Ever since Star Plus and the daily Star soap operas went off the air in Sri Lanka, we have-turned for bawdy entertainment to the Clinton-Lewinsky farce - a bizarre case of life imitating art and the truth being stranger than any fiction. Those who live outside the USA, wonder whether this is a modern-day cruxifiction, a Greek tragedy or a comic opera that unfolds daily our own TV screens. Europeans, of course, are loosing no chance to mock the Americans for being naive, selfrighteous Puritans and Asians are reported to be wondering why the US presidency is being deliberately weekend at a time when a huge world economic crisis is unfolding, and many other world problems remain to be solved. But then showbiz in the USA has always provided us with entertainment, and we remain 'entertained' and 'enthralled' by the going-on in Washington.

Male privacy
It is important to remember that while President Clinton's claim of the privacy of his extra-marital sexual relationships may have merit in general, the recent Lewinsky matter might well be an exception.

Attention was focused on this affair, as well other alleged affairs, by attorneys for Paula Jones - who was an state employee when Clinton was Governor of her state - who was suing the President for sexual harassment. Now this is a serious charge, and allows for the legal investigation of past sexual relationships of the alledged harasser. It would be impossible to investigate this allegation, if the alleged harasser were to claim privacy; in that case sexual harassment, in effect, would just be a private matter, and terrible crimes would go unpunished! Now, furthermore, all Clinton's extra-marital relationships were not under scrutiny - just those is which a professional working relationship seemed to have intersected with a sexual one.

The case of Monica Lewinsky was one such instance: remember that evidence has shown that she was offered jobs, in the US government and private sector, by friends and employees of the President after Clinton had an 'inappropriate relationship' with her.

Sex in the workplace, especially if it effects the career prospects of the less powerful party, usually the women, can be undemocratic - furthermore, those who refuse the advances of the more powerful party, again usually women, may be unfairly penalized, as alleged in the Paula Jones harassment case. These matters are serious and deserve our attention.

Men behaving badly
The problem remains that men in power have often misused their authority to make sexual demands and harass women in the workplace. And even when a liaison is said to be between 'consenting adults', there is always the power factor that cannot be ignored. In some countries 'custodial rape' (women in police custody for example) has higher penalties than other forms of rape, since the authority (whether the office boss, the teacher, or the President of the USA) is presumed to be the person who 'protects' employees, students or interns as the case may be.

Fair and foul
Having said that it is also true, as Hillary Clinton asserted last January, that the issue is political and that there is a right-wing conspiracy in the USA to topple Bill Clinton by all means possible - fair and foul. Of course Clinton, who seems to be a serial lady-killer, has foolishly played into his enemies' hands, and as the writer Gail Sheehy, a Clinton supporter has said, the inquisitors are reminiscent of Joe McCarthy, and the new witch-hunters have taken full advantage of Clinton's failings. This is not the first time a US president has had liaison (they all have, according to a new book on the Presidency). But it is also not the first time that a popular president with a reformist agenda has been put in jeopardy. Who killed JFK?

One factor that has dominated the events is the persistence of a deeply conservative Puritan tradition in the USA. The Pilgrim fathers were non-conformist radical puritans, escaping from the religious orthodoxy of authoritarian England. Puritans were famed for their rigid, sanctinionus fundamentalism, prudish attitudes and moral straight-faced piety, condemning 'sinners' to hell-fire. Always on the outlook for sin, and haters of anyone seen to be having a 'good time', the Puritans symbolized intolerance, bigotry and witch-hunting. The latter was best seen in the East-coast town of the USA (Salem) in the 17th century when, led by a Puritan priest Cotton Mather, hysteria against alleged witchcraft gripped the population, resulting in innocent persons being denounced as devils.

