After the question of leadership, the next question is, how to lead a world without leadership? The unique characteristic of globalization is not interconnectedness, but interconnectedness without leadership and still in need of a direction. If it sounds challenging, it is because it is arguably one of the most serious challenges humanity has ever faced.
The unique paradox of globalization is that no one is leading because we are all, in fact, leading it. As murmurations of starlings or anchovies, the whole flock or school move, without any leader, in somewhat orderly and yet unpredictably fashion because all individuals are participating in the leadership.
All this raises moral questions: is no one responsible of what globalization is doing? Or are we all responsible? Equally responsible? Are social media services responsible for the content of social media or the content creators alone? Is globalization going where we want to go? or is the flock of the mass blindly leading us where we'd rather not go?
Leading the globe without clear leadership seems an impossible task, and it indeed represents one of the greatest social challenges humanity has ever faced. We certainly don't require a super-state or a universal emperor. However, effective open-source leadership demands a mindset that we are far from achieving. In a sense, globalization has occurred without active pursuit, but it's now too late to shirk the responsibility that comes with it.
To ethically respond to the challenge of globalization, we first need a reliable system of information and communication, which is currently lacking. Secondly, we require global structures capable of guiding such a response. All this hinges on an openness to objective truth that can establish common goals, which in turn requires the capacity for reasonable global dialogue.
A cursory look at the global situation suggests that we are significantly distant from achieving these necessary objectives.