Long Essay: Global Village, Learning to Live Together

Here is my sample essay to show how a subject can be stretched to a length of 3000 or more words. There are ideas that are given extra (undue) space, e.g. Holocaust, to show how some ideas can be used as fillers if one is short of arguments. Have a read and leave a comment so that I can gauge the effectiveness of my writing.

Global Village: Learning to Live Together

by Fatima Batool

Dr Shashi Tharoor, a prominent Indian parliamentarian, debated the case “This house believes Britain owes reparations to her former colonies” initiated by Oxford Union. Dr Tharoor’s side won the controversial debate with 185 votes to 56. The OxfordUnion published the debate on YouTube in 2015; since then the video has been watched by more than 4.7 million, liked by eighty-nine thousand, and shared by thousands on social media. The Union channel has been subscribed by more than three-hundred-fifty-four thousand subscribers, while the views it has received on its different videos are in billions. Today humanity lives in a world where Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Whatsaap, Pinterest and Wikipedia have become the buzzwords. Undoubtedly, the reader him/herself must have frequently accessed these along with many other social- and web-sites. The same words would not have rung a bell even in the last decade of twentieth century. Today’s world aka global village is formed on an intricately weaved network of optic-fiber cables that have made it a well-connected place, giving billions of its inhabitants an unbelievable opportunity to live simultaneously on earth and in (cyber) space.

Oxford Dictionary defines Global Village: “A single community linked by telecommunications.” It is a world in which information and telecommunication technologies (ICT) have a key-role to perform. Unlike globalization that is defined as a process that enables organizations and businesses to develop international influence, particularly in international markets, it is the inter-connectivity of people, bringing them close to the point where they can extract information and extend communication without any time-lapse. The technological revolution has led to the development of a cyber-community and a cyber-market, which has been unprecedented in human history.

United Press International (UPI) reports (2017) that out of 7.6 billion people more than 3.58 billion people, forty-eight percent of the total world population, are internet users. The UN reported in 2016, that the percentage of internet users stood at 45.9, 3.4 billion. Europe, with eighty percent of its people online, has the highest rate of connectivity while Africa, with some twenty-two percent of online users, has the lowest rate of online connectivity. Besides, Asia has the highest number of offline population, a total of sixty-two percent of the offline population – China and India are the largest internet markets. Although half of the world population is still offline, the time is near when everyone will ensure his/her virtual presence. CNN reported, five years ago, in 2013, the claim of Eric Schmidt, Google Executive Chairman: “Everybody in the world will be online within seven years, by 2020.”

Transforming the globe into a village means that its inhabitants are well-connected, well-acquainted with one another. This global community has surpassed many challenges, particularly that of distance. Now, people from the under-developed world, even if only twenty-two percent from Africa, can connect with their counterparts residing in the developed world. There has been a time when people living in one part of the world had no clue of the people living in another part. Since the earliest civilizations of Ggantija, 8000 BC, to the more recent civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt, 3100 BC, humanity has trod a long path that includes marvelous inventions, like rafts and ideograms, and splendid discoveries, like fire and geomagnetism. The early civilizations had no clue of one another’s existence; travelling for discovering the land was followed by trading for better prospects of living. Those who had an interaction with foreigner were few; fewer ever stepped on a foreign land. One of the earliest pursuits of humans, after forming into cities, has been the discovery of other human colonies. Thus, connecting the dots of human presence to the point where they were joined to form the all-encompassing map of the world, thus taking the load off Atlas’ bare shoulders. Today’s world is encompassed by a cyber-space, an omnipresent phenomenon, which brings to the table even the remotest, the farthest, the strangest of the lands and their inhabitants. Information is abundant; communication easy and socialization handy. Today one’s friends are not the ones s/he knows personally but everyone/anyone who shares a common interest.

The foundation of a global civilization was laid with the greatest geographical discovery: America. It was the discovery of a new continent in fifteenth century (1492) that put forth the idea of a worldwide, global civilization which was to be further developed under the umbrella of colonialism. While the Spanish civilization managed to go as far as Latin America, it was British legacy that reached everywhere: Africa, Australia, Canada, India and New Zealand. British Empire remained the throbbing heart of the world for roughly three hundred years. Even the common element of a colonial master, instead of shortening the distance between different communities, widened the gap between the people, dividing them on the basis of intellectual, technological, cultural and racial, and economic features. The very incident of Dr Tharoor’s flying to London for participating in a debate is a salient feature of this global world; however, the very popularity of his vitriol on a social media website is a testimony to the fact that his censure echoed through millions of hearts (millions reciprocated the same feeling). His voice, along with the video, reaching to millions who took interest in the subject marks the emergence of a global community that pays heed to every voice that rises and embraces everyone in its infinity. There is a room for everyone: be it the one who delivered the harangue, or the ones who shared the video, or the ones who endorsed it with their appreciative comments, or the ones who out-rightly rejected the narrative of South. The bottom line is: Empire writes back!

