ABSTRACT
Many of the tensions and crises affecting our local societies are direct reverberations of events occurring around the world. Information and communications regarding both local and global events impinge more immediately and more vividly upon more individuals than at any other time in history. A global communications and transportation carries around the world a vast range of diverse products, providing common social and cultural ideas and artefacts which engender, in turn, shared attitudes in their requirement and use. Humans being what they are, awareness of identity within the larger planetary society may also be accompanied in due measure with equally intense local national pride. Where the trans-national aspects of the world economy tend to subvert the opportunities of direct economic warfare, they serve also to limit the traditional gains of armed conflict. The increased aggregation and interpenetration of national economies is another common element.
