It is with great pleasure that Xlibris Publishing introduces William Van Dusen Wishard, author of Between Two Ages.
Part of my career has been spent in what’s called “trend analysis,” looking at the long-term trends that are reshaping the world, and putting them in some comprehensible form for government and corporate decision-makers.
As I’ve done this, I’ve asked myself this question: Is the world simply passing through what appears to be an extremely dangerous and difficult period of multiple crises, after which life will return to a more familiar normalcy? Or do these converging crises signal the end of the world, as we’ve known it, and the emergence of a totally new context of human existence?
My tentative conclusion and basic theme is this: You and I are living through the most rapid and all-encompassing technological, social, economic, spiritual and environmental changes ever to take place simultaneously.
We’ve entered a new zone of history, and in the next few minutes, we’re going to take a look at a few of the trends shaping this new period.
Two clear indications of this new zone of history are YouTube and China.
YouTube. YouTube is a symbol for the Internet. For the first time in history, one person, can write or film something that everyone in the world can see, if they have access to a computer. One person reaching millions, even billions.
Some anthropologists say this capacity—the Internet—is the most significant social development since the invention of writing over five thousand years ago. It’s a totally new form of communication. Throughout history, radically new forms of communication have created other drastic changes within society.
The second example is the rise of China…a new fact of history. We miss the point if we think of China as just one more nation. Think of China as every fifth person in the world; as twenty percent of the world’s population. In terms of its size and speed of development, nothing like China’s current rise and potential has ever happened before.
Whatever their problems, China is now a major force determining the future of the U.S. and the world. So keep your eye on what’s happening in the South China Sea.
YouTube and China…two examples of what I mean when I suggest we are in the middle of some of the greatest changes ever to take place.
YouTube and China are the result of two other trends I want to mention.
First…globalization.
When we think of globalization, we generally think of the worldwide integration of economic and financial factors—the International Monetary Fund, jobs moving from one part of the world to another part, our children bouncing from Boston to Bonn to Bangkok within a week. (For perspective, it took Columbus two months to sail from Spain to America.)
So what really is globalization? Simply put, it’s the shrinkage of the world. As the world shrinks, everything is becoming more intermeshed—economics, politics, culture, traditions and religion.
Thus, age-old perspectives and ways of thinking no longer hold. And it’s all happening very quickly—faster than many people can encompass.
Also for the first time in history, we humans are forging an awareness of our existence as a single entity. Nations are struggling to incorporate the planetary dimensions of life into the fabric of their economics, politics, culture and international relations, and even their religions.
Globalization is changing the distribution of geopolitical power. Between 1945-2000, the United States was the dominant world power, and the guarantor of at least a certain degree of stability and security.
But globalization has been creating other centers of economic and political power, and so the United States is increasingly only one of several centers of geopolitical power, albeit the strongest military player.
The primary effect of globalization is the global crisis of identity taking place. It has taken a series of crises in France, Holland, Britain, Germany and other European countries for the issue of identity finally to be recognized as central to the contemporary global crisis. The French president states on national TV that his country faces “an identity crisis,” a crisis that increases as large numbers of immigrants from Asia, Africa and the Middle East crowd into France and Europe.
As immigration increases, the stories and myths that are the basis of national identities have been waning. As one British historian put it, “A white majority that invented the national mythologies underpinning modern European culture lives in an almost perpetual state of fear that it and its way of life are about to disappear.”
The Catholic Church in Europe is facing the distinct probability of Islam eventually becoming the largest European religion. The fear of such demographic shifts and their potential consequences is the subtext for everything else happening in Europe today.
This issue of identity is an underlying dynamic between the Arab world and the West. They are asking themselves, “Will globalization, based on the Western, rationalistic, consumerist, postmodern ethos, ultimately mean the end of Islam, which is the foundation of their identity? Such unknowns form a significant part of the psychological dynamic fueling terrorism.
ISIS is another example. ISIS cannot be understood within the normal Western categories of perception – political, ideological, national, geopolitical, philosophic, etc. ISIS forces us to seek a deeper understanding than simply our rational categories of comprehension. For ISIS is completely irrational, requiring a deeper psychological context.
It should be obvious that destroying historic buildings and sites of spiritual significance in Syria is not a “rational” activity. Nor is the repression and subservience of women. Or the destruction of entire towns.
ISIS is a completely irrational force in the modern world. Indeed, they hate the modern world. They want to take the world backwards to a “lost greatness;” not forwards to some fresh expression of collective life which – in truth – “globalization” represents. The psychological dynamic driving ISIS is the antithesis of the collective dynamic driving globalization.
Simply put, the psychology of ISIS is, as a New Yorker article suggested, “I kill, therefore I am.”
We simply do not comprehend the psychology of ISIS. We fight it only with bombs and blitzkriegs. While that is necessary, some deeper understanding of the psychology of ISIS is also needed.
Is the psychological impetus propelling ISIS the demonic quest for a lost greatness? If so, how do we confront that , for the question is a personal question for every ISIS member?
Thus, profound psychological questions arise for all people as globalization collapses the national, racial and religious boundaries that heretofore protected—and even defined—identity. “Who am I? Who is my group? Do I even have a group anymore? What does ‘national allegiance’ mean in a global era? What does ‘race’ mean in a world where people of all shades of skin color are increasingly inter-marrying? .
The whole human race—whether pre-modern, modern, or postmodern—is involved in a vast process of redefining identity. Some move forward into the future, some cling to the past. In a sense, we’re redefining the meaning of what we once held as the truth of life.
Make sure to check out Mr. Wishard’s website at www.worldtrendsresearch.org.
Xlibris will continue with William Van Dusen Wishard in Part 2.
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