Listening and speech-acts

The persons participating in the speech-act perform their social choices of alternatively listening and speaking. This social practice usually does not present much of a difficulty in the language games of speech-acts. It is a more ambitious exercise playing the game of speech-acts by following the rules of the equal dignity, freedom and rights of the participants and thus realizing their dignity. The social realization of the dignity of the participants in the speech-acts cannot be taken for granted at all. To grant each other our dignity when we are realizing the series of speech-acts of our daily routines is not self-evident. Performing speech-acts intentionally and deliberately and understanding language games as realizations of our dignity is a rather new game in the history of women, men and queer and their interactions and dealing with each other. It is obvious that the performance of language games that constitute social choices of realizing our dignity are not self-evident, they do not go without saying. This is true on the personal level and concerns everybody, it is also true for the public and political sphere. With the sentences I am writing I am preparing to play the language game of realizing equal dignity, freedom, and rights. I am not yet playing the game.

The persons I am listening to, that is the authors who I am studying, are not able to hear my sentences and therefore are not able to address the word to me. For the moment I am listening and learning, I am preparing for the social realization of dignity in discourse with a series of speech-acts. I am conscious of the fact that I am not realizing speech-acts by writing these sentences. Nevertheless, I am convinced that I am following the way of coherence that leads to the language game of discourse and speech-acts. I am sticking to the sentence as the logical picture of my thoughts, feelings, and dreams. I am aware of the fact that I am speaking, that I am using language to express, describe and communicate to myself, I am self-conscious. There is no reason being proud of my self-consciousness capability. There is more reason to be thankful for the work my brain tirelessly and reliably performs with unbelievable precision to ensure that I am experiencing something that I may describe as lived presence. There are many reasons to speak modestly and feel humble about the human capability to speak of consciousness experience. The human body seems not to be preferably occupied with consciousness. Only a very small part of the brain’s activities reaches the level of consciousness. If the human senses gather some 11 million bits of information per second from the environment, our conscious activity amounts to about 50 bits per second, corresponding to a reading rate of about 5 words per second (“Human body”. Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/science/human-body).

The expression self-consciousness is part of language and without using language there is no expression of consciousness. Without speaking there is not much possibility for expressing awareness. I need language to think, to feel and to dream. I need the agency of speaking to assure my integrity, and to confirm that I am ok. I need language and the community of speakers to be able to tell my body to assess my integrity that is my physical, psychic, social, economic, cultural, and spiritual well-being. I need language to assess the lack of my integrity, to claim my integrity and to communicate that I am not ok.

All philosophy is critique of language in the sense that philosophy is speaking about our use of language and philosophizing is the work to investigate the use of language by speakers and clearing, examining, and looking what the sentences say and claim. To learn to use language, that is to learn the use of expressions and words, putting them together, separate them and produce sentences, is necessary to express oneself. A function of language games is to make oneself understood. If I understand a sentence, I see the sense the sentence shows. If I do not understand a sentence, the sentence is not senseless but expresses nonsense. The sense of sentences is a priori to understanding the sentences, the sense of sentences is a function of the speakers (See my Posting “Sentences and facts, sense and dignity”). I call speech-acts a kind of language game. This kind of language game is rather new in the history of the use of languages. I describe speech-acts the language game that realizes dignity, freedom, and equal rights of the participants in the game (See my Posting “Ethics and Discourse Theory”). I am still preparing to play the language game of speech-acts and the social realization of dignity by speaking and listening.

Learning well to realize my social choice to listen in the speech-acts is a discipline of the art of living that requires sustaining practice. Nobody would dispute the importance of peaceful mutual interaction. Listening and speaking, this kind of reciprocal communication serves the well-being of the participants and their common good. One could call solidarity the realization of equal participation possibilities for the individuals in society. Aiming at an inclusive society that sustains the common good as well as the well-being of everybody needs the practice of speech-acts that realize dignity. It is a matter of fact that women, men and queer are capable of the most brutal atrocities and destructive, violent, and aggressive behavior. Women, men and queer are also capable of realizing empathy and selfless love. The rule of Human Rights law was proclaimed to stop war and work for justice and peace. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) not only addresses states, although the signatories of the Declaration are representatives of states. In article 29, the UDHR mentions the private individual’s obligation to respect human rights: “Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible” (“Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” United Nations, www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights).

Rousseau’s dream of the active participation of the individual in constructing the rule of law by realizing social choices that sustain the equal dignity, freedom and rights of all citizens has come true with the individual becoming the subject of international law.

Has Rousseau’s dream really come true? If we do not want to get stuck in our wishful thinking, we must turn to reality to assess our claims. In 2009 Amartya Sen is sceptical and in fact negative on the assessment of equal dignity, freedom and rights for all women, men and queer on earth. He insists that we must assess issues of justice and equality of freedom based on “assessments of social realizations, that is, on what actually happens (rather than merely on the appraisal of institutions and arrangements)” (Sen, Amartya. 2009. The Idea of Justice. 410. London: Penguin).

Amartya Sen is a renowned Indian economist and philosopher. In 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. His interest of investigation concerns the dignity, freedom, and rights especially of those who are excluded from policy making because of the lack of access, availability, and affordability of the necessary resources for their health condition, and social, economic, cultural, spiritual, or political life conditions on this planet. He insists “that the absence of any guarantee of medical attention curtails” for millions “the substantive opportunities of living, or that severe undernourishment of children, which causes immediate agony as well as underdevelopment of cognitive capabilities, including reduction of the ability to reason, is detrimental to justice” (ibid. 243). Sen’s “Idea of Justice” enhances the responsibility of the single individual but warns that responsibility is not to be understood in an elitist fashion but as the recognition of the individual person and her dignity and equality in freedom and rights. Amartya Sen takes a sober look at Human Rights and concludes that the vote on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 is “an ethical assertion – not a proposition about what is already legally guaranteed” (Sen 2009, 325).

