Publisher Note
Tulisan ini merupakan naskah sambutan Soedjatmoko dalam Centennial Celebration Vanderbilt University (perayaan 100 tahun) di Amerika Serikat pada 3 Oktober 1975. Perayaan tersebut mengambil tema “The Uses of Knowledge and the Consequences of Knowing”.
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IT IS A GREAT PLEASURE and privilege for me to have this opportunity to participate in the celebration of the 100th Anniversary of this unique institution of higher learning, which so successfully has been able to remain true to its regional roots and responsibilities, contributing to the growth of this beautiful region and the development of its educational capabilities while maintaining so consistently a strong orientation to th wider world in the pursuit of academic values and excellence. We are rejoicing here at a time when vast and rapid changers are taking place not only in our immediate environment but on the global scale as well; we may be only at the beginning of a fundamental redistribution of power across the globe between nations, within nations, and across national boundaries; of shifts in the various ways individuals relate to the administration of their nation, to the ever-growing transnational, regional, and global organizations and institutions that affect their lives so deeply and impersonally, while feeling more and more in need of the sense of belonging, of the inner security and comfort that identification with smaller social units seem to be capable of giving them. We are doing so in a world in which no single nation alone is capable of directing and shaping the flow of events on the international scene and in which most governments, of industrially advanced and developing countries alike, seem to be incapable of coming to grips with the problems of their own societies and the anxieties of their citizens. I do not think that I need to illustrate these phenomena here. Our awareness of them is kept alive daily through the media and through the encounters in the personal lives of each of us. The question we all seem to be facing is whether through impotence or ignorance we allow this fragmented world to be blown up or to drift into destructive chaos and violance, or whether we will be able to move together towards a humane global society.
But in thinking about these problems we are inevitably struck by the magnitude and depth of the areas of our igrrorance. Many of the problems that we face, many of the processes that are going on within the united states, within the third world, and around the globe are waiting to be a adequately articulated, and we are brought up short by our awareness that with our own fragmented knowledge we lack the concepts and the analytical tools that would allow us properly to define these problems and to gain purchase on their solution. In part these problems are the result of the phenomenal growth of systematic knowledge itself and the technology it gave birth to during the past two centuries. They have reshaped the natural conditions of peoples’ lives and created a new environment which gives us great power and has opened up unparalled new opportunities for the fulfillment of our needs, for the enrichment of our lives but also for its destruction. They have at the same time also imposed on all of us the terrible psychic burden of living with continuing and continously accelerating change as the permanent condition of our lives in directions which seem to escape our control. In principle, mankind should now be able to fulfill all of its material wants. Still, poverty remains the seemingly permanent condition of hundreads of millions in large parts of this globe. We have developed the most sophisticated instruments for the expansion and transmission of knowledge, but the number of illiterates in the world is growing both in relative and absolute terms. We know much more about the individual and human nature through scientific inquiry, but we cannot seem to avoid having to spend a large portion of our resources for armaments, and violence has become our permanent companion in modern life. Looking into the future there are even broader questions: if growth and efficient production need to longer be, or should no longer be, the main principle of social organization, how and to what purposes should the nation organize itself in ways that maintain its cohesion and sense of identity? We may then well have to think in terms of different relationships between individuals and their work, in terms of different work roles as well as different internal dynamics for corporations, in order to serve new social purposes. We may have to think in terms of organizing greater opportunities and ways for creative human interaction, and of enlarging the capacity for people’s active participation in cultural creativity and enjoyment, if increased leisure time is not to lead to boredom, passivity, and decay. For those poorer countries which, even under the most favorable conditions of progress that we can conceive of today, will have to live for a long period at very low income levels, there is the problem of how to organize their societies and their lives in ways which still make it possible to have a meaningful and relatively satisfactory life. In other words, what does quality of life mean to a human being at the level of 100 to 200 dollars per capita per year? We will, therefore, have to think not only of developing the capacity to grow and of equity, but also of a nation’s capacity for creative enjoyment in its own culture in the first place, but also in those of others, and redefine the role of the humanities and the idiom of the arts accordingly.
Many of these problelns we can hope to solve only through further expansion of the further expansion of the fund of scientific knowledge and understanding. At the same time, it has also become clear that we can no longer afford to have this pursuit follow only its own internal dynamics. We are also faced with the need to redirect the thrust of that expansion in ways that will help us make knowledge serve the most important social purposes more deliberately and more effectively. While we seem to understand this need, we also seem to be incapable of meeting it effectively. We will, therefore, have to think more deeply about the factors that affect the direction of scientific and scholarly inquiry and the mobilization and allocation of resources for it. We will have to gain a much deeper understanding of the relationship of that process to political power, to interests—strategic, miliitary, and economic—on the national level and on the corporate level, and to the value configuration and the dynamics of its society as a whole. We may well be faced with the need to build up a new dynamic, linking power, perceptions of interests, and resources in new ways that will make it possible for the expansion of knowledge in these new directions to become a selfsustaining process.
