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Paper found on the French Foreign Office site, previously published in "Etudes" april 2002 (we are indebted to Janice B. Paulsen who gave us the quotation),.
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Weltanschauung: this somewhat antiquated German compound word was dear to Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), who used it quite often. There is no exact equivalent in English, but it can be roughly translated to mean "world idea", "conception of the world", "world view", even "philosophy" or "ideology". The French have adopted the term but hardly ever use it. The Spanish, who adapt foreign words more readily than their neighbors north of the Pyrenees, frequently use the word "cosmovisión", an admirable term that Father Teilhard de Chardin would have welcomed into his lexicon. The idea of the world that, in all his work, he explains with a scientist's rigor and celebrates with a believer's enthusiasm reaches out across time and space to encompass the immensity of the Cosmos through space and time. In Teilhard de Chardin's thought, the word "globalization, whose present-day meaning is limited to signifying planetary perspectives, would have made no sense were it not re-placed in the energetic and spiritual dynamics that sweep the infinite universe along in its forward momentum.
"The organic reality of the World"During the last years of his life, Father Teilhard de Chardin was disappointed to see his ideas rejected by the ecclesiastical authorities. Not long before his death, he wrote a letter from Capetown to Father Janssens, the general superior of the Society of Jesus. In a few lines, the priest, philosopher and scientist expressed his conception of "globalization" without using the word, which was not yet in use: ... ever since childhood, my spiritual life has been completely dominated by a deep "feeling" about the organic reality of the World. At first, this feeling was fairly vague in my mind and in my heart; but over the years it gradually acquired the more specific, pervasive meaning of a general convergence of the Universe towards the self. At its peak, this convergence coincides with and culminates in Him whom, in quo omnia constant, Heaven has taught me to love. The internationalization of trade, the convergence of economies, financial flows between continents, the opening of markets, the rises and falls in stock markets and banking, the multiplication of information and communication media, new technologies, computers, the Internet, multinational and transnational corporations, relocations, global economic integration, planetary conflicts, international institutions, the expansion of liberal democracy and the market economy, cultural mixing: none of these words, which stand like beacons, lighthouses and objectives in the semantic field encompassed by the term "globalization", were part of Teilhard de Chardin's vocabulary. Nevertheless, they implicitly make up his conception of globalization. "Being more means uniting more" was one of his favorite aphorisms. It could have been the motto for the groundswell that is inescapably shaping the world's future. Humanity is becoming increasingly unified. Even during Teilhard de Chardin's lifetime, this trend became obvious with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). But the "planetary village", as Edgar Morin put it, or, to use a more recent expression, the "global village" that the theologian intuitively foresaw can only find its cohesiveness, consistency, scope and dynamism in the landscape of an ever-evolving and converging universe and the Christian perspective he affirmed and claimed as its only foundation.
