Editorial Note
We live in a truly interconnected and networked world that affirms the innate human nature of the need of human interdependence.
Just finished dinner. Been on a low-carb diet regimen to shed few extra kilos, though the word ‘few’ grossly undermines truth. The truth is that I was growing sideways! Blame it on Agricultural (Neolithic) Revolution that had started sometime in 10,000 BC? The meal was simple and lean, a menu comprising of regular fruits, vegetables and a protein. While relishing the food, I was suddenly struck by a revelation, a rare epiphany that forced me to reflect on the globalized world we are in on a simple dinner plate. This insight was a loose variant of the psychological phenomenon known as “Zeigarnik Effect”. To make this esoteric term simple, it is the kind of ideas which instinctively flashes through one’s mind when one languishes (read downloading as in Internet) on a Western Commode or while dissociating oneself from worldly cares under a refreshing shower! Many would experience such moments of ‘synchronicity with truth’ as proposed by the legendary Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung!
The produce that adorned my dinner meal, however inconspicuous and commonplace were sourced from across the world into a cosmopolitan Alpha + city of Dubai, where more than 200 nationalities live in peace. Emphasis is on peace! The following were the items and their country of origin.
Salad Bowl:
- Lettuce – Spain
- Radish – Holland
- Green Apple – New Zealand
- Cherry Tomato – UAE
- Lime for salad dressing – Vietnam
- Olive oil – Tunisia
- Himalayan Pink Salt – Pakistan
- Ground Pepper – India
Main Course:
- Chorizo Sausage – Germany
- Cauliflower- Spain
- Garlic – Spain
- Mayonnaise- United States
- Peri Peri Sauce – United Kingdom
The salad was served on a bowl sold by a Swedish brand IKEA who had outsourced its manufacturing to a supplier in Portugal. The cutleries are made in Italy, plates from UAE and the table mats were picked up during our trip to Hong Kong. When people fly an airplane, say an Airbus A380 , a giant European consortium, how many would realize that it has 4 million individual parts, produced by 1500 OEM companies from 30 countries around the world? Surprisingly I decided to abstain from either the customary glass of South African red wine or French beer chilled in a Korean made refrigerator. Perhaps I was perturbed by the perils of globalization?
Nevertheless, can we imagine a world without trade? Nations erecting trade barriers causing a decline in their competitive advantages that further limit and distort their production possibility frontiers? Will we be able to live in a ‘Social North Korea’, secretive and cut off from the outside world? Isolated Social Islands have been replaced by a unified Global Village whose integration of communities will be further accelerated by falling transportation costs and exponential increase in the computing power of the silicon chip.
We live in a truly interconnected and networked world that affirms the innate human nature of the need of human interdependence. Globalization is a reunion of the human race into a single large family transcending geographies, culture, race, customs, tastes and preferences. Cultures are becoming homogeneous, especially over food from São Paulo to San Francisco to London, Mumbai and Tokyo. In the famous theory “Six Degrees of Separation”, sociologists and technologists claim that we are only six introductions away from any other person on this planet inhabited by 7.5 billion people! Such is the power of the Internet and Social Media! Perhaps globalization is homecoming of the scattered races at the Tower of Babel narration in the Book of Genesis! A pointer to the deep spiritual/social truth that humans are gregarious by design and nature. Collaboration and coopetition are the pillars of sustainable growth and development. But most importantly of survival as a species!
Cooperation, ideation and co-arising are the tools devised by our atavistic ancestors – ones at the top of the Bell Curve in Evolutionary Biology – for group survival when they descended from trees and exposed themselves to the dangers of the savannah. Creationists and Intelligent Design (ID) proponents may blaze their guns in protest at the theory of human descent from monkeys, but all warring camps relax since the theme here is group survival and universal brotherhood. And religion is not a substitute for food. Wall Street financial gurus may warn that interdependence can result in interconnections that could bring down economies if due diligence in strategic financial risk management principles are sabotaged for corporate greed.
“Butterfly Effect” in “Chaos Theory” is a reality-flapping of the wings of a butterfly in Amazon Rainforest can cause a hurricane in China- and can be disruptive with long term impact. The collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 owing to subprime crisis in US Mortgage Market had ripple effects sending many world economies crashing which is now known as the Great Recession. COVID-19 that originated in one of the wet markets in Wuhan, China has brought the world to a grinding halt, eroding 4.4 trillion dollars of global economic output and causing the global GDP to shrink 4.4% in 2020 alone! Fear and greed always have bandwagon effects and its ramifications are widespread in a networked world. But, despite all the imperfections in the global sociopolitical and economic order, our planet can still be a better place to be, as long as the whole world could come together to continue serving a dinner plate.