To every corner of the world electronic media has spread the word to people, where ever they are that their lives could be better if they had not had the unfortunate situation of being born in the wrong place.
Regular food, running water, a house to live in, health care, a job, education for their children, a mobile phone . . . people all over the world now see these things are there, for others to have. People see that the reason they cannot have the basic things is because of where they were born, i.e. national boundaries.
It is countries, nation states, and national sovereignty with geographical political boundaries and nationalistic ideologies which prevent them from getting the basic needs for the good life accessible to others—simply by a random birth right.
As McLuhan argued (The Gutenberg Galaxy) electronic media disperses the homogenizing forces of culture around the world generating a “common world culture.” People all over the world now see a “common reality”, in the words of Paine, they are acquiring a “Common Sense” concluding that they do not have access to all these “things” which would make their life better only because of where they were born. And they want them.
“Globalization” is no conspiracy, it is neither good or bad, it is human and what people have been doing through all of human history. From “caves” to hunting and gathering “villages” to agrarian towns to industrialized cities and now an electronic world, are a progression of interrelated steps as people seek to increase the quality of their lives by increasing production.
No one wants to go “back to living in caves” —will maybe not no one, there are always exceptions to everything—however “geo-political nation states” are only steps and “ideologies of national sovereignty” are the rallying cries of demagogues who seeking personal agendas preach “solutions to your personal problems” are to be found in hate, violence and scapegoating others.
Globalizaton is going to happen in order for the people of the world to enter into a time of “common laws” for business, trade, investment, property rights, and basic international relatons. Successful leaders will make work , and they will have to work hard tomato successful compromises on national sovereignty while nationalistic demagogues will use the situation to seek their personal enrichment usually through political means as that is one field which does not require a history of professional achievement ethics, or integrity and honesty, and there is usually a solid supporting base of people willing to seek revenge against a scapegoat for their personal problems.
Globalizaton is going to happen, but how it happens, whether leaders emerge to make this transition understandable to others, whether leaders emerge to make this transition happen without war is perhaps too much for which to ask or even hope. A non-war transition, which will take decades of leadership staying on course, can result in great opportunites for everyone in the world to find a way to participate and find personal, professional and economic success.
I believe in free trade, regulated capitalism, and the western concept of human and legal rights which have evolved from the Magna Charta and I also believe that these can improved on.
But the other option, war, nuclear weapons, hundreds of millions of people dying, billions of dollars of property destroyed is very real and more likely given the history of human beings, the willingness of demagogues and dictators to seek personal advantages no matter the cost to human life and the ever presence of their true believer followers.
Historically it is the more likely path.
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