How should we understand the new actuality and what should we do? Is this the first step in the way toward the world of the cyborg: a civilization beyond the dichotomies between nature and culture, humans, nature and machines, reality and fantasy, the moment and eternity? Or is it a gate for the new, most advanced self-inflicted barbarization of humanity? Is it the beginning of a culture-clash that will bring the end of liberal democracies and eventually to human life on this planet?
Humanist educators should ask themselves new questions and open themselves to rearticulating the fundamental values, concepts and predictions of current formal education
The new, dramatic, imposition, so it seems, is no longer stoppable. It is an embarrassing crossroad that shatters, deconstructs, transforms, ridicules all modern and pre-modern dimensions and levels of our lives; challenges all dreams, concepts, practices and fruits of Enlightenment and humanist education, in all its forms and dimensions. As such it should become a starting point for a worthy effort to take responsibility – not to retreat to sentimental, naive or nihilist alternatives. "Retreat from the globalization of the human dependency, from the global reach of human technology and economic activities are, in all probability, no longer on the cards. Answers like 'stand the wagons in a circle' or 'back to the tribal (national, communal) tents' wouldn't do. The question is not how to turn back the river of history, but how to fight the pollution of its waters by human misery and how to channel its flow towards a more equitable distribution of the benefits it carries...An effective response to globalization can only be global".
For good or worse, modern history, or our lives as we were educated to articulate them, to reflect on them, to threaten or edify them – cannot continue linearily in light of a binary logic, social security and dialogically reached consensus and collective action regulated and edified in a liberal democracy; neither in their present form nor in their current directions unchanged, as if nothing happened in the last generation.
Some would claim that modern life and its prospects have no future at all, in face of the post-Fordist production, distribution, representation and consumption within the framework of globalizing capitalism. They see globalization as a menace we should prepare ourselves to challenge, some would say to struggle against at all cost, since it terrorizes all that is dear to us, even the very existence of the earth.
Globalizing capitalism or, in other words, the Americanization of the planet, in this sense, is today the genuine world terror and it is power responsible to the "understandable" response of the fundamentalists and not the fanatic killers of El kaida, Hamas, Hisbulla or the Islamic Jihad. It is only a manifestation of the counter-violence of the oppressed, which in actuality demonstrates nothing less than the original sin of Globalizing capitalism and its Western colonialist roots. And so, as Peter McLaren teaches us, it is the mission of post-colonialist education as part of world's progressive forces to address the colonialist nature of globalizing capitalism in theory as well as in revolutionary practice. Others, such as Salman Rushdie will disagree and insist that "Yes, this is about Islam". Still others, among them moderate social democrats, committed democrats, and wise critical thinkers tell us that globalization opens for us new ways for mutual responsibility and leads us toward potential new forms of solidarity. Less critical thinkers celebrate the disputable fact that globalization makes "us" richer and could be restrained and re-educated, even ethically, and that globalization opens for us the gate for economically-rationalized pro-transparency and anti-dictatorial attitudes, for local autonomy and individual creativity, resistance to closure and for a new, edified, global human existence who will be richer, more democratic and moral that will realize the vision of self-rule in oneself as an autonomous, creative, nomad, free human. According to this vision globalization offers us new horizons for rewording, uncensored creativity, liberation from territoriality and its ethnocentricity while transcending the limits, hierarchies, oppressive values, ideals and practices of modernity and anti-modernization alike.
Either way we cannot avoid addressing the new existential, philosophical, economic, cultural, and political conditions, as educators, as theorists of education, as objects of subjectification and as – directly and indirectly – subjects of dynamic disciplining symbolic bombardment. The changes and transformations inflicted/opened by globalization might be justifiably called "revolution", "transformation of human conditions" or "a new era".
