the prevention of restriction. Therefore, in the West for individual liberal democracy from inherited herder-trader politic, any unnecessary and gross restrictions in religion, politics, and economy violate human rights of the liberty of religion, politics, and economy. To minimize the restriction in the West, individual liberal democracy tolerates a moderate level of chaos. Therefore, different politics have different ways to protect different types of human rights, and have different criteria to judge the violations of human rights.
In the West, the moderate level of chaos has turned into the disastrous COVID-19 pandemic crisis by excessive individual liberty, resulting in tremendous losses of human lives, securities, and livelihood in the violations of Article 3 and Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In Article 3, everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of person. In Article 25 for livelihood human right, everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. As shown in Section 6.3.3., the moderate level of restriction in the East from collectivistic politics has established the “Confucian COVID-19 Safe Zone” that protects the human rights to life and livelihood in Articles 3 and 25 in contrast to in contrast to the “Western COVID-19 Hazardous Zone”.
In the West, the justification of individual liberty during the Covid-19 crisis is from Articles 13, 18, 19, and 20. In Article 13, 1) everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State; 2) everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country. In Article 18, everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance. In Article 19, everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. In Article 20, 1) everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association; 2) no one may be compelled to belong to an association. To an anti-mask protester during the pandemic, it is “give me liberty or give me death”. To an anti-mask protester, liberty to not wearing a mask is more important than death by COVID-19 to a protester or anyone else.
Therefore, different politics and situations have different ways to protect different types of human rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Tyson, 2021). The West for individualistic politics uses the prevention of restriction to protect the human rights of liberty, while the East for collectivistic politics uses the prevention of chaos to protect the human rights of life and livelihood. In the West, liberty matters the most, while in the East, lives and livelihoods matter the most. As a result, human rights simply cannot be used to intrude other countries’ sovereignties without considering other countries’ politics, cultures, and situations. The West should not intrude the sovereignty of the East for being too restrictive in the violation of the human right of liberty, while the East should not intrudes the sovereignty of the West for being too chaotic in the violation of the human rights of life and livelihood. Only a hypocritical imperialistic hegemon can be powerful and misguided enough to use human rights to intrude other countries’ sovereignties without considering other countries’ politics, cultures, and situations. All sovereign nations must respect one another’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Each democratic country must balance restriction and chaos to be adaptive to its politics, culture, and situation. Liberty and life-livelihood are interdependent as one cannot exist without the existence of the other.
6.4.2. Collectivistic Multilateral Organizations
Collectivistic multilateral organizations include the cooperative multilateral organizations for public health as the World Health Organization (WHO) and for global warming as the Paris Agreement. The WHO is the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations system. It is responsible for providing leadership on global health matters, shaping the health research agenda, setting norms and standards, articulating evidence-based policy options, providing technical support to countries and monitoring and assessing health trends. The WHO was found on April 7, 1948. It has now more than 7000 people from more than 150 countries working in 150 country offices, in 6 regional offices, and in headquarters in Geneva. The WHO works worldwide to promote health, keep the world safe, and serve the vulnerable. Its goal is to ensure that a billion more people have universal health coverage, to protect a billion more people from health emergencies, and provide a further billion people with better health and well-being.
The WHO is led by a director general nominated by the Executive Board and appointed by the World Health Assembly. The director-general is Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. The director general is supported by a deputy director general and multiple assistant directors general, each of whom specializes in a specific area within the WHO framework, such as family, women’s, and children’s health or health systems and innovation. The agency is financed primarily from annual contributions made by member governments on the basis of relative ability to pay. During the COVID-19 crisis, the WHO issues various warnings and advices. The WHO launched COVAX (COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access) to ensure vaccine access to the world’s most vulnerable.
