thomas friedman on globalization

thomas friedman from the new york times was here today to give a talk on globalization.

lots of interesting ideas and opinions, and i want to talk about some of them, but before i start...

i think it's really scary that some people are so charismatic, persuasive, and well-spoken. of course it's to their benefit that they are, but i think there's a real danger that some people will just take everything that they say as fact, without spending a lot of time thinking about it. i think thomas friedman is one of these people; he's obviously very intelligent, very educated, very well-informed, has a lot of interesting opinions and ideas that be believes in very strongly and expresses very persuasively, and i very much enjoyed hearing him speak, but i almost needed to make a concerted effort not to agree with everything he said. other people who came out of the talk actually said that their whole worldview was changed, and that's what started me on this train of thought. what if a person who were less well-intentioned and less well-informed decided to use his speaking skills to convince everyone of some totally crazy idea? i'm sure that's happened before in the course of history. i bet that's why we sometimes look at history books and think, what were these people thinking? the answer is some one man or woman was just very very good at convincing them to do something that seems very wrong, when you think about it clearly enough.

anyway, back to the things he said. the most central point he made was about the US and its power, and why the rest of the world hates us "way more than it should" as he put it. his idea was that the US has become more and more powerful, in terms of cultural, economic, political, and military influence, and during the 1990's this was mostly okay for the rest of the world because although we were a hegemon, we were somewhat benign. we were happy and dumb and making tons of money and our biggest worry was whether our president was sleeping with his interns. after 9/11, we became angry, and as an angry giant the US is much more scary. his theory was that people are angry with the US because we have so much influence over their daily lives, even more than their governments do, and they have had no say giving us that power. so there's kind of a resentment that is created, not necessarily on a conscious level.

i think that's one possible explanation, but maybe it gives the US too much credit. i think to a large extent the US does consciously meddle with other nations, and sometimes we don't really know what we're doing. obvious examples are afghanistan (when we were helping the people who eventually became the taliban) and argentina (when we essentially helped instill a dictator). yes we have cultural and economic influence also, but it also seems like we feel free to use our political and military power more than any other powerful nation.

for example, friedman's argument that we should have gone to war with iraq, not for whatever reason the bush administration was espousing, but because the middle east is a factory for undeterrable threats (terrorists) and we need to put a functioning government somewhere in the middle east so that failing nations will have an example to follow...it's interesting and makes a lot more sense to me than rumsfeld's rambling, but that argument seems to try and draw a line in the middle of a grey area. for example, should we have the right to pressure china into free press, because their efforts to conceal SARS cases have resulted in a worldwide epidemic? it's a similar case; if we have the right to invade iraq because we are being hurt by something that their government has done, do we have the right to invade, or otherwise pressure china?

after hearing talks like this i'm always tempted to run out and go buy some books on world history and politics, but then i remember that i'm not any good at reading non-fiction. i always have to work to finish any book that's not a biography or a novel, and i doubt i get as much out of it as i could (or should).

on a completely separate topic (well, perhaps not completely separate) i've always been very impressed with Rilla of Ingleside (by L.M. Montgomery) and its depiction of the Canadian home front during WWI. recently i've been looking for more fiction set during WWI...after looking around quite a bit, i've been pretty much unsuccessful. i guess i'll keep looking.