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It seems a safe bet, as we move toward the year 2025, that governments will become no more idealistic than they have ever been--they will always represent a community of interests. And corporations cannot afford to stress conscience or sacrifice before profit. It therefore falls to the individual, on her own initiative, to look beyond the divisions of her parents' time and find a common ground with strangers to apply the all-purpose adjective "global" to "identity" and "loyalty." Never before in history have so many people, whether in Manhattan or in Tuva, been surrounded by so much that is alien (in customs, languages and neighborhoods). How we orient ourselves in the midst of all this foreignness and in the absence of the old certainties will determine how much our nations are disunited and how much we are bound by what Augustine called "things loved in common."
Pico Iyer, a TIME contributor, is the author most recently of The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home