In the 1950s, America was subject to an anti-Left panic promoted by Senator Joe MacCarthy who led a witchhunt against Americans allegedly linked to communist movements. The intolerance was such that many leading film stars, directors, writers and intellectuals were summoned before the UN-American Activities Committee, those refusing to testify being blacklisted and loosing their jobs. It was a shameful period in American history as many recent books on the subject have revealed. The tentacles of the withhunt even spread to Sri Lanka, when in 1954 Rhoda Miller de Silva an outstanding American journalist and regular contributor to the Ceylon Daily News (in her hard-hitting column 'an Outsider Comments') was deported without warning inspite of being married to a Sri Lankan, on grounds that she was a communist spy. (She later returned to live and die in Sri Lanka). The Salem events and the MacCarthy episode came together when the famed US playwright, Arthur Miller, wrote a sensational play in the 1950s, 'The Witches of Salem' using the Salem history as a backdrop to the MacCarthyist witchhunt, (This has been recently filmed).

Thoughtful Americans
Among the thousands of comments on the Clinton affair, a very perceptive analysis has come from the writer Gore Vidal, who refers to the episode as a 'Wilful and Malicious Conspiracy against, We the People'. He notes that:

'Foreigners are mystified by the whole business, while thoughtful Americans - there are several of us - are equally mystified that the ruling establishment... has proved to be so mindlessly vindictive that it is willing... to overthrow the lawful government of the United States'.

According to Gore, it is a political vendetta by the wealthy conservatives of corporate America, the ultra-right fanatics, Christian fundamentalists and white supremacists who are ganging together to topple Clinton. Gore argues that corporate America 'declared war on the Clintons in 1993 when they tried to give the American people a national health service, something every civilized country has but we must never enjoy because the insurance companies now get one-third of the money spent on health care and these companies are the piggy banks of corporate America'.

Gore also claims that 'the most powerful emotion in American political life is the rage and hatred of certain lumpen whites for all blacks'. Clinton has a huge black constituency and is close to Rev. Jesse Jackson, Vernon Jordan and other black leaders. Being a Southerner from Arkansas, where the Klu Klux Klan is strong, Clinton is seen as a traitor to the whites. The white supremacists who oppose Clinton are funded by Richard Mellon Scaife who Gore says funds such 'disreputable magazines as the American Spectator which has published wild stories about the Clintons'. The same Scaife also rewarded Kenneth Starr with a deanship at Peperdine University, which he accepted and later declined because of the bad publicity. Gore claims that now Starr is the 'most visible agent of corporate America wielding a new weapon-endless harassment of a twice-elected president so that he cannot exercise his office'.

One hopeful aspect of the current situation is that the American people have consistently given Clinton over 60% of support since January when the scandal broke out. They disapprove of his personal conduct but approve of his presidential record. 'Its the economy, stupid' said the maverick James Carville to Clinton during the elections of 1992 when Clinton campaigned on Bush's dismal record on the economic front. Now with a booming economy and low rates of unemployment - it may yet be that what ever the sordid antics in Washington, the economic record will keep Clinton's popularity high.

Wag the Dog?
Clinton has not only earned the wrath of the Christian fundamentalists but after the US bombings in Afghanistan and the Sudan, the wrath of the Muslim fundamentalists as well. In a recent film 'Wag the Dog' the President of USA, involved in a sex scandal, deliberately and with no provocation, invades Albania in order to divert the American people from his personal problem. Is the timing of the recent bombings - soon after the president's admission of guilt in the Lewinsky affair a deliberate attempt to divert and distract, the public from the recent scandal? Many think it is connected. If this proves to be true, then, this is a far more serious offence that his fling with Lewinsky. We watch the continuing theatre of the absurd with great interest and concern.

The globe called Planet Earth is the only viable home humankind has in the universe. It is estimated to last another 4.5 billion years. How long humankind is destined to survive nobody knows. The probability is high, however, that if the multi-faceted phenomenon subsumed under the term 'globalization' is allowed to proceed unabated, humankind will become a mortally threatened, if not a quite extinct species, within the next few centuries. A few years ago the danger that seriously threatened humankind was that of a nuclear holocaust. In those days the global arsenal contained the equivalent destructive power of about three tons of the high explosive. TNT for every living human. If that arsenal exploded, humankind would have ended in the same way the universe is supposed to have begun, namely, with a big bang. The universality of the extermination of humankind would have ensured that there would have been no survivors to see what had happened. 'Men are passionate, head-strong and rather mad' judged Bertrand Russell in the Introduction to his book entitled 'Human Society in Ethics and Politics'. It was madness that drove humankind to the very verge of a nuclear holocaust. In an essay titled 'The Urge to Self-destruction' Arthur Koestler hypothesized that a minute error in the construction of the circuitry of the nervous system of humankind makes humans prone to delusions and urges them towards self-destruction. But alone among all known living things, humankind has the unique power to transcend biological evolution, and this capacity led to the realisation of the utter futility of a deterrent nuclear war. So humankind did not end with a bang after all. However, if globalization - specifically, economic globalization in its present form - forges ahead relentlessly the odds are that humankind will end 'not with a bang but a whimper' (to borrow a line from T. S. Eliot).

