Personal Globalization

-

[Parts: Next | Last | All] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]

Preamble

Globalization has now become one of the most fashionable strategic terms, supposedly descriptive of an inevitable process through which a bright new future will emerge. This use of the term obscures other senses of the term 'globalization' that have traditionally been more highly valued by the individual and by the community through which the person is sustained -- notably in non-western cultures.

Personal globalization might usefully be seen as descriptive of the process through which an individual becomes 'better rounded' -- a person 'for all seasons'. Beyond the evident preoccupations of education and socialization with the enculturation process, it carries connotations of the individuation process that is a central focus for much psychotherapy. Indeed it might be said that the crisis in psychological well-being is intimately associated with fragmentation of an integrative, or global, sense of self.

The following notes explore the possibility that the enthusiastic focus on economic globalization, as an inevitable process, is a reflection of a momentum towards an equally inevitable form of personal globalization. Many challenges of globalization of the planet may be occasioned and sustained by unresolved challenges in the globalization of the person -- just as proponents of economic development argue the reverse, namely that any the problems of people will be resolved by economic development. It is indeed possible that planetary globalization will only prove sustainable with an adequate degree of personal globalization. However 'personal globalization', as explored here, is NOT about obesity and its achievement, nor is it about travelling the world -- nor consumption of products from distant lands!

The paper was partially inspired by the initiative of the Union of International Associations, through its project on Integrative Knowledge and Transdiciplinarity (see commentary) dating from the 1970s, which profiles some 720 'integrative concepts' concernd with unification in some way -- and of which 'global' is an example.

[Parts: Next | Last | All] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]