Thoughts
In my 30-plus years with Catholic Relief Services, I’ve traveled to every continent and visited probably 100 countries. I have been fortunate enough to meet people from a vibrant mosaic of cultures and backgrounds. These experiences reinforced for me how interconnected we have become. How, regardless of differences in nationality, geography, ideology, race, economics or religion, we are one human family.
This is the positive side of globalization. From media coverage to consumer products to market fluctuations to fuel prices to immigrants, we affect the world and the world impacts us. The journalist Thomas Friedman says that he looks at a world that can collaborate at such a high level through communications sent along fiber optic cables and he concludes that Christopher Columbus was wrong. The world isn't round. The world is flat. We're so interconnected through technology that the world's playing field has been leveled – flattened. In a flat world, a doctor in a Bangor, Maine can send a CAT scan in the middle of the night to a radiologist in Banglaore, India, where it is daytime, who can read it and send a diagnosis back as quickly and professionally – and more cheaply – than could an American colleague. Not since we were ruled by England have we been influenced by forces beyond our shores to such an extent as we are now. At the same time, what we do as Americans has an effect on our brothers and sisters – the members of our one human family – around the world. And that provides us with an opportunity and an obligation. Globalization should be a rallying call to people of good will to take a world made smaller and make it work for the common good. Our duty, as members of the one human family, is to care for one another and to reach out to those who need our help. |
