We are living through the most profound transformation of the world s social order that has ever taken place. Nobody alive in the year 2000 will be unaffected by globalization. The emergence of global markets and transnational corporations is creating economic interdependence among all of the world s nations. Pollution of our atmosphere and our oceans is forcing collaboration on environmental protection among politically diverse cultures. Computers, through the internet and the web, ignore national borders in providing instant communication among individuals and groups situated at great distances from one another.
Multinational corporations employ citizens from many different countries.
Global television is showing everybody how everybody else in the world lives. And jet travel mingles us all together. Real world problems, like scientific problems, can no longer be solved by individuals working alone. Real world problems call for cooperation among people with different talents, different training, sometimes different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, and different intellectual orientations. Real world problems will be difficult to alleviate without benefit of the insights that scholars of philosophy, history, religion, literature, foreign languages and cultures, and the arts can provide into human behavior.