What age are you?

(Delhi, India)

Strange as it may seem to all the comfortable Europeans who jumped on the Barack Obama bandwagon, his victory has been met with no more than caution in many countries, particularly the Gulf States and various African countries.

One country which has made polite comments about optimism, while tending towards caution, is India. The world’s largest free-market democracy is making all the right noises in response to Obama’s election, but neither is it making a secret of the fact that it is waiting to see how relations between the two countries will develop.

More importantly, it is waiting for an indication as to how relations will develop between two worlds.

THE GOLD AGE

Perhaps the historical fact which most astonishes people is that the accepted ages in history happened at different times in different parts of the world. On the Indian sub-continent, the Iron Age lasted from around 1200 BC to around 200 BC. In Europe, however, that same Age lasted from around 1000 BC to around 400 AD.

As for other areas of the world, the difference was even greater. When the Indus Valley Civilisation – centred on what is now Pakistan and northern India – was at its peak (in the third and second millennia before Christ), the peoples of the Americas and Oceania were still using stone tools, and in some parts they continued doing so until the time of European colonisation.

Even today we are not all living through the same period of history, in spite of the fact that we are living in a globalised world which appears to grow ever smaller. The differences between certain places are so great as to appear insurmountable. It would be foolish to compare the U.S. and Papua New Guinea, for example.

Incidentally, what name could we give to this present age of history in the western world? Electricity powers just about every appliance in the modern home, light pollution is worse now than ever and a blackout can throw a city into chaos, not least because without television or computers most people have no idea how to function. On the other hand, oil dominates our every move, from controlling the price of our groceries to allowing world powers to justify obscene spending on “defence” by attacking the countries which produce it. And then there’s football.

However, considering our ceaseless pursuit of riches, and continuing the tradition of using the names of metals, perhaps the most appropriate label should be the Gold Age.

KEEPING UP WITH THE JONESES

In the developed world people have been leading comfortable lives for decades, especially as in modern societies, material possessions rate higher than cultural, emotional or spiritual development. Even the poorest people in most Western countries have a television, a fridge-freezer and access to motorised transport and computers.

Countries like India and China have been developing at a rate of knots over the last twenty years, and they are determined to have the same comfortable lifestyle and material possessions as in the West, especially as Western businesses rarely miss an advertising or sponsorship opportunity to throw it in their faces. More importantly, they feel that they have every right to this lifestyle.

Developed countries have grown rich by exploiting weaker markets in the name of a free market and by bringing the planet to the verge of collapse during 150 years of intense industrialisation. And the threat of population growth is a fallacy – one study shows that a child in a developed country consumes between 16 and 31 times more resources than a child in a country whose market is in transition, so for an average family in a developing country to consume an equivalent amount it must consist of between 32 and 62 children.

People in developing countries will feel rightly aggrieved, then, at the recent constant attempts of the West to limit free-market economy with fair trade agreements and to limit industrial progress by capping emissions levels, all the while making oblique comments about population control.

Indian people may well feel they are just about to enter a new age of prosperity but at a crucial time in their development they are being held back.

NOT SO BLACK AND WHITE

It has been commented that middle-class Europeans have allowed themselves to be caught up in the Obama euphoria simply because he is African-American as opposed to a W.A.S.P. (while conveniently forgetting that Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice were too) combined with the fact that he is not George Bush.

However, Obama is still a member of the same political elite – American, suited-and-tied, globalised, capitalist. In terms of atoning for the atrocities of the Bush regime, there is little he can do as his hands are tied by the same forces that tied those of his predecessor.

An immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan will be impossible. A sudden end to the sword-rattling towards Iran, North Korea and other sworn enemies is unlikely. Turning U.S. military attentions to conflicts which do not involve oil in order to prevent further human tragedy would be problematic at best.

Domestically, African-Americans, Hispano-Americans and Asian-Americans are not about to enter a new age of prosperity any more than the developing world is, and poor people are not going to see an immediate improvement in their lot.

That Obama should defend anything other than the best interests of the U.S. – and of those people who traditionally have the ear of the White House – is nothing more than a pipe dream.

Fortunately for Europe’s middle-class, certain aspects of those best interests not only appear more fashionably socialist, they are also in the best interests of middle-class, developed society everywhere.

So everyone wishes Barack Obama good luck as he attempts to lead the world from the Gold Age to a Golden Age. However, who will he be taking on the journey?