Our Endangered Garden
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contraceptives among some religious traditions too often leaves women with newborn children but limited means for proper care and nutrition, while also contributing to the ecological burden of increasing human populations. The plight of the human body is interwoven with endangerments to our
shared, planetary garden.world-shaping dynamics. How to proceed? First, we will explore briefly the reality of globality and globalization and the possibilities and endangerments Theological humanism must provide a way to orient human life within
these introduce to the human future. After all, the locality of present life is truly global. That discussion will provide background for other chapters.
Some people like to speak of globalization as the McDonaldization of the world. (^3) Global dynamics, on this picture, obliterate previous markers of Global Dynamics and Global Locality
identity and draw new ones; they define the world’s peoples within the logic of the consumer market. Others disagree. The condemnation of economic globalization as market tyranny is not so easy. Behind the supposed “same-ness” of globalization are surprising forces of difference. People around the
world are fashioning lives in new and different ways. Additionally, there are extensive debates about the so-called clash of civilizations and also the colli-sion of faiths. The idea is that the forms of conflict that will characterize the age of globality are cultural, ideological, and religious, and that one cannot
expect an easy resolution to these forces. The age is described not in terms of the dialectic of sameness and difference within global economic and cultural flows, but rather as the titanic clash between incommensurable forms of human civilization. 4
the earliest phases back to the spread of hunters and gatherers and the rise of agriculture around 10,000 years ago.at work within the current wave of globalization that make the world our Scholars note that globalization is not a new phenomenon. Some trace (^5) It is helpful to isolate several dynamics
shared “locality:” deep connectivity, global reflexivity, and recognition. Taken together, these dynamics lead to the “deterritorialization” of identity and authority and also to what is called the “compression of the world.”world is becoming “smaller” and is also increasingly seen by people around (^6) Our
the planet as a whole, a shared destiny. These facts of locality alter identities.and ever-densening network of interconnections and interdependencies that characterize modern social life.”John Tomlinson notes that globalization “refers to the rapidly developing (^7) “Deep connectivity,” as he calls it, is forging,