In one sense the process of globalization may be regarded as the translation into practice of the 'One World' concept eloquently articulated half a century ago by Wendell Wilkie. Founders of the great religions have preached the oneness of the human family. Science, which embodies for me, humankind's most trustworthy knowledge such as it is, proclaims not merely the oneness of the human family, but of all forms of life on earth. The 30 million species which comprise the animate world differ enormously in surface detail. But without an exception they are variations on the theme of Deoxyribo Nucleic Acid or DNA. And the unique set of characteristics our species - Homo sapiens - possesses makes humankind not just another species on the globe, but a shaper of its landscape. Our exploratory and adaptive skills have enabled us to colonize and inhabit every continent of the globe. Indeed, the capacity to globalize has been encoded in our genes. Biological evolution has not fitted humankind to any specific environment. Roses cannot bloom in deserts and chimpanzees cannot thrive in the north pole, but Homo Sapiens can. In other words, humankind has the capacity to survive in any environment, including even outer space. This unique capacity - the capacity to remake the environment, if need be, to make it livable - makes humankind the only truly global creature on earth. So globalization is humankind's birthright. Regrettably, the specific form globalization has assumed in the sphere of economic activity has set in motion certain environmental and social changes which may spell humankind's final doom. And if that is the destiny the Creator God of theistic religions decreed for humankind, the only appropriate riposte is Robert Frost's sardonic humour; 'Forgive, Oh Lord, my little jokes on thee; and I'll forgive thy great big one on me.'

The causes of the impending doom are global in extent. To sensitize the leaders of the big industrial powers to the reality of the danger, took a severe drought in the USA, the death of thousands of seals in the North Sea and the wilting of hundred of acres of forest in Europe. Although only a microscopic minority of humankind is intellectually equipped to comprehend the nature of the danger in all its intricate complexity, there can be little doubt that the long-term survival of humankind in health and comfort is jeopardized by certain far-reaching environmental changes already under way. Certain human activities during the past century or so have dangerously upset the equilibrium of some vital natural support systems. These activities occurred primarily and largely in the rich industrialized countries. The consequences of these activities on the environment will affect both the rich and the poor, sooner or later, the poor sooner and the rich later. By some pessimistic accounts humankind is already engaged in a losing battle against their ecologically-induced extinction. Given humankind's current techniques of economic globalization the danger is indeed real.

Predicament
How did humankind arrive at this perilous predicament? With hindsight some of the factors that have been at work can be identified: reproductive prodigality, ignorance of the ecological implications of industrialization, greed and carelessness in the pursuit of material wealth, widespread poverty, rivalry and lust for power. Global population is increasing by about 90 million every year, mostly in developing countries, despite the prevalence of malnutrition in many parts of the world. There is destruction of the forests of the globe on a massive scale with consequent extinction of innumerable species of animals and plants which in turn disturbs the equilibrium in the biosphere. There is environmental pollution with toxic waste and radioactive contamination. As a result the air, soil and water of the globe are becoming harmful to human health. There is a gradual warming up of the atmosphere which may produce disastrous alterations in global weather patterns as well as an invasion of land by ocean. The spectre of ecological catastrophe is haunting the globe. It is not a natural phenomenon like an earthquake or a cyclone. It is largely the creation of a set of policies and actions of a minuscule minority of humankind represented currently by the 358 billionaires of the world. As David C. Korten has pointed out, their combined worth of $760 billion is equal to the total combined annual income of the world's poorest 2.5 billion people, that is to say, of almost half of the world's population (Development& Co-operation, March 1996). The universality of humankind notwithstanding, the billionaires of the world have been far and away the principal beneficiaries of economic globalization.

