Globalization of Conflicts

KY made a good point in the earlier post about globalization and religious conflicts. I quite agree that globalization has the potential to add fuel to age-old human conflicts.

With the movement of ideas, destructive ideologies are able to migrate and gain new converts. It is quite possible that globalization enables marginal ideologies the ability to gain critical mass which hitherto they were unable to. With the movement of people, there are increasing opportunities to sow division. Arguably, the greatest impact comes from the rapid societal changes that globalization entails creating new reasons for frustration, envy and dislocation. Hence, the very same power that globalization are able to unleash for growth, opportunity and human progress; also bring malignant influences.

In the end, what we are talking about is still the eternal race between light and darkness within the human soul. It is part of the human condition to engender conflicts because the tendency is to look for division and to seperate the world into 'us' and 'them'.

Every extremist dream of an idealised homogeneous society (everyone like them of course); whether we are talking about religious extremists, racial extremist or national extremist. In human history, that idea is the probably the most destructive fantasy ever sold; and millions have bought it. It is a dangerous idea that has no place in a modern society.

It is also a false idea that conflicts will magically disappear society will be at peace once it is 'purified' either somehow made religiously or ethnically homogeneous. Without religious or ethnic conflicts, there would be other conflicts. Violent conflicts exist even within societies without religious differences (may be Cultural Revolution China and Taliban Afghanistan are 2 examples on different extremes). All societies are human and conflicts are part of all human society.

Where I agree with you completely is that religion and ethnicity is historically a common cause for conflict. When we talk about religion or race we are talking about them as society's fault lines, and religion and race are particularly powerful fault lines that are easily turned into mass hysteria to be exploited by the power that be. Careful analysis of conflicts throughout history often find complex but usually logical drivers of conflicts: economic, political, personal; but those conflicts are often cloaked in the more emotionally convincing (and dare I say, more convenient) banners of religion and race.

What I am deliberately careful about is any response that amount to to replacing one fault line with a new fault line; and notwithstanding our positive intentions replacing one conflict with another. The reason is that once we set ourselves as an arbiter of what others can be or do or say or believe, we are setting up a conflict between our views, no matter how logical with their views no matter how misconceived. Criminal law still entail great amount of divisions and conflict, even when (after thousands of years of consensus building) everyone agrees certain behaviors to be wrong and to be subject to sanctions of society. Even then I wonder how much public order (e.g .why people tend not to murder or rape as they please) can be credited to the fear for the law? or is it out of enlightened self-control as a civised member of a modern society? I believe a lot of credit has to be given to the latter especially when you observe how people respond during extreme situations such as survivors of earthquake in Sichuan. (The same cannot be said always, the aftermath of Katrina comes to mind.)

The reason is that, from my perspective, the future of human survival depends on breaking down barriers. As globalization breaks down distance and political barriers, my chief concern is whether the human barrier can be broken down fast enough. Climate change is going to result in massive displacement of people because there will be losses and gains all over the world in terms of how livable the place is. If you look at the world's populations, they are congregated in the same places - usually in the river valleys or river deltas of major rivers - for historical reasons as determined by the technologies and politics from 1000 years ago. For that reason, they are not even concentrated in the most productive regions of the world by today's technology e.g. the great plains of North America, Brazil, Ukraine, Argentina and Canada produces large percentages of the world's food but they are not densely populated.

Hence, if you look at the areas where population pressure on the land is the greatest and then accelerating it through climate change, you can get a sense forboding that large numbers of people will need to move or hundreds of millions will die. The reason that keep people from moving are distance and political barriers. Political barriers are serious impediments to the natural distribution of people to resources. If you look at the Sino-Russian border, on one side you have population density of less than 10 per sq km; the otherside is more like 1000 per sq km. held by just a line on the map. If you dry up the harvests in the Ganges and Indus or the Yellow River by 50% you will have massive problems .. and the fact that Russia and Canada will be warmer, more productive and offset the loss in production will be of little comfort to those people and those countries.

So one way or the other, the people have to move or resources need to move. Either way, we need to be talking about removing barriers.