In a rapidly changing world, the West must embrace radical new power structures, writes Tony Kinsella.
IN TIMES of change the familiar acquires particular importance as comforting symbols, totems to grasp. The tightness of the grip on the totem, be it rosary beads or pint glasses, matters more than its inherent value.
The Mayan civilisation of Central America, famous for its pyramids, prospered for more than 2,000 years only to crumble in less than 200. Its stability depended on its agriculture, and in Mayan culture the success of its farmers depended on sacrifices to the gods.
Mayan society went into decline as crops began to fail due to climate change. The totem-clinging Mayan priests redoubled their human sacrifices, with the success you might expect. About 1,200 years ago the Mayan civilisation collapsed.
Our early 21st century society faces challenges every bit as transformational, though hopefully not as cataclysmic, as the Mayan ones.
A crucial totemic struggle is under way in Pennsylvania. Barack Obama described the economic realities of "small towns in Pennsylvania . . . the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them . . . [ Voters] get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them."
In the Pennsylvania rust belt of shrinking industries and closed mines, Barack Obama's analysis was that people had lost faith in the political process to address, much less change, their daily realities, and that they displaced their anxieties towards totemic "values" issues.
Richard Scammon and Ben Wattenberg first described this trend in their book The Real Majority (1970) which argued that US working-class voters went Republican when they voted on "values" rather than economics.
Hillary Clinton's counterattack revealed more than her ability to scent blood. It showed her continuing faith in the political approach championed by her former campaign strategist, Mark Penn.
This approach denies, Thatcher-like, the existence of society. Since voters lack common interests, a candidate must "dice and slice" their appeal, drinking whiskey with steelworkers, altar wine with Catholics, and mineral water with software designers - all in the same evening.
The results of Pennsylvania's primary will speak volumes as to whether Democratic voters opt for a future with Obama as their pilot to help steer them and their country through uncharted waters, or for a more familiar, almost regressive, status quo with Senator Clinton.
Italian voters hedged their bets last week, clinging to the familiar while laying the basis of a new departure. Silvio Berlusconi's third ruling passage in Rome might just reveal hitherto hidden abilities - although US writer Erica Jong cuttingly described him as "a clown".
A clown he may well be, but he is a familiar one, offering many Italians a link with what they view as a better past, rather than a blueprint for the future.
The relative success of Walter Veltroni's new Democratic Party, laying the basis for solid alternating governments in Rome, indicates that enough Italians are prepared to invest in a less flamboyant figure, to help guide their peninsula into an uncertain future.
We are daily assailed with glimpses of our common, planetary challenges from spiralling food and energy prices to melting permafrost.
Europe, or European-inspired countries and cultures, have dominated our world for at least five centuries. The notion that Christopher Columbus "discovered" the Americas in 1492 neatly avoids the reality of the millions who already lived there, and reinforces our Euro-centric view of the planet.
World powers from Columbus's Spain, through the rise and fall of England, the Netherlands, the Hapsburg empire, France, Russia, Prussia and eventually the United States of America, shared two common realities. The first was that their peoples were predominantly white, the second that some variant of Christianity provided part of the cement that held their societies together.
The economic and industrial centre of our planet is moving to Asia, with China and India playing central roles. The peoples of these countries are clearly not white, and while the Hindu religion fulfils a certain national role in India, the 3,500-year-old Chinese polity has never depended on a religion to provide its social cement.
An almost subconscious fear of Chinese power may go some way towards explaining the intensity of protest that caught authorities unawares as the Olympic flame staggered around the world.
The US is in recession - a reality which would traditionally drag European economies down in its wake. Although European growth forecasts for 2008 have been halved, the European economy continues to grow - fuelled by Chinese, Indian, Latin American and even African performances.
US public deficits are largely financed by China, and the sovereign funds of oil exporting nations, buying US Treasury bonds. Yet the US dominates global financial structures such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Banking systems dominated by their most profligate borrowers are not renowned for their longevity.
The World Trade Organisation has yet to adapt its structures and processes to reflect the economic power of India, China or Brazil. There is no global body responsible for agricultural policy and trade on a planet where food production has become a question of stability and survival.
The UN Security Council's permanent members remain the victorious powers of 1945, jealously clinging to their thrones while excluding any permanent Indian, Japanese, Latin American or African presence.
All these bodies must change, and new ones will be required. Europeans, if they act collectively through the EU, can play an important role. So too can a US led by a president capable of imagining the country as an important global player rather than the planetary master.
Pennsylvanians get to choose between clinging tightly to totems of the past, or trying to build a better future tomorrow.
Our chance comes on June 12th.'An almost subconscious fear of Chinese power may help to explain the intensity of protest