Cosmopolitan Ethics in a Fragmented World
Sheliza Hyder
Larger and social fabric of our globe. Talking about the social fabric of world I assumed distinct sanctions or distinct identities emerging from cultural, political and theological aspects as a part of single artifact, unit body. The world is like a mosaic made up of distinct beautiful fragments i.e. it is made up of deviating political laws of a marked land; it is made up of varying cultures and even varying geographical features. Beautifully designed
Peculiarity among the theological believes, a culture and country norm of human society is way more heterogeneous than the human DNA itself. With these variations comes the complexity of our global society and its intermingled relationships where within a single culture we found people of more than one religion. As for example the sub continental culture or I would say the Hindustani culture consists of people of Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity and Islam. Similarly within a religion we found more than one culture. Let us take Islam as an example to understand what I just said. Today the followers of Islam are found in different regions of the world. this is why we observe the African Muslims, Britain Muslims, Turkish Muslims, Syrian and Iranian Muslims and the Muslims of far east and south east. And to its greater extent we see that cultural norms and rituals has a profound impact on the practices of a single faith. it influences the way we dress , the way we perceive our faith with the world, the way we worship God. Explaining the fact that why we observe even distinctions within one theological believe. It is not only in Islam but in Christianity too, the minor communities differing in their school of thoughts. In order to establish peace into our fragmented mosaic society for common good and better future we need to put up a clear concept of “cosmopolitan ethics”
Like ethics provides us the standardize rules and regulation upon systematic judgments of our society , approving the good and condemning the evil. And to its bottomless research what are the cultural or religious or political norms which decides the righteous or wrongness of an action as a whole. Similarly cosmopolitan ethics is referred to as the standard which provides the basicity of the common good of the global society. the word cosmopolitan is evolved from pluralism. cosmopolitan ethics enables a global citizen to not only accepts the differences but to respect these differences of the world what I called earlier the “fragments” and to seek understanding and knowledge from these differences.
The motto that human inventions will continue its ever accelerating conquests of every confrontations that the mankind has faced until now. And to which a lot of subtle uncertainties abound, will get its empowerment only if we cross or open the limits of our learning .it is like to build bridge with different sanctions of the world in order to welcome as much knowledge as we can and yet not to cross those bridge. Ensuring the learning beyond limits without losing our own cultural and religio – political identity. And Aristotle said that it is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a thought without accepting it. Mankind continues expecting more to beat upcoming challenges whether it’s the global food shortage or the global poverty or the global encounters to natural disasters. The revolution of rising expectations demands knowledge beyond demarcated spheres. And to share it with other regions of world like the sun and moon. Spread whatever knowledge you have so that modified conclusions could be derived in order to beat bigger difficulties together.
History sets an example of cosmopolitan society. In the Abbasids regime house of wisdom (bayt ul hikma) was a major intellectual centre where Jewish and Christians learned scholars not only translated the knowledge but were also the part of research works. The Arabian Muslims translated and preserved not only the teachings of Greeks but those of Indians and Persians as well.
Globalization closely associated with the concept of cosmopolitan society. Prince Karim Aga Khan in his speech of Harvard university (November 12, 2015) described globalization as a centripetal force putting us as closely in touch with people who lives across the world as we are to those who live next to us. but at the same time a set of centrifugal forces have been gaining on us producing a growing sense between and within societies of disintegration. It is like the more we communicate, it becomes more challengeable to explain our own opinion. The more we get confused and got lost into the arguments. And in this way we are likely to go astray. The challenge of living well together is still a challenge because people do posses many misconceptions regarding globalization.
One of the major misconceptions is Homogenization. According to this perspective people assume that globalization means one single culture dominating over the other cultural entities that exists around the globe. As the word it self has a prefix “homo” means single. What I observed in my surrounding is that youth is getting inspired by western culture without knowing the significance of their own rituals. Our ancestors to whom the young generation yells “orthodox thinkers” have a good aesthetic sense of our own culture. And they do posses an opinion that one must play an active part to promote the primitive cultural legacy. Not to get confused with this, cosmopolitan society again as I said before built bridges but not cross them. This means cosmopolitan ethic regards our distinctive identities and accepts the ultimate moral responsibilities being an active global citizen rather than limiting our own boundaries. It feels great pleasure to welcome diversity as an opportunity to learn and to establish our own identity rather than feeling it as burden. So what I inferred in the end is the gum or the glue element that holds the beautiful fragments of the mosaic in place is the “cosmopolitan ethics.”
