I think a lot of people are starting to realize that we can't ignore the rest of the world anymore. For years it seems that we have consumed and consumed and consumed with little regard for the rest of the world. I know that this was the mindset that I grew up with. I bought and threw away and it didnt matter. Trash went away and new shiny things came to me. We never wondered where the trash was going on where the shiny things were coming from. Or we saw the industrial areas and thought that was the entire origin of the shiny things and felt it was ok. An ugly industrial area and some atmospheric polution was a fair trade for the right to purchase and use a universal remote control for all your entertainment needs. Or we saw Mt. Trashmore, a landfill where trash was dumped with dirt so that it made a decent sized hill and transformed into a ski slope in the winter.
We assumed that what we could see was the whole story and felt ok with it. What we were not aware of was the vast fields of technological waste shipped to Asia. We didnt know that our industrial areas were just shipping and distribution centers, production took place in other places with more lenient enforcement of labor and environmental standards.
I guess what I'm getting at is that now I am convinced, more than ever, that our actions, practices and lifestyle in the United States has a huge impact on the rest of the world. I would imagine, much more so than most other countries. As the epicenter of empire our consumer trends dictate the opportunities (or lack thereof) for the rest of the world. Our choices echo out into the rest of the world to such an extent that each one of us is responsible to a small degree for their condition and circumstances.
This has been true and building for a long time. As the web of empire was spread all over, we have been increasingly bound to people in distant places. Empire is not propagated though colonies as in the past but more in the creation of roads (like Rome) for money. Money has become the instrument of control. Rome used military power and the levereage of citizenship, today it is money. The military is still a very important part of the equation but the motive of its use has changed. The military is used to ensure the free-flow of money. Where trade agreements, IMF, the World Bank and other such organizations fail military force is available.
I am begining to see that the war in Iraq was not strictly about oil. They were trying to dicatate terms to emipre. Iraq wanted to set their own rules and in so doing impede the flow of money.
I guess this may not make much sense if you are not me and in my head. Metaphor: the monetary flow is a river that cycles throughout the world, there are centers of capital that the river flows in and out of. Money may flow to impoverished nations in many forms but it only goes out so that it may come back to its origin a little richer. In the course of the flow, communities and individuals are spent and eroded, turned into inhuman units of production, and taken back to the source in the form of a little more money. It is important to note that the United States does not equate emipire. It is where a lot of imperial business takes place, so is Europe, Canada, China. Empire is a system of contol, not a nation or people as we commonly consider them.
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