So, how should we understand the new actuality and what should we do? Is this the first step in the way toward the world of the cyborg: a civilization beyond the dichotomies between nature and culture, humans, nature and machines, reality and fantasy, the moment and eternity? Or is it a gate for the new, most advanced self-inflicted barbarization of humanity? Is it the beginning of a culture-clash that will bring the end of liberal democracies and eventually to human life on this planet? Or, is it a new beginning, a dangerous inauguration of a human rebirth, even if only for the few elected ones – an open possibility that is so complex and anarchist that we cannot yet foresee its future fortunes while we must already now position ourselves and educate for addressing its risks, possibilities, and ambivalences? And if so, should we offer counter-education from the roots of Diasporic philosophy that will prepare individuals to live in a godless, multi-oriented, kaleidoscopic, risky, free, creative, ecstatic world? Or, maybe we, as humanist educators, should react in light of the example of the Roman soldier that was excavated in Pompeii facing the magma of the Vesuvius by standing still to our positions and recycle archaic and outmoded humanist strives, values, ideals, and concepts in order to hold on what is still left to us: heroic tragedy?
Nothing prepared us to a worthy addressing of this historical shift, surely not modern humanist education. Humanist education as well as its current various critiques, rivals and alternatives (such as critical pedagogy, ecological education, postcolonial education, and radical feminist education) is not only disoriented. It is exhausted. Beside the alternative of Jihad all other alternatives are too weak to enforce a coherent exclusive, stable, enduring set of master signifiers and strong strives. They compete with each other and with infinite other quests, fashions and developments, too week to change the world according to an exclusive vision as an alternative to the humanist education that became obsolete. Even more than that: they became part and parcel of the open-rich-contingent-conflicting-totality of global cultural products that function in line with the rules imposed by the globalization that they are committed to destroy or overcome! As an example, today's world political leader of anti-colonialism and anti-globalization, the Venezuelan president and Peter McLaren's great supporter, Hugo Chaves, that only recently initiated the idea of mobilizing all the children of Venezuella 3-20 years old to mandatory state-controlled re-education camps where the revolutionary version of critical pedagogy will be implemented against globalization and colonialism, is at the same time a major player in the global oil trade, and is responsible more than anyone else for fushing the oil prizes further higher, while knowing but too well that the rich in the West will not suffer so much from another rise in their gasoline for their cars while the milliards in Third World countries will be pushed closer to starvation. At the same time, as a consistent anti-Western, ant-racist, and anti-"whiteness" revolutionary he presents his post-colonialism and violent rhetoric along with his closest ally and personal friend, Ahmadinejad, the Iranian fundamentalist president. He shares Ahmadinejad's vulgar and explicit antisemitism and anti-colonialism, while in the glonal market devotedly working politically and economically according to the principle of the maximization of profits, indistinctively from Nike, McDonald's and the other representatives of Western colonialism. A central difference between the international corporations such as Microsoft and the explicit "anti-colonialist and anti-globalization" forces such as revolutionary Venezuela, fundamentalist Iran, Syria and Hezbollah is that these revolutionary forces are not subject to any systematic evaluation and regulation by any democratic institution or procedure and are practicing or supporting direct and explicit violence against innocent citizens around the world under the flag of anti-globalization and anti-colonialism.
The point, however, is that the critical pedagogy of McLaren and even Ahmadinejad critique of the West have a point. They are not totally wrong in their critique of Western colonization and globalization. It is erroneous to dismiss this critique as irrelevant, vulgar rhetoric of the lunatic representatives of "the axis of evil". The big challenge, however, not to side with any of the good guys and challenge all forms of globalization, colonialism, postcolonialist-dogmatic-violent critiques of globalization and colonialism. The challenge is to approach a critique of their intimate collaboration, similarities and differences and elaborate on the difference that makes a difference; toward a counter-education that will not only challenge these various manifestations of the essence of colonialism itself, but will further invite for and cultivate alternative, flourishing, moral, life-loving, creative, solidarian modes of existence within the present system against its own logic and imperatives.
