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The relief felt following the collapse of the Berlin Wall did not last long. The bipolar order of the cold war hid a completely different reality. As the influence of the power blocs recedes, broken up by modern telecommunications, tribal and religious identities surface again, like concealed boulders breaking through the ice.
The world at the end of the 20th century consists of a mosaic of irascible ethnic groups, attached to past values and making a fetish out of the possession of their territory or their privileged position. After Lebanon; Yugoslavia, India, central Asia and Africa have been seized by fundamentalist urges and ethnic persecutions, and Asia is rearming. Sporadic and complex racial conflicts burst out, now here, now there like bubbles of hate rising to the surface of the devil's cauldron. People believed such atrocities were confined to the past but forgot too easily the helplessness of the illiterate, the despair of the unemployed, the response to being a social outcast. Without a future offering plausible hope, people embrace the forces of the past. In Eastern Europe, those who previously ruled may have been chased out of power but their lieutenants remain. They represent a resort to the security of a narrower outlook.
Constitutional society took over a century to become part of life in the West. But the Western world tried to give the impression that it could become established in a few years in the East and bring in its trail the prosperity desired. Clan and gang loyalties are not so easily overcome. To choose the new competent entrepreneur rather than the ignorant nephew of the local despot requires a serious commitment to objectivity.
It has to be seen by all as a social necessity, even more important than the old balance of power. However belief in naked force is still widespread, adhered to by a majority of humanity and reinforced by the temporary successes of warlords, the violence of the urban jungles and the growth of mafias.
Nevertheless, a new technological system continues to evolve, bringing with it new forms of actions. In this troubled world, technology is the area where intelligence overcomes force, even at the very heart of the chosen kingdom of naked force - armaments. Moreover modern technology links people beyond beliefs and frontiers. Though invented after the telephone, television became part of everyday life before it. It has instituted a planetary society of entertainment in which reality is transformed and packaged to gain the fleeting attention of viewers. Surreptitiously inserting advertisements into the consciousness of its audience, misleading people while also providing correct information, it creates unfulfillable desires and yet offers a space for the arts and encourages awareness of nature.
The world is drunk and has lost its landmarks. An overloading of information produces hallucinogenic effects. Individuals isolate themselves with their walkman or compulsively interact with their video games. The ensnaring and manipulation of minds spread imperceptibly and become second nature. In the space of a few days, a "true life show" can transform an unknown into the darling of millions of television viewers and just as quickly return him to the torment of the disregarded. Dallas reigns at all levels.
Without meaning to, the media teach passivity. They absorb the energy of the viewer in unfamiliar dramas. Having lived earth shattering events by proxy, the individual loses the motivation to undertake projects in measure with his own life and falls into either megalomania or depression. Millions of people are looking for work while there are less and less entrepreneurs to employ them. Everywhere the shortage is of employers and not of employees.
The world of finance is affected by its involvement with the media. Major entrepreneurs buy out television stations and money and credibility become entangled. Fortunes are made and lost more and more quickly. A raider can raise the equivalent of the yearly income of a million Indian peasants in three telephone calls. Stock markets linked together shift billions of dollars around the earth on the waves of speculation. Whole regions, complete professions are at the mercy of unpredictable hurricanes, originating in distant, elusive and random causes.
The numbers of social outcasts increase and so does unrest. The fear of danger heightens like volcanic forces fermenting away in the inner cities and slums, waiting for the right moment to destroy the old world. The chrysalis prepares to give birth; but to what?