Nayef Al-Rodhan: Culture

Nayef Al-Rodhan is philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author. Explore interesting quotes on culture.
Nayef Al-Rodhan: 150 quotes2 likes

“In a globalized world, security can no longer be thought of as a zero-sum game involving states alone. Global security, instead, has five dimensions that include human, environmental, national, transnational, and transcultural security, and, therefore, global security and the security of any state or culture cannot be achieved without good governance at all levels that guarantees security through justice for all individuals, states, and cultures.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan

The Five Dimensions of Global Security: Proposal for a Multi-sum Security Principle, p. 15-16 (2007)

“Cultural essentialism is, thus, intimately tied to power relations. Fixity, homogeneity and separateness are prioritised within an essentialist framework. Therefore, part of any effort to resist essentialism is recognising diversity within difference, contingency, mutability and connectedness.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan

Source: Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009), p.393

“Institutions should focus on educating against clashes of culture and the promotion of a culture of tolerance and peace.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan

Source: The Role of Education in Global Security (2007), p.105

“Many of the great achievements in history that are commonly attributed to one geo-cultural domain often owe a great debt to those of others. In this sense, some of the greatest achievements of human civilisation have been collective efforts and are part of the same human story.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan

Source: Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009), p.14

“Each high point in the history of human civilisation has taken place where the conditions were ripe and has borrowed and built on the achievements of other cultures whose golden age may have passed.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan

Source: Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009), p.138

“There is only one collective human civilisation comprised of geo-cultural domains and cultures.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan

Source: Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009), p.28

“In order to stop the cycle of disenfranchisement, frustration, and discontent, dignity must be central, paving the way for a governance model that is affordable, acceptable, and applicable to various regional and cultural sensibilities.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan

Arab Spring Transitions Need Home Grown Solutions http://www.theglobalobservatory.org/opinion/554-arab-spring-transitions-need-home-grown-solutions.html - The Global Observatory, 2013

“One challenge is to agree on minimum criteria of good governance that are not perceived as a threat to cultural traditions and to draw on moral concepts that are indigenous to specific cultural settings. {{fix cite}”

Nayef Al-Rodhan

Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009)

“Emotional Amoral Egoism indicates that ethnic conflict should be understood in terms of a reaction to a failure to satisfy a group’s basic physiological, security and ego needs due to discrimination, experienced by a group whose relations are premised, above all, on cultural affinities.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan

Source: Emotional amoral egoism (2008), p.181

“Justice is paramount to civilisational triumph because of its centrality to human dignity needs, the success of individual geo-cultural domains and the well-being of human civilisation.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan

Source: Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009), p.219

“Indeed, collective triumph will also depend both on the application of reason and the recognition that a great deal of knowledge is indeterminate and may be temporally, spatially and perhaps culturally constrained.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan

Source: Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009), p.437

“Almost every golden age of geo-cultural domains has been characterised by good governance, exchanges, borrowing, innovation and the adaptation of earlier contributions to forms of knowledge, and rationalism.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan

Source: Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009), p.171

“Focusing purely on extremism, whether in the Arab-Islamic world or the West, will not alleviate the root causes of tensions between members of different cultures. It will only alienate those who do not recognise themselves in those stereotypes, and generate fear and misunderstanding.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan

Source: Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009), p.390

“Civilisational triumph is thus not a zero-sum enterprise that favours one geo-cultural domain over another.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan

Source: Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009), p.213

“In my view, most human beings are innately neither moral nor immoral but rather amoral. They are driven by emotional self-interest and have the potential to be either moral or immoral, depending on what their self-interest dictates, and will be influenced in their choices by emotions and socio-cultural contexts. Circumstances will determine the survival value of humankind’s moral compass in that being highly moral in an immoral environment may be detrimental to one’s survival and vice versa. Indeed, our neuronal architecture is pre-programmed to seek gratification and feel good regardless of the reason. All apparently altruistic behaviour serves self-interest at some level.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan

Source: Emotional amoral egoism (2008), p.16

“Civilisational triumph is important because if it is not actively sought, conflictual relations between members of geo-cultural domains may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan

Source: Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009), p.219

“Cultural and ethnic diversity benefit humanity’s future, survival, strength and excellence, promoting what I call cultural vigour, similar to the way in which molecular and genetic diversity promote “hybrid vigor” in nature and thus strength, resilience and a higher potential for a problem-free future.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan

The Geopolitics of Culture: Five Substrates, (2014)