The Task of Theological Humanism
100
for good or ill, the future of planetary life. There is an increasing sense of shared planetary destiny even as global dynamics foster powerful senses of cultural, religious, and ethnic cities such as Berlin, Hong Kong, or Mexico City. These are “places” in difference. Clear examples include globalized
which people’s identities, sense of others and the wider world, as well as values and desires, are locally situated but altered by global dynamics. Saskia Sassen writes that the “city has indeed emerged as a site for new claims: by global capital which uses the city as an ‘organizational commodity,’ but also
by disadvantaged sectors of the urban population, which in large cities are frequently as internationalized a presence as is capital.”of deep connectivity that drives the compression of the world. Yet these One element in the current structure of human life is the quickening pace 8
dynamics also mean people’s lives are increasingly shaped by how they are perceived by others. This brings to light a second dynamic. Theorists call it “global reflexivity,” and it profoundly influences both social and reflective goods. Reflexivity is the many ways social entities act back upon themselves
to adjust to information about their internal and external working.rooted in the distinctive human capacity to be aware of oneself while inter-acting with and adjusting to others. Political entities, for instance, have to adapt reflexively to developments in the market or world opinion. Individuals^9 It is
and groups see themselves in terms of how others see and react to them. Reflexive dynamics shape how people react, often violently. Think of the massive global response to political cartoons that depict religious leaders. So, one can decode the structures of experience amid global dynamics
in terms of deep connectivity and reflexivity. These bring about the com-pression of the world along with the expansion of consciousness and the deterritorialization of identity.Deep connectivity and global reflexivity are closely related to a third
dynamic, one that brings us to more obvious religious and moral features of globalization. Recognition, as we know from chapter 5, is the perception and acknowledgment of moral standing in social relations, that is, the rightful claim to respect and enhancement. People’s identities and self-understandings
arise within or are effaced by patterns and structures of recognition. This is of course not a new idea. It is found in debates about multiculturalism and “identity politics” and also among feminist theologians who chart the efface-ment of women’s agency within patriarchal systems. (^10) Patterns of recognition
are also central in discussions of truth and reconciliation after intolerable acts of violence and war and abuse. One of the crucial conditions of such acts of intolerable violence is the breakdown of capacities of moral perception and imagination needed to recognize the moral standing of human beings. 11