The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change. It was adopted by 196 Parties in 2015. Its goal is to limit global warming to well below 2, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels. To achieve this long-term temperature goal, countries aim to reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible to achieve a climate neutral world by mid-century. The Paris Agreement is a landmark in the multilateral climate change process because, for the first time, a binding agreement brings all nations into a common cause to undertake ambitious efforts to combat climate change and adapt to its effects.
6.4.3. Single-Faceted Categorical Politics and Multi-Faceted Relational Politics
As described in Section 2.2.5, the West has single-faceted categorical perception-politics, while the East has multi-faceted relational perception-politics. The single-faceted categorical politics of the West results in the Cold War mentality which divides the world into the two confrontational single-faceted categorical blocs (the West and the East) in economy, politics, culture, and defense. The multi-faceted relational politics of the East results in the interdependent mentality which provides the two interdependent multi-faceted relational blocs (the West and the East) in economy, politics, culture, and defense. To overcome global crises in the interconnected world, multi-faceted relational politics is more adaptive.
7. The Intelligence Age: Global Interconnection and Eusocial Politics
In the Intelligence Age, the combination of the intelligence technology and the global crises lead to global interconnection whose politics is eusocial politics. Eusocial politics includes mutual vulnerability, the interdependent East-West, the United Regional Communities, the green-digital infrastructure of one earth and one future, and the poverty reduction of one people.
7.1. The Civilizational Shift: Global Interconnection
The world now is undergoing the Intelligence Revolution with artificial intelligence, big data, automation, enormous data collection, and digital connection everywhere (Makridakis, 2017). Artificial intelligence (AI) is defined as the ability for computers to perceive, learn, reason, and assist in decision-making to solve problems in ways that are similar to humans. AI can be deployed across a range of business functions to take over manual, repetitive and time-consuming tasks undertaken by employees. It can also provide insight into data. The Intelligence Revolution brings extensive changes that will also affect all aspects of our society and life. In addition, its impact on firms and employment will be considerable, which results in richly interconnected organizations with decision making based on the analysis and exploitation of “big” data and intensified global competition among firms. People will be capable of buying goods and obtaining services from anywhere in the world using the Internet, and exploiting the unlimited, additional benefits that will open through the widespread usage of AI inventions.
With ubiquitous and meaningful connections from the Information Revolution and the Intelligence Revolution, the world becomes highly interconnected in information and production. The usage of ubiquitous global information network in terms of e-commerce, instant news, and social media becomes necessary part of daily life for people in developed countries and many developing countries. Today, very few products are manufactured entirely in a single country, and people consume products daily from all over the world. The Intelligence Revolution leads to global interconnection.
In addition to the Intelligence Revolution, the global crises lead to global interconnection. The spread of virus in COVID-19 pandemic crisis link all nations together. Once the pandemic starts to come under control, the world will face the three existing global crises, including the climate crisis, the inequality crisis in developed countries, and the poverty crisis in developing countries.
The climate crisis is here and now (Milman, 2020). In 2020, the American west experienced its biggest year of fire on record. Meanwhile, the Atlantic exceeded the 21 English-language names for major storms and for only the second time had to turn to the Greek alphabet. In mid-February, 2021, the extreme snow storm caused the Texas power grid failure, leaving millions people without power (Worland, 2021). In recent years, large parts of the electric grid in the U.S. have proved incapable of keeping up with these extreme climate changes. The extreme weather events of the 21st century in this climate crisis will look nothing like those in the 20th century, the past preparation will not suffice for the climate crisis.
The inequality crisis is serious in developed countries. According to the report from OECD, almost half of all jobs could be wiped out or radically altered in the next two decades due to automation (OECD, 2019a). Automation and globalization have helped to increase growth in the world economy by promoting productivity by automation and specialization and division of labor by globalization, but it has simultaneously brought about social and economic insecurity and inequality which lead to the rise of populism in developed countries to produce political instability (Bajo-Rubio and Yan, 2019).
