Everybody’s individual contribution is highly important, and a certain degree of competition among individuals is healthy for innovation and for being productive; but success on a large scale – think of skyscrapers and building cities like Tokyo, monetary systems, or combating climate change – such achievements are possible only if we cooperate; this is a precondition for modern society.
This is true of the small village, it is true of the nation state, and it is also true of the “global village” to which all human beings belong. Achieving a prosperous post-war international order has been a remarkable success, in other words: we have created a global village out of many smaller villages. Is this post-war order under threat from populism?