The ongoing external changes occuring on the international scene on the political, economic, cultural and social levels give rise to interracting relations with traditional and contemporary values in the various societies. Globalization represents one of the axes of these changes, in their impact on the values during the attempt of expressing a unified inconsistency.

As the concept of globalization imposes on the societies choices and alternatives between their reference values and the values of globalisation policies, the equation it imposes in this context goes between absolute inconsistency and partial inconsistency, without a third given that would enable these societies to implement a developing dynamism in its value, and thus achieve the existence of a partial possibility to participate with the international system according to national interests.

Value imposes a kind of conflicting relation with the values in the developing and developed countries as well. It tries to impose its system on the values by considering them as central values represented by the Western example, then considered as cosmic values representing the common factor from the historical patrimony of the humanity.

The globalisation value also imposes challenges that put the societies between the choices of cultural privacies and the economical, political and stategic interests, so that would create some kind of conflict inside these societies represented by three concepts:

• Attempts to latch on to original values, thus refusing values of globalisation.
• Latch on to values of globalisation and consider them as a contemporary value example with the prerogative of dealing with reality.
• Harmony and coordination with the values of globalisation to reflect the aspects of cultural identity, keeping values as the most important symbols.

In our opinion, these three concepts represent important questions within the realm of political, economic, sociological, cultural academic studies in general:

• Does the value of globalisation represent to these societies a system of permanent or temorary values?
• Does the objective understanding of globalisation realize a discovery of some of the positive values present in this phenomenon?
• Could the values that created a retarded reality guarantee its existence in the context of the efficiency of the value system of globalization?
• What the the mechanism of positive interaction of the societies with the values of globalization? How would it respond?

The globalisation value system includes great negativity. Its positive values such as democracy, human rights, tolerance, etc., cannot be considered as absolute. Because these are values that are not reflected in all societies, the concepts behind them serve rather only to enhance current policies of globalisation.

Globalization mainly aims at changing the value systems in societies and transform them and try to alienate them to find a dominating system on which is based the planning and implementation of policies, which meet the interests of certain countries and ensures the priority of the U.S. civilized example in the framework of the system of victorious values that use the multitude of technical, technological and information means, not the mindful explanation.

According to the change in the culture of the international entities, which goes along with the existence of a system of values ruling over the other value systems in the countries that are still living a cultural cycle and haven't yet reached the civilized cycle in which they could accomplish kinds of value control in the human surrounding, the power of the values according to culture built an argumentative relation in which the power of the values was transformed into values of power. This is a logical result that is negatively confronted with the attempts to consolidate the values systems in the other societies.

In general, the globalisation value system, according to theoratical studies in their different contexts, includes great negativity. Its positive values such as democracy, human rights, tolerance, are directional and cannot be considered as absolute. They are values that are not reflected in all societies, rather the conceptual givens implied in them serve the policies of globalisation. For instance, tolerance reflects a powerful meaning of communication and dialogue, but the objective question in this framework is: what kind of tolerance does the Western culture call for, when this culture has convictions to the effect that dialogue and communication with other cultures should be to the benefit of the victorious culture, and thus, even values of positive globalisation are based on rejecting and excluding the other.






Contributed by Mohamad Hussein Abu Al-Ola. Reprinted with permission from Dar al hayat.com.

To read another Global Envision article about the the paradoxes of globalization, see Europe and the Third Wave of Globalization.