The Development of Globalism Brings With It Global Interconnection
On the face of it, the 20th century seems like the beginning of a new stage in the evolution of desires. Every single realm of human engagement was revolutionized (and often re- or counter revolutionized) during this century. Indeed, the pace of change during this century has so increased, life has begun to change at an exponential pace.
But even more astonishing than the pace of progress was the pace of globalization. The process of becoming a single economic system that began with the Age of Discovery and colonialism culminated in the 20th century. At the century’s end, virtually no country remained completely self-sufficient.
In the year 1900, the world population was approximately 1.6 billion. By the end of the century, it was in excess of six billion. In 1900, the average top speed of a car was seven mph. A hundred years later, even typical family cars could reach 130 mph. Moreover, the primary means of transport had changed from carriages, bicycles, and walking to driving. By the turn of the 20th century, the majority of walking was done on treadmills at home, in parks, or in fitness gyms, and the same could be said for cycling.
For overseas journeys, jetliners have completely replaced passenger ships, and travel time between continents had dropped from several weeks to several hours (albeit for shipment of goods, the primary means of transport is still cargo ships rather than planes). And (quite literally) above all, to help ships and cars navigate, to alert them of bad weather, and to survey enemy territory, we have positioned satellites in space.
With respect to technology, life has changed not only in how fast and how comfortably we travel, but also in the instruments we use in our daily lives. Such devices as telephones (and later cellular phones), light bulbs, radios, televisions, and computers were either unheard oforwerejust making their debut inthe early 1900s. At home, life has never been easier. Washing machines, clothes dryers, refrigerators, freezers, vacuum cleaners, electric stoves, and (since the 1970s) microwave ovens, all have become household appliances.
Alas, the technological advances of the 20th century were (and still are) used detrimentally with devastating results: war, occupation, oppression, and tyranny became exponentially more effective and destructive, resulting in two world wars and several genocides within the time frame of a single century.
The two world wars changed the world map dramatically and ended the age of colonialism (with some exceptions such as India, which gained independence from England in 1947, or Algeria and other nations under french rule, which gained their own in the 1950s and 1960s). This allowed numerous new countries to experience independence for the first time, though the gap in wages, infrastructure, and standard of living between the powerful post-empires and the newly liberated countries not only remained, but even widened.
In the 20th century, science had drastically changed the way we view the world. Einstein’s Special and General Theory of Relativity, followed by the advent of quantum mechanics, have revolutionized the way scientists perceive the world, paving the way for numerous innovations from lasers to microprocessors and everything derived from them. Genetics was significantly developed, the structure of DNA was determined, and by the turn of the century, the first mammal, Dolly, the sheep, was cloned.
In astronomy, the Big Bang theory was proposed and the age of the universe was determined at roughly 14 billion years. Also, our observation capabilities have been dramatically improved with the 1990 launch of the Hubble Space Telescope.
All these and many more 20th century innovations and shifts made the past century a landmark of unique position in history.
The 20th Century: Two World War’s Signal Humanity’s Global Interdependence
On at least three accounts, the world witnessed the effect of the invisible links that tie us into a single system. In the two World Wars, virtually entire continents engaged in active fighting. The Great Depression sent multiple financial tsunami waves across the globe, destroying the lives and incomes of millions. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “Since the U.S. was the major creditor and financier of postwar [WWI] Europe, the U.S. financial breakdown precipitated economic failures around the world… Isolationism spread as nations sought to protect domestic production by imposing tariffs and quotas, ultimately reducing the value of international trade by more than half by 1932.”
Yet, despite the evidence, humanity did not recognize that it was a closed, interdependent system. Each time adversities unfolded, countries turned to protectionism and isolation by raising tariffs, employing punitive measures against the apparent wrongdoers, and ignoring or overlooking the fact that adversities are never created or executed by a single culprit. Rather, they have always been the culmination of a prolonged process that involved many partakers.
Therefore, when you realize how deeply we are all connected, that at the deepest level, we are actually a single entity, it becomes very hard to point a blaming finger at any one perpetrator. At that point, you begin to examine issues and situations from a broader perspective, understanding that what each of us does affects every person in the world. But for this, one must be aware that all people form a single soul (desire to receive), whose self-centered modus operandi blinds its parts to the truth of their interconnectedness and interdependence.
For as long as humanity was evolving under the influence of desires Zero through Two, our obliviousness to our interconnectedness was tolerable. In Stage Zero, there was basically no discernible desire to receive; man was a part of Nature. In Stage one, during Abraham’s time, egoism appeared for the first time. Yet, at that point, humanity was in its infancy and there was no danger of us causing irreversible harm to ourselves or to the environment. In Stage Two, there was evidently more egoism but it, too, was managed, primarily by religion.
In Stage Three, the desire to receive became active. As a result, since the debut of Stage Three in the late Middle Ages, humanity has launched a frenzy of accelerating development and growth which have now reached an uncontrollable rate. As we will see below, this rate of growth has long been recognized by science, as well as by Kabbalah.
Did You Know Human Desires Double Every Time You Satisfy Them?
In On the Origin of the Species, Darwin discusses exponential growth and quotes Swedish botanist, Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778), who also observed this pattern: “There is no exception to the rule that every organic being increases at so high a rate, that if not destroyed, the earth would soon be covered by the progeny of a single pair. Even slow-breeding man has doubled in twenty-five years, and at this rate, in a few thousand years, there would literally not be standing room for his progeny. Linnaeus has calculated that if an annual plant produced only two seeds— and there is no plant so unproductive as this—and their seedlings next year produced two, and so on, then in twenty years there would be a million plants” (On the Origin of the Species, The Struggle for Existence, pp 117-119).
