EVEN if you are not addicted to science fiction movies, you might have observed through TV advertisements that many of these dramas begin with a similar scenario: an unknown phenomenon in the skies or at sea is dangerously approaching the Earth’s shores threatening—but how, no one knows—to destroy everything. As there is no answer to the question: “What is it?” all the authorities, administrations and armed forces mobilize themselves against any eventuality, etc. And the thrill of the suspense begins.

In the same way, during the first three months of this year, the great majority of the world media has ceaselessly tried to give information, analysis and explanation about such a threatening phenomenon. It is so complex to describe! It has so many ramifications in the “international community”! It is like a pandemic or a plague with its multi-faceted and uncontrollable consequences: the world’s financial system is in disarray because of its excesses, inter-banking relations are threatened by distrust, many lay-offs have been made by multi-nationals and small corporations due to lack of credit, widespread unemployment across generations forced by economic recession and educational reforms in jeopardy—just to mention a few worries. One word sums up everything: “the crisis” is here. Will it last long? Who knows?

Every day being submitted to all kinds of news, one may easily feel it difficult to sort out any meaning from what is going on. Even the words of the late Samuel Huntington (who died on December 24th 2008) on the world’s civilizations going to clash—a thesis not so long ago heatedly debated—begin to look somewhat outdated: during the last twenty years since the controversy began, the face of the earth has already changed. Geopolitics analyses, despite the vast scope of the understanding they might provide, still only scratch the surface of the new international setting. Where are the roots of the forces that slowly fostered them? A deeper synthetic view seems to be required that would go beyond what intuition or logic provide. Here, perhaps, a metaphor could help.

Human vision is pluri-dimensional. The human eye and brain interpret what we are looking at in such a way as to preserve the richness of what we see in its several inter-related dimensions (a gentle face, an imposing building, a beautiful landscape, etc.) and we may change our point of view to explore the proportions and increase our admiration. Yet even the greatest painters or photographers cannot achieve that perfection: each drawing, each shot, each frame of a video is only two-dimensional. It seems also that the human way of thinking and of discourse has to be similarly linear or “two-dimensional”, so to say, to be clear or logical: one point of view at a time. Hence the controversies about what happens in the world: a pluri-dimensional way of thinking is lacking to rightly interpret what is going on.

We would need a kind of “hologram” to intellectually see the world in its inter-connected aspects. A hologram is a flat surface of an image that, under proper illumination, appears to contain a three-dimensional variable picture. Holograms are used to prevent counterfeiting of documents such as bank notes, credit cards, driver’s licences, etc. Coming from the Greek roots holos, “whole” and gramma, “message”, a “hologram” is a more complete and variable representation of an object through its interrelated three dimensions. To correctly interpret what is happening in this global crisis, we would need to develop a multi-faceted and variable way of thinking to achieve a more complete representation of the forces that move the changes at the surface of the world.

This issue does not deal as such with “the crisis” that is affecting the world economy, the unemployment rates of nations and even China’s reforms of education. But a comprehensive view and understanding of it would greatly benefit by taking into account the ethical dimensions of the global problem.


Yves Camus 赵仪文, Editor

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