Back to basics

If we are to believe Henry Kissinger and his protégé, Barack Obama, we are on the threshold of a new world order. In the run-up to achieving this, the solutions to the world's problems are being pushed up into ever-larger forums, such as the G-20, a reinvigorated U.N., and a heavily top-down EU. Broad solutions are being sought, but the problems affecting daily life are increasingly local and national. Unemployment, the disappearance of productive jobs, the unequal distribution of financial resources, rising energy prices and a decline in community spirit all have a global dimension, but addressing them starts on the local and national level. Elevating them to the international arena is an admission of our inability to deal with them. A better outcome to the crisis than a new world order would be a back-to-basics movement that revives the obsolete notions of fairness, honesty and hard work.