“Perhaps the original flaw of Globalization lies in its overstatement of the success of 19th Century free trade, along with an overstatement of the determinism of technology and the superiority of rational management systems. The certainty of all this inevitable change has distracted us from just how slow civilizations move. The recent genocide in the Congo reminds us that they – and we – are still dealing with King Leopold’s violent, genocidal interference a century ago. Britain is still digesting its loss of world leadership. China still thinks and feels like the Middle Kingdom – the centre of the world. Canada, now the third-oldest continuos democracy in the world and the second-oldest continuos federation, is still emotionally and existentially hampered by its colonial insecurity; just as Australia remains confused by the tension between its European cultural origins, its Aboriginal reality and its Asian geography; just as German youth born forty years after the end of Nazism still struggle with the idea of who they could possibly be. Algerians are still attempting to reconstitute themselves after the loss of their great and appropriate leader, Abd-el-Kader, in 1848; and Americans are still scarred and hampered by the implications of their slave-dependent social and economic origins. The list is endless.”

John Ralston Saul’s, The Collapse of Globalism arrived today. Review to follow, after I’m done reading it.