The "Omega Point" It is more appropriate to start with the end rather than the beginning of History. The Fable of the World, according to Teilhard de Chardin, begins in the future. In My Universe (1924), he explained end and finality, the "omega point" that he intuited during the First World War: Like a sphere radiating from countless centers, today the material World seems suspended to human spiritual consciousness. What does the creative Union teach us about the balance and the future of this system? It warns us in no uncertain terms that the world we see is still deeply unstable and profoundly unfinished: unstable because the millions of souls (living or dead) in the Cosmos today form a multifarious, shaky whole that mechanically needs a Center to keep from falling apart; unfinished because their very plurality, though a weakness, is at the same time its power and hope for the future, the exigency or expectation of an ultimate unification in the spirit.... If the infra-human world is consolidated by our souls, the human World, in turn, is conceivable only if held together by conscious centers that are vaster and more powerful than our own. And thus, from neighbor to neighbor (from more to less multiple), we are led to conceive of a primary and supreme Center, an omega that connects all the fibers and threads generating the Universe. This Center is still in (virtual) formation, if we imagine the completion of the movement it directs; but it is also a real Center that exists, because without its current attraction, the overall flow of unification could not give rise to the Multiple. "Globalization" according to Teilhard de Chardin is but an effect of the irrepressible attraction of this point of universal convergence. The word "totalization" manifests this energy. He wrote: Let us imagine... a man who has become conscious of his personal relationship with a supreme Person, to whom he is led to aggregate himself by the interplay of all cosmic activities. In such a subject, and starting with him, it is inevitable that a unification process will start, marked from neighbor to neighbor by the following steps: totalization of each operation in relation to the individual; totalization of the individual in relation to himself; and lastly, totalization of individuals in the human collective. All this "impossibility" can be achieved naturally under the influence of love. An unfinished worldTaking "the pure Multiple" or "creatable Nothingness", this "entreaty of being", as its source, the creation of the world is an ongoing process: No, the Creation has never stopped. It is a sweeping, continuous movement spaced out on the Totality of Time. It is still ongoing and, incessantly as well as imperceptibly, the World is gradually emerging above Nothingness (1917). Teilhard de Chardin's view of Creation, always becoming and open-ended, is the very expression of evolution. The process is neither a blind nor an automatic mechanism, and requires the active participation of the players who are involved in it. Teilhard de Chardin stresses that point, which is essential to his thought. Man co-created the world through his exploits as well as his more modest undertakings: Perhaps we imagine that the Creation has been over for a long time. That is a mistake. It is continuing, stronger than ever, in the world's most elevated places... And our purpose here on Earth is to complete it, even with the humblest labor of our hands (1926-1927). The "globalization" that Teilhard de Chardin's intuition suggested is a collective project helping to drive the universe forward. "Undeniably, the burden of the World to prolong itself is heavier on the shoulders of Humanity," he wrote. Activists are probably right to proclaim that globalization is a risky, hazardous business, but other observers argue that the momentum of "progress" will defeat or surpass the dangers. However, let there be no misunderstanding: what Teilhard de Chardin offers is far from an idyllic vision of the human adventure: Evil, disorder and failure... decay, loneliness and anguish... Pain and suffering, blood and tears... In the final analysis, that is what, at first glance, the spectacle of the World in motion reveals to us. But is that really all? Isn't there something else to see? The Mass on the WorldIn Teilhard de Chardin's meaning of the word, globalization is a spiritual event. "A single movement," he wrote, "is taking place in the World, which alone can legitimate our action: the emergence of some spiritual Reality through the efforts of life." The admirable Mass on the World (1923), inspired by the deserts of Mongolia, takes part in this "growth of the world", which is the main task of every human being, believers and non-believers alike, whether they are aware of it or not. It is the only real goal of human activity. A mystical kind of intuition directs the celebration of this liturgy, where all the masses celebrated on Earth unite. "All my joy and success, proclaims the celebrant," Teilhard de Chardin wrote, "all my reason for being and my lust for life, my God, are suspended from this basic vision of your conjunction with the Universe." The world, according to Teilhard de Chardin, thus designates now the cosmic universe, now only the terrestrial globe. Most often‚ the word means both. In this