Responsibility in Context

Arne Johan Vetlesen Ours is the era of globalisation. This means that the world is expanding; pressing a key, I can immediately reach persons living in another continent; products travel across the world to the store just around the corner from me; thanks to modern media, I am cognisant of events taking place right now thousands of kilometers away. The world is expanding in the sense that yesterday’s time-space limits are rendered irrelevant; my communications, my needs, my aspirations, transcend all such givens. Whatever confronts me as part of my here-and-now, as making up my present contextuality, I can – and will – easily transcend and leave it behind. That the world is expanding means I am expanding, insofar as my range of action, my horizon for thinking, indeed for existing, is perpetually expanding. Expansion as such is forever-happening; it is without limits. This is what we are being told about the nature of globalisation. It rings true; or more to the point, it sounds trivial. But perhaps it is neither. Let’s make a new start. Ours is the era of globalisation. This means that the world is shrinking. It is becoming smaller and smaller. It imposes itself upon me, wherever I go, whatever I undertake to do. It exerts all kinds of pressure from all kinds of directions, on all kinds of levels: psychologically no less than physically.