Sprocket 12: Globalization;
In a sense to go global is merely to recognise something about the limitations of our current constellations of being., rather that anything positive. To global is then the opening out onto a networks or a series of interconnection of a feelings or an idea that was initially defined within a discrete or particular context. It is therefore the explosion of my world into… As such rather a lot of the emphasis of the global is on corruption and trivialization. The trivial go global: Votes of people pooing on in the internet if don cheekily enough) or jokes, criss-cross the world with relatively pointless power. Or better it I not the consent that matters so much as the Chinese whispers that defy normal characterization and normalizing power, and create open ended exchanges.
Behind this game is a far more interesting one. To create social networks an boos that one across the game is to create a new eddy in the noting of identity. In the past ones identity was given or created as much in the reflection of other says, in that they told one was as it was it anything else. Hume suggests with beautiful scepticism) that ones identity as tied to pride, and pride to possessions or praise or friends. One exists then in the reflection of ones actions one sees in and through others. Fair enough. Rationally though ties has been a fairly meaty affair. A am, I ac, I own, I get raise, and that is it. But in a world where the ones fans; and ones ‘friends' could be anywhere, and are to a degree imaginary any way (one never expects to meet facebook friends’, then the rules slip and change. One constitutes oneself in part in the fact fan imaginary audience (as children do, and par t in the eddies of strange cryptic comments left by others, or though the number of friends on has.
The point here is than this model then simply allows one to o different things what on is. If one is not tied down tote same series of people, who keep custodian ships of ones soul, then what? does one need to be the one person? Dos one need to be at all honest about who or what one is? not really. On the contrary, one downsizes and becomes someone or something else, one sets p alias of backup personalities or merely investigates other possibilities. To have then a welter of other folk at the and open friend list, it to opens the ones identity up in a fresh place. Ones identity far more than I ever has been becomes about possibilities and opinions. I becomes about things one virtually might pretend o be (to others0 – the celebrity ones dreams of, and not so much about the stuff in the here and how.
Here of cause one needs care. Humans are not about vanish down the stuff o virtual possibility. The here and now, ones actually life has the power of reality over fantasy. And yet what he internet foes, by forming a natural congregation to possibility, is give some fantasy more of a chance. O at least t opens out that promise. What it actually of course does, for cost people, is partially expand a part of them. That is ones friends lists actually do not expand to the critical kind of levels to support real endless possibility. One is one another enticed with the possibility of possibility- or sharing, and so to create new realties
The worry that states try o foster on u about identity and identity fraud is in a sense a al one. Our democracy has all sort of hidden assumptions about the nature of the initials voting for it. If then these initials start to shift when they re drawing their line of identity and for what they are voting or for whom or for why), then all kinds of little incipient assumptions in the systems comes under strain. Firs and foremost political parties start to warp. Tribal polices collapses and with it a large part of party funding and organization. Te result is then one gets the political parties( and therefore the leadership)that can survive without mass membership. A fact that changes the verity nature of a democracy. But more than that, if individuals are no longer in a situation where they expect to be held down to the one identity or the one context, then choices one actually makes within government and pitch to a people become even more problematic that they were. The population will be full of individuals that either know better, or simply do not want (or beliv0 that reform now (or ever did0. A world of shifting identities and shifting wants or fast moving desire is a world a government, hamstringed as it is by the slowness of legislation cannot easily react . Or even worst They only react by either creating the worry (many so called social problems are these). O else in a knew jerk and far to quick react o to a supposed crisis. Government becomes necessarily about managing (and creating crisis as only in the emergency is their speed of action sufficient to cope with modernity.
But what we call globalization clearly challenges the nation stat in the other direction as well/ Nations were as has aid before a fairly artificially affair, fostered on arbitrate patches of land of desperate peoples, a hundred years or more ago. They have o a little history of their own (but not much), and a welter of cod history to draw on. But more that that they have that identity we have forced then to have. A nation has then necessarily become a unit not merely of loaned but folds and ‘development Nations then imprison an set of humanity within a certain landmass, and with it a certain level for development, Nations can be counted or reckoned as less or more developed; one can meaningfully talk about leaders of nations, and of a high table and a low table, of power or rich. Nations have then on that issue of development, allowed the west to re-invent the algebra of feudalism and the medieval banquet, and do in a way ht is gloriously self-conscious in the west at least: for example the picture of the recent climate change conference are prominent: this the exception of Obama, and Dr. Manmohan Singh, the picture of the leaders in this top table are all white or Chinese/Japanese/Korean. Africa as such is not there…)
More troubling even that this cod feudalism, is what is behind it. We are using nations o try to channel and control the agenda behind climate change. Climate change itself is of course a supreme dark globalization phenomena . There fact the planet is warming des to our action, and fast, is a real worry not early to humans but also duck billed platypuses or lice… We age all caught unpin this. As such a sense it mars the very nod of the anion state. And this limit, this end is something the rich countries are using to batter the poor. I mean here, that according to one reading of nationhood, if it is really about owning then the rich nations created the problem. They ought not only to solve it, but also accept the fact that it is their pollution. Our GDP ought then to be the ones that suffer, and suffer badly. And ye of course as we are in our nation sat, us rich kids will not have that. We seal then climate change as a global problem and expect the poor to dance along to it. Here of course the trouble is that as global pollutes we have the whip hand. We can just carry one polluting, and so destroy the world before poorer nations have ever a place to pollute at the ‘top table’.
