"Whatever else globalization may mean, it means that we are all dependent on each other. Distances matter little now. Something that happens in one place may have global consequences... However local their intentions might be, actors would be ill-advised to leave out of account global factors, since they could decide the success or failure of their actions."
"Nothing can be done to arrest, let alone reverse, globalization. One can be in favor of or against the new planetwide interdependency, but the effect will be similar to that of supporting or resenting the next solar or lunar eclipse."
"The globalization process has thus far produced a network of interdependence penetrating every nook and cranny of the globe, but little else. It would be grossly premature to speak of even a global society or global culture, not to mention a global polity or global law. Is there a global society emerging at the far end of the globalization process? If there is such a system, it does not as yet resemble the social systems we have learned to consider the norm."
"Most important, that planetary dimension has not been matched by democratic control on a similarly global scale. We may say that power has flown from the historically developed institutions that used to exercise democratic control over uses and abuses of power in the modern nation-states. Globalization in its current form means a progressive disempowerment of nation-states and (so far) the absence of any effective substitute."
"A retreat from globalization of human dependency, from the global reach of human technology and economic activities is, in all probability, no longer in the cards. Responses like «circle the wagons» or «Back to the tribal (national, communal) tents» won't do. The question is not how to turn back the river of history but how to fight against its pollution by human misery and how to channel its flow to achieve a more equitable distribution of the benefits it carries."
"An effective response to globalization can only be global. And the fate of such a global response depends on the emergence and entrenchement of a global (as distinct from international or, more correctly, interstate) political arena. It is such an arena that is today most conspicuously missing. The existing global players are singularly unwilling to set it up. Their ostensible adversaries, trained in the old yet increasingly ineffective art of interstate diplomacy, seem to lack the ability and the necessary resources. New forces are needed to reestablish and reinvigorate a truly global forum adequate to the globalization era - and they may assert themselves only through bypassing both kinds of players."
Zigmunt Bauman assim o escreveu (citado de "Does Ethichs Have a Chance in a World of Consumers?", Harvard University Press, 2008, pgs.71-77).
Visto da paisagem, é todo um programa com futuro.
