ROW Episode 40

In this episode we explore the idea that globalization can essentially be understood as the tangible expression of humanity’s journey towards unity.

Episode Transcript

Sovaida (00:08):
Hello and welcome to Reimagining Our World, a podcast
dedicated to envisioning abetter world and to infusing
hope that we can make theprincipled choices to build that
world.
In this episode, we explore theidea that globalization can
essentially be understood as thetangible expression of

(00:31):
humanity's journey towardsunity.
Today I thought I would sharewith you some thoughts on
globalization and reimagininghow we might understand the
concept and therefore react toit differently.
The word globalization tends toevoke a lot of strong emotions

(00:53):
in people.
People either react vehementlyto it or they're very much in
support of it.
So before we proceed further, Ithought it might be useful to
actually clarify for purposes ofthis conversation what we mean
by globalization, or at leastthe sense in which I'm using it.

(01:14):
And this definition, which I'veput on the banner down below
comes from a meld of twodefinitions given by two very
important figures in leaders ofthought in our day and age.
One is Jeffrey Sachs, Professorat Columbia University and the
other is Professor Ian Golden ofOxford University.

(01:36):
Jeffrey Sachs focuses on theidea of globalization as being
the fact of humanity'sinterdependence over vast
distances.
Ian Golden focuses on theprocess of increasing global
integration and cross borderflows that result from
globalization that happen overan ever widening set of

(01:58):
countries.
So in my mind, if you meld thesetwo together, you come up with
this definition that I've puthere, which is the process of
ever increasing humaninterdependence across long
distances, resulting indeepening global integration.
Now, one thing is for sure, thatglobalization has had both

(02:21):
positive and negative effects.
Some of the positive effects arethe creation of opportunities
for economic growth and risingincomes across the world.
Also opportunities for a widerdissemination of knowledge and
learning through the spread ofadvanced technologies like
mobile phones and the internet.

(02:41):
These are some examples of thepositive impacts of
globalization.
In fact Professor Golden saysthat globalization, in his view,
has been the most powerfuldriver of human progress in the
history of humanity, which isquite a big statement.
Now what's interesting is thatwe as humans generally have a

(03:04):
tendency to focus more on thenegative in most situations.
And so when it comes toglobalization, we also focus on
the negative impacts.
Not to say that there aren'tany, but we tend to over focus
on them.
The fact is that ifglobalization has indeed made
humanity more interconnected andinterdependent and basically

(03:27):
made it more integrated, then itstands to reason that having
become this integrated unit, soto speak, this unit is also now
susceptible to systemic risksand dangers like, for instance,
the spread of pathogens, whichwe saw during COVID, because of
increased transportation andpeople flying hither and yon and

(03:50):
moving between one place andanother within a country like
China, but also across theworld.
Pathogens are going to becarried ever more rapidly.
This is one of the downsides, ifyou like, of globalization.
The other is financialcontagion.
We see, for instance, that in2008, the financial crisis

(04:12):
started from a housing pricebubble in the United States and
eventually, through a series ofevents, triggered a global
financial crisis.
Now, our typical reactions ashuman beings is that when we
experience the negative, webecome myopic, we become very

(04:32):
nearsighted, and we lose ourability to accurately read our
reality and respond to it.
This myopia leads to a couple oftypical knee jerk reactions.
The first is that we eitherrepeat the same behavior,
denying that it has any negativeeffects.

(04:53):
In this instance, we would justkeep going at globalization the
way we have without giving anythought to the negative impacts,
thereby compounding thosenegative impacts.
Or we do the opposite and wepanic and we say,"Oh, let's
reverse course." We take a fewsteps back and undo some of the
progress that we've made andundo some of the good that's

(05:15):
been done.
The thing to bear in mind, asJeffrey Sachs hammers home in
his works, is that this processof globalization started when
modern humans migrated fromAfrica 70,000 years ago.
This ever deepening integrationhas so woven and bound our

(05:35):
destinies together as humanbeings that it's really
impossible to undo.
The way I like to put it is thatonce scrambled, the egg cannot
be unscrambled.
Sachs goes on to point out thatevery time we've tried to take
some steps back to slow downglobalization or arrest its
process, it's proved disastrous.

(05:56):
He has some interestingexamples, including the example
of the Luddites in 19th centuryBritain.
You will remember that theLuddites were a movement of
textile workers essentially, whofelt very threatened by the new
machinery that was coming out,the looms and the textile mills,
that was going to do the textilework and displace them.