Globalization is, of course, not entirely a matter of economics. There are other aspects to it such as technological, political, cultural, social, medical, environmental, ideological, philosophical and religious. The eradication of small-pox from the globe by global co-operation gives a glimpse of the good that globalization can do for humankind. Globalization of the technological advances in communication has held far-reaching consequences, some beneficial to humankind as a whole, others possibly harmful. By means of radio, television and telephone it has become possible to report instantly to the rest of the world events occurring in any corner of it, even as the events are happening. It is this revolution in communication which, above all, creates the appearance and reality of globalization. Thus, gross violations of human rights in the form of cruelty, murder, arson and genocide occurring in any part of the world can be - and have been-exposed for the whole world to see. Even barbaric, tribalist bigots do not seem to relish being so regarded by the rest of the world. Therefore they would be less inclined to burn other people alive just in case the rest of the world is watching. In this respect globalization of communications has greatly benefited humankind. But the same communications technology has also made it possible for Finance Capital to be instantly mobile and allow global financial markets and corporations to ruthlessly pursue instant financial returns. The global system that has emerged has certainly not created a jester. Freer, more peaceful world for the vast majority of humankind.

Diagnosis
Given the present predicament of humankind, what is to be done? Rational prescription requires a correct diagnosis. And as in medical diagnosis, a relevant history is very helpful. Around the year 1500 A.C. from which the modern period of human history is generally reckoned, there were six centres of power in the world: Ming China, the Muslim Ottoman Empire, the Mogul Empire in India. Muscovy, Tokugawa Japan and a cluster of states in West - Central Europe. Of these it was the European states that rose to dominate the world during the next four centuries. During this period Europe witnessed the rise of empirical science, the celebration of intellectual freedom, the practice of political pluralism and the emergence of a tendency to explore the world by sea. The rise of science spawned an armaments industry and power went to those who had better guns. The present world order is largely the outcome of the territorial and economic expansion of Europeans during the past five centuries. They gradually came to occupy most of the habitable land in the American continents, Australia, New Zealand and parts of Africa. They made colonies of large parts of Asia. They did so initially by military means they consolidated themselves by introducing economic, political, cultural and religious institutions. Ever thereafter there has been a net transfer of economic resources from the rest of the world to the lands controlled by Europeans and their lineal descendants who comprise the white segment of humankind. According to data published in the World Bank Atlas (1979) whites who comprised about 34% of the world's population controlled 57% of the land surface of the globe.

It should not be thought that the above recapitulation of history is an indictment against the white segment of humankind as a whole. As Edmund Burke said in another context, 'I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people'. The simple truth is that the most passionate and committed campaigners against the adverse impact of economic globalization on humankind and the globe have also been whites. When it comes to the pursuit of self interest, there is no evidence that the brown, black and yellow segments of humankind are less ruthless than the white segment. They cannot be because irrespective of skin colour, they represent various expressions of what Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins calls our 'selfish genes'. But, then, as he hastens to add, humankind is also the only species capable of seeing through the designs of selfish genes and counteracting them for the good of the species.

In 1996 many of the ardent advocates of economic globalization met in Davos, Switzerland at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. This forum is dedicated to the proposition that the future of humankind is best served by economic globalization. Imagine the consternation that ensued, therefore, when the Forum's founder Klaus Schwab and its director Claude Smadja flatly declared that 'economic globalization is producing disastrous consequences that threatened the political stability of the Western democracies'. As summarized by Korten (in Development & Co-operation, March 1996) among other things, Schwab and Smadja asserted that:

(i) Economic globalization is causing severe economic dislocation and social instability.

(ii) The technological changes of the past few years have eliminated more jobs than they have created.

(iii) Unless serious corrective action is taken soon, the backlash could turn into open political revolt that could destabilize the Western democracies.

