Abstract
Major changes are required in predominant human values during the next two generations to ensure politically and environmentally sustainable societies and a sustainable global order: away from consumerism to a focus on quality of life; away from possessive individualism towards more human solidarity; and away from an assumption of domination of nature, towards a greater ecological sensitivity. After reviewing evidence on these challenges, the chapter analyses their implications and the possibilities for change at personal, societal, and global levels, with special reference to education and its possible contributions and constraints. It discusses the roles of and lessons from internationally oriented postgraduate education in helping form future national leaders and global brokers, drawing examples especially from the past two generations of experience at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague.
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For more detail on all the scenarios, see Raskin et al. 2002 and a series of follow-up studies and other materials at http://www.gtinitiative.org/, including a slideshow, a powerpoint version, and a video lecture.
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There is greater environmental concern in developing countries in many cases than in rich countries.
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The policy agenda enunciated by the UN’s Commission for Human Security (chaired by Sadako Ogata and Amartya Sen) in its report Human Security Now (2003) includes cosmopolitan education that can ‘teach students to reason, to consider ethical claims, to understand and work with such fundamental ideas as human rights, human diversity and interdependence…’ (CHS 2003: 122). It covers ‘opening up of perceptions of identity, to see oneself as having multiple identities’ (p. 123), and ‘clarifying the need for a global human identity’ (pp. 141–142), in addition to awareness of and respect for profound diversity.
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‘Compassion involves the recognition that another person, in some ways similar to oneself, has suffered some significant pain or misfortune in a way for which that person is not, or not fully, to blame’ (Nussbaum 1997: 90–91); and thus includes ‘the thought that this suffering person might [in some sense] be me’ (p. 91).
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Gasper, D., George, S. (2018). Cultivating Humanity? Education and Capabilities for a Global ‘Great Transition’. In: Giri, A. (eds) Beyond Cosmopolitanism. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5376-4_20
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