East, West and the search for Universal Values
The long human odyssey of self-discovery has reached a crucial stage: everything we do affects everyone and everything else – and we know it. The next hundred years will bring more change than we can easily imagine; more opportunities for more people to achieve the fulfilment of a good life, and more risks that could result in catastrophic harm to the entire planet.
Viewed geopolitically, all the major stress points will involve the land mass that we know as Europe and Asia. And the main question is whether the world views of the two superpowers – China and America (the one fundamentally Confucian, the other essentially individualist) – can be brought to work together constructively in the face of rising tensions.
At the same time, on a deeper level, the even greater question is whether and how the irreversible fact of urbanization will nurture a healthy and mature human individuality, such that the accumulated wisdom of the world’s great cultures – all of which have their origins in that same Eurasian land mass – becomes mutually transforming and enriching.
Date: 15 November 2019, 17:30 (Friday, 5th week, Michaelmas 2019)
Venue: St Antony's College, 62 Woodstock Road OX2 6JF
Venue Details: Dahrendorf Room
Speaker: Lord Stephen Green (Former Minister of State for Trade and Investment and former group chairman of HSBC Holdings plc)
Organiser contact email address: asian@sant.ox.ac.uk
Host: Prof Roger Goodman (Social Sciences Division, University of Oxford)
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Public
Editor: Clare Salter