(06:19):
That was their fear.
So they would break into thesefactories and mills and they
would destroy the machinery.
They were known as Luddites, andeven today we refer to people as
Luddites if they're opposed toindustrialization or automation
or computerization or any newtechnologies.
Another example is the Treaty ofVersailles that ended up

(06:41):
exacerbating economic andpolitical malaise in Europe in
the early 20th century, leadingto the collapse of international
trade and putting finance intodisarray.
This combination of factorseventually led us to the Great
Depression.
Any attempts at what is called"slow-balization", slowing down

(07:05):
globalization ordeglobalization, will lead to
decline in growth worldwide andwill lead to higher unemployment
and destabilization of markets,including the market for food.
It will decimate the worldeconomy, lead to conflict with
disproportionate impact on themost vulnerable.

(07:26):
What's important to realize atthis point is that it's critical
to acknowledge thatglobalization has had both
positive and negative impacts.
The trick is for us toacknowledge that some positive
impacts have come and not totake steps that would undermine
those, while at the same timeacknowledging the risks and the

(07:49):
dangers and the negative impactsand learning to manage and
mitigate them.
As Sachs said, we need to learnto act smarter.
Why is that?
Because failure to manage risksleads to some bad consequences
under which we're straining as ahuman race right now.

(08:12):
The first is that the riskscaused by globalization fester
and proliferate, subjecting usto tremendous global challenges
that include things like nuclearproliferation, runaway climate
change, financial crises,pandemics, terrorism, and so on.
These are all the systemic risksto which we're exposed as a

(08:33):
result of the interdependencecaused by globalization.
The second thing that failure tomanage risks does is it leads to
a backlash that translates intoinsular practices in an attempt
to regain control.
What are some of these insularpractices?
First we see xenophobia.
We saw this particularly inEurope as a reaction to the

(08:58):
tsunami of migrants coming fromthe Middle East and Africa,
especially when the war in Syriawas at its height.
It led to a backlash withinEurope with the rise of far
right governments, andeventually even led to Brexit,
with Britain saying, we want totake control of our own destiny,
we want to keep the migrantsout, and we can't do this within

(09:19):
the context of the EU, they'renot doing enough, so we're just
going to exercise nationalsovereignty and do this.
So xenophobia is one of thoseinsular practices.
The second one is protectionism.
We see this with the tarifftrade wars between China and the
United States that have led tobad consequences for people on

(09:41):
both sides and for the world.
Isolationism is another insularpractice.
Nationalism is yet another one,this idea of, wherever we are,
our country first, whetheryou're in Hungary or Turkey or
Russia or the United States orBritain.
This crazy idea that our nationcomes first and we will do
whatever it takes for our nationin an interdependent world to

(10:04):
come out ahead.
It has led to wars like the warswe see in Ukraine and the danger
of war in places like the SouthChina Seas and Taiwan and then
the wars in Yemen and Ethiopiaand so on.
There are many examples.
What's interesting to note here,and I've always been fascinated

(10:24):
by this, is that these insularpractices tend to come in
clusters, very much likeautoimmune diseases do.
If you get one autoimmunedisease then your likelihood of
getting one or more others goesup quite a bit.
How do we manage and mitigatethese risks?
By acting smarter.

(10:44):
I believe that the first step isfor us to start with our beliefs
by reframing our concept ofglobalization.
We need to let go of ourlimiting beliefs and the false
assumptions that globalizationis only bad for us, and there's
no good that comes of it, andthat we need to quash and

(11:06):
reverse it.
We do this by changing ourunderstanding of human history.
The first step is to recognizethat history is an unfolding
story of the human race, and itsmovement from a stage of
immaturity and childhoodstarting with infancy, to
towards maturity.

(11:27):
It's a collective journey thatwe all take together that is
marked by ever widening circlesof integration and unity.
It's time for us to reallyabandon all these old fetishes
that get in the way of ourmaturity, all these insular
practices that we talked about,like nationalism and xenophobia,
and really get with the programand say,"Okay.

(11:48):
We're now maturing as a humanrace into collective adulthood.
What new ways of thinking andbehaving do we need to adopt?"
we also need to be patient withourselves as we do this, while
also ensuring that we don'tprolong this stage, because it
will lead to unnecessarysuffering.

