The World at (not so) Large...

An increasingly popular term doing the rounds doing is describing the world as the “global village”. We can now not only fly around the world in around a day, give or take a few hours – less if the Concorde was still operating. It’s possible to know what is happening n the opposite side of the world in real-time, global migration there are a decreasing number of mono-cultural nations around the world and political boundaries are nothing more little hurdles easily traversed by the giants of the political and economic sectors. Even that last comment I made is a bit of a misnomer, because when one considers the evident relationship between global political and economic powers we have to ask where one draws a line between economic and political matters.

While I am neither an expert nor even a formal student of the political and/or economic sciences but observation and various catalytic experiences have led me to ask some questions about the world we live in today. One article I recently came across rang true for me and was one of the recent catalysts encouraging this train of thought. The article, called “The Metamorphoses of Colonialism” by Jeremy Seabrook (see http://www.usp.nus.edu.sg/post/poldiscourse/seabrook1.html) traces the history of colonialism around the world and then discusses the subtle and more developed form that it has taken in the present-day, namely globalisation. This is at times a misunderstood term and perhaps one of those terms where some attempt to shape the meaning to suit their purposes (this would not be the first time). The Collins dictionary suggests that it is “process enabling financial and investment markets to operate internationally, largely as a result of deregulation and improved communications”. Many say that this has benefited many because of the ability to trade internationally.

Another way of seeing it though is by taking into account who are the ones controls those markets and communication channels or systems – international economic markets are centred around London and New York, with major communication networks owned by and controlled in the UK and USA. With this kind of control those we have seen the gap between the

So what is the effect of this? This global village has become more and more like a feudal village where the many are disenfranchised in order to serve the wants of the few. To put it in tangible terms, “the income ratio of the one-fifth of the world’s population in the wealthiest countries to the one-fifth in the poorest countries went from 30 to 1 in 1960 to 74 to 1 in 1995”.