Rethinking Globalization

Though I read several articles in this mostly excellent compilation, I decided to comment on Bertolt Brecht's poem, "Questions from a Worker Who Reads." I chose this entry because of my love of ancient history, my passion for the theatre, and my respect for this extraordinary playwright who believed that theatre could be used to accomplish good.

Brecht believed that theatre should "provoke rational self-reflection" in audiences, and these audiences should use this critical perspective to "identify social ills at work in the world and be moved to go forth from the theatre and effect change." Yet his poem unwittingly suggests that this is nearly impossible. He catalogues millennia of fighting and abuse illustrating, without saying it directly, that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

A cursory review of world history shows that peoples of every nation have at one time or another been exploited and abused by their leaders, and that they in turn exploited others (as Zinn clearly points out). Brecht asks "who built the seven towers of Thebes," wonders "where did the masons go" after the Chinese wall was finished, and indignantly notes "young Alexander plundered India. He alone?" These are rhetorical questions -- the "who" are obviously "the little people" of this world.

There are no angels in this world -- except in the theatre, of course -- and it might be possible to effect change in that dynamic way since theatre is a force in New York City. Nilaja Sun is trying to do just that in her one-woman show, "No Child," in which she dramatizes her experiences putting on a play in the very high school that Jonathan Kozol wrote about in Shame of a Nation. But I fear that effecting real change on a global scale, no matter what approach is used, is an exercise in futility. As we have seen for decades in the U.N., world leaders cannot agree on anything and are mostly pre-occupied with turf. They remind me of when I was a kid and used to say to anyone I didn't like: "Get off of my property." They still haven't grown up.

Feminist that I am, and perhaps a bit world weary, I truly believe that if women ran the governments -- Margaret Thatcher notwithstanding -- there would be less fighting, and more caring. This World War I verse says it all:

"I didn't raise my son to be a soldier / I brought him up to be my pride and joy / Who dares to put a musket on his shoulder / To shoot another mother's darling boy / Why should he fight in someone else's quarrels / It's time to throw the sword and gun away / There would be no war today / If the nations all would say / No I didn't raise my son to be a soldier."

NOTE: The information in the articles are unsubstantiated -- no footnotes, no bibliography -- making it impossible to verify what the authors wrote, a serious flaw.