That is the cautious hope of Amitai Etzioni, one of the world's foremost sociologists. A professor at The George Washington University and the author of 21 books, Etzioni recently spoke at a RAND seminar sponsored by the Frederick S. Pardee Center for Longer Range Global Policy and the Future Human Condition.

The future of the human condition depends on the human ability to build a new kind of community that extends beyond the traditional nation state, according to Etzioni. He argued that community is a basic human need. Likewise, he suggested that a global sense of community is fast becoming a need for human survival.
 
Why Community Is Important

Etzioni broached a philosophical debate about the nature of human beings. On the one hand, there appear to be "emotional loyalists" who are driven by civic or moral duty. On the other hand, there appear to be individualists who are driven entirely out of self-interest. Etzioni argued that individuals have both selfless and selfish qualities. He dismissed those experts, particularly economists, who fail to recognize one side of human nature or the other.

"I have six papers that economists have written about why people leave tips at highway restaurants to which they have no intention of ever returning," said Etzioni, noting that economists continue to be mystified by the fact that people leave tips with no expectation of a payback. He also cited voting as an example of something that makes no economic sense to a purely self-interested individual. "Voting largely fills a civic duty," he said.

Energy conservation is another case in point. Etzioni cited a study showing that if people believe conservation is their duty, that it's good for their country, and that it's good for the environment, they'll do it. "Economists have developed enormous amounts of literature about people who do things out of loyalty, love, prayer, or anything that is not in their self-interest," he mused.
 
Where We've Been

Any sense of community depends on a set of shared values, said Etzioni. He illustrated the contemporary limits of community by pointing to examples in the United States and Europe.

"Most of us do not wake up in the morning and say, 'Mississippi and Alabama are paying less taxes than my state and get more government services. It's unfair!' Once in a while a journalist will come up with an index and there will be a fuss, but that's a fight in the family. People in New Jersey don't worry about the nuclear weapons that the New Yorkers have. We are Americans, and we don't make such calculations—that is the sense of community."

Another example of community is how the West Germans gave billions to rebuild East Germany. "They made a fuss about it, but they did it. If you asked them to give that money to the Poles, there would be no conversation. The European community gave Greece a billion dollars. If you asked them to give to a country that's not a member of the European community, it would be called foreign aid." He offered a simple test of a sense of community: "At the end of the day, when your country is insulted, you feel it in your guts."

The next step is to translate a sense of community into action. This process takes place when a nation debates a moral topic, engaging in a "moral dialogue." People talk, fight, argue, write letters to editors, and debate an issue on national talk shows. Then, years later, a new, shared moral understanding emerges on a national level and ultimately leads to changes in behavior.

"In the 1950s and 1960s, there was no sense of moral obligation to the environment, and nobody talked about it," said Etzioni. "Change often starts as a book, then there's drama, then come demonstrations. Out of that came a new shared moral understanding toward Mother Earth. Certainly, people still strongly disagree at the margins, but nobody claims we should go back to the 1950s."
 
Where We're Going

Recent technology now allows similar debates to become transnational moral dialogues. "We have the beginning of transnational shared moral values," said Etzioni. "That's a hell of a claim, but if you look at certain issues—whales, ivory, sex slaves, pornography, child labor, human rights—we have them."

DIANE BALDWIN Amitai Etzioni is the director of the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

But solving such problems is a different question. "Look at the list of social problems we had 50 years ago," said Etzioni. "We still have poverty. We still have discrimination. But now, we have HIV. We don't solve problems. We cut them, we reduce them, we reshuffle them, we get on top of them, but that's about as far as the human capacity goes."

To get "on top" of global problems, a global response could take several forms. One development in the business community is international arbitration courts. "The business community wants to do business out of self-interest," said Etzioni. "So it created a court of arbitration that is not run by any nation. These courts are composed of arbitrators from different nations. It's written into the contract that, if there's a difference [of opinion], a transnational arbitration court will decide, and governments sign a commitment to enforce the decision of that court." Business can then proceed as usual.

But when it comes to the big problems that Etzioni calls "moral issues"—genocide, drug trafficking, humanitarian interventions—when they have enormous implications or call for major resource reallocations, when mitigating them imposes significant pain or sacrifice, something born of more than self-interest must begin to operate on a supranational level.

He pointed to two developing events that could test the contemporary human capacity for global community. The first is the push toward a true European Union (EU) with its own constitutional assembly and flag. One goal is to transfer national loyalties upward and create an emotional bond to the EU community. "The EU experiment is a complicated, cumbersome attempt to do that," said Etzioni. "You can have 15 states agree on issues such as traffic and so on, but when it comes to the point of causing pain, you have to move up to something similar to a nation. I'm not willing to predict that they will make it."

On the other hand, Etzioni foresees the emergence of a new vision of shared values on a global level. Currently, he said, the world's shared values are codified best in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was drafted in 1948 by the Western powers that emerged victorious from World War II. Many today claim that the U.N. declaration, with its emphasis on human rights, reflects the philosophical proclivities and cultural bias of the West.

Today, however, a high-level effort is under way, involving former President Jimmy Carter and the former presidents and prime ministers of several other nations, to augment the U.N. document with a new one that emphasizes human responsibilities. Etzioni said the emphasis on responsibilities and obligations would balance Western cultural and religious priorities with Eastern cultural and religious priorities, including those of Islam.

"The world moral code," said Etzioni, "is going to arise out of taking this major body of ethics and combining the notion of rights and responsibilities to create a code—not in a legal sense, but in a moral, shared sense of values—to which many will feel committed. Then, one day, it could have ramifications for the building of [global] institutions."
 
Related Reading

Political Unification Revisited: On Building Supranational Communities, Amitai Etzioni, Lexington Books, 2002 (paperback), ISBN 0-7391-0273-7, 2001 (hardcover), ISBN 0-7391-0272-9.