Three-ness: Healing world politics with epistemic compassion

Abstract

Epistemic compassion can help to heal world politics. It mitigates almost six centuries of Eurocentric ‘epistemic violence’ and ‘epistemicide’ with a trialectical epistemology that bridges even seemingly irreconcilable opposites. Buddhists call this process Interbeing. I draw on Daoist yin/yang dynamics for epistemology and the ancient Silk Roads as an exemplar. Subsequently, I apply this analysis to a watershed development in our contemporary political economy: China’s ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI). A $1 trillion investment scheme to link China with Europe and Russia through Central Asia, Africa, and the Indian Ocean, the BRI provokes charges of reproducing Europe’s 19th-century’s Great Game on a 21st-century scale. A trialectical epistemology offers another mode and model of global interaction for the BRI. It highlights the possibility of local agency and global responsibility for the BRI. I ask: Can epistemic compassion turn this 5.0 version of Asian Capitalism into a 2.0 version of the Silk Road Ethos? The potential exists, I argue.