Welcome to Universalism is Dead?

This blog is inspired by the most challenging and pressing question of our time: where do the global and the local interact?

We are not in a grand clash of civilizations as Samuel Huntington would lead us to believe, nor in a fight of good versus evil as many of our leaders suggest. This is not us versus them. While Thomas Friedman argues that the world is flat, at the same time, the world has never been so rocky. Instead, we are in an era where the local affects the global, and vice versa, like never before.

Global warming, terrorism, poverty, and globalization are all global phenomena, yet they affect local communities and cultures in a dangerous way. Similarly, terrorism no longer terrorizes only its immediate victims, greenhouse emissions do not pollute simply its direct atmosphere, and poverty does not just threaten the poverty-stricken individuals.

Just after the Cold War, it seemed our world was undergoing a swift move towards universalism: a social, political, and cultural—albeit global—order which could be conceived as being true in all possible contexts without creating a contradiction. Democracy won out, the free market globalized, human rights gained momentum, and it was up to the leaders of our nations to push these universal values forward. Clearly, it was not that simple, and framing these issues in this context does no good today. Instead, today’s world poses a stunning predicament: Is Universalism dead?

This blog will explore global issues, which play out in our local communities. It will investigate local activity, which can not be understood without a global understanding. Most importantly, it will grapple with the global and local phenomena that can not be clearly defined as either or.

In third grade, my teacher tried to drill the motto “Think globally, act locally” into the minds of my classmates and myself. It didn’t make sense to me then. But today, you can’t do one without the other.