People Support Globalization example essay topic

Ever since humans walked on this planet their ultimate goal was and still is to attain happiness by themselves, and anything that jeopardized this aspiration was rejected, and argued. The nature of human beings has always been to be individual. And it's this nature that makes us stubbornly and selfishly believe we are always right no matter how ridiculous our ideas really are. It is an instinct inherent in every single soul living, to defend one's opinions and not hear what the other wishes to say; our minds are as an iron staff unwilling to bend. Regardless of the unstoppable growth of technology and communication mediums like the television, the internet, cellular phones and all the other gadgets that humans have created over the last few centuries for "connecting people" as the Nokia slogan reveals, that suggest that to communicate one's opinion is becoming each time easier with each tick of a clock, humans are still failing to understand each other.

Their close mindedness still prevails in them and does not allow them accept others ideas. And it's this narrow-mindedness, the factor of all the clashes and quarrels that take place between people. Understanding one another has turned out to be such a difficult task in our days that dialoguing has began to be called, the peaceful way to solve problems. Peaceful, as if dialoguing was not a normal procedure when putting an end to a conflict. Because humans haven't been able to unite and work together, they have separated into countless groups: "Every division we make is a result of how we think... we select certain things and separate from the others - for convenience at first. Later we give this separation great importance.

We set up separate nations, which is entirely a result of our thinking, and then we begin to give them importance". 1 As David Bohm says in his book On Dialogue, the fragmentation of the world is caused by our unique way of thinking, our individualism, and our deficiency to understand those we live with. But one might question, is this process reversible? One of the movements that seeks' for the unity of the world, the destruction of barriers and boundaries between nations is globalization. To globalize is to connect, to unify, to homogenize the world, and thus to create a harmony among all those that live in it.

However globalization has not become a reality yet and the dilemma of whether it is good or not, is one that humankind is desperately facing today; there is a constant struggle between those that support globalization and those that don't. Those that support it want to make it flourish, and those that reject it want to end as soon as possible. But neither of the two groups has been successful in their mission. This is mainly because they have failed to communicate amongst theme selves and work together orderly, without being supercilious and nonflexible as an iron staff. Hence we can see that only at the time when humans are able of leaving their self-interest aside in order to converse and understand and respect others, they would be able to stop with globalization or make it spread to the whole world.

The paradox shows how communication is the one factor that can make globalization a reality and at the same time put an end to it. If one sits down and thinks why globalization has failed to touch the entire world, one might find that one of the mayor factors that has caused this phenomenon is the lack of an efficient capitalism system in each of the countries on the globe. When one recalls on history, one will notice that at the beginning of human civilizations cities and empires were very much independent and had no other connection with those outside the empire apart from when they were conquered; the empire produced certain goods and its people were accustomed to those goods. However in the times of the Roman empire as, the empire conquered more lands and extended its territories to places where other cultures different from the Roman lived, they began to observe the different foods they ate, the different clothing the dressed in and all the different things these cultures had and began to get interested in attaining them.

As this happened, people from these cultures who had not yet been conquered noticed this and began to make a business put of it; they became merchants, and thus mercantilism was born: the roots of what was to become capitalism. Rome began trading with other empires such as the Arabic, the Byzantine, The Egyptian, and the Persian among others. Mercantilism was basically "the distribution of goods in order to realize a profit"2 and what it did was to connect the different cultures and made them have the same products; without wanting to, it was globalizing the world although to a much smaller scale. The practice was lost in the middle ages, when the Barbarian, Vikings and other forces form northern Europe destroyed the Roman Empire in 476 A.D. However the practice was learned again by the Europeans in the 12th century from their Islamic neighbors. This time around mercantilism began to grow unstoppably and turned into capitalism: an economic system based on "the large-scale realization of a profit by acquiring goods for lower prices than one sells them". 3.

Moreover, Hernando De Soto in his book The Mystery of Capital says: "Capitalism stands alone as the only feasible way to rationally organize a modern economy"4 Consequently we can see that the basis for globalization is indeed capitalism because with out it, countries would not have a notable live interaction with one another and nothing could link them to a global level. Today the essence of capitalism has been lost and for some reason this system has only been successful in the United States and some countries of Europe. Many ask themselves why this is so, and some might have an idea to explain the occurrence, but the truth is that in spite of the reasons why capitalism has failed in most countries, the real problem eradicates in the fact that these countries have not be successful in talking to those countries that have managed to use capitalism appropriately. They are to busy in finding what might have caused the problem instead of simply finding help from others, like the west (US). Hernando De Soto argues that Third World and former communist countries (countries where capitalism has not succeeded) simply copy the west and don't go beyond; he says that: "Since the nineteenth century, nations have been copying the laws of the West to give their citizens the institutional framework to produce wealth. They continue to copy such laws today, and obviously it doesn't work.