All rival critiques of modern humanist education try to react to globalization but they are all united in their impotency: impotency to offer a coherent educational alternative that will present understanding-explanation-prognosis-for-change and actual bettering of the world. The world of Jihad is currently the only educational agenda offering a vivid emotional, spiritual, ethical, aesthetic, political and educational alternative worth approaching and addressing, but in this collection we will not go into it. We will go into the Globalization itself as a creative brake with modernity and its educational utopias and we will critically present various critiques of globalizing capitalism, and offer a reflection on the pre-assumptions, limitations and the new possibilities they offer us.
The apparent weakness of some of the present critiques and educational alternatives to globalization and its fruits is partially due to the fact that the human condition is turning into something totally foreign, young and strange to us. We do not know yet what it will give birth to, yet it is already inflicting new human pre-conditions, pressing challenges in actual powerful conditions, and vivid, creative new ideals and telos that we do not have the tools to decipher and the mechanisms to stop, transform or edify. The newly-born is not yet here in its full richness, yet the world as we modernists knew it rapidly dissolves, deconstructed, ridiculed or transformed in front of our eyes. Maybe we should not expect a clear and distinctive birth of a new historical moment of the kind of the turn from eating raw food into cooked food or turn from nomadism into agricultural and urban life. This is in light of the nature of the new system that turns from linear-binary-hierarchical structures and dynamics into a rich, centerless, ecstatic, hybrid organization of reality best symbolized by the cyberspace and the logic of connectionism. This is one of the main reasons that the new threats, limits and possibilities are embracement not only for the various trends in humanist education but also to its various post-modern and modern alternatives. I the meantime, educational theory and practice, formal and especially the informal, in New York, Tokyo, London, Tel Aviv, Caracas, Sidney and Cairo, is already facing dramatic restructuring, changes and new possibilities that call for a worthy educational addressing.
Globalization is already manifested in many levels and dimensions of public and individual life. It already threatens the pre-conditions, the values, the conceptual apparatus, the habits and the normalized expectations. It confronts the structures that historically made possible liberal democracy, humanist education and the welfare state. It puts heavy pressure on the legitimacy, relevance and fertility of Western canon as a precondition for the master or for an exceptional-educational great-example. It confronts and deconstructs effectively any kind of relative economic independence and stability as well as ecological equilibrium and security in the self-justification of true knowledge, autonomy of the subject and dialogical, democratic, intersubjectivity as Enlightenment educated us to appreciate and struggle for. It deconstructs the pre-conditions for longing and struggling for non-violent consensus and true understanding, peace and worthy civic life in the nation state that accepts and enhances modernization, liberal democracy, civic society and so much more. All that is gone by now and presently we are caught between that which became obsolete and that which did not yet arrive. This, while hybridity, contingency, openness, care, will to power and industrialized "spirituality" and "transcendence" already transgress and de/re-territorialize us, within us/our actuality and each other in formerly unimaginatively complexity, richness, speed and velocity.
Central modern concepts, ideals and master signifiers are swiftly transformed, deconstructed, or become irrelevant reflecting the advancement of the new technologies, economic development, cultural shifts/clashes, ecological threats and the very fundamental dynamics of the "risk society". This is the fate of "love", "subject", "freedom", "dialogue", "understanding", "truth", "justice", "security", "danger", "responsibility" and "creativity".
