In recent years, the United Kingdom has voted in favor of more autonomy in the form of Brexit, the United States has voted for a conservative leader who has made it clear that his absolute stance on immigration and foreign relations is one of isolation and even estrangement, and more and more regions are interested in sovereignty. All of these examples occur in direct opposition to the push for globalization by increasingly more powerful technology. Why is this happening?
A big reason is simply a fear of the unknown. As society moves forward, humans naturally try to oppose the change that they see around them by reverting to the small-group mentality they are comfortable with. But just as the government in the United States can be broken down from the national level all the way down to the local level, the same can potentially be done for the world as a whole.
Many fear that their identity and culture would be lost if it wasn't for their intense nationalism. For them, nationalism is a sort of defense mechanism against new ideas and new traditions in an effort to protect old traditions. A lot of people's identity is deeply bound to the culture that they grew up with so a move towards globalization would be an affront to their very being.
As a human species, in the grand scheme of things we haven't known that there were people living "across that ocean" or "over that mountain." For thousands of years, we didn't know anything more than what was within walking distance. Since then, things have changed, and they have changed quickly. Instantaneous global communication is now possible; something, not even our grandparents could have predicted as they were growing up. As things change more and more rapidly and each of us understands a little bit less of the collective human knowledge, we still haven't evolved enough to understand that it's okay to act as a global collective of humans rather than a local group.
Perhaps in the future people will be content to hold on to their traditions, but not tie them so tightly to the nations from which they came. Until then, we should all make an effort to avoid tying ourselves so tightly to the place we grew up in. Instead, use it as a way to show your perspective, but allow that perspective to be changed by the people you meet and their own backgrounds and beliefs. We're all humans. We should use our differences to unite, not divide.
