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This chapter offers a brief prospectus for a progressive geopolitics that can challenge both the ideals and the account of reality offered by conservative geopolitics. It begins with the ideas of Kropótkin, Kingsley, Hobson, and Reclus, but rejects any notion of a single civilizational scale. It argues instead for a progressive geopolitics defined by an understanding of global interdependencies, the obligations of human solidarity, and the claims of international human rights.

This chapter presents the author's thoughts on Richard Rorty and his philosophy. He also considers the life story of Lillian, a “soothsayer” (sastra karaya) able to work with demonic forces in ways that enable her to dispense medical and spiritual advice to clients. The story brings into dramatic relief the complexity of the struggle to exist in a world sundered by sectarian violence, class conflict, and oppressive political power. It also calls into question the appropriateness of labeling Lillian's choices as real or illusory, or asking whether it is better to struggle against injustice than devote oneself to “private projects of self creation.” There are no algorithms for answering such questions. We can neither know for certain whether a Marxist analysis of social injustices in Sri Lanka would be helpful or harmful, nor know for sure whether our understanding of Lillian reflects our own Western dismay at unnecessary human suffering. For Rorty it is enough to describe and testify to the lives of others, as far as we can, on the grounds of our human solidarity with them.

This chapter looks into the significance of the millennium to the religious sphere, taking into account the views of John Paul II. It discusses the anniversaries in salvation history, the meaning of jubilees, the program of evangelization, ecumenism and interreligious dialogue, human solidarity, repentance and conversion. The jubilee, as understood by John Paul II, has secular and social implications that appear prominently in Jesus' proclamation of his mission. Commitment to justice and peace is a necessary condition for the preparation and celebration of the jubilee. John Paul II laid great stress on the importance of regional churches and their own celebrations of jubilees recalling their distinctive histories. Christian history, as he sees it, may be compared to a single river into which many tributaries pour their waters so as to give joy to the city of God.

This chapter presents the scholars' sharp critiques in the Chicago's 1893 World's Parliament of Religions, claiming that the parliament, despite its vaunted fanfare about human solidarity and religious unity, exhibited telltale Western vices: paternalistic condescension toward non-Christian guests, unwarranted utopianism, colonialist self-righteousness, smug Orientalism, and more. The chapter seeks to understand the parliament from the standpoint of those who organized it and participated in it. Such an empathetic approach means neither forfeiting an inquiry into the parliament's broader context nor dispensing with normative evaluation altogether. It examines some of the forces and developments in the nineteenth century, and even earlier, that helped to set the stage for such a parliament. The chapter also reviews the planning and course of the parliament, which met from 11 to 27 September 1893. It then turns to evaluative judgments, pondering interpretations of the parliament and its legacy in the twentieth century and beyond.

This chapter assesses the thesis that the cause of the world's peace would be aided if in future the principle of insurance were gradually and progressively introduced into international business. Insurance has already proved to be, in the modern life of individual nations, a cause of no little growth in social organization, in human solidarity, in reasonableness, and in peace. The best workings of the insurance principle have been, on the whole, its indirect workings. It has not only taught men, in manifold ways, both the best means and the wisdom of “bearing one another's burdens”; but it has also established many indirect, and for that very reason all the more potent, types of social linkage, which the individual policyholder or underwriter very seldom clearly and consciously estimates at their true value.