than ever before. Nor is this an accident-because despite Samuel Huntington's foreboding, what has occurred over recent generations is not a clash of civilizations but a fusion of civilizations.
To put it simply, the great world civilizations, which used to have detached and separate identities, now have increasingly overlapping areas of commonality. Most people around the world now have the same aspirations as the Western middle classes: they want their children to get good educations, land good jobs, and live happy, productive lives as members of stable, peaceful communities. Instead of feeling depressed, the West should be celebrating its phenomenal success at injecting the key elements of its worldview into other great civilizations.
The march of reason, triggered in the West by the Enlightenment, is spreading globally, leading to the emergence of pragmatic problem-solving cultures in every region and making it possible to envisage the emergence of a stable and sustainable rules-based order. There is every reason to believe, moreover, that the next few decades can be even better for humanity than the last few-so long as the West does not lose confidence in its core values and retreat from global engagement. The greatest danger of the current pessimism, therefore, is that it might become a self-fulfilling prophecy, leading to fear and withdrawal rather than attempts to reinvigorate the existing global system.
The origins of the contemporary era lie in the West's transformation during the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution. No other civilization can take credit for giving birth to modernity. This was not done with some benign intent to uplift humanity in general; there were many problems along the way, and the explosion of Western power across the globe had some terrible consequences for other cultures and regions. Yet the ultimate result was the diffusion of a modern outlook that relies on science and rationality to solve problems, much to the ultimate benefit of the planet's population.
As recently as half a century ago, for example, there was a global clash of economic ideologies. Nikita Khrushchev, the former leader of the Soviet Union, could claim that the state was better at delivering basic goods to citizens than free markets were, but today such a view would be laughed at. The market economy has made Chinese and Indian workers today far more productive than they were under Mao Zedong or Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister. Societies now accept the simple fact that workers need material incentives to be productive, which has led to increased dignity and self-worth. The vast majority of humanity is literate, is at least somewhat mobile, and has access to the world's store of existing knowledge. Around half of the adults in the world own a smartphone, and there are now more connected mobile devices in total than there are people on the planet.
The spread of science and technology, meanwhile, has also improved human dignity and well-being. Most people used to experience lives that were nasty,
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_026841