Long time ago in the 1970s and 80s, when the World Wrestling Federation or WWF was the thing for Samoa, we would die to find a TV on Sunday evenings to watch WWF. One of my uncles, a wrestling fanatic, normally skipped saying the full name of WWF and just call it ‘worldization’. Today, the concepts such as ‘internationalization’ or ‘globalization’ are not just tactics for economic and cultural diplomacy. They are also central to homogenization of peoples. For example, it is typical that only a very few representatives from a few countries attending an event seems to justify calling that event an “international conference”, a “global agreement”, an “international course”, or a “global forum”. The recent conference I attended in Europe, which they called an international conference although there were only two of us from other countries outside of Europe. What’s so “global” about two or three countries engaged in an activity? With the current tension between Israel and Iran, and now with the US with its usual ‘Captain America’ temperament to save the world, the language now been used by the mainstream media is “world war”. What’s so “world” about a war where only two or three countries bomb each other? The whole other 99.9% of the world is not even part, let alone agree, to these wars. For a war to be justified, it has to be built on an ideology of ‘worldization’ where the world must be convinced that powerful countries are trying to save the vulnerable world. The same narrative we have today where Pacific countries have to be convinced that they are vulnerable therefore need to be saved by donor money. Can Captain America stop trying to save the world and save his own country falling apart?