In our search for answers to these questions we have also become more aware of the intricate ways in which a nation’s fund of knowledge is bound to the culture of its society and especially of its elite, as well as being a response to the problems which that society has had to grapple with in the course of its history. It has been brought home to us quite forcefully in the last two decades how many of the concepts of economic development, which American scholars and others from the industrial nations have applied in helping the poor countries of the world realize their aspirations, have proved to be inadequate. Of course not in the combating of disease, not in the areas where the key was a scientific or technological breakthrough, like the development of miracle wheat and miracle rice, but inadequate in those areas that ultimately affect the capacity of those nations to grow, and to develop the attitudes and social structures that are conducive not only to economic growth but also the shaping of societies that are in harmony with their basic values and their human aspirations. To me, this failure points up the need for all of us to realize that the redirection of knowledge-creating capabilites also requires a pattern a deployment that includes the poorer countries themselves, and which should be understood within a broader value context. Almost all the questions that face the scientific community with regard to the directions it should pursue, the directions it should not pursue, and the limits it should impose upon itself, force us to consider the moral and social implications and the moral responsibility of its consequences not only in terms of the use of that knowledge but in terms of its potential abuse. It would seem to me, therefore, that only the simultaneous expansion of our consciousness of our own values, in part by contrasting them with the values of other societies, can help us in setting this new course in the expansion of scientific knowledge. These values constitute the hidden assumptions of our knowledged and perception, and those of others. This may give us a renewed clarity in the perception of the goals of human society and of the meaning of life in one’s own culture. We will simultaneously have to enlarge our capacity for empathy for different conditions of life, for different modes of living, and for different perceptions of its meaning in countries and among peoples other than our own.
The capacity of the scientific cornmunity to redirect itself, out of a greater realization of other, nonrational kinds of human experience, out of a heightened awareness of man’s intuitive, expressive, and transcendental faculties may help improve the selection of problems for scientific inquiry and its methods, and may help in forging the concepts needed to properly formulate our questions. The point I am trying to make is, of course, not identical with the anti-intellectual and anti-rational stances towards science and technology that have for a while been so much a part of the counter-cultures within industrial societies. To someone whose roots are deeply embedded in a non-Western culture, where knowledge and truth were never so clearly separated, nor the manner of their pursuit so clearly differentiated, it is obvious that however valid the counter-culture may be as a protest against the existential emptiness of much of modern life, with its immersion in the self, the search for the interior life, inner perfection, spiritual salvation, and human redemption, what is needed is a combination of much greater passion and much greater disciplining of man’s inner powers and much less self-indulgence in purely sensoy experiences, if these forms of self-fulfillment are to help man to reorient himself anew. His reorientation must occur in a world of such complexitiy and interdependence, with problems of such great magnitude, that it may require the development of a concept of self-realization in human community rather than in isolation. In recognizing the importance, then, of the nonrational faculties of man in this process of scientific reorientation, I am not speaking of the abdication of reason and knowledge but of the restoration of the unity of life in which the pursuit of knowledge should self-consciously remain embedded. In saying this, I do not mean to revive the Augustinian concept of life, nor the image of Renaissance man; nor am I unmindful of the dangers of new religious obscurantism and doctrinal deformation. But we should remind ourselves that many great institutions of learning, this university included, were started as part of centers in the pursuit of ultimate truth, and we should be more shaply aware that when social scientists speak about values they are really speaking about pointers to an ultimate, transcendental reality. When I speak about the restoration of the unity of life, therefore, I have in mind the need to forge a new nexus between man’s intellectual, non-rational, transcendental, and biologically conditioned dimensions that is meaningful to man’s life in the modern world. It is within the context of these very broad generalizations about the use and consequences of knowledge, that I would now Iike to focus on the probiem of global interdependence as a major determinant of the international situation from which we all have to move towards a new global order and community, and the role of knowledge and the self-renewal of its institutions in relation to it.
Preoccupied as many of us are with the reality or unreality of detente, the reduction of tension between the major powers is a necessary condition for growth towards a viable global society based on interdependence. But detente alone is not enough. In addition, it will be necessary to defuse the North/South conflict, the growing tensions between the industrial world and the poor pre-industrial countries. Unless that happens, interdependence may lead to heightened conflict and wars. There is clear need for the kind of understanding and statesmanship that can move the problems we will hae to face away from confrontational rhetoric, away from the frustrations and the anxieties that lie behind the neo-nationalism and the irrigation and aggressiveness that characterize so much of the present international dialogue. Here again it will be important to bring the hidden assumptions about power relations into the open and to mutually recognize the validity of each other’s interests, perceptions of threats, and of each other’s aspirations and value commitments. It is only then that it will be possible to enter a constructive dialogue regarding concrete problems, not in the light of the prevailing patterns of global power but in the direction of a global distribution of power on which a viable, relatively stable, pluralistic, interdependent, and just international order could be based.
