The Fading Global World Order
In this particular historical moment, we humans find ourselves in a world that is undergoing a paradigm shift. This is no longer a fringe opinion. In fact, presidents and prime ministers, who are often the last ones to admit these things, have recently begun to acknowledge that the unipolar global world order as we’ve known it throughout our lifetimes is fading, it is dying out and it isn’t coming back.(1) As is so often the case in times of upheaval such as these, there’s been a big uptick of wars and general violence all over this planet we share.
Globalism Versus Nationalism? Or …
As humanists we aspire to build a nonviolent, universal human nation that champions diversity and individual thought and expression as well as the friendly convergence of different cultures. Curiously, we notice a clash today between many who profess that these two ideas, diversity and cross-cultural intermingling, are like oil and water. In other words, this crisis seems to have taken the form of a battle between what is referred to as the “globalist” point of view and the “nationalist” point of view. The problem with this reading of the current situation is that it is a superficial, mass media-concocted synthesis of a deeper dialectic.
Beneath the current ruling faction’s handy, specious interpretation of events we find a root conflict of interests between an obscenely wealthy and powerful alliance of bellicose oligarchs and the vast majority of humanity. Let’s face it, most of us want nothing whatsoever to do with these plutocrats’ wars of conquest and/or their self-generated culture of fear, unnecessary poverty and despair. Furthermore, it is this alliance of oligarchs and their political and mass media retainers who have proliferated the superficial, divide and conquer oriented descriptions of events that aim to keep the general public confused and at each other’s throats.(2)
The Real Cause of the Burgeoning Crisis
As a result of massive deregulation over the course of the last few decades, the banking system and its oligarchs have been able to take control of the Western electoral process and the Western “mainstream” media. This largely unchecked concentration and centralization of wealth, power and influence has ended up stripping individual nations of their industrial bases and their sovereignty. These conditions have rendered their inhabitants frustrated, ill-equipped and unable to dig themselves out of the deepening financial pits they’re sinking in. This is the real underlying cause of the rise in nationalistic sentiments throughout the Western sphere. The oligarch-owned media spin which insinuates that there’s been a sudden, inexplicable manifestation of long-underlying racist sentiments has been fuel to growing xenophobic fires. Their description is more than a simplification. It’s nonsense.
This is not to say that genuine xenophobic sentiments don’t exist or that they aren’t a problem. They do exist and they are a problem. What’s being pointed to here is the fact that the major cause of the uptick in these sentiments is not some sort of quasi-magical Yeatsian eruption of a collective subterranean uberbeast. The major cause of this crisis has been the felonious concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a very greedy few who’ve camouflaged their cynical powergrab by mendaciously deflecting blame onto what they portray as an “ungovernable” mass of incorrigibles.
We’re All Faced With A Choice (The Impending Shift)
As humanists we reject the current ruling faction’s duplicitous, simplified reduction of the current global crises. Our contention is that when a true recognition of what is really taking place is understood, a humanist “shift” will occur. When enough of us experience the felt realization that we’re all faced with a clear choice between mutual universal cooperation or mutual universal destruction, we humanists have faith that humanity will choose the former.
In a future article I’ll go into more specifics about the humanist position and our proposals for action.
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