The various forms of authoritarianism, autocracy, or their other substitutes are gaining more and more ground globally, not only in the states of the so-called “Third World.” Even in the case of the traditional liberal democracies,  this reactionary trend was half-expected to happen in a fast-paced, frenetic world of changing geo-economic and political trends, as indicated by “troubled” observations of the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler made it the Art of Happiness. After the unsettling pandemic period, in the resulting context of a deepening social anxiety, of increased unpredictability of world developments, an ethical degradation of the act of civic participation profoundly has continually increased, for example, in France, which considers itself as the country of human rights par excellence. Fortunately, we recently have seen a new creative programmatic initiative of the EU, the New Bauhaus, seen as a source of regenerative interconnection between the various components of an envisioned rebirth of the European communities, in the urban, “green,” social, cultural and overall contexts. Such a direction provides the premises, not only of a desirable smart reconstruction, but also of the identification of varied inspiring solutions at the educational level, visionary from the civic point of view and pragmatic from an ethical perspective.

Call for Papers

25The organizers wish to call for contributions for an online conference on the following themes in support of this New Bauhaus project, namely (noted in bold):

1. Obviously, the causes of troubled reactions to rapid globalization are multiple and of various types, more and more studied in the recent specialized literature, but mainly they can be synthetized to a few ones, such as: deepening socio-economic inequities around the world, diluting or even degrading the act of leadership at all levels, the gradual weakening of the role and public trust in international organizations, the call to completely “unorthodox solutions” within international relations, leading to a gradual generalization of solutions based on manipulation, aggressiveness, repression and officially legitimized violence in various manifestations, ranging from Europe to the Euro-Asian area (including the two Americas) and, inevitably, to the African continent.

For a while, a reactionary “illiberalist” political trend in Hungary, Poland, or Serbia, or United States (via Trumpism) came to be welcomed by the less-educated part of the electorate (led by ideological intellectuals) as it was in the past. This recent authoritarian trend has taken the forms of, for example, not only revived fascism, neo-Nazism or Stalinism, but also trends towards doctrinal neo-populism, spreading from Argentina or Brazil to the Philippines, Burma or Nepal. What reunites these cases, each with its own particularities, lies in the deliberate and constant avoidance of identifying the deep motivations that  birth these movements that greatly affect human rights and civil liberties.

2. It is true that some pro-democratic reforms or reformist tendencies have incidentally happened in some countries, but the irrelevance or sometimes blatant anachronism of the old-fashion system of international relations in the post-Wikileaks or Panama Papers period has highlighted the opacity regarding to real radical solutions, degenerating into an increased distrust in socio-political systems based on representative / liberal democracy or, at least, in its assumed positive qualities. The very conditions in which policies or the pro-democratic leadership function are exercised more consistently and consistently, as in the key institutions of the European Union, are not now seen as sufficient. This is the case when it comes to providing realistically pragmatic solutions for overcoming such pseudo-compensatory revenges, as the policymakers have less and less adequate means to suggest and especially to put into practice such viable alternatives. Since the period of the non-alignment movement of the 1970s, the practicised humanitarianism, at the international level, no longer seems productive at all in a pragmatic and mobilizing meaning, especially for the less developed states, including those in the former Soviet camp / Cooperation Agreements for Emergency Response (CAER) countries.

That is why the new doctrinal trends, focused on conspiracy theories or the generalization of civil disobedience or the denunciation of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policies, at least debatable, if not fully hypocritical, of some multinational companies, have quickly taken place in the collective mind. Even in the present, the human rights promoted by the United Nations or by the Council of Europe have deeply eroded their credibility and especially their hoped-for continued effectiveness. Thus, it seems quite clear, especially against the background of dramatic climate change with a generalizing and accelerating effect, that without moving to the boldest testing of good practice models of social-communitarian innovation, of trans-sectoral and even trans-disciplinary type, it is really problematic to imagine that we would be able to influence in a way that is not only declarative or proclamatory, but paradigm shifting, as is now seen as more and more urgently required (or even inevitable).

3. From this point of view, the world, much less Europe, does not lack models or even inspiring leaders – even if they are no longer the size of Simonne Weil, Jean Monnet, Konrad Adenauer, Altiero Spinelli, Martin Luther King, Jimmy Carter, Andrei Saharov, Mario Vargas Llosa, Emma Bonino, Indira Ghandi, Vaclav Havel, Anna Linhdt, Jacques Delors etc. We all realize that we are at a great axial – historical crossroads, if not at a reversal of broader paradigms, but the current geo-political conditions, the new hybrid war in full swing or the threat of a new global economic crisis seem, unfortunately, to overshadow the chance of those needed transformations (which are not directly related to digitalization / cyber fragility, greening, anti-corruption policies, tough decision-making of the powerful financial-militarist leaders, etc.) to take place.

In practice, this would mean that without a revolution of maximum magnitude in the field of education, especially the non-formal one guided in the spirit of the ”common or fundamental human character” (cf. Dalai Lama) of training transversal skills, of overcoming the functional and social illiteracy of the young generations, we will inexorably move towards a decisional entropy or a civilizational collapse from which even ultra-performing robots can save us.

We thus propose and we expect these conference themes to be especially approached from the point of view of the cardinal triad which includes practicing empathy – compassion diet – focusing on the pursuit of well-being / happiness in the spirit suggested above to avoid a final destructive impact on humanity as a whole. It thus becomes increasingly clear and significant that the mere evocation of compassion as a state of mind, even accompanied by the much larger and more palpable use of consolation practices, would be worthwhile to generate a non-formalistic plan of action, which should lead / converge in the end to that set of societal changes that we generally call a better world or the attainment of true natural and responsible happiness, of course not only at the singular or egocentric level. Without  such a synthetic approach based on realistic, politically-ethical subsidiarity, no legitimate pacifism can emerge, whether federalist or universal in scope.

Maximum 20 full papers will be accepted, based on the scientific quality, and being submitted no later than June 20th, 2022.

All abstracts should be submitted and presented in clear English with accurate grammar and spelling of a quality suitable for publication, with no more that 500 words (or 3000 characters including spaces).

All papers will be published on the website of the International Honorary Chair ”Jean Bart” (CIO-SUERD).

Conditions of participation:

As the conference reffers to a wide interdisciplinary thematic approach, the participants and authors could bring their expertise from quite various fields: European Studies, Politics, Social Sciences, Philosophy, Urban Innovation/SmartCity, Creative Industries and so on.

• Participation fee for authors: 40 Euro/author
• Participation fee (without paper): 10 Euro/participant

Deadline for registration: June 20th, 2022