Globalization needs new ingredients

Earth from space, as it was first photographed.
Earth from space, as it was first photographed.

When globalization began, in the early 1990s, it was a nice promise. As it developed, it would bring us access to good information, better products and services, and more opportunities to enjoy a better and more fulfilling life. As it has progressed, however, many of these promises vanished. Today's world is rough and polarized; passionate but insensitive; full of stimuleses yet empty.

Taking a look at what happened, globalization began by giving us the web and portable communication devices (e-mail first, then pagers first and then mobile phones). It also gave us faster trade, more competition between suppliers and, as a consequence of the latter, better products at more competitive prices. It also gave you the opportunity to meet new people and interact with those who are away first through chat rooms, then with instant messaging applications, and with videoconference later.

All of these changes have been good, but they have had costs. Here are some of the main ones:

Our "ubiquity" is stressing us

Resting is crucial for our species. I am not only talking about sleeping. I am talking about our need to detach from ordinary life so we can spend time renewing ourselves. Mobile phones, social networks and their numberless notifications are stealing us this precious time; and as result, people are more stressed, less focused on what they are doing, and for shorter times. There is also an unnatural need to try to become popular and admired. And while there are people making every effort to stand out in useless ways, there are reports stating there has been a rise in sleep disturbances, depression, anxiety and other forms of mental health problems… mental problems that were not as frequent before most of us got our "electronic personal annexes".

We are living in the age of distraction

Globalization chose capitalism as the main economic model for the world, and it has been positive because now we all can enjoy better products and services at better prices. The con is that capitalism depends on sales and growth; and this forces companies to strive for drawing our attention to what they sell. Is advertising bad? No, not at all. If you pay attention, you will notice there is advertising everywhere these days, both on the streets and online. What is wrong are monitoring and manipulation, especially if it continues being done undercover. It might not be a secret anymore that there are plenty of tracking activities on the web, even if you do not see them; but it might be new for you to learn that, sometimes, when you visit a store, someone is observing and studying what you look at, what you choose to buy and other factors aiming to "optimize your experience" and entice you (and other customers) to buy more the next time.

Their will to optimize everything to sell more (or other) is leaving us under a permanent call for our attention… distracting us. Have you not felt sometimes a difficulty concentrating? That happens, among others, because your brain is getting so used to distractions that it even looks for them.

We are living in a sort of dictatorship of tolerance

I am sure you have seen it yourself: Some people think in one way; other people think the opposite way. When these two groups are apart, everything works in harmony; but when they collide, each side engages in a so passionate defence of its position they do not even notice how ridiculous it looks. They attack each other, they accuse each other and they insult each other until some side decides it was enough. When that happens, friendships end and societies polarise.

What I find funny about this is that, during those futile exchanges of opinion, both groups appeal to tolerance one way or another. They say that they have the right to think that way and it is the other side's obligation to respect and tolerate their way to see life or their opinion about that topic. That is true and sounds reasonable… except if you dare to disagree. When that happens, they attack you again! So where is the tolerance in the end!? Nowhere, and that is why it has been called the dictatorship of tolerance.

I have read more than once that this problem in society can be attributed, among others, to media and tracking, but it goes beyond the web too. Companies that want your attention and already have a profile of you use it to show you more of what they think you will like to see (or watch or read or buy). That way, they can keep your attention for a little longer. What they do not think about is that, when you feed a person with more of what he thinks, he becomes increasingly more radical in that option or opinion. The more radical he is about something, the more aggressive he becomes against the opposite position, causing the dictatorship of tolerance.

In civilised conversations, people introduce their points of view with supporting information, state what they believe in with a reasonable train of thought, and also strive to stay away from the most common fallacies. All of that appears to have been forgotten.

We are seeing a complete disdain for privacy

Privacy is an important right. It allows all of us to keep secrets, and to share those secrets only with who we want. Thanks to the right to privacy, artists can work their artworks and only release them when they are ready; companies can prepare new products or services and only make them public when they are ready to sell. Well, privacy has been under attack for years, mainly in three ways: by the cameras they place on the streets in the name of security, by our mobile phones, which are tracking devices by themselves, and by our use of services we know spy us just because they are cheap and convenient. "If we have nothing to hide, we have nothing to fear about being watched", right?

Yet this disdain for privacy can also be seen in recklessness and indecency. There are things that should never be expressed in writing, but they are; and there are images that should never be made public, but they are too. There might not be consequences today or tomorrow, but many lives have been destroyed already because someone made public something that was shared in secret before… days, months or even years ago.

We are seeing less-human humans

Globalization has brought us closer to those who are far, but it has also separated us from those who are close. This has boosted loneliness, exaggerated the importance of individuality and damaged the respect we felt for law, authority and moral values in the past. If this continues this way, soon our younger generations might have to face a world without proper guides to correct behaviour.

When was the last time you asked your friend how he was, and he did not reply with a "fine, thank you"? When was the last time you stopped everything you were doing to go help a friend in need? With these two questions, I think everything gets in perspective. In some societies, friends even make appointments to see each other.

We are seeing fractured leaders and wounding individualism

Since the beginning of times, some people were good at some things and others, in others. That has not changed. What has changed is what we look for to acknowledge and admire in leaders. In the past, most —if not all— leaders were admired and followed because of their ability to be a living example of many things at the same time, because of their integrity. These days, that does not seem to matter anymore.

Add to that the erroneous need to reinvent the wheel and achieve everything by ourselves when we have always been a social species, and you should complete the panorama of what I have been trying to point out up so far in this article.

Globalization needs new ingredients

I doubt we created a globalized world to get unhealthy societies, so let me share with you two ways we can get better societies in the future.

First, let us take a look at some of the values postmodern society has motivated us to leave behind:

If some of them are familiar to you, that is because these are the values different societies around the world have appreciated and respected for centuries. Those that are not familiar to you are values that are regarded in other continents. Retaking what was ours in the past could be a great way to start.

Yet we cannot simplify our wish of a better globalization to merely taking a look at the past, either. Previous societies were not perfect, and we should do better than them. So let us supplement the previous ideas with some new ones, like the ones below:

There might be many more ideas to add, but I do not want to make this article any longer. I just want to close by saying why I believe this, and it is simple: Because you, I, and everyone else was born with talents that makes us unique; and society should ease, and not hinder, the way for their development of those talents.

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