The Turkish born political scientist Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat combines like Amartya Sen empirical research with theoretical writings on women’s rights, democratization, globalization and development (Zehra Arat | Department of Political Science (uconn.edu)). She writes in 2008 optimistically on the possibility of reforming capitalism although she starts her article with the realist assessment, that millions of individuals, invest all their resources and energies to maximize profit on the markets of a capitalist world order in a way that seems to contradict Human Rights (Kabasakal Arat, Zehra F. 2008. “Human Rights Ideology and Dimensions of Power: A Radical Approach to the State, Property, and Discrimination.” Human Rights Quarterly 30 (4): 906–932).

There is no doubt, the UDHR permits private ownership of the means of production and contractual labor but Human Rights call for the realization of the equal dignity, freedom, and rights for all and not for a tiny elite of privileged billionaires. It looks like the managers of capitalism exploit the Human Rights discourse across the globe for their only means to assert hegemony and gain access to world markets. The emancipatory potential of Human Rights for capitalism is not exploited and developed in the same way as capitalism’s potential for profit making in global markets according to neoliberal discourse in the name of competitiveness (Kabasakal Arat 2008, 929). After this empirical diagnosis of the state of capitalism in 2008, the author confronts the critical questions: Does the International Bill of Rights—that is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR); the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR); and the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) — indeed privilege only Western style liberal democracy (ibid. 926)? Is the fulfillment of human rights possible under a liberal social democratic regime? Is a liberal social democracy the only social system that can protect the full range of human rights?

Indeed, the liberal democratic states of the industrialized countries became welfare states that have been “relatively more successful in realizing several social and economic rights for large segments of their population, and they achieved this without curtailing civil rights and political freedoms as done in state-socialist regimes” (ibid.). At the same time, we observe within the constitutional framework of the liberal democratic constitutional state a painful discrimination concerning the participation of the individual in the political process. Lobbying is unaffordable for the simple individual and really does not constitute a democratic means of influence (ibid. 927). It is difficult to imagine changing the economic disparities when only considering the legal provisions and not the effective realization of equal opportunity. The middle class in North America and Europe suffers a feeling of insecurity and the loss of economic stability. If there is this connection between the personal feeling of security and the positive effect of this feeling on the economy, North America and Europe will soon experience economic troubles. If people personally feel secure and safe they do not feel the need for defense strategies, the need to raise military expenditures, to close borders on refugees and to build border walls. If people are not empowered to assess the risks of their lives in a right way, fear of aggression will grow and lead to more aggression and insecurity.

A policy of communication is an integral part of the politics of security, as is the information according to the facts by a free and responsible press, mass media and social media. Yet it is a sad reality that equal and meaningful participation by the expansion of citizenship and electoral attention for many individuals remains closed in our Western democracies and welfare programs seem to generate passive dependency (ibid. 928). In 2024, this analysis of a feeling of insecurity and the loss of economic stability with consequences, such as the surge of homophobic and xenophobic authoritarian political parties in Europe and North America, makes Kabasakal Arat sound like a prophet. But in the end Kabasakal Arat does not speak of  a final failure of Human Rights. On the contrary, she consistently argues for exploring the emancipatory potential of Human Rights to empower every individual on this earth claiming the centrality of equality in dignity and anti-discrimination principles in the struggle for the rule of Human Rights law (ibid. 931).

The trust of the capitalists in the innovative self-regulating capacities of free market mechanisms was only temporarily shaken in the 2007-2008 financial crisis. The neoliberal way of uncontrolled speculation with assets that were already several times used as mortgages came to an end, but the world financial system was not fundamentally reformed. Yes, banks had to raise their capital and regulators are more vigilant. A worldwide acting banking regulatory authority was not created. The 168 years old investment bank Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy on September 15, 2008. Lehman Brothers had a real capital of 27 billion dollars but had lent 639 billion dollars to other banks. Debt and capital related 30 to 1. The US government did not bailout Lehman Brothers. The collapse of Lehman Brothers started the worst recession on the world’s economy since the depression of 1928 and the Second World War. The taxpayers’ money was invested by governments around the world to save the capitalists’ international financial system. The nation state saved the market, not the market the nation state (Duignan. Brian. Financial crisis of 2007-2008. Financial crisis of 2007–08 | Definition, Causes, Effects, & Facts | Britannica Money). In 2024, Kabasakal Arat’s call for exploiting the Human Rights potential of capitalism is still valid.

In 2010 Thomas Pegram claimed that national human rights institutions (NHRI) are no longer the exclusive preserve of liberal democratic regimes but that a powerful international process of diffusion is at work that includes a wide range of political systems. The modes of diffusion, that is coercion, acculturation and persuasion lead to compliance, conformity, and habituation: “A striking phenomenon of recent years is the spread of national human rights institutions far beyond liberal democratic jurisdictions. Mandated to protect and promote citizens’ human rights, national human rights institutions – such as the classical ombudsman, the human rights commission, the human rights ombudsman, or specialized institutions -, are established in countries across the globe, and in a wide range of political systems. The implantation of national human rights institutions in regions as diverse as Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East contributes to a contemporary trend toward the diffusion of constitutional innovations across international boundaries and political systems with unpredictable consequences” (Pegram, Thomas. 2010, “Diffusion Across Political Systems: The Global Spread of National Human Rights Institutions.” Human Rights Quarterly 32 (3): 729–60. 729–730).