For example, young people today enter a reality where no longer is it rational for them to expect that they can rely on or hope for a consensual understanding of any of these concepts; nor is it possible to maintain confidence in an undisputable meta-theory that will justify "their" values, theory, ideals or hopes. At the same time it is already common knowledge that people cannot expect confidence in the future of their workplace, social security, ecological balance, or the outcomes of the next terror attack or global financial markets. The concepts of "security", "confidence" and "risk" are transformed existentially, philosophically and politically in a way that "confidence" is no longer exterior, logically or religiously founded, formal, fixed and stable, but, fundamentally rooted in the essence of the nomadic eternal-improviser who creatively insists on transcending the given, the consensual, the self-evidence and the unbridgeable, changing reality and herself in an instant of the infinity of the moment. Counter-education might offer transcendence and a rearticulated autonomy within the totality of globalization. Within a globalized world and not in an imaginable utopia "openness, danger, and eros must have the last word. It is always put to the test in relation to the connection of human life to the moment, to history, and to eternity…Politics, or the world of contingent power-relations and violent symbolic and direct dynamics, here becomes a very relevant factor, yet never has the upper hand. The Diasporic eternal-improviser, when true to himself or herself, is never a totally controlled citizen of the earthly city; he or she resists becoming-swallowed-by-the-system, the historical facts, or the social horizons. He or she crosses from the infinity of each moment to eternity, or from eternity to the historical sphere and to the infinity of the fleeting moment. Parallel to the asymmetry and the absence of hierarchy and determined order between the moment, history, and eternity s the absence of hierarchy and determinism between reality, and its hermeneutical depths. It parallels also o the "cosmic music" of that which is symbolized by 'reality' nd, its representations, its courageous-edifying critique and its creative-transformative interpretations".
Here responsibility too is transformed – not abandoned – in face of the new horizons opened by globalizing capitalism. In face of structurally-rationally justified growing gaps between the have ones and the marginalized, the destruction of old institutions such as the family and democracy , the threats to the ecology and the culture clash, humanist educators should ask themselves new questions and open themselves to rearticulating the fundamental values, concepts and predictions of current formal education. Effective education takes place more then ever less in the family, the community and the schooling system. The very concept and potentials of education are transformed and it is realized more then ever in the chaotic, ambivalent, informal arenas such as the cyberspace, the commercial centers, in face of the MTV and the rapidly changing marketplace governed by international conglomerates such as McDonalds or Microsoft. It is not only a challenge for democratic education or education for sustainability. It is even a far more reaching challenge for restructuring ethics. Counter-education today should relate to the effective rapid deconstruction of what we know as ethics, canon, social, economic and ecological equilibrium and the already present presence of the future in the form of cyborg, identity politics and the coalition between the McWorld, the world of Jihad and the postcolonialist alternatives which on the remnants of the centralized sovereignty of the nation-state are mistakably conceived as arch rivals and we assert that they are inseparable from the challenge of globalization and should be addressed as part of a coherent theoretical, political and educational re-articulation.
Today we, humanist educators in search of counter-education, have the responsibility to decipher and address that which genuinely happens around us – and what should the educator do in face of these rapid, ecstatic, omnipotent changes while the new language for understanding and change are still beyond our scope? Yet the interdependence and mutual responsibility is present and is pressing and urgent more then ever before. And so, universalism does not shade away with the old foundations, hierarchies, security and telos. It is wrong, however, to recycle "Critical education" in face of globalization that faces difference, hybridity, parallel and conflicting cultural legacies and moral yardsticks, and new technologies and economic de-territorializations that push away any center, linearity, historical telos and non-violent consensus at a time when they are most needed. Ethical ambivalence, dynamic identity formations, and speedy deformed-re-organized understandings, consensus and mutual action might lead us toward counter-education. Counter-education that offer as new, edified forms of togetherness, love, creativity and responsibility while acknowledging ambivalence, multi-layered Net-oriented realities, polyphonic dialogues and improvisation in a rich, dynamic, non-linear speedy space-time relations. Such a counter-education should address the existential and ethical need for responsibility and improvisation in face of the various manifestations of globalization. As humans, as mothers and fathers, as friends, as free thinkers, as creators and as educators we cannot suffice ourselves in enduring our hopes and in continuing what we were doing until now; even "reforms" or merely adopting intellectual, educational or other fashions will not do – the river of change and global risks in unprecedented magnitude, if nothing else, call for it and will not take "later on" as an answer! A far-reaching-sweeping change in educational theory and practice is in need – and there are very few who are willing and ready to rethink educational, political, philosophical and ethical traditions that became so comfortable for them, in order to tackle the challenge we are today globally faced with. This invitation, this first step toward the richness and the dangers of the unknown, is our endeavor in this collection.
