Will

Will

Chapters 1-4 Summary:

Well the thing the author made most clear in this chapter which is that the technological revolution and the economic revolution are driving the change and globalization in our world. He said the changes that these revolutions would bring will be good and bad in different ways. He also said that there was going to be a demographic boom in the near future before the world population stabilizes at 9 billion from the 6 billion it is at right now and that this would only cause problems.Throughout these three chapters he was always talking about countries making laws for an international market economy and that I thought related quite intensly to the main focus of the book which is global citizenship. From what he described it would hinder the world and the specific country if that country decided to shut all borders and communication. I couldn't help but notice that he was saying things like "by the end of 2001". I guess that means this book was written about ten years ago. This may be useful because I can see from the news today if what this guy is predicting is correct. I was also the passage master for this reading and I have explanations for the quotes I picked. The first one I picked was to show how quickly the world is changing and what truths we as a country I trying to avoid and pretend the world doesn't exist like with China's soon to be strongest economy and that's important because I've talked with a lot pf people about China and what it means to us as a people and many think that it's a communist stat when actually the economy is based off a capitalist system and running very well. For the second quote I was trying to bring up conversation about the demographic explosion. I would like to see how the group thinks the problems presented will affect politics in the world and what areas will specifically be at risk. For the final quote I am trying for the group to think on how this necessity of open markets will affect the world as a whole and America specifically. For example a communist country that closes its doors on the rest of the world in todays economy like Cuba will not be able to compete will countries that have their doors open like Germany. The Cuban made goods will not be purchased as often as others because it cost more to make them and the cost more to foreigners which will not make Cuba any money which will leave the country impoverished and technologically inferior to others making it hard for them to survive.

Chapters 5-7 Summary:

Reishchland was talking a lot about the new way that business and government would have to be run in order to be successful and it mostly had to to do with being agile and able to change quickly and at moments notice. Reischland was also talking about some of the changes that would be happening as a result of this change of the running of the system which were most importantly less developed countries being able to piggy back through new technologies and the destruction of inflation. The last key point that was mentioned during these chapters was how government would not be able to control the thingsthat happened to it's countries all by itself because the outside world would have things to do with it like the way other countries ran their enviormental system could affect your countries forest and how business, NGO's, and civil services would have to work together in orde to run a successful and motivated system. When I was reading this I couldn't help but thinking that what Reischland was describing was going to destroy the idea of a country which is good in some ways but is bad in others way because people will lose the ability to chose the way there home is run democratic countries because there will be so much outside influence and many cultures will destroyed in order to yield profit. The reason that we need to be global citizens as described in this chapter is because the new economy will force us to work together so whatever one country or person does will affect the entire world.

Chapter 8-11 Summary:

In these chapters we started to go into some more specific issues, or at least he described how he was going to lay out what problems there were and when we were going to talk about them. Chapter 8 was about human institutions mostly but I still don't understand the importance of them in terms of fixing the world. An important thing that we learned in the reading about the twenty global issues is that they are inherent issues and what one country decides to do with solving them can effect all of the others. This is another example of how being a global citizen is important because in order to solve these problems we need to work together. It was also talking about how even though are own personal countries are having problems right now there are bigger problems that effect the whole world and not just our small homes. This also relates to being a global citizen because if we just try to solve our own problems it leaves the biggest problems to grow larger and larger.

Chapter 12-13 Summary, May 14th

These chapters were talking about specific global issues having to do with sharing our planet and issues requiring global commitment to dissolve them. An important note mentioned was that there are a few underlying problems the chain onto others like poverty. These chapters related to global citizenship in numerous ways. In chapter twelve it was talking about how we have to share our resources among countries and watch what waste we give off into the atmosphere. This involves global citizenship because we as countries share waterways and if one country is overfishing the other country downstream won't get their catch and the ozone doesn't care what country you're from, it will dissipate either way.Because these problems force us to think and communicate outside our own borders we have to think of ourselves all as citizens to the world. Chapter 13 talked mostly about issues that specifically required global commitment and in order for a for a global committee to occur to solve these problems we had to be global citizens and not just think about what we can get out of it. Some of these issues were education for all, prevention of terrorism, and global disease. These issues need global global commitment because the places where the help is needed most cannot do it themselves which in most cases is Africa and South Asia.

Chapters 14-15 Summary, May 17th

In these chapters Rischard talked about issues that needed global coalitions to solve. Some of the issues that were mentioned were the illegal drug trade, immigration, e commerce, and intellectual rights to name a few. These issues are especially important in the snse of relating to being a global citizen because we cannot solve them by oursleves in our own countries and the effects will hurt locally and the benefits won't be revealed for a few years so if we think in terms of our own near future the solutions put forth will not work and will not be accepted. In many cases these issues brought forth had been confronted by many countries by themselves like the United States trying to combat drug trade but without things like shared bank information( which was another issue presented) we will be unsuccesful without the help from other countries. The cause for this is the new World economy and different values/religion/morals. Since we shouldn't have the right to tell people what to think we have to work together in order to combat the problem.

Chapters 16-23 Summary, May 20th

This final part of the book had to do with what Rischard thought might work in order to solve the global problems that he described but more specifically what he didn't think would work. Basically as far as bad ideas he only said that staying static in terms of change and governance and trying to make solutions based off of globalization theories because he beleives globalization is hogwash. Rischard suggested specific Global Issue Networks or GIN's in order to solve our problems because they provide third parties for biased decision making and because they are open to change. He also mentioned networking these groups in terms of relationship like how education will affect poverty. One of the most important thoughts in his theories was how to implement power through these groups. Since these groups don't represent people or a military then many countries will not listen to them but Rischard suggested using reputation as a tool in order for these countries to not lose trade partners and national reputation. Global citizenship was especially important in these chapters. Rischard mentioned that without global citizenship representatives in these GIN's will not be representing the world as a whole but they're own beleifs will will surely devastate the world. Also he mentioned how it's important for everybody to be a global citizen because the decisions made by these groups will surely have an effect on our lives quickly but we have to look at how the long term benefits will help us and the rest of the inhabitants on this earth.