In the meanwhile two poles apart civilizations strengthened their grip on the world, stretching the world into two poles: American capitalism and Russian communism. When the superpowers were conspiring to design a new world order, the technologists were burning the midnight oil to improve the computing system, which was going to change the world for better, and communication technologies, that have made possible the transport of information and culture across the globe, not to mention the overseas transport of one’s image through this network during a video call. This web goes farther than the British Empire and feels stronger than the capitalist pull.

However, setting aside the historical landmarks, if technological change is made the pivot, socio-cultural evolution, a term used by Gerhard Lenski, takes place, dividing human experience of living together in five societies defined by the kind of technology they had, with each society changing with the new technology that it designed or received. First, hunting and gathering societies, more than 12000 years ago, relied on simple tools – the stone-knife, the spear, bow and arrow – to hunt down animals and gather vegetation for survival. Family was the driving force of this society. Then, horticultural and pastoral society, some 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, developed horticulture that used manual tools for plantation, replacing food picking with food cultivation. The regions where it was difficult to grow food developed pastoralism, the domestication of animals. It was horticulturalists who quickly multiplied in number and who extended the settlements with trade. Still the world has societies that practice both horticultural and pastoral techniques – South America, Africa and Asia, but now they are virtually connected with the more developed parts.

Some 500 years ago, civilization dawned with the revolutionary techniques like harnessing of plows by animals, canalization of rivers for cultivation, invention of wheel for transportation, usage of metals in weapons and utensils and the formulation of writing and numbers. The two-million squares mile long Roman Empire, in 100 BC, was agrarian with a population of seventy million. This was the time when “high culture” emerged, making some eligible for “refined” activities and others for hard physical labor. The emergence of distinct religious, political and economic groups led to city-state with a loosening family system. With large machines driven by various sources of energy, the fourth type of society, the industrial society, began making traditional values weaker and work ethics stronger. Most people got the chance of, if not “refined” learning, schooling which slightly decreased the social inequality. Throughout these epochs, Aristotle’s social animal learnt about his/her surroundings, devised ways to cope up with temperate change, geographical variations, economic disparities, ideological clashes and social differences while they continued multiplying in number, outnumbering all mammals on the face of earth and having only brown rats, domestic chickens and some insects as their rivals in number.

With the passage of time, the number of inventions superseded the number of discoveries as scientists uncovered most of the planet earth. With better understanding of the world comes the better ability of benefitting from what is known and is now more persuading and yielding than any political or religious ideology that ever existed. Inventions coming out one after another have completely changed the way Homo sapiens, the frog in the well, hoped to survive as the fittest; now it is the smartest. Daniel Bell (1973) gave the idea of post-industrialism: “The production of information using technology”. The post-industrial society relies on computer; digital data is saved via binary coding. From the ideogram to the signifier to the binary language, not only human ways of communication but also ways of socialization have evolved. This Information Revolution has enabled a worldwide flow of information, products and people which resultantly has devised the idea of a global community and a global market.

Taking under the microscope, the way people living in the US interact with one another or/and across the world would be helpful in understanding the extent to which the ICTs have improvised the ways modern societies live. Statista, a leading provider of market and consumer data, maintains that almost eighty percent of internet users in the US have a profile on social media while the number of social network users was expected to increase from one-hundred-and-eighty million in 2015 to two-hundred-million in 2019. After Facebook, the most widely used social media sites, Youtube, Twitter and Pinterest are some of the most popular social media sites. In terms of customer satisfaction in the US, Pinterest, the visual social sharing platform, is ranked first, followed by Wikipedia and YouTube. This is only the US. The rest of the world is equally receptive to these global trends.

Sir Edward Burnett Taylor, the British anthropologist who founded cultural anthropology, in his book Primitive Culture (1871), under the influence of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, developed the idea of cultural evolution, from primitive to modern. His definition of culture includes everything, from knowledge to laws to habits, that a man acquires from the society he lives in. His study of culture underpins not only the artistic, spiritual and moral achievements but also technological accomplishments. Interestingly, the cultural evolution has reached its pinnacle with post-industrial society that benefits from high-technology culture. The gadgets that an eager child inattentively operates today would have needed a properly trained technical staff for its operations a generation ago. Technological know-how is inherited just like cultural understanding.

Today’s human being is not only enjoying better prospects of living but also a better understanding of his/her whereabouts, with the world in his/her palm. As a matter of fact, s/he does not have to experience xenophobia, the social fear; in the wake of global village the fear of the foreigner ended with the development of better acquaintedness of the neighbors, be of next door or next continent. Racial identity which once led to ethnic identity is now replaced by a global identity, which enables one person to standup for another person even if the two have never known each other, even if the two are from different races, even if the two are from different regions of the world.

