A New Enlightenment

The modern world has taken two long breaks from global disorder, then fallen back into its previous ways. Those previous ways are sadly continuing with the invasion of Ukraine. As I mentioned in my previous article in this series, reemerging from our latest lapse will require a shift towards a more sustainable mindset.

The latest such shift occurred after the Second World War. Humanity modernized its handling of international affairs and succeeded in avoiding World War Three. Today’s geopolitical and other sustainability-related threats also demand a more enlightened approach.

The first long break from global conflict was between the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the Spanish-American War of 1898, which was prompted by an explosion in Cuba on the USS Maine. Since the Cold War luckily never produced a worldwide military clash, the second break was between the end of World War Two in 1945 and the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US in 2001, which precipitated the global war on terror.

Although the USS Maine explosion was never fully explained, the US was quick to blame Spain, which was battling rebels in Cuba. The US fought its European opponent across Latin America, Asia, and the Pacific, then had to subdue revolts in former Spanish territory. Simultaneously, the UK and its allies participated in other international conflicts, including the Second Boer War and the Boxer Rebellion. After 9/11, the US, the UK and their allies have battled known and perceived terror threats globally – especially, but not only, in the Middle East.

During both periods, Europe faced further instability near its Middle Eastern border. In the early twenty-first century, Greece suffered a prolonged crisis, while Georgia and Ukraine tussled with Russia. In the early twentieth century, Greece underwent a coup in 1909, while Turkey and Russia fought conflicts with European rivals. One of them spiraled into World War One.

During the war and the ensuing flu pandemic, international convergence turned from a strength into a weakness. It gave the European combatants even more ability to wreak global havoc. And it helped the pandemic spread, just as it has done with COVID. In the present, the global military order has again entered unsustainable territory, as witnessed in the case of Ukraine. A less sustainable world order also impedes efforts against other global disasters, like combatting pandemics and climate change and bolstering security.

During this period, we should recall the approaches that prolonged our breaks between previous global disasters. Although tensions produced local conflicts, cooperation stopped them spiraling globally. Powerful nations got better at balancing their subjective needs and emotions with a reasonable, objective response to those of others.

In the nineteenth century, the Romantic movement was the benevolent champion of national solidarity, emotion, and subjectivity. The opposite qualities were associated with the Enlightenment earlier in the century, then with modernism in the later half. In the twentieth century, popular culture replaced Romanticism as the official flag-bearer of feeling and pride.

In the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, modernism has arguably made way for a new enlightenment – one that addresses objective concerns over social and environmental sustainability. Examples across disciplines include hip hop, street art, environmental writing, green politics, and sustainable business. Like its forebears, this new enlightenment has fostered broader cultural and scientific innovation, as well as digital, genetic, renewable, and other technologies. It has also been less at odds with popular culture than modernism.

Over the past decade, this new movement has achieved growing support, expressed through initiatives like the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. However, those goals will be impossible to meet without a sustainable world order. We need cooperation and action in the global interest that attracts true popular support as well as objective legitimacy – a groundswell that is impossible for leaders to ignore. Only then will we have a chance of bringing our age of disaster to a close.

After the First World War and the flu pandemic of 1918, the world had an opportunity to avoid World War Two. After COVID, we will have to work hard to prevent a follow-on catastrophe. Of the factors within humanity’s control, popularizing this new enlightenment and the pursuit of a sustainable world order will remain critical to getting a positive outcome.