Lets Talk About Globalization! | Charles Beem | TEDxUNCPembroke

I bring the world with me.

I have one mission in life, make this world a better place. To contemplate such a thing is to wear the hat of a philosopher. And when you get right down to it, that's what philosophers have been doing. From Confucius and Plato to Bob Dylan and Beyoncé, time immemorial. She might ask, "What am I doing to make

this world a better place?" Well, I start with the little things, like being nice to people even when I don't want to, and having a smile ready for everyone I meet. But are there bigger things that I can do to make this world a better place? I think so. For the past 25 years, I've been

teaching a history course called World Civilizations. It's a survey, a runaway train of 4,500 years packed into 15 weeks. And a few years back, it came to my attention that the the textbook I had been using for years had become quite expensive. And I thought to myself, rather than pick another textbook, I would write my

own. I'm a writer. I like to write. And over the years, I developed a truckload of ideas concerning the history of civilizations. Namely, how and why we got from early isolated civilizations like Egypt and Mesopotamia to the globally interconnected world we all live in today. I know that sounds terribly philosophical. But let me tell you what I think. In

fact, let me tell you all a little secret. For the past 25 years, I've been trying to convince my students that making this Earth a more globally interconnected planet is a good thing. Something to build upon, to preserve, to cherish. But what to call this? Globalization works really good. And you know, the world, it goes round and round.