Hope grows in this wide, wide world

[Swagman]

Pico Iyer
January 5, 2007

The emails keep streaming in, here in my little apartment in Japan, from friends in California and places further east. The world is unravelling daily, they say; we're going through a period of darkness unprecedented in our history. The war against terrorism is a war without end; the attacks of September 11, 2001 put us all on edge, even on trial, for life.

As kids walk in the sunshine to their schools outside my window, I read the messages and wonder what planet I've landed on. The cries I hear in my friends' voices are those of conscience, and there's something stirring in their concern about America's warmongering and injustices.
Yet, I feel like saying, the United States - though still the strongest power in the world - is by no means the largest or even the central one. One in every three people on our planet lives in China or India, and for those worthy souls the new century is a time of possibilities unimagined before.

There is corruption and oppression and pollution all over China, India is still a byword for suffering and poverty, and yet, for more than 2 billion of our neighbours in the global village, history is moving in a positive direction.

Los Angeles Times
Pico Iyer is the author, most recently, of a novel, Abandon, and a set of essays, Sun after Dark. He is to attend the Sydney Writers' Festival in May.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/hope-grows-in-this-wide-wide-world/2007/01/04/1167777216316.html?page=2