Summaries / Resúmenes - Studia Moralia

102 BRUNO HIDBERat random because they happened to be in the Towers or on theairplanes. In this way September eleventh was, like Auschwitz,a program of extermination in which the face of the humanperson was rendered invisible and secondary by the logisticsand strategy.Not only ethical-moral dimensions were shut down but alsothe fundamental dimension of religion, God himself, was alsoignored. Pope John Paul II pointed this out several times. It is aperversion to use the name of God for acts of terrorism andassassination. In this sense, these “administrative massacres”were not only crimes against humanity but also against God.3. Globalization, postmodernism and evilThe character of our contemporary era is represented bythe concepts of globalization and postmodernism. The economyand means of communication, which are based more andmore on electronic technology, show that the face of the worldis changing. Such change is often expressed with the sloganthat the world has become a “global village.” 20There are diverse and even opposing views that try toexpress what the notion of “globalization” means. There arethose who regard it as a fashionable neologism about a worldthat essentially functions, and will continue to function as ithas always functioned. On the other hand, there are those whomaintain that the notion of globalization points to a substantialchange, the massive effects of which we are only beginning toexperience. The English writer Anthony Giddens does not hesitateto affirm that globalization does not simply refer to somethingnew, but something quite revolutionary that has neverexisted before and which expands our horizons toward a com-20Marshall McLuhan, “Global Village,” in Anthony Giddens, RunawayWorld (New York: Routledge, 2000), 34.21See Giddens, 24-37: “I would have no hesitation, therefore, in sayingthat globalization, as we are experiencing it, is in many respects not onlynew, but also revolutionary” (28). “It is a shift in our very life circumstances.It is the way we now live” (37).