Beyond Progress

Book excerpt: Argues that in a world of dwindling resources, economic inequality, and unremitting violence, the belief in endless progress can no longer be sustained. Asserts that we have arrived at a great historic divide, in which the old modern order is giving way to an age of "mutualism". Draws on world history and the study of international relations to explore the emerging future, in which new forms of social and political identity and regional associations and alignments will be needed to solve global problems. Argues that mutualism will require a dramatical change in the way states, international institutions, corporations, and local communities interact, and that this transformation will be especially difficult for the United States, which will have to abandon its exceptionalist identity and rejoin a world it can no longer escape.