From Chaos to Something that Looks Like Order (Rough Draft)

From Chaos to Something that Looks Like Order (Rough Draft)

We life in an age of nations, kingdoms are few and far in between, emperors are a memory of times past or delightful figureheads. Our world looks nothing like it did two centuries ago, not even how it looked half a century. The idea of a man spreading his power, taking over nations by force is, if not inconceivable, impermissible. We conquer, space, diseases, global problems, not nations, not anymore. And while such changes in the ways our world could be accredited to the takeover of ideas such as democracy, sovereignty, equality, civil and human right, among others, it was not until the connections between nations changed and grew that we became what we are today. Our world is far from perfect, but today’s levels of interconnectedness have permitted to achieve a level of stability in a system forever deemed as anarchical. Interconnectedness serves to give order to an otherwise chaotic world; it has been able to create a semblance of balance, otherwise elusive in our history. What happens to a particular nation has resonances with others, due to humanitarian sensitivities or economic relations, barriers like language, culture, and religion, which for millennia were the determining factors, are not primordial.

Our interactions have changed, as Thomas Friedman explains in “The Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention”, a chapter in The World is Flat, how supply chains and economic relations-using the Dell suppliers as he model- between countries make them less likely to go to war (125). Why? According to Friedman, “no two countries  that are both part of a major supply chain, like Dell’s, will ever fight a war against each other as long as they are both part of the same global supply chain,” for, “people embedded in a major global supply chain don’t want to fight old-time wars anymore… they want to enjoy the rising standards of living that come with that” (125). Basically since countries in the same supply chains are not in dire conditions, and there is more on the table to lose than what might be won in a war, people prefer to stay out them. We no longer need to conquer a country, or size new land to obtain what we want from them, we make economic deals in which everyone gets more or less what they want, without shedding blood. Supply chains of global scales may seem to some, just as a way for big business to make more profit, which is a part of the equation, they also distribute that wealth in a more reasonable manner. Not only one country alone is getting the spoils of that business, making it a bigger player in international community, it give a level to filled that has forever been anything but.

That levelness, or flattening of the world which Friedman call it, is more or less what Steven Johnson in “Listening to Feedback”, observe in the media, “the overall system, in other words, has shifted dramatically in the direction of distributed networks, away from the traditional top-down hierarchies” (193). The redistribution of networks, like the redistribution of power and wealth in the international system, leave aside the status quo of our historical tendencies, we leave behind hierarchies. While news networks it means that information is shared and covered by everyone, in the political and economic sphere it means that what happens in one nation has a greater resonance in another. What is currently happening in Japan due to the earthquake and tsunami affect us beyond the human tragedy, it disrupts supply the economic networks Japan makes part of. We want Japan to bounce back fast it is instrumental in the economic global system, and while some other nations are able to take on Japan’s role, the glitch in the system would have lasted too long, affecting all its other members. The same would happen if a major player in the media system was incapacitated to do its work, if all the Middle East correspondents of a global news network, like the New York Times, were held captive by terrorist or authoritarian governments, the information they are constantly providing the media system would stop coming too. While some other correspondents of other networks may still be informing, the specific information the NY Times correspondent’s sources where to supply would be lost. A void of information would be created and our almost on time moving media system.  The effects interconnections have are not always necessarily good, they  makes us dependant of one another, but that is perhaps what we have been missing.

The interconnections of all our systems, be it political and economic or mediatic and social, are increasing. The free flow of goods, information, opinion and culture, make our world a source of wonderment, we are probably the most labored collection of all times. As, art critic, Michael Kimmelman expresses in “the Art of Collecting Lightbubls”, both collections and wonder cabinets, make seemingly unrelated thing coherent, the interconnectedness of so many systems at a time work like a collector, in the great scheme of things, “they make order out of chaos” (219). They create an intangible collection of niches that are necessary for the entire thing to work.

Johnson, Steven . “Listening to feedback” Emerging. Barclay Barrios. Boston. Bedford/St. Martins, 2010. 190-204. Print

Kimmelman, Michael. “The Art of Collecting Lightbubls” Emerging. Barclay Barrios. Boston. Bedford/St. Martins, 2010.  216- 225. Print

Friedman ,Thomas. “The Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention” Emerging. Barclay Barrios. Boston. Bedford/St. Martins, 2010. 121-138. Print