Page 167 - Contribution To Phenomenology

160 ALOIS MICKUNAS

is at the center of the problem, since it wants to abolish the distinction
between the individual and the traditional unity, leading toward a
dissolution of individuality (the case of totalitarian states) or a dissolu-
tion of social cohesion in favor of individualism (the case of Calvinism
and its branches).
Despite the pitfalls cultures, for Dumont, could maintain their identities
in modern globalization by establishing their local solutions. This option
has not been appreciated by the modern West because the West tends
to regard its particular universahty as all encompassing. If there is a
solution for Dumont, it would have to be premised on an acceptance of
modern globalizing within the parameters of its particular universality,
with material or practical values. Yet at the level of symbolic designs of
cultures, the indigenous mythologies will remain distinct and engaged in
oppositional confrontations and mythological evangelisms. This would
mean that the symbolic designs of various cultures and their national
identities would have to abandon their claims to be the universal
civilization—as is the claim by various fundamentalisms such as
Islam—and to accept a position of being a particular universal. What
emerges in this context is a struggle between the claims of two particular
universalities, the globalizing practical and the localized mythological, each
purporting to encompass the other. Can the symbolic designs of local
cultures subsume the globalizing practical under its own parameters?
What could be anticipated is an increase in revitalization of mythologies
and their efforts to make themselves part of a universal discourse and
confrontation.^ The current case is Azabaijan, Armenia, and Turkey,
accepting modernization, and yet taking sides within the parameters of
mythological confrontations supplied with technical means to do battle.
This combination poses unique problems for specific nations. The
contemporary West faces an issue of its own uniqueness. Its tendency
toward modernistic globalization, dependent on the primacy of seculariza-
tion and—apart from resurgence of fundamentalistic claims—the historical
equalizing of all mythologies, artistic styles and experimentations,
feminism, the self-critical intellectual milieu, the demand for tolerance of
ethnic diversities and life styles, the non-foundationalisms, etc., pose
important questions: for whom, and to what extent, is the current West
traditional? Does it have any basis or structural identity? Although the

^ Jo Ann Chirico, "Humanity, Globalization, and Worldwide Religious Resurgence:
A Theoretical Exploration," Sociological Analysis 46 (1985): 219-242.