When desires are small, such as in plants, animals, or even in the early stages of the evolution of desires in humans, Nature finds ways to balance the exponential growth rate by presenting equally powerful elements such as competing plants and animals that form a delicate balance. This is why Darwin writes in the above quote, “Every organic being increases at so high a rate, that if not destroyed, the earth would soon be covered…”
Put differently, Nature’s own mechanisms guarantee that excess reproduction of plants and animals would be restrained.
But when desires grow exponentially in a dominant species, and especially when they manifest a self-centered trend such as begun to manifest in Stage Three, the environmental balance is breached and a serious problem arises.
As we said above, Kabbalists have long known about the exponential pattern of growth in human nature. They described it in a frequently cited quote from the 1,500-year-old text, Midrash Rabbah: “If one has 100, he wishes to make them 200, and if he has 200, he wishes to make them 400.”
Yet, there is a not-so-subtle difference between the exponential doubling time in an ordinary exponential formula and the Kabbalistic doubling time. In a traditional exponential formula, the doubling time is fixed. When the annual growth of a country’s GDP, for example, is seven percent, the doubling time for the GDP is ten years. Thus, economists can plan ahead even when the growth is fast, since it is still predictable and therefore somewhat manageable.
The growth of desires, however, is unpredictable. In desires, as the above quote demonstrates, what doubles the desire is not a fixed length of time, but the fact that one has satisfied one’s wish. Notice that the quote says, “If one has 100, he wishes to make them 200,” etc. This means that the condition for acquiring a twice-as-strong desire is the realization of the former one. In other words, you can never have what you want because the minute you have it, you want twice as much. The Babylonian Talmud says of one with this type of desire, “Anyone who is greater than his friend [in this case financially], his desire is greater than himself,”134 and (Midrash Rabbah, as earlier cited), “one does not leave the world with half of one’s wish in one’s hand.”
Why Today the Whole World Is Considered One Society
As we have just noted, human desires double every time we satisfy them. This forces us to continuously innovate, devise new instruments, explore new seas, and conceive new ideas in order to obtain what we want. During Stage Three in the evolution of desires, when desires first became active, the effects of the exponential pattern were clearly showing in the accelerated pace of progress.
Thus, in search of new avenues for pleasure, we have turned the world into a web of trade routes by air and by sea, and by numerous technologies of communication. The World Wide Web is not just a virtual entity that lives in our computers; it is a name that describes the reality of our lives. This was recognized many years ago by sociologists, as well as by Kabbalists.
Today, globalization and financial interdependence are well- recognized facts. Yet, globalization is far more than financial interdependence; it entails a profound mingling of culture, society, civilization as a whole, and in the end, a common fate. Professor of International Relations and prolific author on globalization, Anthony McGrew, made very clear statements about the impact of this process on human society. In an essay titled, “A Global Society?” he writes, “In comparison with previous historical epochs, the modern era has supported a progressive globalization of human affairs. The primary institutions of western modernity— industrialism, capitalism, and the nation-state—have acquired, throughout the twentieth century, a truly global reach. But this has not been achieved without enormous human cost… While early phases of globalization brought about the physical unification of the world, more recent phases have remade the world into a single global system in which previously distinct historical societies or civilizations have been thrust together. This… defines a far more complex condition, one in which patterns of human interaction, interconnectedness, and awareness are reconstituting the world as a single social space.”
Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag, too, recognized the trend and its hazards, and explained it from the perspective of the evolution of desires. In his essay, “Peace in the World,” Ashlag provides both his observation of the state of the world in his time, as well as the approach humanity should adopt if it is to cope with the situation. In the essay, he writes, “We have already come to such a degree that the whole world is considered one collective and one society. This means that because each person in the world draws life’s marrow and livelihood from all the people in the world, one is coerced to serve and to care for the well-being of the whole world.”
Subsequently, Ashlag explains how we are all connected and interdependent, and concludes as follows: “Therefore, the possibility of making good, happy, and peaceful conducts in one state is inconceivable when it is not so in all the countries in the world, and vice versa. In our time [he wrote the essay in 1934], the countries are all linked in the satisfaction of their needs of life, as individuals were to their families in earlier times. Therefore, we can no longer speak or deal with conducts that guarantee the well-being of a single country or a single nation, but only with the well-being of the entire world because the benefit or harm of each and every person in the world depends and is measured by the benefit of all the people in the world.”
In the last paragraph of that section, Ashlag predicts that mere intellectual, scholastic comprehension of the situation will not be enough for people to internalize their interdependence. Rather, life’s experiences will compel them to do so: “And although this [interdependence] is in fact known and felt, the people in the world have not yet grasped it properly… because such is the conduct of development in nature, that the act [impact of interdependence on our lives] comes before the understanding, and only actions will prove and push humanity forward.”
In hindsight, we can say that regrettably, Ashlag’s prediction came true on more than one occasion in the 20th century, and in the most gruesome of ways. In “Peace in the World,” as well as in several other essays, Ashlag predicts what will happen if we continue to let the act precede the understanding.
“Why Today Is the Age of Global Interconnection and Interdependence” is based on the book, Self Interest vs. Altruism in the Global Era: How Society Can Turn Self Interests into Mutual Benefit by Dr. Michael Laitman.
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