Pegram assesses a contagion logic in the sense that one instance of establishment appears to increase the probability of another such occurrence within a circumscribed period of time. If there is diffusion, it is important to remember that the historical spread and resulting structural configuration of national human rights institutions arose from the interaction between local political conditions and the international social system (ibid. 731). The local is important, the individual queer, man and woman claim basic human rights and an institutional polity for Human Rights. Historically we can say that international organizations like the United Nations have played a crucial role in creating and strengthening national human rights institutions. They used four mechanisms: standard setting, capacity building, network facilitating, and membership granting (ibid. 739). It is important to document the important work of individual NHRI advocates just as the fact that in 2007 at the transnational level, the Network of African National Human Rights Institutions was created and that the Asia Pacific Forum APF is one of the most sophisticated NHRI (ibid. 740–743). NHRI diffusion continues through a range of platforms, from international and regional governmental institutions to international financial institutions and nongovernmental entities (ibid. 759). Coercion, persuasion, and acculturation contributed to the fact that the NHRI cannot be considered any more a Western democratic phenomenon (ibid. 760).

Pegram’s assessment of the growing diffusion of constitutional institutionalization of Human Rights law around the globe in 2010 sounded quite assuring. As a European academic I lived a comfortable live, working at an Austrian university. Since the end of World War II, my country was a Western democracy. I am thankful for the sacrifices of the Allied soldiers, who forced the Nazi dictatorship to surrender and taught my country to live by the rule of law of a liberal democracy. My academic research concerned Human Rights and speech-acts, Christian faith and discrimination in the Roman Catholic Church. I was naively and irresponsibly convinced that a kind of eternal peace had conquered Europe. I knew that my central European social context gets mirrored in my writing. I was not at all worried that I am constantly reproducing this cultural context as a speaker and listener in my daily speech-acts. When I am interacting with discourse partners who come from a different cultural and social context, we change and modify our proper social context, generate new cultural elements, and pictures of reality. Apparently, every form of communication carries more informational baggage than any of its originators realizes. Content that is not realized, unconsciously generates contexts. All kind of not intentioned excess content contributes to generating frustrating misunderstandings. Misunderstandings do not tell us that understanding is impossible. They tell us that there is lot of information in a sentence of which the speaker of the sentence was not aware while speaking. Culture is a wide land that is inhabited by all possible uses of an expression. Culture is a friendly host to all inventions of new words and their changing uses.

I was occupied worrying how to cope with misunderstandings. I wanted to get clarity about one’s cultural and social ways of doing things with words. Therefore, I asked myself what the art of listening is about? The art of listening needs self-assuring exercise and trust in one’s capacity to listen. I must have confidence and trust in my listening experiences and assess that listening does not harm my personal integrity. I must be aware of my possible suffering while listening, my joy or my excitement. This kind of awareness of my feelings guarantees that my integrity does not get hurt when participating in speech-acts. Although the social realization of dignity with speech-acts enhances my integrity, I must assess my integrity before entering a series of speech-acts. If it is impossible for me to assess that I am ok, it is legitimate and good to ask for help. It is not good in this kind of situation to pretend that everything is ok and to go on with business as usual. It is especially clear that listening in speech-acts is an agency that presupposes integrity. Listening is an art of living; it is not a strategy of exploitation. Listening belongs to the art of relating to the other. Listening does not compensate for the lack of mutually relating and creating intimacy. Listening is based on an independent social choice. Surviving emotionally by dependence is a pathological mechanism and indebted thankfulness is not free.

Learning to listen is part of my preparation for realizing speech-acts of dignity. The agency of listening serves in the speech-acts to hear what the case is and to identify the claims of the speaker, to discuss the validity condition of the claims and to assess the social range of the claim to validity. All too often, I listened to others in order not to have to confront my own feelings and states of the mind, and to escape the stressing memories of suffered losses. There are multiple losses in one’s life, losses of persons, of self-images, of preferred ideas, of cherished certainties, etc. In these cases of ignoring my feelings, I was not listening to the other for the sake of listening, but I was listening for the sake of pushing away and repress unpleasant sensations. To become listener again, I exercised saying good-by to the losses that I have suffered and then went on with listening. Getting aware while listening, that I am about to lose my balance of empathy and self-consciousness is an important capability and social skill. This assessment needs a lot of exercise and permanent discipline. This exercise takes a couple of moments of pain that accompany my memories of past losses. Listening is the possibility condition for respecting the personal history of the discourse partner, listening is a possibility condition for realizing the dignity of all discourse partners, of the listeners as well as of the speakers.

In March of 2020 the calm academic life at university got rudely interrupted. In December 2019, a new coronavirus began appearing in human beings in the region of Wuhan, China. The virus had been named COIVD-19, no one on earth had an immunity to it, and the new virus spread worldwide within months. On February 24, 2022, my illusion of a European era of eternal peace that is based on international treaties, trust through trade and not on military force and deterrence, was destroyed by the Russian’s army unprovoked attack of Ukraine. Since then, the terrible aggressive war of destruction of Ukraine’s infrastructure, the torturing, raping and murdering of Ukrainian women, men and children by Russian soldiers, the television pictures of mutilated soldiers, wounded civilians, incredible sufferings, and pain feed my daily fear, stress, and angst that the Russian aggression will not come to a halt but will destroy peace in all of Europe. Has my dream of an international world order under the rule of Human Rights law come to an end? Had this dream never been a realistic option, but was but the cheap illusion of a European academic?

Wishful thinking, personal convenience and the strive for undisturbed harmony paralyzed my willingness to accept the possible choice of Russia breaking international law and waging aggressive warfare against its neighbor countries in Europe. When Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 - starting the first twenty first century war in Europe - and occupied the Crimea in 2014, I was not attentive at Russian violence and aggression. Personal concerns and interests mirror personal concerns and interests and darken the sight on the state of the world. What is the state of the effective rule of Human Rights law in the world of 2021 and 2022?

In 2006 the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) began publishing research results on “the state of democracy worldwide in 165 independent states and two territories” (Democracy Index 2001. The China challenge. The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 2022. 3. eiu-democracy-index-2021. pdf) (See my Posting "Planet Earth and Democracy). In 2021 the EIU focuses on the consequences of the economic miracle of the past 40 years of authoritarian China’s capitalist economy:  Even though there are no political and almost no civil liberties, “China will be the leading economic power in the world within a decade and developing countries will look to it for leadership” (ibid. 19).