The poverty crisis is serious in developing countries. Global extreme poverty in developing countries is expected to rise in 2020 for the first time in over 20 years as the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic compounds the forces of conflict and climate change, which were already slowing poverty reduction progress (The World Bank, 2020a). The poverty crisis in developing countries has contributed to the refugee crisis in the developed countries (Chamie, 2020). The global number of refugees and asylum seekers at the end of 2019 was nearly 26 million, an increase by about 13 million since 2010. By midcentury, some have estimated that as many as 1 billion environmental refugees may result from climate change (Laczko and Aghazarm, 2009).
The global crises show that a serious problem can be spread from one part of the world to another part of the world quickly, and at the same time, a solution to solve crisis can be found easily from one part of the world to another part of the world. In the Intelligence Age, the combination of the intelligence technology and the global crises lead to global interconnection
7.2. The Formation of Eusocial Politics for Global Interconnection
The politics of global interconnection requires the highest level of sociality. Eusociality (eu in Greek means good) is the highest level of organization of sociality (Nowak, Tarnita, and Wilson, 2010). Ants, bees, and termites are eusocial animals. Eusocial animals are the most successful animals. The biomass of ants alone exceeds that of all terrestrial nonhuman vertebrates combined. Humans, who can be loosely characterized as eusocial, are dominant vertebrates. By learning the evolution of eusocial bees, we can learn how to form eusocial nations.
The various stages of the evolution of eusocial bees can be found among various different bees which consist of non-eusocial bees in various stages and irreversible eusocial bees. According to Wyatt A. Shell Sandra M. Rehan, the eusocial evolution of bees consists of solitary bee, multi-generational bee, cooperative multigenerational bees, division of labor cooperative multigenerational bees, and one-queen division of labor cooperative multigenerational bees (Shell and Rehan, 2018). In a particular stage, the bee which did not evolve further become the non-eusocial bee in the particular stage. In the same way, the eusocial evolution of humans consists of mobile band, multi-generational nation, multilateral multigenerational nations, division of labor multilateral multigenerational nations, and one-earth division of labor multilateral multigenerational nations as in Figure 2.
The key to the final stage of the evolution of eusocial bees is one queen in one hive. The genes of all bees in one hive are from one queen, so all bees in one hive are related. They do not have competitions in genes. In the same way, to form eusocial nations requires that all nations are related under the one earth for all people and one future for all our descendants. According to the National Academy of Science, we all live inseparably under one earth and one future (National Academy of Sciences, 1990). The politics of global interconnection under one earth, one future, and one people is eusocial politic.
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Figure 2. The parallel evolutions between eusocial bees and eusocial nations.
7.3. Eusocial Politics
Eusocial politics includes mutual vulnerability, the interdependent East-West, the United Regional Communities, the green-digital infrastructure of one earth and one future, and the poverty reduction of one people.
7.3.1. Mutual Vulnerability
The eusocial nations under one earth, one future, and one people require the acceptance of mutual vulnerability (Nef, 1999). For economic mutual vulnerability, adventurous production type in the West and consolidative production type in the East produce economic mutual vulnerability where the West is vulnerable in consolidative production type (development, supply chain, economy of scale, and ration) and the East is vulnerable in adventurous production type (invention, productivity, efficiency, and market). Instead of trying to be strong in both production types, the West and the East should continue to do what they are good at to avoid unnecessary and wasteful duplications which cannot be tolerated under the global crisis situations and under one earth. As a result, under one earth, the eusocial nations must accept mutual vulnerability as worker bees accept their vulnerability of the inability to reproduce, while queen bees accept their vulnerability in the inability to procure food. The rejection of mutual vulnerability destroys eusociality.
Under the acceptance of military mutual vulnerability, eusocial nations keep military expenses as low as possible, because the current military weapon powers already are sufficient to destroy each other fatally. Under one earth, one future, and one people, the offensive military against other nations will eventually be abolished. The money saved from military expenditure at 1.83 trillion dollars in 2020 (International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2021) will help to solve the global crises.
