Are Lankan business leaders enemies of globalization?

Those of us who put a very high premium on material and rational progress of man, and view the energetic contacts between cultures as the wellspring of change, are happy to witness the increase in the extent and velocity of such contacts due to the globalization of economic activity.

Although the world is rapidly shrinking and people are increasingly becoming free from national limitations, there has been no fundamental shift in how we think about the limitations of our own cultural materials.

It is not that there are no cultural shifts to be discerned. For instance, the habit of showing respect for human personality embodied in liberalism and democratic capitalism, having impinged on our customs, has precipitated a visible shift in the centre of gravity of our own social habits.

It is rather that as a society, we have been more interested in defending the purity of our culture, or the set of social habits that time and parochial pressures have crystallized, than in understanding the significance of the cultural shifts that the impingement of new customs on old habits brings about.

Consequently, when we look at our culture - from the way we govern ourselves to the way we understand and spiritualize the experienced world –there is no feeling whatsoever to be had that something wholly new has begun to emerge in terms of our underlying attitudes and final aims.

In business too the familiar attitudes and values persist.

For instance, the effort to succeed continues to be pivoted largely on the use of monopolistic practices and the art of manipulation and intimidation, while the profitability of many businesses remains wedded to the fact that the character of goods and services could be defiled with immunity.

The idealization of the character of goods and services does not appear to be something from which our entrepreneurs have found a way to draw inspiration and strength.

We might bring these generalities about business nicely to facts and particulars by pointing out that the unprecedented business success of Harry Jayewardene is widely attributed to monopolistic practices, cynicism and the art of thuggery. Additionally, at the risk of sounding too contrived to be convincing, we might cite a wag who recently remarked, while scurrying to get out of the Nawaloka hospital, that there is a run on Dharmadasa’s doings!

These particulars are not offered as a test of the generality of the conclusion that our businesses tend to build their success around the defilement (rather than the idealization or refinement) of products and services and around the barbarousness of th art of manipulation and intimidation.

Even if our businesses were found guilty of such a tendency, it would not be something for which our business leaders could be singled out from the rest of our culture for blame - it would be deemed a systemic problem.

We may, however, blame our business leaders for their failure to perceive the sharp limitations of our own culture - everything from our unceremonious folk ways of eating with our fingers to our folklore and folk wisdom that are psychologically incompatible with knowledge and philosophic wisdom.

Such a failure is inexcusable. The business leaders have had the most opportunities to see the world and to have fresh social and intellectual experiences. They are also the major beneficiaries of economic globalization.

Yet they persist in their sentimental attachment to folk ways. More importantly, they are in denial, out of either ignorance or petty provincialism, about the fact that globalization necessarily implies Westernization. Consequently, when the emphasis is on attitudes and judgements about the world, no discernable difference is apparent between them and those who view the yearning to rise above national limitation with derision and disbelief.

Although human progress is a matter of great complexity, one need not be a rocket scientist to come upon the awareness that not every social habit or system that time and circumstances have crystallised is conducive for progress. The process of assimilating the cultural materials that are conducive for progress and the ensuing destruction of familiar habits is what is meant by cultural change.

Globalization is but a euphemism for Westernization. The best practices that we are so keen to adopt are largely if not entirely of Western origin.

Consider those practices that come readily to the mind. At a practical level: The practice of limiting the power of government constitutionally - and the rule of law; the approach to adjustment of conflicts that is at once egalitarian, pragmatic and experimental; the courage to risk failure and the experimental attitude that inspire and sustain an ethic of achievement.

At an intellectual level: A consuming passion for the passionless truth and the practice of the activity of knowing and philosophizing, with the use of observational, experimental, and logical procedures.

At an imaginative or spiritual level: The stubborn refusal to gainsay the reality of the feeling of human personality or “soul”, which inspires creative works that aim at nourishing an optimistic attitude and a liveliness for all that is best in existence.

All these and many other practices of the West constitute “the locomotive at the head of mankind.” We should be happy that there are cultural materials that are conducive for human progress.