Collapse, Brasilianisation or Balance: Blade Running in Tough Times

Abstract

The alarm signals cannot be ignored: population explosion, famine, clear-cut rain forests, exploited mineral deposits, global warming. As it stands, the current global economic structure and, in particular, the current world economic system is driving humankind into ruin through overexploitation of nature and raw materials and the lack of social and cultural balances between the countries and the cultures of the world. Within the framework of an unleashed globalized economy we are in the process of assaulting the social, cultural, and ecological capital, worldwide. The globalization of the economy, triggered above all by the incredible new possibilities of information technology, leads into the wrong direction due to inadequate worldwide rules. The body of rules governing world trade today as represented mainly by the World Trade Organization (WTO), together with the worldwide closely linked financial systems, increasingly determine economy around the globe. Questions concerning environment, society and cultural diversity are insufficiently addressed. The result is uncoordinated growth and increasing social divisions in nearly all countries. The pressure on economically weaker cultures is increasing. Herein lies one of the main reasons for the conflicts between the West and the Islamic world.