Thursday, April 12, 2007
Green multipolitanism
(beyond transnationalism)
"...[D]emocracy itself needs redefinition according to a new transnational ideal...," says the publisher's description of Democracy across Borders: From Dêmos to Dêmoi, by James Bohman, MIT Press, May 2007. In his “Introduction” to the book, Bohman shows how he seeks to establish the conceptual foundations of transnational democracy.
But his argumentation strategy seems to me (after having read that "Introduction") outdated by the Internetted globalization that he supplementarily seeks to appreciate. I see a multipolitan planetarity (later parts of that discussion) that liberally antedates Bohman's "republican" statism. My sketch of infospheric evolving seems, frankly, beyond Bohmanian republicanism because pluralism implies a multipolitan liberalism, and leading news proves it regularly. (By the way, I'm tired of referencing my precursory set of discussions. I'm moving on! The past is preface!).
Especially relevant to all this is an appreciation of the cultural geographic character of any polity, such that environmentalism and green politics express the starkly common ground for a multipolitan politics that develops regional and local geographies relative to our planetary legacy.
Tom Friedman argues in this "flat world" direction as well, albeit as an American economic matter, in the April 15 New York Times Magazine cover story, "The Power of Green":
"...I want to [make 'green'] geostrategic, geoeconomic, capitalistic and patriotic. I want to do that because I think that living, working, designing, manufacturing and projecting America in a green way can be the basis of a new unifying political movement for the 21st century."
Of course, America's situation isn't the whole world's, but America's side effects do pertain to the whole world; so, our prospects for green telos would be important all around, if not exemplary for other cultural geographies. Indeed, we Americans must show leadership for addressing problems that we had a large hand in creating.
I'm seeking American exemplarity for united nations' governance of our shared futures.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told environmentalists on Wednesday they needed to stop nagging and make their cause sexy, likening it to bodybuilding's evolution from a weird pursuit to mainstream.
