New York Times, David Brooks, 8 April 2022: Globalization Is Over. The Global Culture Wars Have Begun.
I’m from a fortunate generation. I can remember a time — about a quarter-century ago — when the world seemed to be coming together. The great Cold War contest between communism and capitalism appeared to be over. Democracy was still spreading. Nations were becoming more economically interdependent. The internet seemed ready to foster worldwide communications. It seemed as if there would be a global convergence around a set of universal values — freedom, equality, personal dignity, pluralism, human rights.
We called this process of convergence globalization. It was, first of all, an economic and a technological process — about growing trade and investment between nations and the spread of technologies that put, say, Wikipedia instantly at our fingertips. But globalization was also a political, social and moral process.
It’s taken me a while to realize this. It goes back to the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City with its visions of a future technological paradise. I grew up with Trek, and literary science fiction, which with some exceptions had optimistic takes on the future: a future of progress, of overcoming technological problems and solving moral issues, overcoming racism, moving past superstition and religion, toward an enlightened, egalitarian future. I think I’ve assumed that kind of future, for decades, long past the time the evidence (for the current short term, at least), has indicated otherwise.
What is wokeness, like political correctness, other than respect for others? Being sympathetic to others, trying to understand their situations and points of view? Why is that so difficult for so many people, who not only reject it but demonize it? Because it threatens their tribal identity?
Alas, the very deep-rooted instincts built into us by evolution for survival do indeed entail suspicion of others, of the ‘other’. It’s difficult to discuss this without being accused of this or that, but let me just say — it’s not true that racism has to be *taught*. It’s instinctive, to a degree, just as many other personality traits are instinctive, to a degree, and the way in which these instincts play out in the growth of a child depend on parental influence and social circumstances. Those who are most upset by the idea (which presumes the long-discredited “blank slate” model of the human mind) exhibit the very principle. If it’s ever to be overcome, it will be through the gradual intermixing and blending of all kinds of groups of humans from around the globe. Which will happen. The frightened conservatives cannot stop it. Unless they manage to blow up the world.
I don’t keep up with all the latest Star Trek series (or movies), but apparently there is now some backlash against the latest Trek series — Star Trek: Discovery I think it is, though again, I haven’t seen it — as being overly “woke,” with commentators pointing out that Trek has been “woke” ever since the beginning!
And yes, I realize, by current standards, it was. I absorbed its ethos, and that of science fiction’s, back in my mid-teens. They were certainly better than the tribal fantasies of religion. I thought Trek was an omen of the future, back there in 1966, even of the near future, but actually, I now realize, it was an outlier. An ideal. A fiction. A fantasy. For now.
