Professor of Philosophy Ashok Gangadean
Max Turner '98

A simple recommendation for anyone who has doubts about the future: fall into one of the well-worn Victorian couches on the second floor of the Gest center and listen to the reflections of Philosophy Professor and Department Chair, Ashok Gangadean. Yet be warned: you won't have time to bring up career goals, car payments, or concerns about your child's education. Because when Gangadean starts to talk about the future, you will quickly find yourself swimming in a sea of terms only a Philosophy professor could love: dialogical culture; global ethics; meditative thinking. The quick pace of his speech and the flurry with which he throws diagrams onto paper make it quite clear that the future has Gangadean very excited, and within ten minutes he'll have you excited, too. Why shouldn't you be? He says we're heading towards a cultural transformation of a magnitude unseen in recorded history. And there's a good chance it's the best thing that's ever happened.

Gangadean is co-founder and co-director of the Global Dialogue Institute, a group that believes modern culture is experiencing a deep trend away from an egocentric view of the world, towards a more dialogic one. A dialogic view embraces compassion for all, communication, mutual nurturing, and sensitivity for the environment. It may sound far-fetched at a time when we seem to be overwhelmed by news of ethnic conflict, irresponsibility among our leaders, and a loss of hope among our youth. Yet Gangadean can point to contemporary examples, 30 years of his research, and 2500 years of history, all with a convincing passion that makes it appear logical. He believes we are moving towards a global awakening of culture, and he'll tell that to anyone who will listen. "Since this event is happening, to harness that, to bring that out in the leadership is vital at this point," he explains. "The strategy of the Global Dialogue Institute is to reach out to the corporate world, to educational leaders, to Congress, to leaders across the culture, to the media and so forth. We're engaged in the global pursuit of a greater ethical awakening in all aspects of cultural life." Gangadean has appeared on CNN and NBC, he's spoken at countless conferences, and he's working on a new book, The Awakening of the Global Mind, a narrative on cultural evolution for a more general audience.

Gangadean is particularly excited about the growing awareness and humanity among businesses and corporations. "We're finding in the corporate leadership amazingly an openness, a kind of awakening and a Quaker ethos; a corporate responsibility," he remarks. Over the last few years he has discovered surprising growth of business leadership on the spiritual and moral level. One such example is Starbucks Corporation, which contributes heavily to humanitarian organizations benefiting AIDS research, child welfare, environmental awareness, and the arts. In addition, the company encourages its employees to take an active role in improving their own neighborhoods. Gangadean sees this as a sign that the business world is becoming increasingly receptive to the ideas advanced by the Global Dialogue Institute. "At the GDI we're trying to bring the dialogic awakening process to these corporate leaders who are ready for it to help them accelerate in terms of humanizing the workplace and cultivating a deeper ethical awareness." According to Gangadean, dialogical thinking is not just good for the future of humanity, it's also good business: "If you speak to business persons, they understand productivity, profitability, competitive edge, and the ultimate competitive edge is being attuned to what is happening in reality. A number of businesses are taking on this deeper ethic and finding they're making greater profits." A quick glance at Starbucks on the NASDAQ stock exchange confirms this simple assessment: businesses do well by being good. Corporations that experiment with increasing morale among workers and spirituality in the workplace benefit at the bottom line: productivity, creativity and profits all flourish.

Signs of an evolving global ethic are not limited to the business world. Gangadean points to the large number of headlines in popular magazines and newspapers that deal with spirituality in our culture, or the number of books on best-seller lists that discuss spirituality oriented to the lay person. This is spirituality in a larger sense than church on Sundays. He is referring to the common bonds that all people share&emdash;the element of humanity that transcends cultural and political borders. Gangadean believes people are far more worldly spiritual than we might believe. It's a side to them, he says, that is irrepressible. "That kind of burgeoning of spirituality, particularly in the corporate world, is a sign of the emergence of a cultural breakthrough, which is very profound. It's the human being emerging in our mature form."