Comparing the world that exists today with the one that existed some 70 years ago would be helpful in drawing an understanding of the landmarks of global village. The frequently witnessed protest of the international community on the plight of humanity, be it ethnic cleansing or genocide, is one instance of an extended human community which is formed on the basis of humanity that transcends all identities, be it national, racial, ethnic, religious or cultural. When in 1930s Hitler was forcing Jews, living in different parts of Europe, to move to concentration camps, the people living in Europe relied on newspaper and radio to develop a picture of what was happening on international and national front, not knowing the misery that crept into the lives of Jews and gradually swept the peace of their lives away. Fear was lurking in the hearts, fear of the unknown, fear of remote places. Nobody, not even Jews, knew where they were heading to. The people living in remote parts of the world, say sub-continent which sent its people to the great world war, had no knowledge of what was happening. The forced migration aka ethnic cleansing of Jews led to their mass murder. Millions of Jews were subjected to gas chambers and liquefied into soap; experiments were performed with anomalous medicines, new medical procedures were tried. Jews were abused, tormented, tortured and even gunned because they had a belief which was disapproved by the Führer, leader. The war ended, Nazis retired, allied forces arrived, and left-over Jews, three million, were rescued, but years passed till the world could actually find out what had happened to the Jews. It was not until 1960 that “The Final Solution” of the Nazis was replaced by “The Holocaust”, the genocide of six million European Jews in Second World War. The response of the international community at the greatest tragedy in the history of humanity took years to generate partly because of the long distance between places and partly because of the slouch methods of communication.

Today Burmese Citizenship Law does not acknowledge those Rohingyas as citizens who migrated after 1823. It was then that the British government allowed mass migration within India, and the flux of laborers that Myanmar experienced then was later termed by the Burma government as “illegal”. Last year when the Buddhist government asked the Rohingyan minorities, including a large chunk of Muslims, to leave the country, followed by extreme military measures, not only the Muslims living across the world but everyone knew what was happening. The international community raised its voice against this crime against humanity, persuading Myanmar defacto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate, to stop this persecution. The ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of people who have been living in Rohingya for three generations (some ninety-three years) has been reported throughout the world, watched and disapproved by millions. The world came to know of the crime as soon as it started to take place. Petitions were signed; photographs were shared; videos were made; banners were uploaded: the world disapproved the suppression of the minority and raised its voice for the violation of basic human rights (how in/effective that voice proved in political realm is a separate issue). Cherry on top is the way these modern-day platforms have empowered journalism, both print and electronic, with the ability to stay informed all the time and to keep their ‘followers’ informed.

In this global village the pace at which information is shared, relations are developed, purchases are made, causes are joined and ideas are propagated has been unprecedented in human history. For the first time the world has been exposed to infinite possibilities of living, with better prospects of shaping the world and developing a shared culture. With the help of mobile technologies, say, smartphone and tablets, one can get access to any information from any location while social sites like Facebook make communication and collaboration instantaneous. The citizens of this global community are more empowered and more united whether they have to propagate a political message, arrange a rally, organize a conference, generate a donation or run an NGO. Interestingly, when the famous pop-singer Rihanna was featured in an advert “Would You Rather” slap Rihanna or Punch Chris Brown by the social-media app Snapchat, she posted about the unethical advert on her Instagram and asked her followers to leave the app, dropping company shares by a 5 percent overnight.

The global village is all about a virtual bond between human beings who are connected through a network that brings them close despite the distance between them, giving an opportunity to understand one another’s grievances better. The way demise of Stephen Hawkins is grieved, assassination of Benazir Bhutto is condemned, Forty Rules of Loves is cherished, education of Malala Yousafzai is supported, victimization of women is shamed, emancipation of third-gender is endorsed, Right to Education is propagated and Child-labor is disapproved by the international community are examples of better-connectivity and better-receptivity of the global community.

In this global village, one opens a window that takes her/him to a world of possibilities. A world where learning is a piece of cake and knowing is a child’s play. With one touch of the finger one can virtually transport her/his image to remote places. Real relations are complemented with virtual ties. The virtual-self mostly treads the path unknown to the real-self. Blogs and Vlogs, e-books and audio-books, forums and messengers, online teaching and online distance learning, e-doctors and e-counseling: the contemporary world has devised new ways of living its old habits. This socially integrated unit fully understands its rights and frequently unites for mutual benefit. When Netflix, a steaming service, announced increase in its pricing, 82,000 comments were made on various social platforms; after the instantaneous response of the viewers, the company lost two-third of its market share (800,000 subscribers). Speed is the specialty of this global village: the speed with which news/information travels and with which feedback emerges. Services are subscribed, products are shipped, groups are joined, admissions are acquired and scholarships attained without covering any distance physically.

When in 1964, Marshal McLuhan predicted a global village, it was a ground-breaking idea. “Today, after more than a century of electric technology,” McLuhan wrote in his book Understanding Media, “we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned. He was the first to recognize the social effects of global village, a carefully-picked insightful term, where in real-time one part of the world can experience the events happening in another part of the world. Media, communication and technology have been rapidly, constantly changing the world; in less than twenty years it has transformed the global milieu; in another twenty years one can hardly imagine where it would take the global community. However, one thing is sure: this village is a place where its inhabitants are still learning to live together, to support one another and to fight for the greatest cause of Humanity. A day will come when the whole world will show up online and celebrate the triumph of humanity over medium and media, going beyond creed, color, region an race, flying above fences, boundaries, jurisdictions and borders.

The End