3/25

 The chapters assigned here give a much better and widespread view of globalization than I feel previous chapters have given. These chapters show how people use globalization to their advantage, to fight back against the big corps that use and abuse it. In chapter 70, Evans describes how people use globalization to magnify their local issues without diluting said issues. Efforts like these are what I imagine we would see a lot more worldwide with globalization, if the idea was not so intertwined with capitalism.

Chapter 76 is helping me understand where people who tolerate these nationalists are coming from. Haidt describes how these nationalists see their bloodline and heritage as in danger by refugees and immigration. I have never considered my “bloodline” something that needs protecting, but if someone did have that thought, seeing people from other areas enter your area would be scary and something they would see as worth fighting against. The only thing is, they never seem to have issues with immigration if the person is white or white passing. Even if these nationalists' true concern was protecting their culture and norms, it always extends into normal racism. Also, reading on, Haidt routinely mentions assimilation into a country as a sort of remedy to nationalism. This sounds all well and good, but an issue that happens a lot of the time is, once again, just racism. An immigrant can assimilate, change their values, norms, work on their accent, change their appearance, but they cannot change their skin, and these nationalists are viewing white as the acceptable color. I do think that these nationalists do care about protecting their culture, but they view their culture as something that is unable to be participated in by non white people.

I think chapter 77 best explains how I see globalization used outside of economic gain today. The internet has led people to constant marketing exposure, and the best way to market anything is anger and fear. People with bad intentions use this tactic to spread hate, anger, and fear, by influencing people to constantly compare themselves to others situations. No matter how good my life is, the goal of the internet and social media is to influence me to be angry about something. I think he summed it up best with “Competition, envy, and domination over others have become the essential condition of existence in commercial societies.”

These chapters show a few different sides of globalization, and being entirely honest, I think that if done with good intentions, globalization could have led us into an era of peace not seen before, but unfortunately, as Lord Acton said in the 1800s, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" so the people in power have and will continue to do their best to keep themselves in power, and that includes putting down anyone who they deem a threat.