The result is therefore in the name of a global affair, the worse kind of nationalisms raise their head in the west. The anion as a n idea ha you see done us proud for the last hundred years. I has allowed us to shit on all our neighbors from low or great height, and then trap in their poverty, and we see or behave as if we saw, climate change to do exactly the same That id it is a similar trap. By making it into all our problems, or a scientific problem or a global problem, we ensure that we undo our part of responsibility, and make it other folk responsibility. They are the ones that shoulder the burden : they must not developed as we have…
Here then yet another aspect of globalization kicks into the equation. O globalize is also o mobilize on the level of nations as much as it is one the level of individuals. Nations are then held out a realm where in that picture of world leaders all nations actually would be represented. They are then held out the idea that every has a right to material wealth (as long as they accept the liberal values we do desperately assume goes with it – another hidden assumption). The globalize nations are then locked not merle into a parcel of hand a degree of poverty and a slice of history (often not theirs), but also an agenda for development. We have for the last fifties or so (and very off and on, and when it helps us) offered a ladder for countries o develop. We have then pitched global deals of the level of lifting up the poor countries. This lift p as usual involved of coursed helping them somewhat, an helping western companies (or these days Chinese companies) quite a lot. To be a nation (with flag and head of state all the ludicrous and quite made up paraphernalia) into be part of a global development program. Such apprised future is a powerful concern. It opens humans minds to possibilities and to dreams: It became embodied in the Cola can and the cheap and horrid food of the weskit is then of cause this dream titillate change darkens. Or better it is this dream that it perplexes. We are forced o realize that there are real consequences to this dream, and then are forced to understand where and when they fall.
The problems then that the current givers of the global (finical crisis, environmental collapse and terrorism) all state a problem. The problem that the tie in of story, nation, people, and development to land mass as a flag is really not good enough. An yet we have n will it appears t solve this problem. Worse than that it seems o me that we have real ability to even being to solve it. There is n place in our current liberal West is Fee and Best rubric even for starting to solve it. Oh we ca mutter about local or global, or world government, and yet such dreams are so nebulous as to be worthless (they have not got past the Kid dreaming phase.
Globalization then poses a real problem, the problem that we simply, appear unable to create structure to mitigate of world. o better that we can only create structures, states, companies whatever that impose on local areas partial good solutions, and do so at the cost of creating elsewhere bad that is destructive) solutions.
Going global is then the realization that the nation state model of history is problematic. That path to development, to capturing us al in the one history, the one saga of stone-age t modernity’s not working, and worst than that cannot simply work. Very consternation cannot then simply industrialize as we did in the West, and then liberalize – the planet to story all civilization first. We are caught up in the failure of one take of the global: the single global history. Other nation or better other peoples and areas of the globe are going to have the make this own history, and we are all then going to inhabit than taking. This fact then changes something else.
In the west we have a legend hat at times we have told ourselves. The poverty we see elsewhere or even everywhere is not really endemic we say. it merely a historical phenomena. We too were poor when we industrialized, and then we became wealthy, and other nations must similar have their baptism by fire: it I the only way. This little piece of nonsense, allows the west for remain fat and guilt free, while it quietly shits of everyone else (although it does offer the chance than other nations ,say China might get in on the shitting act, and might even shit on the West). Be that as it may, if now other nations cannot develop was we did, then the legend is no more, this is not the one history, or nations and redevelopment and other ‘global’ stories will need to be found and refounded.
The sprocket of the global is a strange one. It starts form somewhere very snug and easily. We watch the responses to our actions, and dream then as individuals we might reforge what and who we are on a larger canvass. Bu behind this little fragment of onanism there lies something rather dark and problematic. At the same moment that what we call global is unpicking our souls in a delightful way, it is also unpicking gradually, oh so gradually the base fabric the west has spun for thaw world. The way we created a safe world with West on top as masters of the development agenda, and lords of history (is opposed to county), has slipped away. We might be time Lords, and yet we are not lords in linear time ,in that one thing following another world. Rather war are going to have to find another way to create other history or other nations we have created. That I other ways they and we can be part of something global. Or mastery of time has then been unpicked by a great space – by the global. Our problem comes down to whether are up to understanding this fact. That is comprehending that the linear time of the global (and he mount of carbon it has) has trumped our history , and made us need other history and new option, We might get it is theory, an in practice? We merely the slippy sprocket of the global with its fracture pious hope.
Let us hope (or frankly pray) that this is enough….