Peculiarity among the theological believes, a culture and country norm of human society is way more heterogeneous than the human DNA itself. With these variations comes the complexity of our global society and its intermingled relationships where within a single culture we found people of more than one religion. As for example the sub continental culture or I would say the Hindustani culture consists of people of Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity and Islam. Similarly within a religion we found more than one culture. Let us take Islam as an example to understand what I just said. Today the followers of Islam are found in different regions of the world. this is why we observe the African Muslims, Britain Muslims, Turkish Muslims, Syrian and Iranian Muslims and the Muslims of far east and south east. And to its greater extent we see that cultural norms and rituals has a profound impact on the practices of a single faith. it influences the way we dress , the way we perceive our faith with the world, the way we worship God. Explaining the fact that why we observe even distinctions within one theological believe. It is not only in Islam but in Christianity too, the minor communities differing in their school of thoughts. In order to establish peace into our fragmented mosaic society for common good and better future we need to put up a clear concept of “cosmopolitan ethics”
Like ethics provides us the standardize rules and regulation upon systematic judgments of our society , approving the good and condemning the evil. And to its bottomless research what are the cultural or religious or political norms which decides the righteous or wrongness of an action as a whole. Similarly cosmopolitan ethics is referred to as the standard which provides the basicity of the common good of the global society. the word cosmopolitan is evolved from pluralism. cosmopolitan ethics enables a global citizen to not only accepts the differences but to respect these differences of the world what I called earlier the “fragments” and to seek understanding and knowledge from these differences.
The motto that human inventions will continue its ever accelerating conquests of every confrontations that the mankind has faced until now. And to which a lot of subtle uncertainties abound, will get its empowerment only if we cross or open the limits of our learning .it is like to build bridge with different sanctions of the world in order to welcome as much knowledge as we can and yet not to cross those bridge. Ensuring the learning beyond limits without losing our own cultural and religio – political identity. And Aristotle said that it is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a thought without accepting it. Mankind continues expecting more to beat upcoming challenges whether it’s the global food shortage or the global poverty or the global encounters to natural disasters. The revolution of rising expectations demands knowledge beyond demarcated spheres. And to share it with other regions of world like the sun and moon. Spread whatever knowledge you have so that modified conclusions could be derived in order to beat bigger difficulties together.
History sets an example of cosmopolitan society. In the Abbasids regime house of wisdom (bayt ul hikma) was a major intellectual centre where Jewish and Christians learned scholars not only translated the knowledge but were also the part of research works. The Arabian Muslims translated and preserved not only the teachings of Greeks but those of Indians and Persians as well.
Globalization closely associated with the concept of cosmopolitan society. Prince Karim Aga Khan in his speech of Harvard university (November 12, 2015) described globalization as a centripetal force putting us as closely in touch with people who lives across the world as we are to those who live next to us. but at the same time a set of centrifugal forces have been gaining on us producing a growing sense between and within societies of disintegration. It is like the more we communicate, it becomes more challengeable to explain our own opinion. The more we get confused and got lost into the arguments. And in this way we are likely to go astray. The challenge of living well together is still a challenge because people do posses many misconceptions regarding globalization.
One of the major misconceptions is Homogenization. According to this perspective people assume that globalization means one single culture dominating over the other cultural entities that exists around the globe. As the word it self has a prefix “homo” means single. What I observed in my surrounding is that youth is getting inspired by western culture without knowing the significance of their own rituals. Our ancestors to whom the young generation yells “orthodox thinkers” have a good aesthetic sense of our own culture. And they do posses an opinion that one must play an active part to promote the primitive cultural legacy. Not to get confused with this, cosmopolitan society again as I said before built bridges but not cross them. This means cosmopolitan ethic regards our distinctive identities and accepts the ultimate moral responsibilities being an active global citizen rather than limiting our own boundaries. It feels great pleasure to welcome diversity as an opportunity to learn and to establish our own identity rather than feeling it as burden. So what I inferred in the end is the gum or the glue element that holds the beautiful fragments of the mosaic in place is the “cosmopolitan ethics.”
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