I would like to share with you a book I recently read that deals with some of the issues I have been seeing in the discussions. It is an interesting book that examines some of the trends in international relations. He develops his argument throughout his book by making subtle points reflecting his view of human and nation-state behavior. Barber sees the world as increasingly riven by fratricide, civil war, and the breakup of nations.
Barber paints two scenarios.
The first, McWorld, depicts the future as an increasing onrush of economic, technological, and corporate forces that demand integration and uniformity. This force mesmorizes people with elements like fast food, computers and music. The secord world, Jihad, shows the prospect of a retribalization of large parts of humanity by war and bloodshed, a threatened balkanization of nation-states in which culture is pitted against culture. This Jihad is motivated by hundreds of narrowly conceived faiths against every kind of interdependence, every kind of social cooperation and mutuality, against technology, against pop culture, against integrated markets, and against modernity itself. But both worlds cannot do without the other.