Problems of Humanity

Just beneath the surface of current events lie two likely political outcomes. The first is a retribalization of giant paths of humankind by war and bloodshed. The second is being borne in on us by the surge of economic and ecological forces that demand integration and consistency and that captivate the world with new music, fast computers, and fast food; Corporations like MTV, Apple, and McDonald’s, are pressing nations into one commercially similar global network. One McWorld tied together by technology, ecology, communications, and commerce.

This analysis is carefully understood and interpreted by political scientist Benjamin R. Barber who characterizes these issues into two sides and in one title: Jihad vs. McWorld. On the one hand, consumer capitalism on the global level is rapidly dissolving the social and economic barriers between nations, transforming the world’s diverse populations into a weak even market. On the other hand, ethnic, religious, and racial hatreds are dividing the political landscape into smaller and smaller ethnic units.

The idea that the world is becoming simultaneously more homogeneous and more diverse, and that these phenomena are related, is controversial, mainly because this idea of “Jihad” and its inhabitants do not have a good record regarding economics and human rights. Barber’s argument is flawed by his distastefulness toward capitalism and American western ideology, which he claims is America’s most distinguished result. The sharp line that Barber would like to draw between a good, democratic civil society and a much worse, brash McWorld is not justifiable: the capitalist global economy is intimately related in ways unacknowledged in this book to the success and stability of democracy and civil society.

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The outbreak of pop culture reflects the engagement of cultures once shaped by elitist authority of perception. Barber neglects countervailing trends in modern capitalism that will permit McWorld to strengthen rather than undermine a society, such as the rapid growth of new information technologies that will destroy media monopolies

By advocating a democracy across the world, western states are advocating human rights along with democracy. Barber focuses on the relationship between Jihad and McWorld and suggests that the world is moving away from conscious and collective human control and toward this lawless state. Jihad is driven by narrow-minded animosities and aims to re-create subnational and ethnic borders from within the nation-state. McWorld globalizes world markets and effectively makes borders absorbent. Both, therefore, “make war on the sovereign nation-state and thus undermine the nation-state’s democratic institutions.” As result, these radical terror groups are formed because of the hatred of the west. People in “Jihad” believe that the West wants to get rid of their culture and as a result, they want to destroy “McWorld”.