Creative Altruism: The Prospects for a Common Humanity in the Age of Globalization

Journal of Futures Studies, August 2004, 9(1): 45 58 For better or worse, humanity is now becoming a unitary whole in an important and unprecedented way. Many names have been given to this process; and because names create realities, it matters very much which one we use. Some, beginning with the sociologist Harold Innes and his student Marshall McLuhan, see it as a movement toward a global village. Architect and futurist Buckminster Fuller referred to the Spaceship Earth. Now current in many quarters is the term globalization. Some, with good reason, speak of capitalist imperialism. Others say modernization, Westernization, Postmodernization, or internationalization. Sociologist George Ritzer has influenced many with his evocative term, McDonaldization. For the purposes of this discussion, we have chosen an alternative formulation, one that might help us to avoid some of the unwanted connotations that "globalization" and the other terms carry. This is the process of coming to species consciousness. The phrase characterizes an evolutionary movement toward a state in which every member of the species Homo sapiens is aware that – beyond all secular differences – a common Abstract