regard, globalization as Teilhard would have understood it to mean - without being unaware of the "religious globalization" taking place today - can be conceived only in its spiritual incandescence. In the final act of this Eucharist with a cosmic dimension celebrated "on the altar of the entire Earth", the priest made the following pledge to Christ: Jesus, I devote myself, with all the resources that your creative attraction have caused to spring forth in me, with my knowledge, which is too weak, with my religious faith, with my calling and (what I consider the most important of all) with the depth of my human conviction, to living and dying for your Body in all its extensions, in other words to the World that has become, through your power and through my faith, the magnificent, living cauldron in which all disappears to be reborn. An explanation of the worldTeilhard de Chardin wrote his greatest book, The Human Phenomenon, between 1938 and 1940. Even though he spent two years painstakingly revising and rewriting the work to get it past Roman Catholic Church censors, it was not published until after his death, in 1955. The Human Phenomenon opens with these lines: "Do not seek in these pages an explanation of the World, but an introduction to an explanation of the World." He designated and described in minute detail the different stages of human evolution, or, rather, its "sudden lurches forward", which manifest a qualitative "leap", an irreversible advance towards consciousness and Spirit, from "pre-life" to the appearance of life, from the "step" of reflection to the "step" of socialization. Anthropogenesis occurred in various places around the Earth. Is that not the first sign of what could have been called the "step" of globalization? Teilhard de Chardin may not have used that expression, but what he wrote foretold events that have unfolded down the years since The Human Phenomenon came out: From a zoological point of view, Humanity presents us with the unique spectacle of a "species" capable of achieving what every other species before it has failed to: not merely being cosmopolitan, but covering the Earth with a single organized membrane, without its breaking. After life appeared on Earth, thought appeared like fire. "Eventually," Teilhard de Chardin wrote, "incandescence covered the entire planet, which thus became 'phosphorescent with Thought'". Increasingly complex socialization gives rise to the appearance of a harmonized collectivity of consciousnesses equivalent to a sort of super-consciousness. The Earth is not merely being covered with the myriad seeds of Thought, but wrapped in a single thinking envelope until it forms just one vast Seed of thought on a sidereal scale, the plurality of individual reflections grouping together and strengthening each other in the act of a single unanimous Reflection. Was that a scientific observation or a prophet's vision? The two are inseparable in this great, overarching synthesis, which offers the best definition of globalization according to Teilhard de Chardin. From the Creation to GlobalizationNo element of Father Teilhard de Chardin's Weltanschauung can be separated from the whole: Creation, Incarnation and Redemption are part of the same basic process. In the broadest sense of the word, "globalization" - undoubtedly just an effect or a manifestation of "the unitary aspirations of the Universe around us" - can be placed in this line of events, which expresses "the unification of the Multiple". If Father Teilhard de Chardin had used the word, he surely would have intended it to have a sweeping meaning embracing every one of its dimensions: not just the economic, political and social, but the theological, religious, spiritual and cosmic as well. Taking into account technological progress, the multiplicity of trade and human relationships, the acknowledged innervation of the planet by increasingly dense, rich communications networks (of which the Web is but the most striking example) can only lead to what Teilhard de Chardin would have called the accomplishment of a new step. The phenomenon of unification is only the manifestation of a process that encompasses it, Cosmogenesis expressed by creative Union, which Teilhard de Chardin explains as follows: Creative Union is the theory according to which, in the present evolutionary stage of the Cosmos (the only one we know), everything is happening as though the One was being formed by the successive unifications of the Multiple - and as though it were all the more perfect insofar as it more perfectly centralizes under it a vaster Multiple. Imagined in this perspective and dimension, Globalization - written with a capital letter, which was characteristic of Teilhard de Chardin's style - could only have a positive meaning in his view. Not only is globalization inevitable and, in the end, beneficial; he would have considered it as a lesser-scale manifestation of Consciousness, the Universe and the process of the planet's Unification. Nevertheless, the movement is buffeted by the uncertainties, hazards and unexpected twists that affect every event of creative Evolution. However, the "fresh, new step of Evolution" that Teilhard de Chardin foresaw could but benefit more fully-developed beings on a higher plane of consciousness; the scope of reflection "is now planetary". The