What in the World

is Going On?

The world as we know it sometimes seems to be coming apart.  And perversely, it sometimes seems to be coming together.

In our century, we have witnessed the fall of great empires -- the British, French, German, Ottoman, and Russian Empires fragmented into hundreds of independent national states.

Some of these Empires were remarkably durable.  The British and Russian Czarist Empires lasted for hundreds of years, the Ottoman Empire for a thousand. Some came and went, like the German Thousand-Year Reich, in the space of a few decades.

But we have witnessed also the birth of the League of Nations and the United Nations.  And the rise of a powerful new collection of states -- the European Union -- out of a simple arrangment for managing coal and steel resources.

Clearly there are forces working to tear Empires and countries apart. We in Canada are well aware of that today. And still there is a clear desire and probably a need for people to unite.

 Carleton's Online Journalism students explore this theme in a series of articles about the good and the evil of what forces separate us and what forces impel us to join. Nationalism has been condemed as a destructive force and praised as a uniting force. Can it be both?

What of nations without a country, such as the Kurdish and Palestinian nations? Or countries without a nation, such as Lebanon or even Canada?

A case could be made that what creats a common culture in a common world is not the force of nationalism expressed through language or religion, but the force if international economics expressed through business and crime.

The criminal or the businessman in one country has more in common with the criminal or businessman in another country than does the artist, the intellectual, or the average worker. It is becoming almost truly one world for terrorists, criminals, and businessmen. The policeman works together better with foreign policemen than the politician with foreign politicians.

These are the themes our students have selected to explore all over the world and at home.

Let us know and let the students know if you have found them enjoyable and useful.

Mail George Frajkor or Kerry Taylor

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