We are hoping for Transformation

We are hoping for Transformationrn(Vinod Anand)
Everyone wishes the world would get transformed. It’s an ambitious, wish — for we want to transform oppressive relations, reform structural inequalities and embody the highest aspirations of all people, particularly of the most marginalized and vulnerable. Everyone, especially the youth, is asking for justice, equity and equality to uphold human honour and dignity.
Though it’s an ambitious visualization for a better future, there is plenty of hope — and this is clear from the extent of participation in raising the above issues. It speaks of a society in transition. Even as we yearn for such a transformation, society remains enmeshed in norms of conflict, violence and competition: political systems are organized as contests for power; legal systems as contests of legal advocacy; economic system as contests of capital accumulation; and educational systems as contests of intellectual achievement and recognition.
Such structures promote separation into opposing groups of “we” and “they”— groups that fight, compete, negotiate and even cooperate across the boundaries of their separateness. These norms exacerbate the many categories of “othe
ess” that distort human relationships and perpetuate injustice. So apparently prevalent in societal affairs are prejudicial distinctions based on constructs of gender, race, age, socio-economic status, caste, nationality tribe, religion, disability and location that alte
atives can seem out of reach. The deeply fragmented social reality that we find around us today is, in .part, a consequence of these divisive constructs and attachments.
Is a conception of society without an “other” even possible? Not only is such a thing possible, timely and practical — such a conception is essential to our maturation. Humanity is experiencing a transition that can be described as the passage from a collective childhood to our collective maturity. During this transition, the thoughts and attitudes associated with humanity’s childhood are gradually being replaced by adulthood. Characterizing this transition is the redefinition of human relationships within the context of a single social body, animated by bonds of mutualism and reciprocity. Such a transition calls for an organic change in the structure of society on an unprecedented scale, especially making the oneness of humanity an operating principle of our lives.
Take the human body as analogy: Within the body, countless differentiated cells, structures and organs collaborate to sustain life. Each gives and receives whatever is needed for its individual functioning and for the welfare of the whole. And just as no one would explain a healthy body in terms of self-interested competition, no one would argue that functioning would be improved by all of the body’s cells becoming identical to one another. Optimum performance, rather, is achieved through the reciprocity found in the body’s governing principle of “unity in diversity”—a principle that applies to the social body of humanity as it does to the physical body of one of its members.
This conception of equality in which all are able to participate in the development process implies that certain questions need o be asked at the levels of both practice and theory Among these: How would relationships between and among individuals, communities and institutions of government need to be defined to reflect the oneness of humanity as an operating principle of collective life? How could a concept of trusteeship be better incorporated into current efforts for security, peace and development?