Sorry Im prideful when it comes to grades but Im so happy I got an A+ on this! I usually suck at grammar. Its a review on the well-known essay of Jihad vs. McWorld. Read it if you have the chance, and heres my summary: Jihad vs. McWorld Summary Are we headed towards a new world order? Will war separate us into secular political units? Is democracy being destroyed by globalism and in other countries by tribalism? In Benjamin R. Barber’s, Jihad vs. McWorld essay, he relays to us that we have two major spectrums that are completely radical and nonrelated whatsoever, but have one unrealized goal of the annihilation of democracy. The first perspective he talks about is his cleverly named, “McWorld”. He describes McWorld as the “globalization of politics” and elaborates on this term by four imperatives; market, resource, information-technology, and ecology. The market imperative of the McWorld yearns for and is heading to a so-called ‘international economic imperium’, which paves the way for globally known companies to monopolize the world and leave small business and new opportunity to become something that is inevitably obsolete. Secondly, resource and its availability ultimately forces nations to come together by needs of materials and inventions produced by other countries that can’t be obtained or created themselves. Thirdly, information-technology binds the world by a click of a button. Internet, cellular devices, radio, television, and many other technological advances harbor and enforce communication and ideas to be spread and known throughout the world. Lastly, the ecological imperative unfortunately binds our nations by the pollution our countries create. Radiation, oil spills, and smog, just to name a few, circulate throughout our globe and affect us negatively whether by destroying our landscapes, spreading disease, or harming the necessary organisms that we need for survival. The second perspective recalled in his essay is named “Jihad”. Tribalization is the stance of this side of the spectrum. The author identifies the participants of his “Jihad” as cultures or groups who would like to keep their own identity and abstain from the conformist McWorld the majority lives in. War is the machine that keeps these groups’ identity, through the fueling of culture, religion, and ethnicity. In the end, the writer gives us the option of a “confederal union” which would define our nations and the insides of our nations as loose, small nation-states that would be governed by “strong” democracy. As the author mentioned, the feeling of it would be like the Green movement, “Think globally, act locally”. Could the author’s option be a realistic solution for our political turmoil? Based on my findings, I agree that small democratically governed groups could be a viable choice as long as these societies could work together to provide each other with their wants and needs in a fair manner. McWorld is definitely not a suitable choice because every level of the system is unjust. Top companies would rule and monopolization would prevail from the overall ignorance of the fact that McWorld is a complete oligarchy that is candy-coated by socialism. The tribalization of “Jihad” would not work either because just as Rome did in the past, isolation from other countries results in lack of required resources that may not be found in that country, and also leads to weak bonds with other countries who may aid if war strikes. Based on the faults of these two extremes, a try at small democratic groups looks like one viable option. The only fault to this option is that it would require a fall of all of the nations’ governments and this seems to be something that would not occur anytime soon and would be something that would occur simultaneously together. Chaos would inevitably take place before order could be installed. It would take a lot of time and ambition, but this may be the only choice we have left.
Posted on: Tue, 29 Oct 2013 19:36:44 +0000
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