(12:09):
The second thing to change inthe way we understand our world,
and we've talked about thisbefore on this series, is that
humanity now functions as asingle organism.
Because we're so interdependentand interconnected as a result
of this movement of humans over70,000 years we have become as

(12:30):
one and it reflects the factthat there is a law that governs
our social and spiritual lifewhich is akin to the operation
of the law of gravity in thephysical life, and that is the
law of oneness.
It requires that we develop avision of our shared identity
and common purpose as humans, orelse what will end up happening

(12:54):
is we will continue to bebuffeted by competing ideologies
and power struggles and anendless permutation of us and
them, which leads to the tearingasunder of the social fabric.
It's been happening and it willonly continue to get worse
unless we do this.
This brings us to the crux ofthis episode: the proposition

(13:19):
that globalization should beviewed as the tangible
expression of humanity's journeytowards unity.
This is what globalizationreally is, and once we start to
view it in that light, itliberates us to start to take
the actions that are necessaryto manage and mitigate the

(13:43):
systemic risks that are causedby this deepening integration.
Before I move on to change inbehaviors, having addressed
change in thought, I wanted totalk for a second about the role
of suffering.
It's important to acknowledgethat suffering, both mental and
physical, has a role to play.

(14:04):
It's not something we shouldseek, but once it happens, it
can be used to help catalyze ashift in our collective thinking
and perception by first stirringour conscience.
When we suffer, we, ourconscience gets stirred.
We saw this during COVID withthe Black Lives Matter movement
in the United States, which hada ripple effect across the

(14:26):
world.
The stirring of the conscience,the disillusioning of the

masses (14:30):
as we see our world falling apart at the seams and
people suffering needlesslyeverywhere, we become
disillusioned.
This stirring of our conscience,and the disillusioning of
ourselves prompts us then towant to make radical changes in
the very conception we have ofwhat society is.

(14:51):
And that radical conception willallow us then to coalesce our
disjointed limbs of this humansociety and bring them together
in unity, thus fulfilling ourdestiny of maturity as a human
race.
Suffering can also be viewed asa fire, if you like, that fuses

(15:11):
the discordant elements ofsociety together.
It also instills in our leadersa sense of responsibility, and
maybe we haven't suffered enoughbecause we're not quite there
yet, but the sense ofresponsibility that's necessary
for them to really act asstateswomen and statesmen and
create peace in this world onceand for all.

(15:32):
Interestingly, both JeffreySachs and Ian Golden acknowledge
the role of suffering anddisaster in bringing about the
next level of change.
One example is that after theSecond World War, the suffering
of the Second World War,humanity created the
institutions of the UnitedNations and the Bretton Woods

(15:53):
institutions to deal with allthe global financial matters.
Now, after we've changed the waywe think, we need to change the
way we behave.
We need to adopt the necessarytools, powers, and capacities
that are appropriate to the nextstage in our collective
development, which is ourmaturity, our unification as a

(16:17):
human race.
There are three particularbehaviors that I believe we
should start off with, or woulddo well to start off with.
Before we get to behaviors,there's a certain set of skills
that we first need to hone, andthat is the development and
honing of the core disciplinesof collaboration and cooperation

(16:38):
and meaningful and extensiveconsultation to find solutions
to problems.
We have a great example.
During COVID, scientists reallyrole modeled well for us.
Whereas in the past it wouldtake 12 to 14 years for them to
come up with a single vaccineand bring it to market, we saw
that during COVID, within 11months, we had several new
vaccines.

(16:59):
What that required was amazingcollaboration, absence of
secrecy, putting aside of theiregos to hold out until they got
published first.
So it is possible.
Imagine what humanity can doonce we set our minds to it and
collaborate.
The beauty of globalization isthat it makes it easier to

(17:20):
collaborate and cooperatebecause of improved
communication and instantaneouscommunication.
Now, the first behavior that weneed to change is creation of a
set of institutions at theglobal level that we desperately
need, or at the supra nationallevel, set of collective

(17:41):
decision making and enforcementinstitutions to meet the
challenges of our time.
Most of our collectivechallenges like climate change
and nuclear proliferation andglobal financial crises are
collective and therefore demandcollective solutions.
And yet we lack the requisitemechanisms.
As Ian Golden says globalinstitutions, which may have had

(18:03):
some success in the 20thcentury, are now unfit for
purpose.
And he goes on to say that ourcapacity to manage global issues
has not kept pace with thegrowth in their complexity and
danger.
We see that again with climatechange, this complex problem
that affects and implicates thewhole world requires the whole

(18:26):
world to be able to act togetherand come up with something
beyond just voluntary pledgesthat are loosey goosey.
The second change in behaviorhas got to be identifying a
shared set of global ethics,which we then weave into the
very fabric of all our newinstitutions and processes.