NoosphereEvolution never stops. From the bird to the airplane, from the fish to the submarine, why not recognize that there are "vital analogies"? Teilhard de Chardin uses these telling examples to demonstrate the uninterrupted work of biological evolution, the driving force propelling the world. Long before the spectacular strides in telecommunications that have sped up globalization, he described its manifestations to refute the absolute division we always set up between the natural and the artificial... For years, we have been watching, without understanding, the formation before our eyes of the astonishing network of roads, sea and air routes, postal routes, wires, cables and ethereal pulsations that are squeezing the face of the Earth tighter each day under the influence of that same, harmful presupposition. "All that is communications for business or pleasure," they say, "the establishment of lines that are useful for commerce and industry..." Not at all, I would submit, but something much deeper than that. What we are witnessing is the creation of a veritable nervous system of Humanity, the development of a shared consciousness... Teilhard de Chardin follows the progress of "Hominization", and considers "the mysterious living envelope born around our stellar unit at the dawn of geological time", to give it a new dimension and meaning. The discovery of what he called the Noosphere seems to have left him amazed and dumbfounded: Although at first glance this view might seem far-fetched and fantastical, what we are suggesting here is to view the Biosphere's thinking envelope as being of the same zoological (or, if you will, telluric) order as the Biosphere itself. The more it is considered, the more this extreme solution appears to be the only sincere one... And, in one way or another, this comes down to imagining, above the animal Biosphere, a human sphere, the sphere of reflection, of conscious invention, of the union felt between souls (the Noosphere, if you will). The Greek root of this word (noos: the ability to think; intelligence, mind, thought; soul, disposition of the soul, will, desire) has been borrowed by the French cable operator NOOSnet, which provides worldwide Internet connections. Just a coincidence? At any rate, it is rich with meaning. As early as 1918, Teilhard de Chardin had an intuition about this basic notion of his "globalized" thought, that of a "planetary consciousness", which at first he called "the Great Monad" and the "Anthroposphere" (1920), before finally and definitively settling on "Noosphere" in 1925. Teilhard de Chardin, reaching the "climax" of his demonstration "of the extraordinary singularity of the human event", wondered whether he would be dismissed as a dreamer. Refuting his critics before they had a chance to make that accusation, he said, "Suppose we admit that this is indeed a dream. Better to follow it to the end and see how much the World's immensity and depth harmonizes with our dream than to remain trapped by the limits of the narrow reality within which they want to keep us confined." From the time he developed the concept, the Noosphere was inseparable from Teilhard de Chardin's world view, which he further expounded in The Human Phenomenon. In a way, it is a sort of mental picture foreshadowing "globalization", not only in the present-day meaning that economists have given the word, but in the broader social, cultural and spiritual sense. He attributes many positive effects to globalization that make up for the sadly negative impact of social trends. For example, although unemployment is bad in itself, it enables the Noosphere to release a new sum of mental energy. Teilhard de Chardin's views of various social phenomena, such as wars, are paradoxical to say the least, and have been the source of many misunderstandings. In every case that he envisioned, the progress of Consciousness is always the main point, the definitive criteria for appraising the advances in the World's development. In the middle of the Second World War, on November 15, 1942, at the height of "the suffering and scandal", Teilhard de Chardin concluded a talk in Beijing, where he was living in exile, far from the death and destruction ravaging Europe, with this "optimistic assertion", as he himself called it: Seen in the light of a general Science of the World that places spiritual energies in a third infinity, the crisis we are going through is a "positive sign". Its features are not those of disintegration, but of birth. Let us not be frightened, then, by what at first glance seems to be a final and universal discord. What we are enduring is but the price, the earliest sign, the preliminary phase of our unanimity. "Shadows on the landscape"The September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States rank as a "crime against all humanity" because of their nature, scale and effects. Has that tragedy ushered in a "change of era" in world history, to pick up on the expression that Father Teilhard de Chardin used while meditating on the atomic bomb and "the intrusion of nuclear energy into the play of human societies"? The tragic optimism that informed his thought does not disregard the sinister side of the faces of Evil, "the shadows on the landscape", as he referred to war and acts of barbarism. "One way or