Introduction
If this project resonates with you, we would like to invite you to join us as a participant to explore the East-West barrier. For more information on how to participate, please contact us at participate@paralimes.org
Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem about East and West begins with the words, "Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet." [1] Even today, as we live in a globalised world where rapid developments have led the East and West to be highly interconnected and dependent on one another, there is a sense that East and West do not understanding each other. There have been rising tensions between China and the West, with each side expanding their military in response to the other’s expansion. There is a risk that if this carries on – or rather, if there continues to be no development of understanding and respect for each other’s cultures, backgrounds, and motives – a simple misunderstanding may be all we need to spark an armed conflict between the two. [2] We believe that underlying such tensions between China and the West is a barrier that prevents both sides from accurately reading each other’s motives and intentions. We hope to do something to reduce the tension between China and the West.
In the period between September and October 2014, Para Limes organized two small workshops, with the purpose to survey the East West barrier and explore possibilities to navigate that barrier. In March 2015 we organized a third workshop, in which we developed a “roadmap” to chart a course for action.[3]
The input for the first two workshops was a short paper – a challenge – in which the (perceived) problem was stated and possible approaches were sketched in general terms. [4]
The input for the 3rd workshop was a working paper based on the discussions from the 1st and the 2nd workshop. The working paper is fully reproduced in the following pages, as Attachment A to this paper on the Project Roadmap. With the exception of paragraph 6 and 7,[5] it was fully endorsed in the 3rd workshop. Only small editorial corrections have been introduced in the other paragraphs.
Contents
The Main Points
The long-term goal for action can be stated briefly as:
- To get people and thought leaders involved in the discussion about navigating the East West barrier; to create a movement.
The common ground for the explorations is:
- Complexity
To provoke imagination and inspiration, our long-term project is:
- The development of a Museum of the Future
As the first milestone we will aim for:
- A high-level conference on the theme of “Science and Humanity” to be organized at NTU, Singapore in August 2016.
The Conference on “Science and Humanity”
The reason we chose this theme is beautifully articulated by Lin Yutang, who wrote:
"Thinking is an art, and not a science. One of the greatest contrasts between Chinese and Western scholarship is the fact that in the West there is so much specialized knowledge, and so little humanized knowledge, while in China there is so much more concern with the problems of living, while there are no specialized sciences. We see an invasion of scientific thinking into the proper realm of humanized knowledge in the West, characterized by high specialization and its profuse use of scientific or semi-scientific terminology. I am speaking of “scientific” thinking in its everyday sense, and not of true scientific thinking, which cannot be divorced from common sense on the one hand, and imagination on the other. In its everyday sense, this “scientific” thinking is strictly logical, objective, highly specialized and “atomic” in its method and vision. The contrast in the two types of scholarship, Oriental and Occidental, ultimately goes back to the opposition between logic and common sense. Logic, deprived of common sense, becomes inhuman, and common sense, deprived of logic, is incapable of penetrating into nature’s mysteries."[1]
We believe that, as we reinvigorate the sciences with humanity and advance humanity through the sciences through a high-level conference on “Science and Humanity”, we will be able to explore and expose ways of navigating the barrier between China and the West and develop ample opportunities for collaboration and understanding.
The Roadmap
Based on the discussions of our 3rd workshop, we have decided to chart our course of action as follows:
| Timeline | Track 1
Activities aimed at "Science and Humanity" |
Track 2
Activities aimed at long-term goal and project |
|---|---|---|
| Start-up Phase
(Mar - Sep 2015) |
Projects:
|
Projects:
|
| Midway Calibration Point
(23 - 25 Sep 2015) |
Agenda:
|
Agenda:
|
| Post-Calibration
(Sep 2015 - Aug 2016) |
Projects:
|
Projects:
|
| "Science and Humanity" Conference
(Aug 2016) | ||
| Post-Conference
(after Aug 2016) There will be only one track after the conference |
Objectives:
Projects:
| |
Participate
If this project resonates with you, we would like to invite you to join us as a participant to explore the East-West barrier. For more information on how to participate, please contact us at participate@paralimes.org
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Rudyard Kipling, The Ballad of East and West.
- ↑ For this reason, we chose to focus on the barrier between China and the West.
- ↑ The workshops took place on 1-3 September and 29-31 October 2014 and on 5-6 March 2015 and are henceforth referred to as the 1st, 2nd and 3rd workshop. The list of participants in each of the workshops is given in Attachment C.
- ↑ See Attachment B: The Challenge
- ↑ Paragraphs 6 and 7 of the working paper were meant as a starting point for identifying a number of feasible actions and to design a plan to realize those actions. After the 3rd workshop, we have revised the plan into a Roadmap, described in the following pages.
