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Saturday, January 7, 2012

Ted Talk: The Global Power Shift

Fascinating talk by Paddy Ashdown (former MP in the British Parliament).  I think he may be right to call the wars of the 20th century as the "European Civil War."  I had a professor at university who referred to them as "The 30 Years War of the Twentieth Century."  Ashdown sees three power shifts on a global level that he thinks will destabilize us in the 21st century.  Is this the end of Western hegemony in the world? Perhaps that is not the most constructive way to look at it.  How about we say instead (as Ashdown points out) that the world is beginning to share a common destiny.


And here is the John Donne poem he refers to at the end of his talk:

No Man is an Island

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

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