How to save globalization

If the unraveling of the global economy taught us anything, it’s that globalization can be a double-edged sword. The same tools that generate prosperity and development are the same agents of economic instability and international malaise.

This fact implies that man can use globalization in both responsible and irresponsible ways, a truth that ultimately demands more from us as citizens of an increasingly interconnected world. Secondly, it lends credibility to the growing sense that what helped us get into this mess is the very force that might bail us out.

Innovation and developmental repair do not occur fluidly and evenly throughout time, but instead arrive in spurts and clumps, Harvard economist Joseph Schumpeter said. We might take as an example the industrial and political advancements following World War II or the new wave of technological innovation after the tech bubble collapse in the ’90s.  

Observing this pattern, Schumpeter offered a peculiar explanation: Hard times in regard to politics, society or economics actually give way to great bursts of insight and progress. And the negative effects caused by such downturns, such as unemployment, decreasing wealth and economic inequity are merely the forces of what he called “creative destruction” at work.

Our nation’s current struggles, Schumpeter would argue, actually serve as a sort of breeding ground for the next burst of creative production.  

Using Schumpeter’s model, the editors of Foreign Policy magazine recently collected predictions of what might become the “next big thing” to stem from the most disastrous economic crisis in 75 years. Responses ranged from advances in biofuels and biotechnology to prosperity in Africa and higher levels of happiness worldwide.

The report acknowledges the enormous structural shifts that must take place in the global economy, but it also suggests that new mind-sets and global perspectives will become increasingly necessary for strong diplomatic and economic ties between countries.

One of the great pioneers of this last cause is former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who initiated a program June 9 that uses videoconferencing to educate secondary schoolchildren across the globe about different world religions.

The premise is that in order to understand the religion of another culture, and thus decrease the potential for ignorance and strife, one must have direct exposure to other peers within that religion and culture.  

“Globalization is shrinking the space we live in,” Blair wrote in a recent Washington Post op-ed. “If religious faith becomes a counter force to this process, one which pulls people apart, then it becomes reactionary and divisive.”  

Blair understands that using globalization responsibly requires the adoption of a global mind-set. Although the many sources of this current catastrophe are complex and obscure, its repair will demand global thinkers who can plumb the interrelated facets of global transformation – factors such as religion and prejudice, or political and economic instability – especially amidst the wreckage of a major collapse. Perhaps the great product of this disaster will be a new generation of internationally minded individuals.

It’s time to follow Blair’s lead. And let’s hope Schumpeter is right.