Roughly 2300 years ago, Alexander the Great traveled outside of his world, and found that there were actually other sophisticated places besides Macedonia. He found powerful kingdoms in Egypt, Persia and India, sharing (and imposing) Greek culture with those he encountered, and bringing home the innovative items and ideas he found in each region. The Hellenistic Era, as it is now known, was a result of this cultural blending, and was the largest example of globalization in history to that date. Move ahead to the Roman Empire. The famous Silk Road between China and the West hosted a new era of “world” trade, with its own set of pros and cons. Fast Forward to Christopher Columbus: two worlds collide, ringing in hundreds of years of conquest, genocide, cultural blending, cultural extinction, imperial wars and a flourishing of ideas about how to address this “new era” of globalization. Today we find ourselves having the same debate.
Revolutions in technology determine winners and losers, causing revolutions in thought about what to do about it. Imperialism, mercantilism, capitalism, socialism, communism, militarism, pacifism, nationalism, globalism.
But what also repeats itself is a new tide of progress, prosperity and peace. A new Golden Age somewhere emerges and there is relative peace. Pax Romana, Pax Mongolica, Pax Americana. Might we finally achieve Pax Globica? The pendulum swings between peace and revolution. Looking backward, the writing’s on the wall. We are more interconnected than we’ve ever been, and our weapons of mass destruction are just that – weapons of mass destruction. Einstein once commented that we may not even know yet how World War III would be fought, but World War IV would be fought with sticks and stones. The question is, will we essentially Ctrl-Alt-Delete the world as we know it and start over? Or might we be the first generation to find a way toward peace before another great war, because the cost is too great? The history has yet to be written.