I only actually spent three months in Oxford, but those three months rocked my world. Never have I learned so much in such a short period of time. Over the course of those three months, I wrote 16 essays. Seven essays for my tutorial on Politics of the Developing World; five essays for my tutorial on Comparative Politics focusing on the political system and an influential ruler from Great Britain, France, Spain, Italy, and Germany; three essays for my tutorial on the Imperial Crisis focusing on nationalism, liberalism, and on the shift in political thought throughout the 18th century; and one essay for my online theology course on St. Augustine's theology of free will. Because of the way the tutorial system works, I didn't have to go to classes every day, but it was vital that I spend each day in the library reading and doing research so that I could begin to write my essays. And from all of this came a lot of questions and a lot of wrestling.
Two thirds of the world today still live in poverty, about half live on $2.50 a day. Our current global order remains the product of imperialism. Toward the end of the 18th century, Enlightenment thinkers such as Rousseau, Hobbes, Locke, Immanuel Kant, Adam Smith, and Jeremy Bentham expressed criticism of imperialism. Yet by the mid 19th century, liberalism advocates such as John Stuart Mill and Alexis Tocqueville came to believe that imperialism was justified because, though individuals should be sovereign over themselves, authoritarian rule was necessary for backwards peoples. Mill spent the majority of his life working for the British East India Company, governing Indian peoples and civilizing them. Yeah… that seems to have panned out well over the course of history. Later criticisms of imperialism came in the late 19th century during the Victorian era, a period in which the sun never set on the British empire, primarily from a philosopher known as Karl Marx. Imperialism didn’t actually fall until after WWII when Allied nations realized their own hypocrisy in criticizing Germany for Hitler’s inhume and growing empire. It took acts so inexplicably inhumane from the Nazis for other world power empires to grant sovereignty to their dependents. Yet, the problems of those newly independent nations were just beginning.
The Cold War, beginning in the 1950s, was essentially the result of territorial and ideological unsettlement between the Western Allies and the USSR over the division of Germany. This ideological unsettlement over modes of production soon spread globally. The Third World, or nations who had recently become independent from imperialism collectively band together in solidarity to displace the East-West conflict with the North-South conflict. The South is now another term to refer to these collective yet heterogeneous nations that were once termed the Third World. Afraid of the spread of ‘Communism’ to the Third World, Western nations began to take notice of the South again. After the Bretton Woods institutions, the IMF and World Bank, revitalized the European nations economically destroyed by WWII, the development of nations of the South became its new project. Through a series of economic choices made, the Third World became increasingly indebted to Western nations, leading to the implementation of structural adjustment programs, policies enforcing neo-liberalism (essentially promoting free trade), and continued hegemony of the North over the South.
Some philosophers say that history is progress, flowing in an upward momentum. Others say that it is cyclical; we progress to a certain point, only to revert back to where we were before. I would argue that history is like a spiral staircase. We progress upward as atrocious acts catapult us upward and force us to recognize a collectively heterogeneous world drawn together through our humanity. Yet self-interest, pride, power, and greed often bring us back to the same atrocious things we revolted against years ago, now in a different, less inhumane form. Colonialism has been defeated, but we still live in a world of neo-colonialism, an economic order of the North asserting its hegemony over the South and exploiting its resources. The paradox of liberalism, in which individual rights to liberty were upheld for civilized humans but denied to uncivilized peoples, has manifested itself recently in the paradox of neo-liberalism, in which economic policies are enforced promoting free market conditions for trade whilst maintaining the underdevelopment and dependency of the South.
What do you do when you suddenly learn that all you have profited from enslaves someone else? How do you respond when you discover that the values you have been taught in the comfort and privilege of the US don’t apply so nicely to all of humanity, to every nation, to every culture, and to every group of people.
Not only did my political and economic worldview proceed to be destroyed this term, my faith additionally came into question. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t surrounded by a community constantly asking how I was doing spiritually or ‘holding me accountable’ in my faith journey. Some of the injustices that have faced our world and continue to face our world that are done in the name of God anger me with every fiber in my being and ultimately became the root of my questioning.
Conclusions? Any? Not really. A changed world view maybe. I spent the majority of my time questioning God and questioning capitalism- me, the Christian business major. Sound like an identity crisis? Well, it kind of was. Concerning God- I don't know if what I believe is true, but I have found peace in learning that doubt is okay. In fact, doubt is good and the sign of a mature Christian. If I can't question what I believe then I must be afraid that it isn't true. Concerning capitalism- yeah, it sucks. It's not perfect. It's broken. But I'm not convinced that there is a better solution. Institutions such as capitalism and even governments are broken because they are comprised of broken people. If we want something to change, what better way to create that change than to work inside the institution, to train up individuals who recognize these flaws and short comings, and to work toward restoration. I suppose these conclusions are the only ones I can cling to now. But the exciting part is that my quest for knowledge and truth isn't over- it's only beginning.
