3 - 2000

EXPO 2000 - More than a Show?

"Stimulus for a new morality"

Conversation with Richard Schröder, the president of the board of trustees (Kuratorium) of EXPO 2000

As a contribution to the search for ways to assure the future of humankind, and to propose discussion of some already existing approaches, a "thematic area" was created at the EXPO, overseen by a board of trustees. In view of secularisation in Germany, it is not to be taken for granted that a theologian, Professor Roland Schröder, was appointed to lead this body. In this interview, he discusses the concept of the thematic area and how it has been implemented.

Mr. Schröder, what is a theologian doing here at the World’s Fair?

My position is a peculiar one, somewhere between theology and philosophy. I think this qualifies me quite well for the task which this board of trustees has been given. We organised the process for choosing the topics and deciding how to present them. When we began in December 1995, the makers of the EXPO were still all at sea as to what should be done.

Has the board of trustees provided more than just the intellectual background music?

One could say that we provided the EXPO company with the script for its thematic area.

You yourself were the godparent, within the board of trustees, of the complex devoted to "Humanity". What image of humanity did you have in mind?

The first concepts which were presented to us were purely scientifically oriented. They were shiny like chrome, with the dimensions of guilt, of fate and tragedy all cleaned away. But if my child is weeping and I explain this as a scientific phenomenon - salty fluid being expressed from the tear ducts - I haven’t understood anything about weeping, and I won’t be any help to my child. It is not the natural sciences which have the decisive word to say about humankind.

And what does that mean for the EXPO theme, the relation of humanity to nature and technology?

There is a commemorative coin for the World’s Fair. It shows a female figure holding scales, with the sun on the left and a wheel on the right. This represents humanity, with its interest in construction on one hand and preservation on the other. The relation between the two should be in balance. It also stands for the idea of sustainability, which comes from the "Agenda 21" (final document of the Environment and Development Conference in Rio de Janeiro, 1992 -Ed.) and is the guiding concept of the EXPO.

In theory, perhaps. Capital Magazine wrote that "at the EXPO, it is industry which makes the decisions". Sustainability is not their main interest.

Unless their customers demand it, and they can make money with it! We couldn’t let our policy be pulled in an anti-industry direction. Industry had to be taken on board. That always means compromises, and so we made them.

For example?

We have a conservationist among our trustees. He put up a continual fight against soft drink tins and non-returnable bottles. He didn’t get it his way, but he got an agreement for there to be less of those. This is somehow symptomatic of the problem, but how could it be otherwise? The EXPO company has a contract with Coca-Cola, because we need them as a partner company. At that point we can negotiate something with them, but we can’t dictate the terms.

Well then, why not just have an industry and commerce show without covering it in ecological icing?

I don’t go along with the division into nice friends of nature and evil industry. We have begun to take notice that our activities as human beings bring about desirable results and undesirable side-effects. Little by little, industry is beginning to notice that too. Whether it is also noticing what actually ought to be done is another question.

But the EXPO is supposed to be about ideas for a better future.

The human race will not survive without a great deal of industry and technology. Almost every environment-friendly technology is more complicated than the technologies which were used by the early German industries in the 1870’s. If we try to leave out the scientists and technicians, we are romanticising. And the best place for nature-loving romantics to live is, of course, in niches within a highly industrialised society.

Romanticism is not what it is all about, but rather ideology. The EXPO finds itself in an identity crisis, because nobody needs a World’s Fair any more in order to be informed about the latest technologies.

Then the industrial fair has to have a new image.

What is an industrial fair anyhow? A collection of the newest products, without regard for their meaning or purpose. That is not what we have done here. The World’s Fairs in the past were military shows, where we could see the technologies of our arsenals, because we still believed that technology was our instrument of power, to make nature subject to us. In the meantime we have become wiser....

....so that now Ms. Breuel, the boss of the EXPO, talks like a church convention president about "ways to go beyond the consumer society" and the "interests of generations yet unborn".

Then would you rather divide things up: keep the EXPO as an industrial fair, and the church convention as the place for reflection? Should we make sure that those who produce and who consume don’t come in contact with reflection?

No, but we should make sure we are not kidding the public.

What, if you please, would you mean by kidding?

That we are not using a bit of church convention as an ideological window-dressing for the purposes of such an exhibition.

Pure John the Baptist! That is the way he came on, like a radical, boasting and preaching the Last Judgment: "The axe is lying at the root of the trees". There may be situations where this is the appropriate tone, but for economic policy processes I find it completely out of place. The EXPO is supposed to be a technological show, but of technologies which can adapt and learn in relation to the problems we have to deal with.

Ms. Breuel was also talking about a "morality for the future". How are we to imagine that?

Certainly we should not imagine it as a new moral code being formulated. But the EXPO does offer stimuli for a new morality, through the encounter with other peoples and cultures, and with the problems of the future.

Then the EXPO is a contribution to the globalization of morality?

Yes! There must be an awareness of "we", not just at the local level, but also globally. The climate change catastrophe, for example, is no respecter of differences among continents or national boundaries.

Is this moral concern, which the EXPO is openly claiming, the justification for the Christian churches to participate by having an ecumenical pavilion? They haven’t been at any World’s Fair since 1967.

Wherever a lot of people come together, the church can offer an opportunity for encounter with and discussion of Christian topics. What is wrong with that? Islam is present too, by the way, in the pavilions of the countries where it is a majority religion.

For years the church has been trying to save money here, there and everywhere, but it allowed the cost of this pavilion to reach some 20 million marks. That’s an expensive drive to self-expression. How do you reconcile it with the church’s social concerns?

Spare me the fanaticism of the social argument. You could question every concert and every celebration with the slogan: it would be better to give the money to the poor. Special events justify special efforts, even in the church. Furthermore, after the EXPO the pavilion is going to be part of a monastery which is being rebuilt.

Where can God be found at the EXPO?

Do you mean, is God standing there on display somewhere, like a cupboard?

Supposedly God can be everywhere.

That’s it. Wherever people have the insight that it is worthwhile to look calmly and confidently towards the future, where people recognise that they will have to do something about it, but that they will not stand alone in doing it - where that is happening, God is there.

Professor Richard Schröder teaches philosophy at the Theological Faculty of the Humboldt University in Berlin. This interview, which was conducted by Bascha Mika and Jörg Herrmann, appeared on 13 June 2000 in the leftist alternative daily newspaper "die tageszeitung".