-- Prepared for the conference "Knowledge Tools For a Sustainable
Civilization," June 8-10, Toronto, Canada
Jixuan HU, Ph.D.
Center for Social and Organizational Learning
School of Business and Public Management
George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052, USA
Sustainability is not just an issue at the level of a economic-ecological
system but an issue at the level of civilization and the ways that
different civilizations interact with each other. A global-wide
sustainable civilization cannot be created if the conciliation and mutual
understanding among the Christian Civilization, the Islam Civilization,
and the Eastern Civilization are not reached. Furthermore, the sustainable
civilization cannot be achieved on the "spaceship earth," if the
difference of the living conditions between the developing countries and
the developed countries is not controlled within a sustainable threshold.
In other words, the most important issue for the survival of human
civilization after the "cold war," among other things, is the
restructuration of the global system.
At least two major dimensions of efforts can be identified for such
restructuration. The first is to seek new ways of interaction between
different cultures and civilizations, i.e., more humanitarian ways that
are different from colonialism, imperialism, hegemonism, radical
nationalism and terrorism. The second is to seek a new set of shared
values that can overcome the current crisis of unsustainability and can
help reform the current world into a fair and sustainable global village.
New ideas and new kn owledge tools need to be developed to facilitate
these efforts.
Among many elements which cause the unsustainablity of the current world
system, one element carrying a considerable weight is the failure and/or
the difficult of communication among different perspectives developed
through different cultural-ideological-political systems. The theory of
communicatics, with its consequent value of communicationism, is developed
as a knowledge tool which may be used to facilitate the transformation
towards sustainability.
Communicatics is defined as a science of coexistence through communication
and understanding. It has four theoretical origins: Constructivist
Cybernetics, Self-organization Theories, Paskian Conversation Theory, and
Jaquesian Theory of Human Capacity. It consists of (1) five basic concepts
(P-individual, constructedness of reality, eigen-mechanism, stability
scale of constructed realities, and dual-phase evolution), (2) a model of
cognition and communication which consists of a knowing-doing eigen-loop
of an P-individual, and five basic scopes constructed through the loop,
(3) a new definition of communication and a new perspective to understand
communication failure, and (4) principles and methods to improve the
effectiveness and efficiency of communication.
Generally, communicatics can be applied (1) to help build shared visions
within a group or an organization, (2) to help reduce the probability of
communication failure under conflicting situations at interpersonal,
inter-organizational, and international levels.
Using the model of communicatics to synthesize the positive points of
Western individualism and the Eastern collectivism resulted in a new value
system named Communicationism, which (1) explains the pathologies of
extreme-individualism (egocentrism) and extreme-collectivism
(totalitarianism), (2) emphasizes the uniqueness of individuals and the
differences among individuals, and (3) points to the importance of
community development through communication and mutual understanding.
Applying communicatics and communicationism to assist building a
sustainable civilization could, hopefully, improve the current
relationships among different nations and cultures. A sustainable and
peaceful world could only be co-created with understanding and hope, not
with hostility and fear.
+---<< Jixuan HU, Ph.D. >>------- e-mail: jixuanhu@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu -+
| (o) 202-994-7530 (f) 202-994-4930 http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~jixuanhu |
| snail-mail: 2115 G Street NW, Suite 401, Washington, DC 20052, USA |
|______________Planet Earth__Milky Way__(1957-2027)__Communicationist_____|