7.3.2. The Interdependent East-West
The interdependent East-West is like the symbol of interdependent yin-yang in Figure 3. Yin has small yang at its core, yang has small yin at its core, and yin and yang are in balance with each other. Yin does not dominate yang, and yang does not dominate yin. The East has small West at its core, the West has small East at its core, and the East and the West are in balance with each other. The East does not dominate the West, and the West does not dominate the East.
For the foundations of governments, competitive election from the West and consensual civil service from the East are interdependent. For social rules, rule of law from the West and rule of relation from the East are interdependent. For production types, adventurous type (invention, productivity, efficiency, and market) from the West and consolidative type (development, supply chain, economy of scale, and ration) from the East are interdependent. For human rights, liberty from the West and life-livelihood from the East are interdependent. For overall perceptions, single-faceted categorical perception from the West and multi-faceted relational perception are interdependent. For the foundations of governments, social rules, production types, human rights, and overall perceptions, the West is not complete without the East, and the East is not complete without the West. Instead of hegemony of the West or the East, the best politics is eusocial politics for harmonious interdependence between the West and the East under one earth, one future, and one people to overcome global crises.
7.3.3. The United Regional Communities (URC)
The financial crisis in 2008 is a turning point in both economic and political globalizations. The economic globalization as the ratio of export to GDP has been in retreat since 2008. According to Zhaohui Wang and Zhiqiang Sun, the empirical results confirm that localization and regionalization have been filling the vacuum of economic globalization in retreat in the last decade (Wang and Sun, 2020). The signing of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) on November 15, 2020 among the Asia-Pacific nations of Australia, Brunei, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, New
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Figure 3. the symbol of the interdependent East-West.
Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam further confirms the regionalization (Ng, 2020).
Politically, the financial crisis and pandemic crisis have weakened the U.S. as the military and political global power as it cannot dominates all regions all the time (Seligman and O’Brien, 2021). The global hegemony with military bases all over the world basically becomes obsolete. The desperate formation of alliances to maintain such global power is impossible to do as all countries have their own cultural, geopolitical, and economic alliances. Such obsolete hegemony is a complete waste economically other than selling military weapons. Facing global pandemic, climate, inequality, and poverty crises, the world cannot afford to have such huge global military waste (1.83 trillion dollars in 2020) to maintain obsolete global hegemony (International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2021).
The regionalization of the EU as the regional union on the geo-cultural base continues to exist. Regionalization will become the new normal in the international relations. For defense only, the world under one earth can be divided into the twelve geo-cultural defense regional communities of one earth as described previously (Chung, 2020). The 12 regional communities from the 195 states in the United Nations (The United Nations, 2021b) establish the “United Regional Communities” (URC) as follows and in Table 6.
The North American Regional Community
Canada, Mexico, the USA.
The South American Regional Community
Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and The Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay, Venezuela.
The East Asian Regional Community
China, Japan, Mongolia, Philippines, the Republic of Korea, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Viet Nam.
The South Asian Regional Community
Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Indonesia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Timor-Leste.
The Midwest Asian Regional Community
Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Turkey.
The Southwest Asian Regional Community
Bahrain, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen.
The Eurasian Regional Community
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan.
The West European Regional Community
Albania, Andorra. Austria. Belgium. Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria. Croatia. Cyprus. Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, Vatican City.
The North African Regional Community
Algeria, Comoros, Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Egypt, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Tunisia.
The West African Regional Community
Benin, Cape Verde, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Republic of the Congo, São Tomé and Príncipe, Togo.
The East-South African Regional Community
Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho. Madagascar, Malawi. Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, Seychelles, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
Pacific Islands Forum Regional Community
Australia, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, New Zealand, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu.
