Lets Talk About Globalization! | Charles Beem | TEDxUNCPembroke

thank you I bring the world with me I have a mission in life to make this world a better place to contemplate something like that is to wear a philosopher's hat and when you get down to it that's what philosophers have been doing from Confucius and Plato to Bob Dylan and Beyonce since time immemorial, she might ask what I'm doing to make this world a better place. Well, I start with the little things like being nice to people even when I don't want to and having a smile ready for everyone. We come together, but are there more important things you can do to make this world a better place?

I think so for the last 25 years. I have been teaching a history course called World Civilizations. It's a survey. A runaway train of 4,500 years packed into 15 weeks. and a few years ago I realized that the textbook I have been using for years has become quite expensive and I thought to myself that instead of choosing another textbook, I would write my own. I am a writer. I like to write and more. Over the years I developed a lot of ideas about the history of civilizations, that is, how and why we moved from early isolated civilizations like Egypt and Mesopotamia to the globally interconnected world we all live in today.

I know it sounds terribly philosophical, but let me tell you what I think. I think, in fact, let me tell you a little secret for the last 25 years. I've been trying to convince my students that making this Earth a more globally interconnected planet is a good thing, something to build on to preserve and appreciate, but what do you call this?

globalization

works very well and you know, the world goes around and around, so what is

globalization

? It's a misunderstood concept nowadays and calling someone a globalist isn't exactly a compliment, but I use that hashtag proudly and with a purpose, but what?

They are the things that allow globalization to happen. Do you know what those processes are that make that work well? We have to get over the idea that it is something associated with predatory international capitalism, imperialism and colonialism, the erosion of national identities, the destruction of rainforests. and, of course, the challenges of climate change and pandemic diseases. I know it makes you want to build a wall around your house or maybe around your country, but walls never work in the long term, from the walls of Jericho to the Berlin Wall. In the 20th century, they all eventually collapse.

I think bridges work much better. The people of the world have been building bridges with each other since Egypt and Mesopotamia emerged from the Stone Age to create writing systems that tell us the story of how. Civilizations became more sophisticated, more powerful, more interconnected over time, but what word to call this process? I think globalization works really well, so I'm going to take this word and assign my own meaning to the processes by which the people of the world come together. So what is the engine that makes globalization possible? I tell my students what human capital is, human capital, what is the result of human productivity? humans are resourceful in his novel Robinson Caruso Daniel Defoe imagined a man who could dominate an entire island, but what happens when you take a bunch of Robinson Carusos combining their human capital, the usual results are an exponential increase in sophistication, as The cart gave way to the carriage, the carriage gave way to the car and me.

I've been waiting impatiently since I was a kid for the flying saucer to replace the automobile, but you get my drift, so what does this have to do with globalization? Well, let me tell you a little story like we historians do two thousand years ago, the Chinese invented gunpowder. They used to delight in fireworks and firecrackers, it did not occur to them to use it to fuel firearms, but China was the eastern destination of the Silk Roads that crossed Asia from the Pacific Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea on this bustling trade route. Religions such as Islam and Buddhism, luxury items such as silk porcelain, spices and technologies such as the formula for gunpowder.

It was the civilization of Islam that had the idea of ​​using gunpowder to blow up large balls of cast iron with the cannons they used to tear down the walls. From Jerusalem and Constantinople, the Europeans took note and placed artillery on the decks of their ships which they used to make their way to America and Asia. Well, let me give you a more relatable example of how sophistication works when I was a kid in the 1960s. My family had only one phone, it was plugged into the wall, so you couldn't take it anywhere for a private conversation. , there was no way to text, you had to

talk

and when the phone rang you had no idea who was calling now.

The world is a better place today I don't know about you, but I really like my iPhone, so what is that engine that really makes globalization happen? I've

talk

ed about it before, but it's what I call the cosmopolitan spirit, yes, the cosmopolitan spirit. I tell my students that I possess the cosmopolitan spirit. I'm a cosmopolitan guy. What is this? It is the willingness to interact and learn from people who are different from you. It is the cosmopolitan spirit that allows human capital to come together in big, bold and exciting ways like the rise of universal religions like Christianity or Buddhism that anyone anywhere can believe in or the creation of global trading systems that me allow us to eat Peruvian blueberries in January or a world in which everyone knows who the Beatles are, so this is a story. of globalization that I have created for my students so that they can advance and help me make the world a better place, from the world of Alexander the Great, the world's first globalist, to the Roman Empire with its extensive contacts with China and India and the rise From an amazing cosmopolitan Islamic civilization and the European Age of Discovery, civilizations rose and fell, but across time and space they shared their knowledge, increased their store of knowledge, increased their sophistication, and solved the problems facing the world today. global climate change pandemic, disease, world hunger, and violent rebel nations unwilling to follow the rules of civilized conduct, it is my hope that the people of this world will continue to come together to combine their human capital in big, bold, and exciting ways. , like the way in which the vaccines for the covet occurred to him that this is how the history of this pandemic is going to be written, that it was a globalized effort of human capital that came together and that saved millions at great speed, if not billions of lives.

I say that it is a resounding endorsement of globalization. Do what you can to help me make the world a better place and be nice to people whenever possible. Thank you.