Most citizens still cannot use the law to convert their savings into capital". 5 This is because "It is not uncommon for us to know how to use things without understanding why they work". 6; the whole world has copied the west's capitalism but does not understand why it works and thus has failed to use is appropriately. The mystery relies in capital. If countries cannot make capital then they have no budget to invest in trade and being that the basis for globalization is the "increasing interaction, or integration, of national economic systems through the growth in international trade, investment and capital flows". 7 or most likely known as trade, then globalization will never become a reality.

This means that as long as the Third World countries learn to make capital, they would never de able to correspond with the west knowing of course that "globalization is a two way street"8 What explains that only the West has been able to create capital is that they have managed to create a representational process, where "every parcel of land, every building, every piece of equipment, or store of inventories is represented in a property document that is the visible sign of a vast hidden process that connects all these assets to the rest of the economy". 9 Third World country people however, "do have things, but they lack the process to represent their property and create capital. They have houses but not titles; crops but not deeds; businesses but not statutes of incorporation". 10 this explains the reason why even though they copy every single invention from the West; from fast food to advanced computers, when lacking this representational process will never be able to produce a significant capital. This is a mystery for all nations except for the West, and unless that all these nations sit and dialogue with the West about the cause of globalization then globalization will never flourish. This certainly understanding that in a dialogue "there is no attempt to gain points, or to make your particular view prevail.

Rather whenever any mistake is discovered on the part of any body, everybody gains. It's a situation called win-win"11 When this happens and all countries are able to exchange ideas with one another and especially with the West they would be able to know the "mystery of capital"12 will be able to have an efficient capitalism system and will be able to participate in the process of globalization. Nonetheless if humans were to begin dialoguing and understanding each other this could also mean a threat to globalization. In the same way that many people support globalization there is also a significant number of people that believe that globalization will have nothing but terrible repercussions. The great majority if not all of these people are most often know as environmentalist or simply people that care for the environment. They are concerned about the destruction of forest, the pollution of the air, the contamination of lakes, rivers and oceans, and the menacing loss of animal species among other ecological problems.

They believe that "Our commercial obsessions have disturbed the biosystems of this continent in a depth never known previously in previously in the historical course of human affairs"13 as the writer Thomas Berry wrote in his book The Great Work. This suggests that trade has a great impact on the environment. Berry argues that the modern man's drive and ambition is each time destroying the ecosystem. He says that: "Throughout the twentieth century the situation has worsened decade by decade with relentless commitment to making profit by ruining the planet for the uncertain benefit of the human". 14 This reveals that globalization has inherently been present in the twentieth century, that no has been able to stop it and thus it is creating environmental disasters. Globalization certainly is a movement that stimulates not only trade but the growth of industry as well, and since it would serve for nothing to refute that factories do not pollute and affect the ecosystem, it would leave globalization as indirectly responsible for these problems, and this is the reason why environmentalist fight against globalization.

Nevertheless people have failed to communicate and begin to work together as a team, and as a result they are not in shape for the fight. Their main goal is to end with globalization, but using force against the power of globalization and the organizations that support it such as the WTO, and the IMF might not be the ideal why to fight. This is when the power of dialogue must come into action. The author Thomas Berry in his book The Great Work talks precisely about this problem and proposes a way to stop globalization based on dialogue rather than violence. He believes that the only way of making humankind stop with all this madness is for people to begin communicating, uniting and working for what he calls "the Great Work"15 or as he quotes: "overarching movements that give shape and meaning to life by relating the human venture to the larger destinies of the universe". 16 The Great Work that he proposes is "the task of moving modern industrial civilization from its present devastating influence on Earth to a more benign mode of presence"17 which naturally means the abolition of globalization from the entire world.

Yet if everybody doesn't contribute to the Great Work then it will not become a reality. As he says: "We might observe here that the Great Work of a people is the work of all the people. No one is exempt. Each pf us has our individual life pattern and responsibilities. Yet beyond these concerns each person in and through their personal work assist the Great Work". 18, dialogue is the basis for the Great Work to succeed and hence for globalization to come to its end.

It is clear that communication is the thin line between globalization's triumph and its breakdown. When people learn to communicate, their spirit and determination grows and gets stronger as David Bohm comments: "if people were to think together in a coherent way, it would have tremendous power"19 When people find the way to work together they would be able to create a homogeneous booming capital system in the entire planet and at the same time create a Great Work whose target is no other than the movement disturbing the environment. And lastly, when people understand the way to dialogue with one another then it would be effortless both, to make globalization more than just a dream and at the same time make the dream vanish for ever.

Bibliography

o Berry, Thomas. The Great Work. Bell Tower; 1st edition (November 14, 2000) o Bohm, David.
On Dialogue. Routledge; 1 edition (December 1996) o De Soto, Hernando.
The Mystery of Capital. Basic Books; 1st edition (July 8, 2003) o Hooker, Richard.
Capitalism" Updated 7-14-1999 web o "What is globalisation?" Updated 2002 web.