Parallel to the events of the Russian war on Ukraine, critical cultural voices have emerged in America and Europe that are rethinking the intellectual theses that were prevalent in the past few decades, and criticism and even mockery of the idea of ​​"the end of history" has become a prevalent opinion of commentators and cultural critics.

The American newspaper "The New York Times" published a lengthy article by Canadian-born journalist and opinion writer David Brooks in which he sees the end of globalization and the start of global culture wars, and in which he presents the difficulties facing the values ​​of democracy and liberalism, yet confirms the superiority of these values ​​to everything else.

The writer says he belongs to a lucky generation, in which the world seemed to come together a quarter of a century ago as the great conflict of the Cold War between communism and capitalism ended, democracy was still spreading, countries became more economically interconnected and the Internet was ready to enhance communications, and it seemed as if there was a convergence global around a set of universal values;

Freedom, equality, personal dignity, pluralism and human rights.

This process of convergence was called globalization.

It was first an economic and technological process related to the development of trade and investment between nations and the diffusion of technologies, but globalization was also a political, social and ethical process.

globalization story

In the 1990s, British sociologist Anthony Giddens argued that globalization was "a shift in the conditions of our very lives, it is the way we live now", it involved the "intensification of social relations around the world", and was about the integration of worldviews, products, ideas and culture.

This fit with the academic theory that was about modernization, and the idea was that as countries developed they would become more like the West, that is, those who initiated modernization.

In the broader dialogue, it was sometimes assumed that countries around the world would admire the success of Western democracies and seek to imitate them, and it was sometimes assumed that with "modernization" people would become more bourgeois, consumerist, and peaceful just like the rest of us.

It was also assumed that as societies modernized they would become more secular, just as in Europe and parts of the United States, they would be motivated more by the desire to make money than by conquering others, they would be motivated more by the desire to settle in suburban homes than fanatical ideologies or the aspiration for domination and conquest Which wiped out humanity centuries of war, according to the writer.


deteriorating visions of globalization

This was an optimistic view of how history would evolve, a vision of progress and convergence.

Unfortunately, this vision does not describe the world in which we live today;

The world is no longer converging, the process of globalization has slowed down, and in some cases even moved backwards.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine highlights these trends, and while Ukraine's war against Russian aggression is a source of inspiration in the West, much of the world remains unaffected and even sympathetic to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The British Economist magazine reported that between 2008 and 2019, world trade fell in relation to global GDP by about 5%.

There were a slew of new tariffs and other barriers to trade, migration flows slowed, and global flows of long-term investment halved between 2016 and 2019.

The reasons for this decline are broad and deep, and the 2008 financial crisis delegitimized global capitalism for many people.

China apparently demonstrated that mercantilism could be an effective economic strategy, and thus all kinds of anti-globalization movements arose;

Such as the pro-Brexit movements, xenophobic nationalists, Trumpian populists, and the anti-globalization left.

Simultaneously, global conflict increased. Trade, travel, and even communication across political blocs became more difficult morally, politically, and economically. Hundreds of companies withdrew from Russia;

As the West is partly separated from Putin's war machine, many Western consumers are unwilling to trade with China over accusations of forced labor and genocide, and many Western CEOs are rethinking their operations in China as the system becomes more anti-Western and supply chains are threatened by political uncertainty. .

In 2014, the US banned Chinese technology company Huawei from bidding on government contracts, and US President Joe Biden strengthened the "buy American" rule.

It seems that the global economy is gradually beginning to separate into a western region and a Chinese region, and foreign direct investment flows between China and America were about $30 billion annually 5 years ago, and now it has decreased to only 5 billion, according to the writer.

Invasion of Ukraine buries prevailing assumptions

The author quotes an article in Bloomberg that states, “Geopolitics is moving definitively against globalization, towards a world dominated by two or three major trading blocs. This broader context—particularly the invasion of Ukraine—buries most of the basic assumptions that have focused on business thinking around the world on over the past 40 years."

