GLOBALISATION, HUMANISM, MODERNITY:
IN SEARCH OF EQUILIBRIUM
Monica Grigorescu*
Our time has proved to be amazingly effective in gropingly building up
a civilization which it has proved amazingly inept at putting in order.
(André Maliaux)
After so many crises which have followed each other in as many
areas, we ought to admit that industrial and technological civilization
is creating as many problems as it is capable of resolving. The myth of
progress, one of the founding myths of our civilization, also appears to
have collapsed as a myth. The development of modern society, spectacular
as it is from an economist’s angle of vision, has not been able to society;
stop a slide into human and moral underdevelopment. A deterioration of
quality in relation to quantity makes only those things that can be actually
measured appear to be real; unfortunately, things like poetry, suffering,
or love are hardly quantifiable. Towards the end of his eventful life, Jean Monnet, a remarkable
figure of the twentieth century, reasoned that, had he been able to start
all over again, he would have begun with culture. A founding father
of what was later to become the European Union, he expressed that
belated belief in the pre-eminent role of culture as a part of greater
civilization after he had tried for several decades to build a prosperous
Europe in economic terms in the aftermath of a devastating war.*Director of the House of Latin America of the Ministry of Foreign Affair of Romania.
Revista Direito Mackenzie