jihad vs mcworld
...orld on the other hand, points to a future of prosperity through technology and market-sharing. McWorld paints that future in shimmering pastels, a busy portrait of onrushing economic, technological, and ecological forces that demand integration and uniformity among its components. It’s a scenario that mesmerizes peoples everywhere with fast music, fast computers and fast food (MTV, Macintosh, and McDonald’s), pressing nations into one homogenous theme park, one McWorld strung together by a tight knit network of communications, information, entertainment, and commerce. Caught between the Koran and Six Flags Magic Mountain, many people in this world don’t know whether to invest their savings into stocks or use it to move away to a secluded island all to one’s self. The planet is falling sharply apart and coming reluctantly together at the same point. On one side of the ball, people are complaining about the thousands of separated “peoples” who prefer to say hello to their neighbors with machine guns and secret missile attacks. Others, partisans of Six Flags, seize the promise futurological advances and the promise of virtuality. Both are right but how can that be? To the naked eye, one could never imagine that in this crazy world we live in the tendencies of both Jihad and McWorld are at work, both visible sometimes in the same country. Iranian Muslims, keep one ear tuned toward their mullahs during holy war, and the other tuned to Passions and Seinfeld beamed down from technology’s greatest marvel, the satellite. Jihad is a term that in its mildest of meanings means a religious struggle on behalf of faith. In its strongest political innuendo, it means a bloody holy war on behalf of the Islamic faith that must be carried out until the bitter end. While for many Muslims, it signifies passion in the name of religion. Jihad can also be looked at as a fanatic response to colonialism and imperialism, and their economic offspring, capitalism and technological change. It is diversity gone haywire. McWorld is a product of popular culture driven by ever expanding world commerce. The best example of this is America. It products are as much image as material, fashion as ideology. Its symbols are big burly Ford trucks and expensive luxurious Cadillacs raised upon highways, where they were once a mode of transportation now they are a symbol of Amer...