The EIU suggests a broad definition of democracy “as a set of practices and principles that institutionalize, and thereby, ultimately, protect freedom” (ibid. 65).  60 indicators are used to measure the five categories: electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, political culture, and civil liberties, “each category has a rating on a 0 to 10 scale, and the overall Index is the simple average of the five category indexes. (ibid. 67).

Although, democracy has not been in robust health for some years, in 2021 authoritarian pandemic responses are undermining democracy all over the world for a second successive year (ibid. 5). The covid-19 pandemic “has resulted in an unprecedented withdrawal of civil liberties among developed democracies and authoritarian regimes alike, through the imposition of lockdowns and restrictions on travelling and, increasingly, the introduction of “green passes” requiring proof of vaccination against covid-19 for participation in public life” (ibid. 3).

According to the EIU’s measure of democracy, in 2022 almost half of the world’s population live in a democracy of some sort (45,3%). Only 8% reside in a full democracy, 37,3% reside in a flawed democracy. This is a tiny improvement compared to 2021. 17,8% of world population live in hybrid regimes. “More than one-third of world’s population live under authoritarian rule (36,9%)” (Democracy Index 2022. 3. eiu-democracy-index-2023.pdf).

The restoration of individual freedoms that had been temporarily curtailed by the covid-19 pandemic did not lead to post-lockdown revival but to stagnation in the state of global democracy (ibid. 5). “Strikingly, the situation in two countries that are home to more than 20% of the world’s population, China and Russia, took a decisive turn for the worse in 2022” (ibid. 4).

“Russia recorded the biggest decline in score of any country in the world in 2022” that is from a score of 3,24 in 2021 to 2,28 in 2022 in the scale from 0 to 10 (ibid. 4). Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “was accompanied by all-out repression and censorship at home”, “and is now acquiring many of the features of a dictatorship” (ibid.).

China’s repressive approach to all manifestations of dissent did not change after abandoning the zero covid policy – “fearing the spread of mass protests more than the spread of the disease”-, resulting in a further decline in China’s already low score in the Democracy Index of 2,21 points in 2021 to 1,94 points in 2022 (ibid.).

The 2022 Democracy Index focuses on Ukraine’s example for democracy, on Russia’s war in Ukraine and “its importance for the future of democracy in Europe and globally” (ibid. 10): “The commitment of the Ukrainian people to fight for the right to decide their own future is inspiring. It shows the power of democratic ideas and principles to bind together a nation and its people in the pursuit of democracy. If it was not immediately possible to identify a coherent Ukrainian national identity at the time of the Maidan protests in 2014” – the year the Russians occupied the Crimea -, “when the country was still divided between west and east, in 2022 Ukraine’s fightback against Russian domination has strengthened national sentiment and demonstrated the incontrovertibility of Ukrainian nationhood” (ibid.).

In early 2022 the EIU prognoses pandemic fatigue and protests as reactions to these authoritarian responses (ibid. 5). EIU was right: In December 2022 the dictatorship of the Communist party of China had to lift its strict zero covid-19 policy because of massive popular protests (https://www.eiu.com/n/campaigns/democracy-index-2022/.4).

In 2021 there is a sharp decline in public trust in political parties and government institutions in Europe, the US, and Canada (EIU 2021, 27) also because of the unsatisfactory handling of the covid pandemic. “Citizens increasingly feel that they do not have control over their governments or their lives” (ibid.). The decline in public trust continued in 2022 and still grows in 2023, although the reasons for the decline are now high inflation, rising prices for food, energy and living due to the Russian violent aggression of Ukraine.

I am no historian, no economist, and no political scientist. For understanding what is happening in Russia, I turn to the “competent and well-informed experts” who write in Foreign Affairs that “is published by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a non-profit and nonpartisan membership organization dedicated to improving the understanding of U.S. foreign policy and international affairs through the free exchange of ideas” (About Foreign Affairs | Foreign Affairs). I learn that the self-destruction of the Soviet Union was caused by “misguided Soviet economic policies and a series of political missteps by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev” (Zubok. Vladislav. 2024. “Can Putin Survive? The Lessons of the Soviet Collapse”. In Foreign Affairs. Volume 101, Number 4. 84-96. 85.). Gorbachev’s perestroika liberalized the economy, but Soviet-style entrepreneurs did not create a new market economy and did not fill shelves for Soviet consumers (ibid. 86). There developed an oligarchic kleptocracy that exploited the state’s economic assets, exported the valuable resources of the country, and parked their dollars in offshore sights (ibid.). In 1991 Yeltsin pushed Gorbachev aside, “banned the Communist Party, and acted as a sovereign ruler” (ibid. 87). “On December 8, 1991, Yeltsin and the leaders of Belarus and Ukraine declared that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist as a subject of international law and geopolitical reality” (ibid. 87-88). Putin had managed to avoid financial chaos despite intense sanctions, he had learned from the Soviet collapse (ibid.). More than once he declared that “the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the twentieth century (ibid. 88).  His narrative claims “that he is the essential leader of a sovereign and great Russia, which has risen from its knees under his tenure” (ibid. 96).

In 2010 the Russia-friendly candidate Yanukovych won Ukraine’s presidency, “four years later, he was toppled in a revolution of dignity” that “led directly to the first Russian invasion of Ukraine” (Zelikow.Philip. 2024. “The Hollow Order. Rebuilding an International System that works”. In Foreign Affairs. Volume 101, Number 4. 107-119.111). The 2014 invasion of the Crimea was triggered by “Ukraine’s attempt to associate with the European Union” and has nothing to do with NATO (ibid.). Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, puts the world order created after World War II at risk of collapse (Daalder, Ivo, H. and Lindsay, James, M. 2024. “Last best hope. The West’s final chance to build a better world order”. In Foreign Affairs. Volume 101, Number 4. 120-130.120). Russia is not content with the ruling world order anyways and China has supported Moscow’s aggression (ibid.). The United States also ignored rules of international law when it “intervened in Kosovo in 1999 and Iraq in 2003 after failing to secure a UN mandate, and when it tortured detainees during its war on terrorism” (ibid. 122).