(18:50):
These are critical.
As Jeff Sachs says, we need toagree upon a model of
understanding and ethics on thebasis of which to build peace.
Ian Golden also argues that it'snecessary to make ethics the
central concern in ourdiscussions on the future of
global governance.
In fact, there are so manyleaders of thought now, not just

(19:11):
academics, but people who are inpolitics and have served on
various institutions have allarrived at this conclusion.
What sorts of ethics andprinciples, first principles are
we talking on about?
First and foremost, the law ofoneness, which must be made the
ruling principle ofinternational life.

(19:31):
A recognition, in other words,that the advantage of one nation
can only be guaranteed byguaranteeing the advantage of
the whole organism, the world,so all nations.
Dispensing with unfetterednational sovereignty: we need to
abandon this immature andchildish fetish.
The principle of collectivesecurity that we have spent a

(19:51):
couple of sessions here talkingabout at length.
I'd refer you to, I think,episode 29 was one of them,
where we limit the number ofarms that each nation has to the
amount necessary to preserveinternal order, and then agree
that if one nation flouts therules, the rest will arise as
one to reduce it to submission.

(20:13):
Another principle is that forceis to be used solely in service
of justice, that internationalforce is to be used only
internationally, not byindividual nations, to safeguard
the organic unity of the world.
For those of you who areskeptics that such a thing is
possible, it has been donebefore.
I would refer you to a book,Building a World Federation, The

(20:37):
Key to Resolving Our GlobalCrises, that gives an example of
a principle that from conceptionto adoption by 193 nations only
took five years.
This is the Responsibility toProtect principle.
The third behavior is that weneed to train ourselves to elect
fit leaders with the requisitequalities and motivations to

(20:59):
tackle the tremendous needs andglobal challenges of today.
We know that buildinginstitutions isn't enough
because any institution, nomatter how perfect, is capable
of misuse if the people who aremembers of that institution are
unfit and don't have thequalities of character,
including honesty, uprightness,selflessness, and so on.

(21:23):
The first step in, in trainingourselves to elect fit leaders
is to change our conception ofand assumptions about power,
that power is not a means ofdomination, but rather a
necessary element in socialorganization whose sole role is
to create the environment inwhich you and I and everyone

(21:43):
else can fulfill our potential.
And that power should beassociated with uplifting words
like"release" and"encourage" and"channel" and"guide" and
"enable." And that power is notsomething to be seized and
jealously guarded, but rather itis a limitless capacity to
transform that resides in thehuman race as a whole.

(22:06):
If we were to do all of this,then imagine what a different
world it would be.
A world in which, for instance,critical natural resources are
equitably managed anddistributed, including energy
resources.
It's a world in which thequantity of arms in each nation
is restricted to what'snecessary to maintain an
internal order.

(22:27):
And so it liberates us from thefear and suspicion and the
enormous waste of money in theseever escalating arms races that
we're engaged in, and thescourge of both conventional and
nuclear wars.
It'll take away the fears of thewars.
We fear war over Taiwan betweenU.S.

(22:48):
and China.
We fear that the war in Ukrainewill spill over and involve NATO
and that Russia and NATO willhave a nuclear standoff.
We'll also have mechanisms tomanage and mitigate climate
change and to manage ourfinancial and economic affairs
so that we don't havedestabilizing financial crises.

(23:09):
In short, we'll be able to livein a peaceful and secure world.
If you are interested inlearning more about some of
these thoughts I would refer youto one of two things.
The first is book that I wrotein 2021 called The Alchemy of
Peace, Six Essential Shifts inMindsets and Habits to Achieve

(23:30):
World Peace.
This is the cover, availableeverywhere on Amazon.
And the second, if you want todelve more into the idea of
globalization, I recently wrotea chapter in a collective
monograph entitled Religion andScience in the Globalized World.
It's a collective monograph.
You can also get that on Amazon.

(23:52):
And it was really wonderful toparticipate in a webinar with a
couple of my colleagues,Houshmand Badee and Paul Hanley,
in discussion on this topic.
Feel free to pick up a copy ofthat, I've highlighted some of
the ideas that I had put in thischapter for you in this episode.
But if you have any comments orquestions, please put them on

(24:14):
YouTube or on Facebook, and wecan engage in a conversation.
Thank you very much for yourattention, and I look forward to
seeing you next month.
Take care.
That's all for this episode ofReimagining Our World.
I'll see you back here nextmonth.

(24:35):
If you liked this episode,please help us to get the word
out by rating us and subscribingto the program on your favorite
podcast platform.
This series is also available invideo on the YouTube channel of
the Center for Peace and GlobalGovernance, CPGG.