The End Of Nations?

The age of nations is coming to an end. As evidence we might take note than when Chinese president Hu came to the U.S, his first stop was not with president Bush, but with Bill Gates.
Each passing day multi-national corporation gain more power in the world, and increasingly national governments are falling into second place, with religious institutions assuming a distant third.

As anthropologist Joseph Campbell pointed out many years ago, when we look at the history of city architecture we can see the history power. In early cities the religious temples were the tallest buildings in every city, then in later times the government buildings were the tallest, now it is the financial institutions that have the tallest buildings in all major cities.

This trend has been apparent to anyone who was looking for the last 50 years, and the struggle for power between governments and corporations dates back as far as the founding of the United States, whose first settlers were in fact a corporation.

Now days, thanks to new technologies that make globalization possible, the national governments and their associated borders are becoming even more meaningless. And this will only accelerate in the coming years.

I do not mean to suggest that government will cease to exist, only that their power and important will be increasingly diminished.

China itself is attempting to reap the benefits of globalization while still maintaining its totalitarian control. But it’s a fool’s quest. They can use torture, they can jail those (with the help of Google and Yahoo) who search words such as Tiananmen Square or Fulan Gong, but the cat is out of the bag. The free flow of information and ideas cannot be stopped unless they close themselves off like North Korea, and that would bring a sudden halt to their booming economic growth.

I believe the United States has the most to lose from Globalization, because we are the ones who benefit most from having the good future to be born into this nation. As the playing field levels, and we must all compete for jobs with billions of Chinese and Indians, the standard of living for most U.S. citizens will likely deteriorate. It appears inevitable. The corporations benefit form access to cheap labor, so don’t expect globalization to stop.

The question then arises; why to we cling to our National identity as Americans? Would I really rather see someone on Ohio or Oklahoma have a job instead of an Indian peasant who might live in extreme poverty? They are all humans? For the believers in religious faiths they are all God’s children. Perhaps the time has come for American to sacrifice for greater good of humanity?