American hubris “refused to join new cooperative arrangements on nuclear testing, arms control, prosecuting war crimes, and regularizing trade in the Asia-Pacific” (ibid.). European wishful thinking ruled the day and ignored signs of resurgence of great-power competition (ibid.). “China, for its part, conducted unprecedented acts of economic espionage, coerced its trading partners, laid claim to the South China Sea, imprisoned more than one million Uyghurs, and crushed democracy in Hong Kong” (ibid. 123). Protests of the West were presented with the force of a paper tiger. Europe even increased its dependance on Russian oil and gas. In the COVID-19 pandemic every country pursued policies of self-interests. The United States and Europe did not serve the global requirements for vaccines, tests, and medication (Zelikow. 2024. 117).

Is this one of the reasons why “Brazil, India, South Africa, and other democracies of in the Americas, Asia, and Africa have refused to condemn the violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty, declined to back sanctions against Russia, and, in a few cases, sought to exploit the war to their benefit (Daalder, Ivo, H. and Lindsay, James, M. 2024. 128)? After all this sad analysis, the authors turn to a positive prospect for overcoming the crisis of the world order. Western democracies have the capability to forge democratic cooperation. Their commitment to the rule of law makes it possible for them to trust one another” (ibid. 128). The United States has formal security commitments with more than 50 allies, Russia has five, and China hast just one – North Korea (ibid.).  Accepting smaller powers as “sovereign equals” is not the Chinese and Russian way. The global South will be the biggest loser if China and Russia remake a world order for exploitation and manipulation of these countries (ibid.).

2022 marks also 50 years of the Club of Rome’s claiming of the limits to growth. The climate crisis makes clear that the time frame that the world must achieve its climate goals is shortening. Building a new and better world order needs to take care of the climate crisis and the climate crisis must be seen in the context of a couple of world problems that must be addressed in practice and not in theory. For this reason, the system dynamics model Earth4All developed together with the Transformational Economics Commission Report to the Club of Rome “A survival guide for Humanity” that was published in 2022, fifty years after the Club of Rome’s “The limits to growth” (Earth for All. A Survival Guide for Humanity. Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Owen Gaffney, Jayati Ghosh, Jorgen Randers, Johan Rockström, Per Espen Stoknes. New Society Publishers. Canada. 2022.3).

Although poverty has declined dramatically in the last fifty years, still almost half of the world lives on less than $4 per day (Earth for All. A Survival Guide for Humanity. 2022. 59). Low-income countries lack funds to invest in key infrastructure and to act on global warming. The rich countries are more interested in extracting interest payments from the poor countries than supporting their economic development. “High-income countries outsource their production to low-income countries to benefit from reduced costs” while “heavily polluting industries and more climate emissions” are brought to low-income countries (ibid. 61). Low-income countries cannot access the desperately needed “technology to green their operations, bring vaccines to their poor, or reduce expenses” (ibid. 63). Debt relief to low-income countries and “cooperation on a Global Green New Deal” to generate greener paths and millions of high-paying jobs are suggested by “Earth for All” (ibid. 65). Further, “the entire foreign-denominated debt and trading system needs complete transformation to enable countries in most of the world to borrow at low cost in their own currencies” (ibid. 66).

“Essential foundations for a functioning economy” are secure incomes for families, “access to universal healthcare, flexible working, adequate pensions for all, and humane parental leave” (ibid. 93). “Discrimination against women’s rights to equal education, equal pay, and financial security in old age is still pervasive around the world” (ibid.). The empowerment of women demands a “better access of women to education, health services, and lifelong learning, financial independence and leadership positions, economic security through a universal basic dividend, or similar, and expanded pension schemes” (ibid.). In 2022 “women’s share of total income from work (labor income) was 35% and less than 20% of landowners in the world are women” (ibid. 95). “Arguably the biggest challenge in the world today is not climate change, biodiversity loss, or even a pandemic. It is our collective inability to tell fact from fiction. In democratic societies, misinformation and disinformation had been kept at bay, to some extent at least, by checks and balances within mass media. Social media smashed this model apart. It has industrialized the spread of misinformation and disinformation in the world, polarizing societies, reducing trust, and contributing to our shocking inability to cooperate around common challenges, or even agree on the interpretation of basic facts. … Education systems have a duty to step up and teach critical thinking to help the next generation navigate this information minefield” (ibid. 102f.).

When in 2022 the Club of Rome published “A survival guide for the survival of humanity” (ibid.) the authors were very careful not to estrange the readers. Their policy of communicating the life-threatening developments of climate change tries to understand how and why people behave the way they do in the real world. People do not make strictly rational decisions, even if they have the information and the tools available to do so. Many of us know from experience, that we like to delay exercising, even though we know that doing exercises would benefit our health. Empirical observations of human behavior led to the development of behavioral economics. The field of behavioral economics considers people as human beings who are subject to emotion and impulsivity, and who are influenced by their environments and circumstances. Behavioral economics research have come to understand managers as people who are far from having perfect self-control and rather lose sight of their long-term goals than acting purely rationally (https://news.uchicago.edu/explainer/what-is-behavioral-economics).

If governments and businesses develop policy frameworks that empower and encourage people to make choices that are in their and in the public interest, meaningful participation in politics will grow. A principle that emerged from behavioral economics is the fact that people are often willing to choose a less-optimal outcome for themselves if it means they can support others (ibid.). This principle is called bounded self-interest (ibid.), and a policy of communication may use this principle to enhance people’s participation in ecologic policies.