So there we have it straight from the horse's mouth. What is true for the Western democracies is truer for the rest of the world. What cries for elucidation, though, is how and why economic globalization came to assume its disastrous modern form. Here goes one hypothesis. Having appeared on earth somewhere in Africa about a million years ago, Homosapiens gradually spread to the rest of the globe.

This migratory globalization was an exceedingly slow process and occurred in the context of the ongoing social evolution of humankind on earth. The earliest humans lived as nomadic hunter - gatherers in small tribes. At the next stage tribes learned to cultivate crop and settled down in different territories which they fiercely defended when necessary. Gradually this primitive economy evolved into feudalism. In Europe feudalism persisted upto the middle ages.

Feudalism was primarily based on ownership of land. It ended with the industrial revolution and capitalism made its appearance. Adam Smith was its classic exponent. In his 'Wealth of Nations' (1776) he wrote: 'Every individual...neither intends to promote the general interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it.

He intends only his own security, his own gain. And he is in this led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was not part of his intention. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of society more effectively than when he really intends to promote it'.

(Contd. tomorrow)

Everybody is concerned with knowledge. The epistemologist may be interested in the theory of knowledge, but the others also need knowledge. We all acquire knowledge from the day we were born into this world, until we die. A Buddhist may say we acquire knowledge until 'we' attain Nibbana. However there are various kinds of knowledge. Some refer to scientific knowledge as distinct from the other knowledge. Then there is the so-called objective knowledge. A recent addition has been the indigenous knowledge,which is defined in such a way by the westerners so as to give the impression that there is some kind of common world knowledge. The indigenous knowledge is local while the non-indigenous or the common world knowledge is global.

These categorisations of knowledge come to us from the west. We are told that objective, scientific, global knowledge (sometimes expressed as a single system as objective scientific knowledge) is discovered by eminent people. However even in the west there has been a school of thought for some time, according to which knowledge is not discovered but constructed.

According to them knowledge is constructed by the society. As the society is not a homogeneous body, this implies that there have to be different systems of knowledge. The social construction theory of knowledge would have been influenced by Marxism, even though the Marxists adhere to objective knowledge.

Any theory, which believes in an objective knowledge, discovered by Newtons, Darwins and Marxs have a difficult problem to solve. If there is only objective knowledge it is easy to maintain that knowledge is there to be discovered by the top scientists and thinkers. But the problem is that there is knowledge other than the so-called objective knowledge. Even the Marxists had to admit that there is a non-objective knowledge. The knowledge branded as metaphysics by them is not objective, but it exists as a system of knowledge. If that is knowledge who discovered it? If it was discovered then it would have been there as an objective knowledge waiting for somebody to discover it.

If it was not discovered then it would have been fabricated by somebody. Can knowledge be fabricated? One way to get around this problem is to declare that only objective knowledge is 'true' knowledge and the rest is fabrication. But then it raises more questions. One obvious question is how does one identify this 'true' objective knowledge. Then there is the question of people who base themselves on the so-called non-objective knowledge. How do they interact with the 'objective world' whose properties are expressed by the 'objective knowledge'?

The Marxists themselves have faced this problem on many occasions. For example they found that their much admired proletariat did not behave according to their objective theories. Then they 'discovered' another piece of objective knowledge, which said that it was the 'false consciousness' of the proletariat, which made it to act contrary to their previous objective theories.

The problem is that many people who do not have access to this objective knowledge get along with their work without much of a problem while those who posses the objective knowledge have to go on 'discovering true theories' which explain the behaviour of the former. If the non-objective knowledge is fabricated what guarantees that the objective knowledge is not fabricated?

The most important question is how does one distinguish objective knowledge from non-objective knowledge. There is no satisfactory answer that can be given to this question. Then there is the question of the entity, explained or understood or whatever by this objective knowledge. Is there an objective world independent of us, or to use a technical term of the observer, existing over there waiting to be discovered? But then this raises the most interesting question. How does one know objectively that there is an objective world independent of the observer?

It is impossible to deny that the statement 'existence of an objective world' is also knowledge. Is that an objective knowledge? If that is an objective knowledge then we have the following situation. We have an objective knowledge of an objective world existing independent of us. How did one discover objectively, that is independent of the observer, this objective knowledge? If that knowledge is not objective then what we have is a non-objective knowledge of an objective world. No 'objective' person can be satisfied with such a situation.

