Our Coming New World:
The Case for Preservation

April 14, 2006

An article by John Gray in the most recent New York Review of Books examines some recent books on the topic of globalization. It seems to me incontrovertible that the coming century will pose huge problems for the way of life Americans think of as their birthright. On the one hand there are the accumulating human-caused changes to the environment, and on the other a continuing surge in human population. By the time we are done with these twin issues, it is likely that our world will be largely unrecognizable to someone who had lived a mere two centuries earlier.

An issue that Gray takes up in his article is the possible outcome of globalization. I think in the minds of many Americans, when it is not perceived as a direct threat, globalization is understood as the process of getting every country up to our industrial/technological speed. For the optimists, this means bigger markets for our goods.. and more peaceful mixing of human cultures. This version of "convergence" is questioned by Gray:

The conjunction of intensifying scarcity in energy supplies with accelerating climate change is the other face of globalization. It poses a large question mark over Cohen's belief that the main problem with globalization is that it is incomplete, for it suggests that completing it may not be feasible. The current phase is only the extension to the wider world of the industrial revolution that began in England a couple of centuries ago, but already it is destabilizing the environmental systems on which all industrial societies depend. Extending the energy-intensive lifestyle of the rich world to the rest of humankind would have an even more destabilizing impact.

The point here is that the hope that all human beings could live at our current American level of consumption is impossible on its face. Eight billion people (the global population we are looking at in the next century) living like an average American would devastate the planet. That is, if the resources were there to allow this as a possibility. The recent up tick in oil consumption from China and India has already sent oil prices higher.. and one can imagine what would happen if still more parts of the world came "online" with respect to energy demands.

Thinking in terms of America and its future.. what are the choices? There would seem to be two. First would be to accept the fact of a world badly divided between those at the top of the pyramid and those at the bottom. We could create a club of nations and decree that these countries alone have access to the majority of the world's resources.. and perhaps that club already exists in the form of the G-8. The other would be to work to bring a level of sustainability to the American (and more generally Western) lifestyle. Realistically, that must mean a fall in consumption.. Americans would start to live a little more like Indians.

Both options have risks. Why would a surging nation accept second or third rank in the world's tier system? Someone will crash that party. And as to the option of living with less consumption.. I sometimes think that Americans would rather take the world to hell than see our power (vastly inflated since World War II) wane. Of course, we would take the world to hell insisting it is for the world's own good.. and in defense of certain hallowed words.

Someone might admit the political challenges related to globalization, but still miss the ways that these issues are in the process of changing everything about our world. Mecca and the hajj is a simple example. Early in the 20th century the number of pilgrims numbered in the tens of thousands.. in 1931 numbering only 40,000. The number of security guards employed by the Saudis at the time of the hajj was greater than the total number of pilgrims just 70 years ago. The number of pilgrims for the hajj now gets to about 2 million. In response to this immense crowd aspects of the hajj that had been relatively stable for centuries have been transformed in the past generation, beginning with the construction of an enlarged Mosque surrounding the Ka'bah. I found the following description of the way even Islamic rituals are changing as a result of the logistical challenges that arise when dealing with this many people:

Hajj managers encourage pilgrims to stick to the basic rites and dispense with others that are only customary or that are potentially life threatening. Each year, they urge pilgrims making the tawaf to be content with beckoning to the Black Stone from a distance instead of pushing through the crowd to kiss or touch it. Nowadays, most people make their animal sacrifices by proxy rather than in person… [Guests of God: Pilgrimage and Politics in the Islamic World (Oxford UP, 2004), by Robert Bianchi, pg. 12]

So it is not simply a matter of changing a few buildings. And it goes without saying that Islam is not the only religion facing these kinds of modern transformations.

I don't think one has to be too imaginative to recognize that a time is coming when the world of the past.. the world which formed human beings for several thousand years.. will seem strange, even unrecognizable. The very seasons may be different, the coastlines almost certainly, and the pace of human concrete-construction may well leave only islands of preserved historical and natural sites.. from which the visitor is challenged to mentally-reconstruct a life that proceeded on totally different assumptions. But perhaps not many visitors will want to engage in that effort.

Preservation will be a central issue for this time of change. It is a word that will get repeated elaboration on this website.. preservation of places, cultures, points of view.. cultural products.. ways of traveling and styles of living..