The realization of the emancipatory potential of Human Rights, that is the empowerment of every individual on this earth claiming equal dignity, freedom, and rights, needs emotional support to be effective. The struggle for the rule of Human Rights law needs the resources of the emotional world of the individual. Not only psychology and sociology study emotions but also philosophy and economics learned to deal with emotions to enhance their theories. Being aware of the emotions that are part of the language games and speech-acts is a necessary condition for realizing the dignity of the speakers and listeners. Emotions are an important player in the social realization of dignity.

I am no expert in economy, nor in psychology, least in behavioral economics that combines both sciences. Nevertheless, I am interested in publications that deal with emotions in behavioral processes. Eval Winter is an economist, an academic expert in behavioral economics and game theory in business studies (Winter, Eyal. 2015. Kluge Gefühle. Köln: DuMont). He stresses the role of emotions in interactive decision-making: emotions serve our basic interests, emotions are clever, and we need emotions to be successful, cooperative, and capable of socially adapting to new challenges for realizing the common good and individual well-being (Winter 2015, 14). Winter uses empirical studies to underline his credo of the cleverness of emotions. I cannot reproduce the study-designs and do not know if they recruit participants from all social strata or simply include middle class college and university students.

Winter refers to an experiment where he found that within a group of young European academics North Europeans would get discriminated significantly less than South Europeans even though all participants were familiar with stereotypes of international and multicultural interactions (ibid.: 100). Winter himself does not reflect on his white male academic background. Claims of equal dignity of women, men and queer are not part of his reflections; human rights claims are not part of understanding his job, that is legitimate. There are economists who insist on the link of democratic liberties and rights and economic development.  Amartya Sen is ready to assess from the point of view of the economist and economic, social, and cultural development that “we must not miss the crucial recognition that political liberties and democratic rights are among the ‘constituent components’ of development” (Sen 2009: 346–347).

Winter follows the belief that maximizing profits is an agency that aims at positive results for all. He sees this agency as acquired in evolution through the function of adaption. The capability to use emotions for optimizing social choices pays off financially by high profits. Knowing how to handle emotions leads to better outcomes in negotiating. My social choices get influenced by financial incentives for doing something specific. Therefore, I must develop the capability to read the other player’s emotions and intentions while playing with her or him the game of profit. Empathy is the capability to read and imagine the emotional state, intentions, and views of another person. Autism is a lack of this empathy to read the mind of the one I am looking at. The agency of empathy is the basis for profitable social choices; it is also the basis to signal profitable signals back to the co-player (Winter 2015: 55).

Emotions are very much about social success or failure. Profitable decisions are not only based on rational arguments but need the social interactions of emotionally experienced players to be made successfully. I need a positive emotion to experience a positive emotion. I need the empathy to recognize a positive emotion to be able to respond with a positive emotion. In this worldview, emotions can be as important as money in terms of what is perceived as profitable. In addition, emotional behavior can maximize the monetary profit. Cooperation is needed for an emotional equilibrium, that is reaching the maximum profit for all, emotional profit included. The claimed reciprocity by the Golden Rule mutually protects the players’ interests and balances contrasting emotions like greed and shame. Greed produces anger and fury produces indignation, but if the other shows me generosity, he induces in me shame (ibid.: 64).

Most people are not simply rational and egoist in their social choices. The feeling of getting hurt, the wish for retribution and sanctions for insults, or the deceptions of getting hurt are examples of emotional facts that influence our social choices. It helps the process of evolution if a group feels collectively and not individually. Social structures, values, solidarity within a society constitute an evolutionary advantage, and are the result of a good selection. Ethnocentrism will disappear, if the cultures of the world—for example by using the internet—, progressively differ less and less in their values and become like each other (ibid. 107). Therefore, globally existing ethnocentrism can be understood as a failed equilibrium. Collective emotions lead the individual’s social choices in the right direction for the profit of all who make part of the collectivity. What is the evolutionary advantage of helping others? Helping others empowers my social group (ibid. 131). A strong social group gives me stronger support than a weak social group. I am protecting my genes by helping others, because their genes are very much the same as mine. Reciprocity is the will to survive.

Winter, the son of German Jews, explains the extraordinary economic, scientific, and technological success of the state of Israel: Because of one hundred years of fierce existential struggle for survival, the society of Israel gives solidarity and personal sacrifice for the common good top priority in the time of crisis. In less tense and secure situations, the Israelis again turn to the pursuit of individual interests, to competition and personal profit (ibid. 111). Winter forgets about a third possibility of behavior by the state of Israel that is ignorance of a growing threat to national security and the hubris that the Islamic terror organization Hamas is just not capable of a massive deadly attack on Israel’s population.

I learn from BBC, February 13, 2024: On October 7, 2023, waves of Hamas gunmen stormed across Gaza’s border into Israel, killing about 1200 people, young women and men, babies, and elders. Rape, sexual violence, and burning alive of whole families were reported. Hamas took more than 240 others as hostages into Gaza. Hamas is a terrorist group that violently rejected political rivals in 2007 to become Gaza’s sole ruler. The Gaza strip is a 41 kilometer long and 10-kilometer-wide territory between Israel, Egypt, and the Mediterranean Sea. Previously occupied by Egypt, Gaza was captured by Israel in the Six-Day 1967 war. In 2005 Israel withdrew its troops and about 7000 settlers from the territory. The UN considers the West Bank and Gaza as single Israeli-occupied territory. The future of the West Bank and East Jerusalem is one of the most difficult issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Since 1967 Israel has built about 140 settlements housing some 700.000 Jews in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Hamas rejects Israel’s right to exist and wants to destroy Israel to build an Islamic state in the place of Israel. Since it took power Hamas has fired thousands of rockets and carried out other deadly attacks in Israel. Israel repeatedly retaliated with airstrikes on Hamas and in 2008 and in 2014 sent troops into Gaza. In response to the Hamas attack on November 7, Israel immediately began a massive campaign of airstrikes on targets in Gaza. Three weeks later Israel launched a ground invasion. Israel’s aims are the destruction of Hamas and the return of the hostages. After three months of war, 28000 Palestinians have been killed, and tens of thousands have been injured, most were women and children says Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry. Israel cut off supplies of food, water, and fuel to pressure Hamas into releasing hostages. The UN has described the situation in Gaza as horrific, with shelters overflowing, and food and water running out. It has also warned for a famine and starving children. Gaza’s health system is collapsing (BBC. February 13, 2024. What is Hamas and why is it fighting with Israel in Gaza? (bbc.com)).