Each regional community enforces the “Monroe Doctrine” that forbids military intrusion from the countries outside of a regional community except the intervention approved by the United Nations. As a result, all overseas military bases as the military intrusion from the countries outside of a regional community have to be abolished. All defense treaties connected to the countries outside of a regional community also have to be ended. The United Regional Communities provide the permanent world peace and stability. Economically, each country can have economic treaty with any countries inside and outside of the geo-cultural defense regional communities. The degrees of political and economic unity vary with various regional communities.
Similar to the flag of the EU which stands for the ideals of unity, solidarity and harmony among the peoples of Europe, the flag of the United Regional Communities (URC) as Figure 4 represents the eusocial twelve regional communities (six for the West and six for the East in Table 8) on one green earth, and shows
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Figure 4. The flag of the United Regional Communities (URC) represents the eusocial twelve regional communities (six for the West and six for the East in Table 8) on one green earth, and shows the interdependent West-East (Greece-China) political cultures.
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Table 8. The United Regional Communities (The URC).
the interdependent West-East (Greece-China) political cultures. It is interesting to note that the meaning of the national flag (blue-white) of Greece is “freedom or death” for individualism, while the meaning of the national flag (gold-red) of China is unity for collectivism. The national flag of South Korea includes the yin-yang symbol (blue-red) to represent balance in the universe.
7.3.4. The Green-Digital Infrastructure of One Earth and One Future
In the keynote speech at the Rome Investment Forum 2020, Antoinette M. Sayeh, the Deputy Managing Director of the IMF, pointed out the steps to recover from the pandemic and to help low-income countries (Sayeh, 2020; IMF, 2020). The third step to build the foundation of a 21st century economy is a synchronized push for green and digital infrastructure investment, once the pandemic starts to come under control. Green-digital infrastructure is the infrastructure of one future for one earth. Green infrastructure leads us out of the climate crisis in the future, while digital infrastructure manages global interconnection in the future. The research in the IMF has shown that if G20 countries simultaneously increase the green-digital infrastructure spending, they could spend a third less to achieve the same the global GDP increase than if they acted alone.
The green-digital infrastructures include efficient mass transit systems and smart electricity grids. These are the keys to start tackling climate change as the most consequential challenge of facing humanity. 2021 is the first year where the three main economies or trading blocs of the world (the US, the European Union, and China) refocus their efforts to fighting climate change. The IMF estimate that a combination of green investments and appropriate carbon pricing can put us on a path towards net zero emissions by mid-century and help create millions of new jobs to minimize income inequality in developed countries. Meanwhile, to minimize inequality, OECD recommended more training and urged governments to extend protections to workers in the “grey zone”, where a blurring of employment and self-employment often comes with a lack of rights (Horobin, 2019). The efficient investment in the green-digital infrastructures requires the removal of trade and security barriers under one future with effective anti-monopoly and transparency regulations.
The Earth Day (April 22) will be Green-Digital Infrastructure Day to accelerate the expenditure and infrastructure for the construction of one earth and one future and to decelerate military expenditure and infrastructure for the destruction of one earth and one future.
7.3.5. The Poverty Reduction of One People
In the 1960s and 1970s, close to half of the world was living in extreme poverty. From the decrease in extreme poverty rates in East Asia and then in other parts of the developing world, the world has learned that the strategy for the poverty reduction has involved broad-based economic growth, investment in education, health, and family planning, and insurance against setbacks to families, nations, and regions due to disabilities, recessions, disasters, and disease in the study by the World Bank (Gill, Revenga, and Zeballos, 2016). Global extreme poverty has fallen from close to 2 billion people in 1990 to about 700 million today. Before the pandemic, according to the World Bank, the strategy of growth, investment, and insurance would allow the world to end extreme poverty by 2030.
However, global extreme poverty in developing countries is expected to rise in 2020 for the first time in over 20 years due to the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, the forces of conflict, and climate change (The World Bank, 2020a). The chaos generated from the poverty in developing countries produces the chaos of refugees and illegal immigrations in developed countries as shown the world today. We are all one people. The poverty reduction of the interconnected world under one people is necessary to prevent such chaos.
