The existence of a global village is a fact. The media and the new technologies have brought us closer together, facilitating information exchange and the real possibility of sharing knowledge with mankind. But this positive achievement, full of possibilities, is being spoiled due to the abusive appropriation that large economic and financial interests are realizing. The same had happened with the industrial revolution and with the conquests of technology.
We must not become scared, but we need to know its dynamics to serve ourselves better from it and thus benefit all beings and our surroundings. Humanitarian organizations have the duty of using all the scientific, economic and technological means to fight for justice, for peace and for an approachment to peoples in a way that fosters a true cultural exchange; not a sterile syncretism but rather a fertile process of multiple beings that creates a new being.
We must invent the future to humanize the present. Old wineskins only serve as a reference, but never as an imposition to contain the new wine. We must not cling to the past; only to learn from its lessons and to assume the challenge of the future, with all the charge of unknown possibilities.
Some of the characteristics of the so-called globalization are the opening of the flow of capital without restrictions, the weakness of the State in the face of economic powers and a greater inequality between countries and between social sectors. It cannot be pisitive because the weakest suffer. Even the State and the supranational organizations are in danger. And the weakest people need institutions that defend them from the hidden powers and to help them help themselves. When we predicted the end of the Nation-State, an obsolete model due to new technologies that know no borders, maybe we did not count on the necessary institutional supply: federations, amphictyonies or supranational entities to fill the vacuum.
On the other hand, the protection of Human Rights, the management of the natural environment and peace maintenance affect the international community, which should manage those tasks in a coordinated way. Is it possible to count on a world government or shall we invent more adequate forms to avoid the danger of George Orwell’s “Big Brother”? The right proposal of order and justice will always glide above our heads, with the danger that the first will precede the latter as a priority to administer justice. Goethe’s words, “Order first, then justice,” can have another interpretation: “We need order as a product of justice because that is peace.”
Neoliberal triumphalism of the 1990s has proved to be empty because it has made a very few people rich and created misery for billions of beings. That cannot be the path and thus we must look together for valid options to control our social surrounding.
The new age brings challenges against which we must seek alternative proposals. There must not be a protest without a sustainable and feasible proposal.
We are experiencing a change that takes us from the industrial society to the information society. It is precise to substitute the consumerist society for a sharing society, the society of “security at all costs” for a society with solidarity as an alternative to unjust inequality. The future is here but its signs escape from our understanding because we ignore its codes. We drive with our foot on the pedal as we look at the rearview mirror. We experience a mutation of which we are barely aware. But, thanks to Niestzsche, we can claim that sometimes, “it is precise to have an inner chaos to give birth to a shooting star.”
Globalization is increasing inequality in all societies and between the different human communities.
The crumbling of the Communist model accelerated emergence of an orthodox way of thinking and the confusion between a market economy and a market society.
The expected results of peace that a new international order would bring have given way to horrible regional conflicts over matters of ethnic, cultural and religious identity. The emergence of new forms of excluding nationalism and tougher responses against the fear to cultural imperialism, blamed on globalization, is taking place.
Opportunities are enormous since the confluence of politics with solidarity in each national society and in the international sphere can be important to achieve a more just economic model. Like an illustrious politician says, “It is possible that the most profitable business we have in front of us is the war against poverty. >From principles of liberty, justice and solidarity, the proposal must respond to the new realities with non-resigned attitudes and with an opening to the necessary cultural exchange as a condition to open new spaces.”
A progressive vision with solidarity must find the most sustainable formulae for the emerging society. The authentic raw material is the capacity of inventing the future. We must be prepared to assume this challenge by overcoming the conditioning of a society that educates for passivity, squandering, resignation and the alienating consumerism that takes away people’s personality.
But hope is always posible. But not hope for the future, but rather of what is still invisible to our eyes.

José Carlos García Fajardo
Profesor of Contemporary Social and Political Thought. CCS Director
Translated by Carlos Miguélez
ccs@solidarios.org.es