It is very hard and often impossible to expose me to the television pictures of dying and dead babies in destructed hospitals, dispersed corpses and deadly bombardments and killings of civilians, be they Palestinians or Israelis. The suffering of the families who mourn their dead must be agonizing, the families of the hostages and prisoners must despair. I do not know how war will turn to peace, I do not know how hate and revenge will cede to reconciliation. If even a military truce is not possible, how to speak of reconciliation and peace? Will it take a hundred years of silence before Israelis and Palestinians can talk to each other peacefully?

Margarete Mitscherlich-Nielsen (1917-2012), the German psychoanalyst and medical doctor invested her professional career studying and analyzing the incapability of post Nazi Germany to face the atrocities and crimes the Nazis had committed. Starting to accept the historic truth and take responsibility of the Holocaust and of Nazi terror took Germany 30 years, Austria took longer. I learned from Margarete Mitscherlich-Nielsen (Mitscherlich-Nielsen, Margarete. 2002. “Sinnstiftung mit und ohne Gott.” GEO.Wissen 2002 (29): 130. Hamburg: Gruner + Jahr) that accepting the challenge and doing the remembering, mourning and saying good-by to my losses remains a lifelong exercise. To say good-by to losses, small or big, is a lifelong process that one must manage until the moments of the last good-by.  Pushing away one’s guilt and cooperation in terror and state violence, and not acknowledging historic guilt as society leads to further hate and violence. At the end of her life, the North European academic Mitscherlich-Nielson widened her empathic solidarity with suffering women, men and queer. She claims that the sufferings in our social and cultural contexts are ridiculous compared with the real sufferings of millions of women, men and queer in this world who are condemned to living in inhumane, sickening, and deadly conditions of poverty, violence, and suppression (Mitscherlich-Nielson 2002).

Television channels and newspapers tell us on April 1, 2024, that “thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets to protest against the war in Gaza and to call for new elections in the nation” (Protests against war grow in Israel | Here & Now (wbur.org). Yes, there are protests, but thousands of Israeli protesters is not a mass protest of Israel’s society. There is no doubt that Israel lives through one of its severest national crises in history. Winter is proud of Israel, a Western style liberal democracy, and he is right so. To this point, a large majority of Israelis is in favor of the war against Hamas. Is there really consensus in this time of severe crisis in Israel’s society, that the release of the hostages is less important than the brutal war in Gaza that kills tens of thousands of civilians?

I understand that Winter prefers to write on the art of Jewish survival and not on the Holocaust. The Ten Commandments serve Winter as the example to demonstrate what is necessary for collective survival (ibid. 129). Mutation, that is spontaneous and arbitrary changes of genes, and the selection of good mutations for a population constitute the two elements of Winter’s model of evolution. Winter claims that we find the principle to help others in all cultures and religions and that even animals help each other (ibid. 131). What constitutes the motivation for altruistic behavior? Human groups and collectives sanction selfish behavior of individuals with social exclusion. Nobody wants to get excluded by his social group and therefore behaves according to the rules.

Religion creates social cohesion and the believers profit from this collective solidarity (ibid. 138). The Ten Commandments secured the physical existence of the small group of the Jewish people, then of the Christians and Muslims (ibid.). The Ten Commandments not only secure the physical existence of the group, but they also secure reproduction and impede the individual to leave the group (ibid. 139). The first three commandments of the Decalogue (Exodus 20, 1-10) insist on monotheism and monotheism as the fundamental possibility condition for continued existence and the survival of the people. Winter claims the moral superiority of the Decalogue to all other laws. Winter does not present an empirical proof or study about moral superiority of the Decalogue in relation to other systems of moral principles, rules and values.

Winter continuous commenting on the commandments four to ten of the Decalogue. These seven commandments ensure something like a social contract forbidding theft, adultery, homicide and lying that is giving false evidence, and mutually good relationships in the family as with neighbors (Exodus 20, 11-17). Winter cites the Decalogue according to Deuteronomy and not to Exodus. He interprets the evolutionary profit of the fourth Commandment “Honor your father and your mother so that you may live long in the land that Yahweh your God is giving you” (Exodus 20, 12). The evolutionary profit is the profit for the survival of the people (ibid.). The commandment of honoring my parents makes the parents give their children the example that they are supposed to imitate. When the children are grown up the respect for their parents functions somewhat like an old-age provision (ibid. 140).

