Rethinking nature, culture, and freedom

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, Jan, 2007 by Steven V. Hicks

   In the liquid era of digital information, telecommunication, and
   deregulated markets, there are no fixed territories for manufacture
   and distribution and no permanent set of rules or norms to limit the
   harsher effects of capitalism. The global economy and the weakening
   of the welfare state bring a multitude of material benefits that
   stimulate and gratify (temporarily) the desires of consumers, who
   are (momentarily) succeeding in the new order. But its unregulated
   freedoms also bring new forms of insecurity, misery, and violence,
   as evidenced by the millions of unemployed, abandoned in the rush to
   "downsize" and "outsource." and the millions of refugees, asylum
   seekers, and so-called illegal economic migrants who are left
   homeless in city streets, in camps, in holding cells, and prisons,
   as the financial, managerial, and intellectual elite whiz around the
   globe in constant motion.

Advances in information technology are also allowing more self-enclosure and isolation for the elites by, for example, allowing them to build "high-tech" walls around themselves to keep the excluded poor at bay. As the new corporate and informational elites are less able to see beyond themselves, they will be less inclined to distribute resources in a way that benefits the least well off. They will be less inclined and less prepared to regard sharing as a duty of justice owed to other community members. It is not hard to imagine an ominous future where political and economic power is centralized in a few "high-tech" transnational (and perhaps virtual) corporate centers, and where the corporate elites are answerable to no one (e.g., no democratic procedures, no regulatory oversight, no rational governance) beyond the corporate boardroom. Thus, if it turns out that economic and informational connectedness is the only "social glue" holding us together as a world community, then the new "globalization" will likely lead to new inequalities, more impoverishment, more exclusions, fewer individual freedoms, and greater injustices. In the face of such a failed global culture, it is likely that we will continue to see extremist revivals of radical nationalism, sectarianism, anti-secular fundamentalism, and even global terrorism as "cynical" attempts to fill the global ethical and cultural void. In short, the new "globalization" may herald a new "dark age" for many of the world's citizens.

Yet for those of us in the ISUD who are concerned to promote a more decent, peaceful, and just world, we will continue to look for new ideas and new sources of inspiration. We will continue to work for a more just international legal and political framework as well as for a more rational, and democratically oriented, world governance. And we will continue to strive to discover how we can have participation in the best of local, national, and regional cultures and traditions, as well as location in much broader cultural and historical contexts--including, perhaps, a cosmopolitan world culture and an emerging global, ethical community.