As civilization grows more complex, it is simultaneously becoming increasingly interrelated. We are converging upon ourselves, and this is forcing us to relate.
Anodea Judith
Source: Waking the Global Heart: Humanity's Rite of Passage from the Love of Power to the Power of Love, Pages: 302
The problem is no longer that with every pair of hands that comes into the world there comes a hungry stomach. Rather it is that, attached to those hands are sharp elbows.
How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets the real thing...it is irresistible. If even 10 percent of the world’s population had it, would not the whole world be converted and happy before the year’s end?
You know that the population is of this planet is now ten times greater than it was in the ages preceding capitalism.; you know that all men today enjoy a higher standard of living than your ancestors did before the age of capitalism. But how do you know that you are the one out of ten who would have lived in the absence of capitalism? The mere fact that you are living today is proof that capitalism has succeeded, whether or not you consider your own life very valuable.
Ludwig von Mises
Source: Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow, Pages: 5..6
Terrorism [is] a biological consequence of the multinationals, just as a day of fever is the reasonable price of an effective vaccine . . . The conflict is between great powers, not between demons and heroes. Unhappily, therefore, is the nation that finds the "heroes" underfoot, especially if they still think in religious terms and involve the population in their bloody ascent to an uninhabited paradise.
Umberto Eco (1932 -)
Source: "Striking at the Heart of the State" (1978) from Travels in Hyperreality