The contemporary civilizational scene - one or many modern civilizations?

Abstract

While modernity has spread to most of the world, it has not given rise to a single civilization or one pattern of ideological and institutional response, but to several, or at least to many basic variants, which are constantly developing their own closely related but not identical dynamics. For all these reasons, the encounter between civilization and cultures in the contemporary era acquires new dimensions, due to the development on the one hand of more and more similar institutional and ideological arenas, as well as more and more arenas of common activity, and on the other hand of growing differences in the different programmes of modernity of societies or civilizations in the very interpretation of modernity. This development may give rise to new and very intense tensions or problems which have been inherent in such encounters from their very beginning in the history of mankind. In some cases or situations, it may well exacerbate them - it may well be that it is here that some of the greatest difficulties and new types of tensions develop -, but it does also open up new possibilities.