Interdependence among the nations of the world has, in an intellectual sense, already become part of the official rhetoric in academic, government, and business circles in the United States. Nevertheless, it is obvious how little this awareness has penetrated into the deeper layers of the national consciousness. All large nations have a natural tendency towards intense self-absorption. This is especially true for an open and dynamic society like the United States. Moreover, because of its power the close contacts the United States has had with other nations have until recently been mainly on its own terms. Most nations have had to learn quite early in their history the limits of their power and their dependence on other countries. They have hacd to learn to make their accommodations to external reality, and to learn to live witit a treasure of vulnerability. The United States has grown and develop its strength mainly from its own resources. But now no nation, however strong, can any longer define its security in its own terms, or solve all of its problems by itself in isolation from other countries. If any form of a viable international order is to emerge, it now will have to be shaped with the consensus and active participation of the weaker and smaller nations.
In the light of the new limits to coercive international politics and the new patterns of power distribution across the globe—which are likely to keep on changing over a long period—persuasion, negotiation, and straight bargaining will be the main instruments towards forging new forms of international cooperation. The shaping of a new international order within which a viable and just global society could grorw, and which could be maintained at much lower levels of military expenditure, would therefore require in the first place a clearer vision of such a global society, within tire horizon of feasibility, and the fusion of global and long-term national interests. Secondly, a greater capacity to manage the international organizations and mechanisms at various levels, created to deal with global and international problems, as our instruments tor multiple co-existence. Thirdly, a greater capacity of peoples and nations to transcend their own cultural boundaries in relating to each other with the same trust and moral standards they accord their own kind. An awareness of the relativity of one’s own culture in the search and the bargaining for a shared future.
To this end we will have to brealk out of our present stereotypes about international understanding. We will have to delve much deeply into the cultural substratum of other societies in which lie embedded their values, their aspirations, their fears, their perceptions of reality, the roots of their ideological perspectives, and their motivations to political and social action. The differences in modes of being and perception that we encounter here are truly formidable, but we must find the ways to understand and manage these differences in new pluralistic structures.
Such heightened capacity for international understanding and for international cooperation, such groping for new forms and directions of international politics and international relationships in general, is greatly in need not only of expanded and redirected knowledge, but also of expanded consciousness, sensitivity, and empathy, not only on the part of governments and national and international bureaucracies, but also and especially on the part of those peoples around the world who potentially are the natural constituents for such a global society.
These observations have a number of implications for the role and organization of universities, not only in the United States but everywhere. A university should of course remain a community of scholars in free pursuit of systematic knowledge, irrespective of its utility. At the same time the world can ill afford a university that remains oblivious of the new needs of its own society and of the requirements for the survival of the human species in civility, freedom, and justice. It won’t be enough for the university simply to expand the range of professional capabillities for which to train and educate its students. We have to deal with more than changes in faculty attitudes, or adjusments in structures and rewads systems. We may have to move more deliberately away from the continued fragmentation of knowledge along traditional disciplinary lines and from the increased specialization towards narrower and narrower problems in pursuit of greater methodological refinement, which have been so much responsible for the “hubris” of intellectuals and social and economic planners. The university must also, and at least in equal measure, try to rearrange itself towards addressing the problems of interdependence and survival more effectively. We may well discover then that the traditional approaches through centers of international affairs, international development and area studies, may be inadequate to deal with these problems. We may in fact even have to go beyond the concept regarding the “internationalization of higher education” as these are beginning to be discussed now.
In the coming decade we may have to considcr seriously building a university capability for global development, either through the restructuring of our universities or through grafting onto existing structures—but fully integrated—, academic centers for global developments linked together across the globe through formal and informal networks. These centers should not be discipline oriented but should be organized around the major problem areas that concern the growth of nations and peoples towards an interdependent global and pluralistic society. Each problem area should be handled by a university division, comprising several disciplines, but at the same time cutting through the more traditional lines of compartmentalization of the university. Food production and distribution, including nutrition; population and global development, including fertility behavior and population movement; poverty, resource transfer, and the global distribution of productive capacity; resource management and environmental care; global communication and cultural and political pluralism; the learning capacity of nations; but also areas dealing with the need in both industrial and developing countries for energy-conserving modes of social organization and personal life styles that are capable of fully engaging the vital energies of the human being and of meeting his needs for cultural creativity and enjoyment, might be some of these problem areas. The study of these problems should encompass their technological, political, as well as their human dimensions in all their complexity, and they should be deal with on the national level of each nation as well as on the international one. This must also include the relationship of the interpenetration and interaction of both problems and solutions between these two levels, their organizational and managerial implications, the instrumentalities for conflict resolution that will be needed, as well as their impact on freedom and collective obligations; on efficiency and justice; on individual privacy and human community; on growth and equity; and on the individual pursuit of happiness and voluntary self-restraint out of human solidarity. In this way these institutions for global development could provide the kind of knowledge and depth of understanding, and above all the integrative capability and vision, that will be required. Provisional and incomplete though these suggestions are, they might be a small step in the direction of restoring the unity of knowledge, and enhance its capacity to serve very vital needs in each of our own countries as well as towards building a new human community encompassing this globe. Barbara Ward once said, "We must either learn to love each other or we will perish." I have no doubt in my mind thar the restoration of the unity of life, in all its fullness of knowing and being, will also enhance our capacity to love, and to transcend ourselves in reaching for the most noble human aspirations. In the general search for the articulation of a new mission for the university in the decades ahead, I am, therefore, very hesitantly otfering these very tentative reflections to you as my humble tribute to this great institution.