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What can I know (if trust in knowledge has been lost)? | 33 operation is and the more it excludes the peaceful coexistence of alternative explanations of the world, ways of life and technologies, the more vulnerable the system proves itself to be: its chance of adaptation to changing circumstances decreases. Aggressive expansion, the push for homogenisation and the lack of flexibility are hallmarks of the desperate struggle for survival of every declining civilisation. By the end of the twentieth century, the Western models of modernisation had spread across the world; we call this difficult and by no means linear process globalisation. Its historical roots are contradictory. ‘They are about not only conquest, expansion and the subjugation and despoiling of the defeated peoples, but also the universalistic nature of European thought. This is reflected in the development of the scientific concept of truth as much as in the teachings of the Christian religion. ‘The disappearance of the intellectual and physical limits led in the Age of Enlightenment to the great success of a unified world history and the concept of endless historical progress, with a cosmopolitan self-awareness, an imperialist sense of mission and freedoms extending to all human beings (and with — optional — ambitions of world revolution as well). This complex and contradictory cultural formula explains the determined efforts of the white man to explore, survey and transform the world. It is in this that he finds justification for the relentless exploitation of the Earth's resources, for the aggressive spread of the achievements of his civilisation, for the organisation of colonial empires — and eventually for their dissolution, once he possesses the technologies in the areas of transport, telecommunication, credit and warfare which make the stationing of armies, missionaries and officials in distant lands superfluous. In the postcolonial age, greater integration has become possible — and more or less necessary. They strove to achieve it with supposedly peaceful, purely economic methods (in the shadow of constant military threat, of course). These, however, are no longer the instruments of trade. In contrast with the free trade system that flourished before World War I, at the end of the twentieth century it was not exchange but production itself that became international: the production of goods and knowledge. This could not have happened without the successes in defeating distance, if anything had not become reachable from anywhere with the aid of the worldwide web, satellite transmissions, supersonic rockets, jet planes and other technological marvels. The world of globalisation is the world of technological systems and networks, but the institutions and motifs which operate them are primarily of an economic nature. Globalised humanity speaks the language of the competitive market economy. Be it the success
