Yet now that we inhabit Mackinder's "closed political system," which, as Bracken notes, has closed much further in the course of the twentieth century, the map is also subject to the law of entropy, meaning a state of equilibrium will eventually set in, with each human habitation on the relief map-not just the megacities-looking increasingly like one another, and be subject to similar passions. The result, according to Ohio State University political science professor Randall L. Schweller, is that "a sort of global ennui" will result, the consequence of overstimulation, "mixed with a disturbingly large dose of individual extremism and dogmatic posturing by states."17 In other words, the world will be both duller and more dangerous than ever before.
( Robert D. Kaplan )
[ The Revenge of Geography: What ]
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