New article on Starlight News: The Global Paradox

[Nancy Waterman]

http://starlightnews.com/global.html

The Global Paradox

One way of looking at the world these days is through the lens of globalization. Although our earthly home retains its physical dimensions, the evolving human experience is of a planet that keeps shrinking, with each of its various parts ever more inextricably interconnected. Not many years back, who would have thought that wages in Indonesia would impact employment in North Carolina? Who would have imagined that growing car exhaust in Houston might influence the thickness of ice in Greenland? Or that diminishing ice in Greenland might threaten a radical shift in the weather in London and Paris? And who could have guessed that a small newspaper item in Denmark might inspire riots and embassy burnings throughout the Muslim world? Today, news flies around the globe like it flew around the neighborhood in yesteryear. First radio, then TV, and now the lightning-fast internet, with its blogs, e-mail alerts, and instant reporting, have exponentially augmented the power of a single story once it has been launched by only a motivated few.

In Jean Paul Sartre’s torturous version of hell, described in his play No Exit, three completely incompatible people are bound together forever in a room with no escape. Likewise, we live in a world where we are bound ever more tightly with other people whose cultures, religions, and world view are often very different from and often contradictory to our own. It seems that the challenge presented to us in our newly globalized world, where there really is no retreat from our interconnectedness, is simply to learn to get along together, whether it be the red states and the blue, the fundamentalist right and the liberal left, the industrialized nations and the Third World, or the secular, democratic nations and the Islamic theocracies. And yet, in reality, this is anything but simple. It is hampered by the universal disinclination of humans to accept responsibility for their own contribution to their difficulties. It is hampered by our tendency to think in stark terms of black and white, good and evil, right and wrong, and not inwardly stretch to recognize the innate humanity of our adversaries. Much like a troubled marriage, the opposing parties will never progress if they cannot take responsibility for their own participation in the conflict. But unlike in a troubled marriage and more like the torment described by Sartre, there is no possibility of divorce.

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[Idylle Moon Dancer]

1. 2012

Your article spurred my memories of reading about predictions and/or speculations relating to the end of the Mayan calendar. Also of reading a bit about Terrence McKenna and a prediction he made of a world-changing event in 2012. He claims to have made this prediction before knowing about the Mayan calendar. I don't remember the details well (and there were not very many given in what I read) but his prediction was based on examining patterns of historical events and extrapolating into the future.

[Nancy Waterman]

2. 2012 -2015 Uranus Pluto square

It goes on and off for three years. Towards the end it is in exact hard angle to the US Sun (13 Cancer). I can't even imagine the turmoil here in 2014 and early 2015 with both Uranus (13 Aries) and Pluto (13 Capricorn) aspecting the US Sun. And in general throughout the planet for those three years there will be lots of rebellion and change. The conjunction happened during 1965 and 1966.

[Nancy Waterman]

3. bump!!

I don't want my article to get lost in the shuffle.

Happy Valentine's Day all!!

[DemExpat]

4. Nancy, I very much value this perspective here!

I am in my senior year's studies (doing one year in two....) for my degree in Human Geography, and, for me, a perspective like this one is one I personally miss in all of the discussion and theory. It definitely adds to the big picture IMO.

Right now I am reading about the paradigm of the "inevitability" of the processes of globalization to the point where there is no room for alternatives.

Keep up the great work,

DemEx

[LaurenG]

5. Thanks Nancy

Happy Valentines day. :loveya:

[PinkTiger]

6. Great Post!

Thanks!