To Uphold the World. By Bruce Rich (2011)
The Catholic
theologian Hans Küng observed that “a global market economy requires a global
ethic.” Yet at the very moment when the need for just such an ethic is more
urgent than ever, our national and global systems of governance seem
effectively paralyzed in moving toward it. To reimagine the
future, and to describe the elements of a global ethic of care, we can look to
what precedents there are for a government that has tried to put such an ethic
into practice.
Perhaps the most wondrous example takes us to Kandahar, of all
places, in southeastern Afghanistan. Following September 11, 2001, Kandahar,
capital of the Taliban and Al Qaeda’s terrorist network, symbolized the
intolerance, chaos, and violence that threaten to erupt anywhere, with
repercussions everywhere, in a tightly interconnected world. In 2010, after
nine years of U.S. military intervention, the Taliban reigned in Kandahar
stronger than ever.
Yet Kandahar’s history
also has something different to tell us. In 1957, Italian archaeologists
uncovered an ancient series of rock inscriptions in Greek and Aramaic (Aramaic
was the lingua franca of the Persian Empire). In the inscriptions, a great and
ancient Indian king, Ashoka, declares state policies built on fundamental values
of tolerance, nonviolence, and respect for life. Ashoka’s empire was the
greatest empire of its day, stretching from present-day Afghanistan deep into
southern India and, in the east, to modern-day Bangladesh. It was a
multiethnic, multicultural state and was, for its time and in certain ways, a
microcosm of our own globalized world….
