GANDHI WITH SATELLITES
“Convulsive shudders” . . . “unexpected uprising’* . . . “wild swings” … The headline writers search frantically for terms to describe what they perceive as mounting world disorder. The Islamic uprising hi Iran stuns them. The sudden reversal of Maoist policies in China, the collapse of the dollar, the new militancy of the poor countries, outbreaks of rebellion in El Salvador or Afghanistan are all seen as startling, random, unconnected events. The world, we are told, is careening toward chaos.
Yet much that appears anarchic is not. The eruption of a new civilization on the earth could not but shatter old relationships, overthrow regimes, and send the financial system spiraling. What seems like chaos is actually a massive realignment of power to accommodate the new civilization.
We will look back on today as the twilight of Second Wave civilization, and be saddened by what we see. For as it came to a close, industrial civilization left behind a world hi which one quarter of the species lived in relative affluence, three quarters in relative poverty—and 800,000,000 hi what the World Bank terms “absolute” poverty. Fully 700,000,000 people were underfed and 550,000,000 illiterate. An estimated 1,200,000,000 human beings remained without access to public health facilities or even safe, drinkable water, as the industrial age ended.
It left behind a world hi which some 20 to 30 industrialized nations depended on the hidden subsidies of cheap energy and cheap raw materials for much of then* economic success. It left a global infrastructure—the International
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