Certainly, globalization will continue with the flow of trade, but globalization as the driving logic of world affairs seems to have ended;

Economic rivalries have now merged with political, moral, and other rivalries into a single global competition for hegemony, and globalization has been replaced by something much like a global culture war.

Looking back, perhaps we focus too much on the power of material forces like the economy and technology to drive human events and bring us all together. This isn't the first time this has happened;

In the early twentieth century, the British writer and politician Norman Engel wrote a notorious book called The Great Delusion, arguing that the industrial nations of his day were too economically interdependent to go to war with each other, and instead two world wars erupted.

Motives of human behavior

The truth is that human behavior is often driven by forces much deeper than the pursuit of economic and political self-interest, at least as Western rationalists usually understand these things.

It is these deeper impulses that are driving events today, and they direct history in highly unexpected directions.

First

, human beings are strongly motivated by what are known as desires and needs, which must be seen, respected, and appreciated.

If you give people the impression that they are invisible, disrespected, and underappreciated, they will become angry, resentful, and vengeful, and will view belittling as unfair and respond with indignation.

Global politics over the past few decades has operated as a huge machine of social inequality.

In country after country groups of highly educated urban elites have emerged to control the media, universities, culture and political power more often, and large groups of people have emerged feeling despised and ignored.

In country after country, populist leaders have grown up to exploit these resentments: Donald Trump in the United States, Narendra Modi in India, and Marine Le Pen in France.

Despots arm the people's resentment

Meanwhile, authoritarians such as Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping practice this policy of resentment on a global scale. They treat the collective West as global elites and declare their open rebellion against it. Putin tells stories of humiliation, what the West supposedly did to Russia in the 1990s, and promises to return To Russian exceptionalism and Russian glory, and Russia will regain its heroic role in world history.”

China's leaders speak of the "century of humiliation." They complain about the way arrogant Westerners try to impose their values ​​on everyone, and although China may eventually become the world's largest economy, Xi still talks about China as a developing country.

Secondly

, most people have a strong allegiance to their place and their nation, but over the past few decades many people have felt that their places have been neglected and their national honor threatened.

At the height of globalization, multilateral organizations and global corporations seemed to outdo nation-states.

In country after country strong nationalist movements have emerged that insist on national sovereignty and restore national pride, criticize globalization and global convergence, and many proponents of globalization have underestimated the power of nationalism to lead history.

Third

, people are motivated by moral longing through their attachment to their own cultural values, and their desire to vigorously defend their values ​​when they appear to be under attack.

And over the past few decades, globalization has seemed to many people exactly this kind of abuse.

After the Cold War, "Western values ​​have taken over the world through our films, music, political conversations, and social media. One of the theories of globalization has been that global culture will converge primarily around these liberal values."

extremism of western values

The problem is that Western values ​​are not world values, and in the West are completely extreme cultural values.

In his book The World's Weirdest People, Canadian economist and psychologist Joseph Heinrich compiled hundreds of pages of data to show just how strange educated, industrialized, wealthy, democratic Western values ​​can be.

Heinrich wrote, "We Westerners are highly individualistic, self-obsessed, control-oriented, non-committal, and analytical. We focus on ourselves—our traits, achievements, and aspirations—and on our relationships and social roles."

Many people around the world look at our ideas about gender roles and find them strange or hateful, they find our strong defense of gender roles, and gay rights troubling. The idea that it is up to each person to choose their identity and values ​​seems absurd to many, the idea that the purpose of education is Inculcating critical thinking skills so that students can free themselves from the ideas they received from their parents and their communities seems stupid to many.”

And with 44% of American high school students expressing persistent feelings of sadness or despair, our culture isn't exactly the best expression of Western values ​​right now, says the author.

Despite the assumptions of globalization, global culture does not appear to be convergent and in some cases disparate.

Economists Fernando Ferreira and Joel Waldvogel studied popular music charts in 22 countries between 1960 and 2007 and found that people are biased towards their country's music, and that this bias has increased since the late 1990s.

People do not want to integrate into a homogeneous global culture, they want to preserve their species.