Wednesday, 19 January 2011

Interregnum


Zygmunt Bauman, a philosopher, thinks that the world is in a stage where current institutions (states, national governments, international bodies) are not fit to cope with some of the most important global trends and challenges any more (global warming, international terror, global nature of internet). What is worse, current institutions are equally unfit to come up with the alternative/solution.

Globalisation has brought more good than evil and arguably made the world a safer place. The better you know someone and the more business you do together, the more likely is that it will not be in your interest to start a war. Except for the emergence of the global terrorism (or rather a perception and fear thereof) this theory seems to work. USA and China do too much business together to risk it over an argument. 

However, the other side of the coin is that important changes are becoming too difficult to implement. There are too many layers of interlinked commitments and interests, so any major change is bound to bring significant resistance. Is this the beginning of The End of History?

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