There are two major things with which humanity has to contend: globalization and division. The world is more inter-connected than ever before by international trade, transport networks including aviation, and highly sophisticated global communication systems. At the same time, conflict is widespread. According to the 2025 Global Peace Index (Global Peace Index Map » The Most & Least Peaceful Countries) there are 59 active state-based conflicts currently raging across more than 35 countries. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and other researchers estimate there are over 120 armed conflicts worldwide, involving more than 60 states and 120 non-state armed groups.
Aside from military conflict and violence, division is increasingly evident within national populations, exacerbated by the instantaneous reach of social media. ‘Culture wars’ rage around the world with people violently disagreeing over their visions of the best society and how humans should behave. Religious and political ideologies unite members within the group but exclude non-believers.
In this book Michael Ignatieff (Michael Ignatieff | Biography & Facts | Britannica) presents his discoveries and his interpretation of what globalization―and resistance to it―is doing to our conscience and our moral understanding. Through dialogues with favela dwellers in Brazil, South Africans and Zimbabweans living in shacks, Japanese farmers, gang leaders in Los Angeles, and monks in Myanmar, Ignatieff found that while human rights may be the language of states and liberal elites, the moral language that resonates with most people is that of everyday virtues: tolerance, forgiveness, trust, and resilience. These ordinary virtues are the moral operating system in global cities and obscure shantytowns alike, the glue that makes the multicultural experiment work. Ignatieff seeks to understand the moral structure and psychology of these core values, which privilege the local over the universal, and citizens’ claims over those of strangers.
Ordinary virtues, he concludes, are anti-theoretical and anti-ideological. They can be cheerfully inconsistent. When order breaks down and conflicts break out, they are easily exploited for a politics of fear and exclusion―reserved for one’s own group and denied to others. But they are also the key to healing, reconciliation, and solidarity on both a local and a global scale. Ultimately, they may be what saves us.
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464 pages in Harvard University Press
First published 2017
ISBN-13 : 978-0674976276
Michael Ignatieff