Our time is unique, but certainly not isolated from changes that have been happening for several millennia. This awakening is not merely the product of a new school of thought or advancements in world communications. For generations people have been evolving, shifting from close-minded to open-minded perspectives, but now is the time when the changes are truly remarkable. Gangadean speculates, "If you can stand back with a global perspective and see 2500 years in terms of Buddhist evolution, Judeo-Christian evolution, Islamic evolution, and look at the trends, what I see as a philosopher is that culture has been in this painful transformation and we're at the cusp, we've reached a point where it's ripening!"

One can see similar ripening in Gangadean's work as a student of philosophy, a career that spans over 35 years. Born in Trinidad, Gangadean settled in New York as a child. He received a B.A. in philosophy from City College of the City University of New York, and soon after, a Ph.D. from Brandeis University. Since 1968, Gangadean has been a professor of philosophy at Haverford, and chair of the department since 1993. In the early 1980s, he served as the first director of Haverford's Margaret Gest Center for the Cross-Cultural Study of Religion, a program that furthers the study of cross-cultural religious beliefs through seminars, lectures and cultural events. He is currently the vice chair of the Greater Philadelphia Philosophy Consortium. Most recently, Gangadean was awarded one of the first Fellowships from the Contemplative Practice Program, administered by the American Council of Learned Societies. The fellowship will support the development of a new course on meditative thinking in the classroom. Gangadean explains, "Meditative texts require the reader to go through a transformation into a different mode of thought. Egocentric ways of thinking, which cause division and fragmentation, have to be overcome. As I studied the various meditative traditions, East and West, I began to see a fundamental pattern in them, and as a logician I've tried to develop a notation, a symbolic notation to capture the two kinds of thinking." For the last 30 years Gangadean has immersed himself in this area of research, which has heretofore received little attention. The imminent release of his latest book, Between Worlds: The Emergence of Global Reason, however, marks a turn in his career. Having documented the new philosophy of Global Reason in two volumes (the first, Meditative Reason was published in 1993), Gangadean eagerly looks forward to sharing his work with general public.

Gangadean's ideas, as complex as they may sound, give students the tools to re-examine philosophers and texts in a way opens the door to a more holistic, less egocentric way of thinking. He calls this the challenge of moving between worlds: searching for a logos, a term that describes the understanding of reality common to all cultures and religions. It is a way of thinking that is critical to the human evolution towards dialogical culture. As we learn to appreciate the common themes that link cultures around the world, we will feel less of a need to cling to egocentric perspectives; we will begin to break down the barriers that prevent us from seeing the common reality shared by all people. This is what students are doing in the classroom, it's what executives are doing at Starbucks. Gangadean draws complex diagrams on a pad of yellow paper, linked by circles and brackets to philosophical jargon, but he's actually making a very simple point: people everywhere are becoming more aware, more thoughtful, and they're creating a better world.

Gangadean is quick to warn, however, that the future is not all roses for human civilization. Every day we are made aware of the misery of modern times: ethnic wars are waged, workers are exploited, churches are burned. These episodes of cultural fragmentation and violence are signs that the egocentric forces are peaking, impacting against the rise of the dialogical culture; isolationist thinking meeting face-to-face with the emergence of a deeper humanity. In the end, Gangadean cautions, something's got to give. He narrates his research as if he were describing an epic struggle between good and evil, and for a time egocentrism sounds as menacing as George Lucas' dark side. "If we don't stop this fragmentation and gridlock and tribal way of being, then we're not going to make it," he warns. "I'm not trying to paint a rosy picture. My deepest faith is that the dialogical forces are going to predominate, but I don't want to downplay the risk, because we can blow it. That's what's exciting and dangerous!"

These days it can be a challenge to find someone passionate about anything. Ashok Gangadean is passionately optimistic about and deeply faithful to the potential of the human spirit. He can excite a room full of students, an entire conference of peers, or even just a single listener on a soft couch outside his office door. Listen to him sometime. Personal anxieties about the future melt away, and you will leave knowing that you are part of something absolutely amazing.