another," he wrote, "it remains that, even in the eyes of a simple biologist, the human adventure resembles nothing more than the Way of the Cross." According to one of Teilhard de Chardin's fundamental beliefs, the forward march of evolution, which drives the universe and contributes to globalization, is not linear and peaceful, but stop-and-go, following a sort of unavoidable, generally brutal dialectic where the worst is not only the price to pay, the consideration, but, paradoxically, the guarantee of any progress. He has often been misunderstood on that point, especially when giving free rein to his imagination. "Looking at the cyclotron"When Father Teilhard de Chardin visited the University of California at Berkeley in the summer of 1952, the astonishing vision he had while looking at the cyclotron seemed to irrefutably confirm his intuitions: ... The Berkeley cyclotron definitively disappeared before my distracted eyes. In its place and in my imagination, was the entire Noosphere, warped by the breath of Research, forming but one single, enormous cyclone, whose effect was to produce, instead of nuclear Energy, psychic Energy in an increasingly advanced state, in other words, identical to the Ultra-human. Yet, the remarkable thing was that, faced with this colossal reality, which made me feel dizzy, I felt only deep calm and joy. Finishing the World"Globalization" as understood today by its most enthusiastic advocates and most virulent opponents, would have had no significance or interest for Father Teilhard without the religious perspective. "I am utterly convinced (more and more)," he wrote, "that the World cannot be finished without Christ..." His world view and Christian faith were inseparable from one another. "Placing God in discordance with human Progress today," he wrote, "is to undermine believers' reasons to believe and cut off non-believers' access to Faith." This theme is a shining thread running through the myriad fragments of Teilhard de Chardin's oeuvre. "The disheartening spectacle of the scattered human masses..." did not stop him from sensing or observing "certain forms of planetary energy in play, which invincibly tend to draw nearer together and to organize themselves (as incredible as it may seem) into the teeming multitude of billions of thinking consciousnesses forming 'the reflecting layer' of the Earth." A single condition is necessary for the "forces of totalization" to have the upper hand over "the forces of disintegration": the "same deep aspiration" not towards Something but towards Someone. Teilhard de Chardin reasserted that affirmation, which is inseparable from his religious faith, in a brief essay dated January 6, 1950, when he asked, "How can we hope to conceive and achieve human unanimity on Earth?" Giving globalization a "soul" - or not - by adopting - or rejecting - the Tobin tax, seeking to achieve a "human and controlled" globalization through all kinds of regulations and adjustments, joining - or not - activist non-governmental organizations, denouncing the injustices brought about by globalization or singing its praises, choosing between free trade and protectionism: would Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin have taken a stand on the challenges and risks posed by globalization, which are being so hotly debated today? Is it not the case that, as a geologist and a palaeontologist (the only scientific titles he recognized), he was always more interested in the fate of homo sapiens than in that of homo economicus or homo politicus? Even more fundamentally important to him was the fate of "'Homo progressivus'... in other words, the Human for whom the future on Earth matters more than the present." The "New type of Human", whose ideal shape Father Teilhard de Chardin roughly sketched out, will be among "the real 'workers' of the Earth". The problem of the genesis and evolution of the Universe and of human beings - cosmogenesis and anthropogenesis - surely contains all the vicissitudes of globalization, but on another scale. The scientist and the believer gazes further into the distance than do economists, financiers and politicians, who must deal with more immediate issues. René Passet reminded his readers that true globalism is a "universalism that aims to build the unity of the human community." That project is very similar to Teilhard de Chardin's views on "the step of socialization" and the changes affecting human society in the "planetary globalization at work today." *** Universal Evolution /The law of Complexity-Consciousness/The Omega Point: this triad is the underlying structure of Teilhard de Chardin's Weltanschauung and the framework in which he constantly, and with an increasingly urgent acuity, as he himself put it, asked and tried to answer "the two-fold question of the meaning and the value of the World around us" in order to give meaning to its "disordered agitation". Pierre Teilhard de Chardin suggests giving the word its full meaning, ranging from the economic to the spiritual, and original perspective, which is eminently stimulating for the spirit and fertile for action. In this way, he can surely be considered a prophet of Globalization. A Globalization that is still just in the incipient stages of what he had hoped.
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