In one of the letters written to the Infeld group in Warsaw Einstein wrote:
"A new manner of thinking is essential if humankind is to survive."

A DREAM

1. THE EVENING

"Chez Armand", a private club, stands in woody hills with its back against the lake and mountain crests behind. Selected tycoons congregate there, sheltered from the vulgar mob. Simple fellows are occasionally asked into the Presence and this evening I happened to be one of them. Why Joe Morelli, chairman of Globholds, one of the world's most powerful men, should invite me was more than I could say. Surely he had no interest in my physics research.

So it's perhaps my essay on "global paradox": the anti-globalist masses manifest and revolt all over the world only to run like one man to eat Globburgers, thus inadvertently promoting globalization and making Globholds a giant business.

It sounds crazy. Still, each madness goes by some reason of its own, only this "reason" escapes our traditional dogmatic "pro or con" analysis.

Einstein said: "A new manner of thinking is essential if humankind is to survive".

My essay outlined a possible new manner: "grey dialectic" investigating grey zones between black and white pros and cons. But Morelli doubtless never read it.

I parked in front of a Georgian house of lovely proportions, delightful in the setting of dark pines rising up behind it. A medium height, slender fellow attired in cotton jogging suit came down the perron. I recalled that Morelli advocates simplicity and never dresses up.

-I'm Joe Morelli- he greeted me -Call me Joe, we're easygoing people here.-

Simplicity was undoubtedly the motto.

Up to a limit. The menu presented by Armand was not exactly simple:

Aperitif: Blanquette de Limoux. Bisque d'écrevisses Les oeufs en meurette à la lie de Puligny. Wine: Chevalier Montrachet. Roquefort Société. Wine: Château Yquem. Digestif: Grande Champagne Cognac Rechou.

Morelli did not seem to stick overmuch with his Globburgers.

Explanation came with the cognac.

-I want to talk to you about your "global paradox"- said Morelli. So he read it after all!

-All my enterprises run up against this madness, but I could never understand it. It feels like I'm moving through a swamp. Everybody writes about globalization, but it's all committed pro or con stuff which, as you rightly said, does not help. So I took a fancy to your grey dialectic. Where did you pick it up?-

-In physics. Most people are one-sided. Physicists don't write, and writers ignore physics. But I do some of both. So, for instance, I know a bit about light. In some context it has the aspect of discrete particles, in another, a contradictory one of continuous waves. We don't know the nature of light in general. We can talk only about its often contradictory aspects. Likewise, we cannot talk about globalism in general, but only about its contradictory aspects. Not my fault. Reality happens to be made this way and I did not invent it.-

-Fine. Let's talk aspects and play a game. Could you put on the hat of our enemy and say why you hate us so much?-

-A hundred reasons, but that's what first jumps to mind : "the world of homogeneous consumption" where people everywhere eat the same food, wear the same clothes and live in carbon copy houses. That offends all and sundry, as everyone believes himself to be unique and extraordinary.-

-Good start. Now put on our hat and try to retort.-

-Easy. First, it's not your objective at all, just a false picture painted by your enemies. You are not in business of creating homogeneous or heterogeneous worlds but in that of making money by feeding the largest possible global population. Now, if the population prefers cheap uniformity to more expensive diversity, that's their problem.-

-Now the ball's in their court. How do you counter this one?-

-You talk about feeding global population, about eradicating hunger and poverty, you print full page ads showing gentle breeze waving through a green sea of cereals amidst a desert, but your "Green Revolution" is a barefaced lie. It introduced monocultures, destroyed biodiversity, exhausted water reserves, created water-logged and saline deserts and destroyed peasant livelihoods. You buy land suitable for permanent crops at dirt cheap prices and turn it to monocultures of cotton, peanuts, or flowers for export. And when you grow these lovely seas of cereals, it's for feeding factory raised animals and for making Globburgers. A few natives, connected to local Mafia join the rich and enlarge the customer base of Globburgers. Some others get semi-slave jobs with the landlords and can afford one or two burgers a month. The majority is excluded, sentenced to hunger and to precarious attempts to survive through deforestation and abuse of marginal, non productive lands. Half of all grains produced, which could eradicate hunger, are used to feed factory livestock. Rising consumption of factory meat exerts tremendous pressure on scarce land and water, deteriorates environment and destroys livelihoods. Your fortunes grow upon hunger, misery and pollution.-

-All true, we prosper on hunger, on misery and pollution. It's wrong ethically and economically, but I'm not a priest, so let's stick to business. Economically speaking we are converting free goods, such as water to scarce, prestige goods, such as gold. Economy is not making money, but providing and distributing goods. Money is worth only as much as the goods behind it. A thousand dollars buys a good PC, so it's good money. Drinkable water was free and is still worth only a few cents a litter. But someday we shall succeed to make it so scarce that a litter will cost a thousand dollars, whose value will thus fall to that of a few cents. Our fortunes will collapse and not buy us enough water to drink, nor air to breathe. Nor survival in the revolt of hungering, desperate, excluded billions. Rather bad business strategy.-