Winter observes that evolution theory of groups insists on the necessity of adaptive selection of new norms that would react to new living conditions and historic circumstances. It is therefore very important for a group that individuals dare take the risk of ignoring some of the norms and create a mutation of behavior that ultimately will enhance the performance of the whole group (ibid. 142). Winter understands the Ten Commandments as social rules of universal validity. At latest at this point Winter turns in his book from writing as empirical scientist to writing about his personal worldview. This turn is legitimate, but for the sake of logic, I would have liked that Winter announces this change of paradigm. The first to speak of a universal validity of a law or constitution was not the prophet Moses – if Moses is a historic person at all. Universal validity of a moral law, universal values and the principle of equality are principles of the German Philosophical Enlightenment. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) teaches us that “all persons, regardless of rank or social class, have an equal intrinsic worth or dignity” and the Categorical Imperative “tells us to treat humanity in each person never merely as a means, but always as an end in itself” (Hill, Thomas E., Jr. 2014. “Kantian Perspectives on the Rational Basis of Human Dignity. In The Cambridge Handbook of Human Dignity, edited by Marcus Düwell, Jens Braarvig, Roger Brownsword and Dieter Mieth, 215–21. 215.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Winter does not care about the fact, that the understanding of the laws of the Ten Commandments has considerably changed during the last 2500 years. Already claiming universal validity for the first collections of the Ten Commandments   logically is an anachronism. At the historic starting point of the traditions of the Ten Commandments – somewhere in between 900 BCE and 300 BCE, who knows? - their understanding was quite different from ours.  The taboo to kill humans that we find in Exodus 20,12 and in Deuteronomy 5,17 and in many old cultures, does not include the death penalty, blood feud by God or juridical religious authorities, and killing in war (Deuser, Hermann. 2005. Die Zehn Gebote. Kleine Einführung in die theologische Ethik. Stuttgart: Reclam. 83–94).

The Protestant German theologian and philosopher of religion Hermann Deuser indicates two important steps that were preparing the universal understanding of the fifth Commandment “You shall not kill” (Exodus 20, 13). One is Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5,1-7,27). The first antithesis says: “You have heard how it was said to our ancestors, You shall not kill; and if anyone does kill, he must answer for it before the court. But I say this to you, anyone who is angry with a brother will answer for it before the court;” (Matthew 5, 21-22). The sixth antithesis says: “You have heard how it was said, You will love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say this to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5, 43-44). The second step towards banning the death penalty is Martin Luther’s programmatic claim not to kill anybody, even if one would merit to get punished with the death penalty (ibid.).

Winter is right to interpret the sixth commandment “You shall not commit adultery” as a rule for protecting the family. He is not saying that the protection of the family in Exodus 20, 14 does not function by enhancing the mutual fidelity of the couple but protects the right of the man to possess his wife. Only a woman could commit adultery and harm the family of her husband, a man could only commit adultery by violating the right to the possession of a woman by another man (ibid. 95–96). The commandment “You shall not steal” refers to persons rather than to objects. Although objects and animals are included in the commandment, the context of the commandment explains that stealing concerns the robbing of men from other families, the selling of slaves, adultery, and the lust of men (ibid. 105). The commandment “You shall not give false evidence against your neighbor” (Exodus 20, 16) in the Hebrew Bible relates first to truthfulness in court; the case is false accusation and false testimony. The testimonies were men because only men had legal capacity (ibid. 114).

The universal understanding of the second table of the Decalogue as rules for the reciprocal commitment of women and men possessing equal rights and liberty in the sense of the Golden Rule, is of a very recent date in history (ibid. 10). If Winter claims that the Ten Commandments were necessary to secure the survival of the Jewish people, we have to say that this survival was founded on the patriarchal structure of society and its suppression of women who were negated equal rights and dignity. For thousands of years women and queer have had to pay with their dignity, freedom, and exploitation for the survival of their communities. Therefore, I ask the questions, if this kind of survival is worth this inhumane price, and when will evolution theory take up the challenge to include discrimination of women, men and queer into her research?

Love and sexuality are necessary conditions for the continuing genetical existence of humans (Winter 2015, 156). What comes first: love or commitment? Winter claims that love creates the mutual commitment of a couple to altruistic behavior. This commitment is the necessary condition for the upbringing of children (ibid. 157). Winter does not describe love as a social choice of an individual but rather as a hormonally controlled instinct. What is an instinct? Winter is right when pointing at the biological possibility conditions of love and sexuality. From a point of view of genetic determinism, it is coherent to suppose determinist behavioral instincts; but what about the decision-making process of social choices? Are the functions of the brain such as language and speech-acts complicated results of interactions of the individual body with other bodies that are genetically determined? Are choice possibilities real for the individual’s brain or are they wishful thinking? Does the expression “I want to” make sense as a sentence of an individual speaker or do we have to consider this expression as an adaption to genetic, psychic, and social constraints and determinations?

Winter leaves the questions of genetic versus behavioral determinism unanswered, and looks at the oldest flute. Why do esthetic experience and art unite cognitive and emotional reactions? The oldest flute we found dates back 35,000 years. Cognitive development followed creativity and often surprises enhance understanding, insight, and knowledge. At the very end of his book Winter returns to the science of behavioral economics. Most people shy away from taking risks. Is it really the case that many years of studies signal intellectual talent? Overestimation of one’s abilities might indeed constitute a characteristic of women, men and queer. Most people convince themselves of having more capabilities than they do. I agree with Winter’s advice that it is useful for women, men and queer to accept their tendency to overestimate their capabilities and to work on self-imposed limits concerning concrete situations. The behavioral approach in economics, marketing, or in neuroeconomic behavioral economics leads to a multitude of interesting insights about human behavior. Winter is conscious of the fact that the empirical results of behavioral studies are interpreted in pluralistic ways and that there is a difference between theory and interpretation (ibid. 279).

Long before the feminist revolution, and long before the first human civilizations, evolution created the physiological differences concerning reproduction that led to the specific sex of women and men (ibid. 159–60). Was all this development necessary for the survival of human genes? Do all the cultural, social, and emotional developments, behaviors and consequences that resulted from the first necessity for specific sexes mirror the necessity of the survival of the fittest? It is up to science to try to answer these questions and to investigate the evolution of so-called sex-specific differences? My interest consists in identifying contemporary social and cultural structures of discrimination of women, men and queer and trying to contribute to a society that realizes better the equal dignity, liberty and rights of women, men and queer.