It's a good article, with a nice analysis of the 12th century Eurasian system.
Yes, this is clearly not the 12th century, but the parallels can give a good deal of insight into our present world-system.
I think the most interesting thing about looking at the parallels is how similar the models are between 12th century and present. Yes, we move and communicate a lot faster, and there are a lot more of us, but at the core you can still see the same sorts of organizational units showing up, and the relationships between those organizational units function very similarly. That said, you can see some fundamental shifts in the nature of organizations. Slavery is almost universally shunned, which marks one institution that has shifted radically in social importance. Democracies are consequently very different from their historical predecessors.
There's a lot of interesting stuff here. Your post, on the other hand, is reductive and boring.
>> Your post, on the other hand, is reductive and boring.
So mean and bad mannered ;)
This guy, Parag Khanna, have been shown in school and Hollywood movies an extremely simplified model of the 19th and 20th centuries world. A model where all events are explained through the state politics and big business is ignored. Based on that stupid assumption he is saying that now the world is different, because there are powers outside the states.
Yes, this is clearly not the 12th century, but the parallels can give a good deal of insight into our present world-system.
I think the most interesting thing about looking at the parallels is how similar the models are between 12th century and present. Yes, we move and communicate a lot faster, and there are a lot more of us, but at the core you can still see the same sorts of organizational units showing up, and the relationships between those organizational units function very similarly. That said, you can see some fundamental shifts in the nature of organizations. Slavery is almost universally shunned, which marks one institution that has shifted radically in social importance. Democracies are consequently very different from their historical predecessors.
There's a lot of interesting stuff here. Your post, on the other hand, is reductive and boring.