INCITEMENT FOR CHANGE

Civilization is one of those big, stuffy words that may intrigue philosophers and historians but put most people to sleep. Unless it is used in a sentence like " our civilization is threatened" at which point large numbers of people prepare to load their AK-47.

Today many people do, in fact believe that their civilization is threatened, and that the United States is doing the threatening. IT IS.

But not in the way most of us think.

Around the world, critics of the United States point to its military and its economy as the main source of its predominance, maybe it is in part, however knowledge in the broadest sense and new technologies based on it, are the big threat that America constitute over the world.

The most extraordinary engine of power change in modern history is the accumulated bases of knowledge and the ensuing technologies,PCs,programing,Internet,etc..etc...

America is by far the leader in the world of export and distribution of this scientific knowledge and of popular culture,including, fashion,music,TV,programing,books,movies and computer games.In the meantime,however,the influence of all this is so powerful that other societies fear for the survival of their own cultures.

Many societies, are so different today from the present American youth and adult psyches and way of life. One example I'm going to site is this recorded conversation in a West African society.(And it could as well be in so many parts of the world.) So I ask why there seem to be no girls older than thirteen or fourteen appearing in public life or in the streets. "That's when their parents marry them off and they spend most of their time inside the house." I ask whether the girls choose whom they marry. "Of course not" the answer comes,"Marriage is too important for the girl or boy to make the choice; our parents always decide."

This conversation shows us why millions of parents around the world who see their cultures under attack. The United States, they feel, is seducing their kids.

While Hollywood sends its messages that freedom means unrestrained hedonism, Wall Street was sending a parallel message saying that unrestrained business and trade offer the best path to wealth. Washington, echoing this theme, chanted the mantra that unrestrained free trade benefits everyone. This was combined with a magic formula: Liberalization + globalization = democracy.

For several decades America thus told the world, and itself, that Laissez-faire(especially privatization and deregulation) would deliver democracy and prosperity, as though any one-size-fits-all formula would work everywhere overriding all differences in religion, culture, history, and levels of economic and institutional developments.

But America, arrogant though as it often seems, is itself shaken and uncertain as it experiments with novel ideas, social structures and values. In fact, the very variety that comes with knowledge-based developments ensures that other countries will adopt quiet different economic,social and political pathways for the future. They will not look like America. But ,then, neither will tomorrows America.

The real message that America sends,more important than its ideological, commercial or military rhetoric is an incitement for change. It is the dominant message now being delivered to billions of people in rigid societies around the world: Change is possible, and not just in some blue-sky future, but soon, in your own life time or that of your child. It doesn't specify whether change will be good or bad. That will be interpreted differently and fought over.

If and when the emergent generation world wide is inspired by the incitement for change,the changes to come will not necessarily please America and Americans. In the Middle-East,it could take the form of popular elected theocratic-fascist regimes duly voted into power, Hammas is one example,and the Iraqi situation as well, in Africa and Latin America, it might take completely different forms.

Still this is the message emanating from the United States. And is what, at the deepest level,disturbs the dreams, and triggers the nightmares, of billions of human-beings. The United States cannot help but transmit that message because it itself exemplifies changes.

That is why even present and former allies are increasingly troubled by America's role in the world. Even as they, too, undergo significant transformation, the recent enlargement of the European Union and the rejection by some countries of its proposed constitution, indicates that they are themselves slower and less revolutionary. As many struggle to build their own future, they see the United States pulling away, speeding into the unknown and pulling other cultures and countries in its uncertain and turbulent wake.

But if everything is in fact temporary, so is American power.


As usual many thanks for the inspiration brought by the Tofflers,helping me to compile these few words and ideas, salamat.