In a statement to the steering committees of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen underscored the need for major economies to continue supporting developing countries as they grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and high debt burdens. IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told reporters she was encouraged that the United States and China—the world’s two largest economies—shared a consistent view about their recovery prospects, and their “recognition of the responsibility they have for positive spillover impacts” (Shalal and Lawder, 2021).
The world under one people is responsible to continue the poverty reduction strategy of economic growth, investment, and insurance in developing countries. Instead of establishing overseas military bases in developing countries, the developed countries should establish technological centers in developing countries to assist economic growth, particularly in agriculture.
To carry on an effective poverty reduction, the politics in a developing country requires the minimization of the chaos in competitive election for a peaceful political transition, the liberalization of economy for individuals to manage their own livelihoods, and the centralization of civil service based on rule of relation to serve people, rule of law to govern people, and rule of professionalism to protect and enhance people’s lives-livelihoods. Rule of professionalism is based on education and standardized qualification.
8. Summary
In summary, this paper proposes the political evolution is through the political transformations in different technological Ages (the New Stone, Bronze, Iron, Industrial, Information, and Intelligence Ages) from technological revolutions. The parallel political evolutions in the individualistic West and the collectivistic East were originated from Greece and China, respectively. The three types of politics are territorial politics based on territorialism with rigid boundary, individualistic politics based on individualism with flexible boundary, and collectivistic politics based on collectivism with flexible boundary.
In the New Stone Age with the civilizational shift from egalitarian band to hereditary tribe with rigid boundary, the origin of the politics in Greece was the territorial hereditary pastoral-trade tribe, while the origin of the politics from China was the territorial hereditary agrarian tribe. In the Bronze Age with the civilization shift to hereditary nations with flexible boundary, the politics in Greece evolved into individualistic hereditary nation alliance, while the politics in China evolved into collectivistic hereditary nation feudal system. In the Late Bronze/Iron Age with the civilizational shift to centralized mega empire with flexible boundary, the politics in Greece evolved into individualistic selective mega empire, while the politics in China evolved into collectivistic civil service mega empire.
In the Industrial Age with the civilizational shift to democratic nation with flexible boundary, the politics in the West evolved into individualistic individual liberal democracy, while the politics in the East evolved into collectivistic common professional (socialistic) democracy. In the Information Age with the civilizational shift to multilateral organization with multifaceted boundary, the politics in the West evolves into individualistic multilateral organization, while the politics in the East evolves into collectivistic multilateral organization. In the coming Intelligence Age with the civilizational shift to eusocial politics with multifaceted boundary, the politics in the West will evolve into individualistic eusocial politics, while the politics in the East will evolve into collectivistic eusocial politics. All nations will be eusocial nations under one earth, one future, and one people.
For the foundations of governments, competitive election from the individualistic West and consensual civil service from the collectivistic East are interdependent. For social rules, rule of law from the individualistic West and rule of relation from the collectivistic East are interdependent. For production types, adventurous type (invention, productivity, efficiency, and market) from the individualistic West and consolidative type (development, supply chain, economy of scale, and ration) from the collectivistic East are interdependent. For human rights, liberty from the individualistic West and life-livelihood from the collectivistic East are interdependent. For overall perceptions, single-faceted categorical perception from the individualistic West and multi-faceted relational perception from collectivistic East are interdependent. Instead of the hegemony of the West or the East, the West and the East are interdependent. The West is not complete without the East, and the East is not complete without the West.
The combination of the emergent Intelligence Age and the various harsh global crises results in inevitable global interconnection which demands eusocial politics under one earth, one future, and one people to overcome global crises (pandemic, climate, inequality, and poverty crises). Eusocial politics includes mutual vulnerability, the interdependent East-West, the United Regional Communities, the green-digital infrastructure of one earth and one future, and the poverty reduction of one people.