The NY Times (registration required - sorry) has this interesting piece entitled "No Politics are Local" that examines the increasing trend toward globalizing moral issues. Basically, as the world becomes a "global village" it becomes clearer and clearer that the new neighbors just ain't like us, and we don't like it. So citizens in the Midwest become concerned when a San Francisco mayor decides to issue gay marriage licenses, etc. Key quotes:



"Ever since the media theorist Marshall McLuhan announced that electronic interdependence was turning the world into a ''global village,'' we have put the stress on the adjective ''global.'' The wired world would bring a bigger choice of cuisines, we thought, but no increase in aggravation. Instead, the key term turns out to be the noun ''village.'' And villagers are notoriously bad at tolerating differences that bug them. . . We (stupidly) believed that McLuhan's global village would be a friction-free Brotherhood of Man. But McLuhan never said that. In his last television interview, in 1977, his interviewer began, 'I had some idea that as we got global and tribal we were going to try to --' McLuhan interrupted. 'The closer you get together, the more you like each other?' he said. 'There's no evidence of that in any situation that we've ever heard of. When people get close together, they get more and more savage, impatient with each other.'"



My own examples: Deaniacs from across the nation converging on Iowa to influence our caucuses. American politicians decrying Spanish election results as pandering to terrorist bombings. To take it bigger: Wealthy nations trying to impose their views of pollutants and child labor upon a developing third world that finds itself unable to compete commercially without taking the ecologically and humanely harmful shortcuts that got the wealthy nations where they were in the first place.



********WIERD PHILOSOPHICAL RAMBLING ALERT***************



This puts things into an interesting perspective I'll have to mull over for a while. The same globalization that enables me to make maki rolls for the last cast party probably contributes to the perception many of us have that this country has never been so deeply divided politically. Conservatives and liberals appear to have utterly different views of reality. Is this because we are able to reach beyond local borders via weblogs and email and such to communicate directly with those who agree with us, instead of having to figure out a way to get along with "that nut next door" who doesn't?



I sat on the phone with my best friend Ellen, who canceled my vote in 2000 - or did I cancel hers? - and watched the elections. We were fascinated as the results wavered into the night and debated the whether there could be legal ramifications to the release of poll data at a point that could effect states that hadn't closed the booths. The legal debate went on over the next few weeks as we discussed the court cases and appeals on both sides. We're both lawyers, both the same age, and grew up in the same town, but we disagree on numerous issues. It's cool we can 'debate, not hate,' to sound like a really stupid bumper sticker.



The NY Times had a piece recently about the fact that 2 million people per year die of malaria in underdeveloped countries that are economically blackmailed into banning DDT. It's a pay-only link now, but the issue is also debated here, here and here. I think we can all understand that's an appalling number, and yet none of us wants to endanger the ecosystem. But can we negotiate a way to both save the people and save the birds, or will absolutist views simply battle to a stalemate?



I make it a point to try to sit down and have philosophical and political discussions with friends who vehemently disagree with my perpectives. We talk, and the respect we show for each other's viewpoints enables us to admit the weaknesses in our respective reasoning, and the good points made on both sides of the issue. At that "nursing-your-last-beer-for-an-hour-and-a-half" time of the morning people open up, drop the defenses, and we discover - wonder of wonders - common ground. We may appear radically divided, but I have confidence that we will get this all sorted out in time. . . . . .



If those insane radical nutjobs don't send the world to h*ll in a handbasket first.



:-)