Conclusion

Postmodernist thinking has not eclipsed humane values in the global age. The urge to find practical solutions to the daunting problems of contemporary life—population explosion, scarce resources, pollution, global warming, ethnic hatred, North–South inequities, and terrorism—through the careful assessment of facts still guides public policy. Some of these global problems were briefly overshadowed by the collapse of the Soviet empire, which initially produced human misery, rising criminality, and the flight of population during the 1990s and even into the 2000s. Reformers who sought improved conditions of life by bringing down Soviet and Yugoslav communism saw unexpected bloodshed and even genocide. What appeared to be an economic boom resulting from globalization and the collapse of communism itself had disadvantages, as a series of crises beginning in Thailand in 1997 and finally exploding in the more sustained crisis from 2007 on cost jobs and harmed human well-being.

Yet the past twenty-five years have also seen great improvements. Events in South Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, for example, suggested some progress toward democracy, even as gains at times appeared fragile. Human health gradually improved even as scientists sought to cure the victims of global pandemics and even to prevent such ravages altogether. The global age ushered in by the Soviet collapse unexpectedly brought denationalization to many regions of the world, leading to weakening of borders and cooperation among former enemies. The expansion of the European Union and the tightening of relationships within it are the best example of this development even as they too dealt with challenges in the face of economic adversity.

Some consequences of increasing globalization are still being determined. The Internet and migration suggest that people’s empathy for one another grew worldwide. One commentator claimed that there was little bloodshed in the collapse of the Soviet Empire because fax machines and television circulated images of events globally, muting the violence often associated with political revolution. At the same time, militants from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Indonesia, the Philippines, North Africa, Britain, France, and elsewhere unleashed terrorism on the world in an attempt to push back global forces. Each incident was shocking, including the planned murder of seventeen French journalists, Jews, and police in the winter of 2015. (See “Seeing History: World Leaders and Citizens Come Together after Murders in Paris.”) Nor did powerful countries hesitate to wage wars against Ukraine, Chechnya, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon—or against their own people, as in Libya and Syria. On a different level, even as globalization raised standards of living and education in many parts of the world, in other areas—such as poorer regions in Africa and Asia—people faced disease and the dramatic social and economic crises specifically associated with the global age. In contrast, the most hopeful developments in recent globalization were communication in the arts and in culture more generally and the cooperation that nations undertook with one another in the realm of health, economics, and politics. Social media via the World Wide Web offered people in families, localities, nations, and the world a new way of communicating. Thus, both opportunities and challenges lie ahead for citizens of the West and of the world as they make the transition to what some are calling the Digital Age.

The challenge to the making of the West today involves the inventive human spirit. Over the past five hundred years, the West has benefited from its scientific and technological advances and perhaps never more so than in the Digital Age. Although communication and information technology have brought people closer to one another than ever before, the use of technology has made the period from 1900 to the present one of the bloodiest eras in human history—and one during which the use of technology has threatened, and still threatens, the future of the earth as a home for the human race. While technology has enhanced daily life, it has also facilitated war, genocide, terrorism, and environmental deterioration, all of which pose great challenges to the West and to the world; the use of digital media to promote violent causes, inflame others, and network with and recruit new followers has made some of these challenges even more significant. How will the human race adapt to the creativity the Digital Age has unleashed? How will the West and the world manage both the promises and the challenges of Digital Age technology to protect the human race in the years ahead?