Competing Universalisms: An Introduction

Competing Universalisms Dot Net is committed to the theory of competing universalisms and competing hegemonies. This theory seeks to explain human behavior and conflict between nations in terms of competing universalisms and competing hegemonies and is really an exercise in model-building.

The four competing universalisms are Christianity, Islam (narrowly defined), Liberalism and Marxism (broadly defined to include Statism and the authoritarian Left, but not necessarily the democratic Left).

It is said that facts only exist in the light of theory that informs one’s perception of the facts. If so, this helps explain why the world looks very different to people operating out of different universalisms. Competing universalisms are total systems that seek to explain why the world is the way it is, and serve as a guide to behavior for all people - they are both descriptive and normative. Advocates of Islam, for example, use this exact phrase – total system. Pure Marxism leads to the totalitarian state – it’s no pun. Universalisms are, in fact, closed models; they provide an answer for everything.

The term "universalisms” occasionally is used to refer to philosophical and democratic ideas that are spreading around the world, albeit with resistance: Free markets, elected governments, individual liberties, and civil rights based on citizenship (not race, religion, station at birth and so on), among others.

As such, the notion of competing universalisms would be important enough. But this is not what I mean by the expression “competing universalisms,” nor is it what other people should be thinking of. The above conditions – free markets, elected governments, individual liberties, and so on – are themselves characteristic of only one of the competing universalisms on the world stage today, namely Liberalism, at least in the classical sense. Think John Locke; think Thomas Jefferson; even think John Stuart Mill, at least in part.

Think George W. Bush and Tony Blair. They are necessarily hated by people affiliated with two of the other competing universalisms on the world stage today, namely Islam (narrowly defined, referring mostly to its supremacist and imperialistic Jihadist side) and Marxism (including Statism and the authoritarian Left) . The fact that both Bush and Blair are affiliated in significant ways with the other remaining competing universalism, namely Christianity, in addition to their Liberalism makes it only worse from the point of view of the Islamists and Marxists (including other Leftists, whether authoritarian or not).

Each universalism represents a perfect dichotomy of sorts, or at least a “zero sum game” – if one universalism is right, anything that deviates from it is wrong. In fact, the Marxists (and others on the authoritarian Left) rail against deviationism and kill reactionaries who cannot be “re-educated.” Historically, the Christians and Muslims have talked about heresy and have killed people who refused to be saved. More about the Jews later, but they'll excommunicate you before they'll kill you for heresy, and Judaism is not a competing universalism in any case (theologians usually deem it to be "particularistic," a weakness exploited by Paul and Muhammad).

Universalisms try to spread over as much of the Earth and convert as many people as possible, but sometimes they clash with each other (see the Crusades, for example, or Afghanistan in the 1980s, where Marxism and its related hegemony, namely the Soviet system, clashed with Islam, and lost).

Marxism has been called a secular religion, and for good reason – it is teleological in nature (the future has a hold on the past); it promises a Utopian end-state to history (compare to Eternal Salvation in Christianity, or Paradise in Islam); and time stops at some point in the future. Also, just as in Christianity and Islam, there is an age of innocence or purity in the Marxist universe that predates Evil - it's the Garden of Eden in both Christianity and Islam, and in Marxist thinking (broadly speaking) it is some of kind of authentic state of affairs that preceeded the rise of capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, sexism, racism and all the other "evils," and which will return when the evils are eliminated.

But instead of Marxism being God-given, it is a version of “history revealing itself,” meaning some supernatural entity (here called “history”) is really guiding things. Marxism may be considered a version of Zoroastrianism, the very early monotheistic belief that had a sophisticated view of the battle of good versus evil over time, and an end-state where good triumphs. German intellectuals of the 19th Century, such as Karl Marx and Friederich Nietzsche, were well familiar with Zoroastrianism.

Liberalism is the hardest to pigeon-hole as a competing universalism, but recent actions by George W. Bush and Tony Blair have helped clarify things. They are the most radical Liberals since Oliver Cromwell, and much more radical than Woodrow Wilson. Yet the great gift of Liberalism is that, while it does apply to all, and does seek to spread (“make the world safe for democracy,” for example) it’s easiest to understand as an antidote to other universalisms and hegemonies. Unlike all the other universalisms, it emphasizes the individual. All the other universalisms emphasize group identity and affiliation.

Competing universalisms are total systems that seek to explain why the world is the way it is, and serve as a guide to behavior for all people, as stated above. As such, they confuse the normative and empirical contexts badly (see British philosopher G.E Moore). Frankly, the world is whatever it is; what we “should” do about things is an entirely different question (see also David Hume).

Liberalism seems a bit different than other universalisms, especially in the normative context – instead of preaching that one must believe and must act a certain way, it preaches tolerance, pluralism and a “live and let live” attitude. You don't have to pray to the same God in a liberal state, or belong to the same political party. The democratic Left shares some of these views.

Liberalism also is different from the other universalisms in that it does not postulate a Garden of Eden or state of grace or anything like that prior to the rise of civilization. On the contrary, most versions of liberalism see early man living in fear and chaos, and liberalism promises to solve that, but does not gurantee a paradise or utopia now or in the future, ever.

The total, universal, closed nature of universalisms is why “treason” and “heresy” are the same crime in Marxism, Christianity and Islam (though not necessarily in a liberal democracy). Deviating from the absolute and total truth is impermissible, and it is to put oneself outside of a closed model, which cannot be permitted or else the model breaks.

Competing universalisms always spawn competing hegemonies, which simply are the means by which conquest will be achieved. It’s hegemony we’re always afraid of. If Marx just wrote books and died in the British Museum after closing time no one would care. But Lenin scared us, and Stalin and Mao scared us more.

Christianity and Islam, being followers of the theory of supersession (Christianity supersedes and improves upon Judaism and the covenant with God, and Islam supersedes both Christianity and Judaism), are proselytizing religions, which is by definition conquest. Marxism (and the entire Left in this instance) also is supersessionist - the so-called secular religion simply supersedes all the religions that came before it. This is why "religion is the opiate of the people," according to Marx and Lenin. Religion is the enemy of Marx and Lenin, and of Stalin - that's the real issue.

Hegemonies ultimately go to war against each other, and usually beat each other into the ground. Hegemonies can't win because there are other hegemonies to fight back. Plus, hegemonies are subject to local conditions, whether it is bad leadership, bad arms suppliers, or bad weather. Like the antithesis to the perpetual motion machine, competing hegemonies run down. But universalisms, like psychoses, are immortal.

Ultimately, competing universalisms must be related to a theory of mind that is itself part of a theory of behavior. Universalisms operate on a cognitive level; at a minimum they filter the world and prevent us from seeing “the thing in itself,” as Kant would say. Yet it’s not enough to say that we all see the world through our competing universalisms; our worlds are the competing universalisms.

Still, I’m working on the entire theory. In any model building, at some point, after some work and reflection, one just throws it out there, and sees who can attack it, and who can improve it. Science is decidedly liberal in that way – open to criticism, even welcoming of it, open to change, and so on.

Abraham Aamidor is the author of “Real Feature Writing” (Erlbaum, 1999) and Editor, “Real Sports Reporting” (Indiana University Press, 2003), both college-level journalism texts, and "Chuck Taylor, All Star: The True Story of the Man Behind the Most Famous Athletic Shoe in History" (Indiana University Press, 2006). He has taught journalism at Indiana University-Bloomington, Butler University, Georgia Southern University and Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. He works in daily journalism in Indianapolis.