Modernity and Decision-Making for Global Challenges

There are competing views on modernity. Some focus on the isolation of the individual, bereft of traditions and rituals, while others optimistically espouse the power of globalization, technology, and science to support progress and enhance human life. The challenges created by emerging diseases and human environmental impacts allow a new appreciation of the power of coordinated human responses while highlighting the limitations of globalization, technology, and science. Both climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrate that science and technology provide rapidly updated information, but immediate solutions reside in aggregate changes in personal behavior supported by regulation and governmental or trans-governmental agencies. These requirements for personal responsibility challenge individual powerlessness and highlight the necessity of communal responses to global challenges.