Meditation 39: Local and Global

Each individual lives at a historically precise intersection of local settings and global conditions.  In the past, this intersection was less consciously global. Great distances and slow communication ensured this.  Lately, new systems of communication throw us into a truly global world.  The world appears as a whole from one ideological perspective or another. However, it is possible to multiply perspectives and come at the world from different angles. We are now in a position to see the interrelations that are making us think globally.

What are truly global concerns? Obvious ones are natural disasters, famine, disease, war, pollution, social injustice, racism, sexism, animal rights, biodiversity, genetic engineering, weapons of mass destruction, defoliation, global warming, the spread of democracy, human rights, and the increasing difference between rich and poor.  To take one example, deforestation may not seem to matter to a desert country, but the extent that such denuding changes rain and weather patterns, it could make a great deal of difference in the long run. All these concerns are "long term."

What are local concerns? There is no telling what these may be in the absence of a social setting. The local concerns of people displaced by an earthquake in the winter, for example, would be tents, blankets, food, warmth and medical assistance, international cooperation, and volunteers to look for survivors. In relatively peaceful towns, local needs might come down to filling potholes, or finding a playing field for the children to use. Of course, towns and cities are also affected by global conditions, and this will affect local needs.  Other local concerns transcend particular localities but are not truly global, like the question of gay marriage, female priests, gay bishops, whether marijuana or prostitution ought to be legalized.

How will the individual react to this intersection?  It depends upon the individual's character, habits of action, thought and emotion, attitudes and orientation in a world of values, moral aesthetic or social.  Some will feel the global conditions more acutely than others. Some will ignore, as far as possible, the global conditions as long term and thus not applicable to them, though their descendants may feel the effects. Others will be forced to put them together, as when the earthquake does strike and you are suddenly in the street with nothing.  In morality, we have obligations to those who are physically close to us as well as those who live half way across the world. Both the local and the global concerns have their pull.  The important thing is to see that there is a choice where one's commitments lie, in the local, the global, or, with difficulty, in both.