-So, why don't you do something about it?-

-Because I simply don't know what could be done. It's fine to proclaim humanitarian panaceas as long as it is demagogic prattle, but making decisions is a different matter. I made an experiment. Armand prepared snacks worthy of Maxim's from best products of his organic farms. We offered them at the same price as the standard, nauseating Globburgers. Nobody wanted them. Once conditioned, people stick to the most noxious stuff and disdain the best. One talks about teaching the third world to fish rather than giving them fish. Indeed, if you give money to the poor, they'll spend it on Globproducts and end where they began. So, maybe, give them back some of Globholds' land trusting that they will abandon disastrous monocultures and restore old, sustainable companion planting, which would feed them adequately. No hope there. They will resell the land, buy TV sets in Globstores, disappear in some arid region and die of hunger. Caught up in the gears of our system, they cannot escape. Anyway, there is nowhere enough money to buy Globholds' property and if there were, Globholds would not sell.-

-You could be obliged. Anti-globalists proclaim that only a political change which would abolish globalization may produce a solution.-

-Well, let's resume our game and have the grey dialectician answer this one.-

-You can't abolish progress. Revolt against guns is nonsense. Only guns can protect you from guns. It's not the gun, but its usage which is good or bad. Likewise, only globalism can protect you from globalism. Globalization of the market place may be matched by "globalism with human face" based on human values. But that involves some new power structures, which takes us into deep waters.-

-Because you need experience to talk reasonably about power. Power is using currents, not returning rivers with a stick. Currents may be canalized into beds, ready to take the flow. Politics provides locks and sluice gates, but beds must be there, or currents will go wild, out of control. Beds ready to take the flow of freedom were at hand when Gorbachev opened the gates of glasnost. With a bit of lobbying I can provide any reasonable gate. But beds must be there beforehand. People must be taught to think and not to react with their guts. But what exactly should be taught? Can you make an outline for tomorrow?-

-But we have seen that all critical issues have contradictory aspects, that we need dialectic to grasp them. How can we teach it without muddling people furthermore? How can I answer it in one day?-

-If you don't know it tomorrow, you won't know it in ten years. Armand will give you a nice room and I'll meet you at lunch. The night will bring advice.-

2. THE NIGHT

I was in a remarkably lofty cathedral. Soaring capitals of columns were hard to discern. Ribs raising from them melted with dark webbing, as if the nocturnal sky were the vault. Choir, devoid of altar, encompassed in its stead a colonnade carrying a screen-like wall topped with a parabolically shaped niche.

A man in formal dress advanced along the nave and reached the crossing. The screen brightened up. Foreground displayed a sumptuous study with mahogany paneling and furniture. In the background bulldozers were moving into the tropical forest. Trees were falling, along with monkeys that had climbed for safety. Lumberjacks were catching the small ones. Their mothers trying to defend them were dismembered with chain saws.

-Not my fault. I only ordered a decoration.- the niche reflected and vocalized the thoughts of the man at the crossing. -It's the loggers. But for them the decorator would chose for me another material.- A pause.
-No, I'm lying. It's demand that creates supply. It's consumers' fault. My fault.- A longer pause.
-Maybe I can atone by reincarnating as each of these monkeys and living through their agony; as each of the natives hunted out or killed; as any man or beast affected by deforestation.-

Another man moved to the crossing. Foreground showed him drive by an organic farm to a supermarket to buy viands, slightly cheaper than at the farm. Background showed thousands of
14-inch-square mesh cages with six hens packed in each. Beaks were cut off with hot irons. Some were kept 18 days in the dark, without water, to shock them into another egg laying cycle. Most finished their lives thrown into grinders. Equally gruesome torture was applied to calves, hogs and other factory raised animals. Many contracted contagious diseases. Waste from factory farms contaminated groundwater, aquifers and rivers.
-I'll atone,- vocalized the niche -I'll reincarnate as each tortured factory animal. And as every person poisoned by contaminated food and polluted water.-

And elegant ladies in seal coats sought redemption by living the agony of all massacred baby seals and their mothers. And maniacs using ground rhinoceros horns as aphrodisiacs sought forgiveness by living a priapic agony for each killed animal. And hundreds of apparently decent, honorable people took responsibility for tortured animals, for exterminated humans, for ravaged earth and implored redemption through self-imposed merciless sentences.

3. THE DAWN

The sun emerged from behind the crests like a triumphal symphony and spread its splendor over the serene waters of the lake. And I knew the answer, dazzling, clear and obvious. There is nothing to teach. Learn we must. Learn together to listen to our consciences, for so long buried, buried under tons of garbage.