The World

There is always something going on

One of the biggest bonuses about living our lives in the year 2007 is that there is always something going on.  Realistically, there has always, always been something going on, but until relatively recently we haven’t been able to see it. 

Our world is shaped roughly like a sphere and it spins on an axis, meaning that for each of us to some degree, our lives are cyclical.  As soon as we have experienced day, the sun disappears behind our planet and we experience night.  As soon as we experience summer, our angle towards the sun changes and we experience winter.  For each of these times there are normal activities that occur in our immediate environment.  For each of these times there is someone on the other side of the globe experiencing the opposite. 

When I experience normal business hours, chances are, you may be sleeping.  When I swelter in summer, you may be freezing in winter.  For every condition we are in, there is always someone, somewhere experiencing the opposite.  This includes economic recessions, and growth, droughts and bumper crops.  All sorts of conditions are balanced across our world, it just takes a bit of “Looking around corners” to see it.  How is this useful to people interested in making the most of their lives?

The first, obvious implication is that now business can be a 24 hour affair for most of us.  This is fairly routine for most companies these days - if it is not for yours, then you should make it so.  People world wide are demanding access to whatever you offer at times that suit them.  If you can supply, then you win, if not then they will go elsewhere.

The second implication is that while there is an on-season and an off-season for many pursuits, someone is always having an on-season somewhere.  If you are a surfer, there are always waves somewhere, if you grow rice someone is harvesting, somewhere.   

The third implication is the sense of balance that we can see in problems and solutions.  While Australia is short of water, Japan is short of land.  While some African countries are starving, the United States is killing itself with obesity.  Surely in our new interlinked world, we can find ways to balance these problems. 

You can see how these cycles can make living in one spot less restrictive now that we have instant worldwide access.  How much more so, when we realise how cheap international travel is these days in real dollars.  If you want to ski in the Australian summer, then you can jump on a plane and in 8 hours you can be on the Japanese powder.  If you want to fight malaria on the other side of the globe, then the cost of a plane ticket will seem like very little compared to the opportunities. 

There is a negative side to this apparent shrinking of the globe, but it doesn’t come from the fact that we are linking our world together, but more from the way that we use these links.  Nobody seems to complain that Greenpeace operates in over 30 countries.  People only have a problem when a multinational company discriminates against local employees.  Globalisation is one of the biggest boons to productive living that we have seen in a long time.  Embrace it and you take a much more effective part in the world, ignore it and you will be left behind.

The negative side of globalisation gets all of the press coverage these days.  Its about time that we focused on the positive side and really made globalisation work for us.

What are the advantages that globalisation holds for you?  

Thanks

Tom