Supporters of the Dalai Lama and a free and independent Tibet saw in the almost military execution of the torch run an implicit defense of Bush’s foreign policies and free trade, as well as of the human right violations on the part of the Chinese government. This awkward de facto alliance between Washington and Beijing has unleashed a fury of ironies and contradictions that our dualist primitive brain is not yet prepared to handle.

Those who peacefully protest human right violations see China as a colonial power that subjugated the people of Tibet by force. Is the struggle of the Tibetan monks and of its people a separatist ploy, or does it represent a legitimate anti-imperialist effort?

Those who ideologically oppose reestablishing economic stability by using the people’s taxes in the rescue of investment banks, consider the financial system a capitalist tool that has subjugated by force the world economy. Do efforts to perfect financial regulations in the US benefit the people of India and China, or is it an illegitimate capitalist imposition?

Those that defend freedom of expression and free trade see the campaign to boycott the Olympics – or the inaugural ceremony – as a strategy that harms the stability of world markets. Can one be pragmatic, cynical and promote freedom simultaneously?

The challenges facing humanity render ideological fundamentalism very dangerous. The fine line separating issues such as the free trade (promoted as well by China and India), the West’s opening up politically to the East (while promoting human rights), and government intervention for the sake of protecting financial stability (promoted by all) has been blurred, and these inconsistencies make us lightheaded.

In the name of consistency, many extremists would have to justify human right violations in Tibet, while others would have to applaud the fact that the US is copying a page from the Chinese ethics playbook by being bashful towards human right abuses when national interest are at stake. China – after all – is the world’s authority in the exercise of constraint and soft power, a foreign policy based on the strategy of commercial brinkmanship bundled with utmost silence regarding internal affairs, which incude brutal repressions on the part of many of its African trade partners. 

Our achromatic daltonic brain struggles with the contradictions brought about by a multipolar world, as we strive to differentiate between friend and foe, and take a stand only once we have sorted out who is who.  The Olympic game held every four games represent the union of the five continents and harmony between nations. This time around, they will also symbolize the unity and harmony that exists between multiple realities. Human rights now coexist with the imperative to transform the world economy into an efficient, ecological and socially driven engine for change. The world has ceased to be painted in black and white.

Global warming, energy and food crisis, and financial illiquidity are hitting humanity like a storm. Perfecting the system and understanding reality in its full range of colors, instead of pretending to reduce it to a dichromatic dualism, has become a matter of survival for humanity. The torch that lights the path towards practical solutions will require a modern and integrated global economy, one that creates incentives for nations to sit down together and improve the system, rather than to strive to malign it.

The fire that feeds the torch demands increasing cooperation, and less cynicism. Strengthening commercial ties and diplomacy will probably go further in overturning human right violations in China, than demanding Western leaders to upstage and defraud their games. Maybe the foreign policy currently in place by Washington has shown to be self-defeating. It does not follow that those who exercise their freedom of expression in protesting human right violations must be censored. Particularly when dissuading the protests could be confused by the Chinese government as having successfully appeased the West, encouraging brazen initiatives, such as the sale of weapons to Sudan and Zimbabwe.

Regardless of the many contradictions, truth is not absolute, and the process of creating conditions for peace and wellbeing for all people demands that we navigate waves of discontinuous logic. A small dose of the dreaded relativism will help advance global integration, and does not contradict the fact that defending principles only when it is in one’s interests to do so is invariably wrong.