An objective world existing over there is merely the knowledge of such world. The 'objective world' cannot be separated from the knowledge of it. As such there is no 'objective world' independent of the knowledge of an 'objective world'. The knowledge of the 'objective world' is not independent of the observer. It is another creation or construction of the human mind and we have to accept it as such.

Influenced
There are schools of thought within western philosophy, which can be categorised as relativistic. Some of us in the Jathika Chinthanaya movement have been influenced by these relativistic philosophies. However that does not mean that we have imitated them blindly or otherwise. We were able to assimilate some of the knowledge created in the west into our culture. The philosophy that we have been developing may be called constructional relativism. In Sinhala, in which all the literature pertaining to these developments have been published, it is called Nirmaanaathmaka Saapekshathavadaya.

Constructional Relativism is based in Buddhist culture. With slight modifications most of it can be formulated within the Hindu culture as well.

In order to construct (constructional relativism is also relative and created!) constructional relativism we start with Avidya or ignorance. It is

due to avidya of anicca, dukka, and anatma that we create knowledge. (Within Hindu culture one can say that we create knowledge due to maya). Once anicca, dukka and anatma is 'understood' 'one' attains Nibbana. All our activities on creation of 'knowledge' is on 'this side of Nibbana' (This is only a way of expression. Nibbana is not something that exists somewhere in space.). The knowledge that is created due to avidya of anicca, dukka and anathma is relative. It is relative to the sense organs, the mind and the culture of the person or the persons who create knowledge.

If people had different sense organs then they would have created worlds different from their present constructions. In constructional relativistic formulation, the world is the same as the knowledge of the world. It is not a case of knowing a given world or creating models of a given world. There is no world independent of the knowledge of the world. As mentioned before the statement that there is a world independent of the observer, is itself knowledge and that knowledge has been expressed by an observer with sense organs and a mind. In other words the knowledge of an objective world isitself relative to an observer or observers.

The word model is sometimes used to describe a theory without implying a model of something that exists over there independent of the observer. A theory or model once created is not only knowledge but constitutes the 'relevant part' of the world as well. The totality of the models or the theories, the concepts etc., of an observer constitutes the world relative to that particular observer or the observer's world.

The relative worlds of different observers do not imply that they are the ways in which a world existing over there appears to different observers. The observers create their own worlds due to avidya or ignorance of anicca, dukka and anathma. Constructional relativism is different from other relativism in this aspect. It does not talk of relative pictures, relations or any such thing. In fact there are no such things independent of the observers.

For example different people reading 'this article' will create their own articles while reading according to their tastes, attitudes, frames of minds etc. What appears in print is my article. What you read is your article. It must be emphasised that the articles you read are not different versions of my article. In reading you give different interpretations and create your own article.

Some philosophers and sociologists in the west also talk of different readings of books and articles. Some have even gone to the extent of raising questions such as 'where is the text?'. However they have not explained or 'created an explanation' why there is no text as such. The avidya of anicca, dukka and anathma is not within the western culture.

The culture plays an important part in the creation of knowledge. People of different cultures create different worlds. The worlds created by the westerners are in general different from those created by the Asians and the others. We create and experience different worlds.

This does not mean that there is nothing in common between these worlds. The fact that all human beings have the same sense organs imply that there are some common elements between these worlds. In fact the idea of an objective world has been created as a result of this commonness.

Constructional relativism is clearly not a materialistic philosophy. It is neither an idealistic philosophy. The concept of the mind or the mind itself is also a creation. The mind or the ego or I-ness or self is also created due to avidya of anicca, dukka and anathma. In constructional relativism things neither exist nor do not exist. They are created due to avidya or ignorance. One might even explain these in terms of dependent origination but that is outside the scope of this article.

One important aspect of cultural relativism is that even the so-called science has been created due to avidya and that western science is only one system of knowledge created in the west with respect to the western culture.

There are other systems of knowledge and other sciences created in other parts of the world. They are not mere indigenous knowledge confined to particular regions