Hantingtonovo shvatanje čoveka i društva

Abstract

This work includes a critical analysis of Huntington's views of man and society, especially those in which he talks about establishing a new world order confined by the new cultural borders - to which contributes the reviving of religion. This, as well as some of his other paradigms (like the one about seven or eight civilizations) aren’t sustainable in theory since in African, Islamic, Latin American and Orthodox civilizations there isn't a most important country who is the bearer of identity of the said civilization. If culture follows power, like he believed, then the clash of civilizations is inevitable due to the shifting of power from West to East and reverse. Huntington’s research, however, is more in favor of validity of the other paradigm (Us and Them), than the very paradigm of the clash of civilizations. In Huntington's understanding of men and society the feeling of superiority and the need for an enemy motivates the behavior of an individual and a group, which not only suffer from anthropological pessimism, but also from social Darwinism. The responsibility for the collapse of the system of liberal values in the United States Huntington attributed to American transnational elite and the second wave of immigration in America. In the newly created democratic regimes of non-Western countries Western values cannot be fully accepted due to the process of indigenization which is ran by the second generation of the elite educated in their home countries. His thesis of the clash of civilizations as a "tribal conflict of global proportions" leads him to accept "the three faces of America" (America stays America) in constellation of seven or eight civilizations, with which he attempted to "relocate" the place of conflict from the territory of Western to the territory of non-Western countries in order to preserve the national spirit of the Western civilization from the modern nomads. Huntington’s view of multiculturalism is ambivalent, since it can cause the tearing of cultural and national (US) identity, as well as the battle between a man of immigrant and nomad culture (immigrant and nomad). This fight further advances the separation of the social character and is the cause of the fear of foreigners as a personification of the unknown (barbarians), and with time that led to the loss of collective memory and the loss of primary American civilization’s identity, which, Huntington states, is defined by humanness. Although he is right when he argues that multiculturalism has caused a crisis of identity, Huntington overlooks the fact that identity, especially cultural identity, is a dynamic phenomenon and that the process of acculturation goes in both directions. He does not notice that he reduced the inevitable interaction between cultures to relations of conflicting parties. His claim that a world war can be avoided if the international order was based on seven or eight civilization cannot be accepted either. Establishing civilizations this way would mean redrawing of the political map of the world and the replacement of the existing administrative borders with cultural boundaries would have to involve armed conflicts, which surely wouldn't cause the calming of the situation. He also makes a mistake when he gives more importance to the religious consciousness than the others forms of social consciousness, because his religious man (religion is the most important characteristic of civilization) cannot solve existential problems of the postmodern global society. He does not realize that his new homo religious would only close the borders to any man of other religion or secular society. Each one of his civilizations would be a closed society, a private island in the archipelago of different cultures without any contact with each other - which would contribute to the overall social and cultural stagnation on the planet.