On the "End of History" and the "Clash of Civilizations"

"The salience of religious nationalisms today should be attributed first of all to the resurgence, or more precisely, the uninhibited manifestation of national sentiments in general and, in particular, of ethnic nationalisms. It does not indicate any change in the nature of modern collective identities. The tendency of so many ethnic, and occasionally even civic, nationalisms to clothe themselves in religious garb, in turn, is a function of the temporary unavailability of obvious ideological alternatives as a result of the collapse of communism (which for so many ethnic nationalisms was the camouflage of choice for most of the twentieth century) and the consequent disintegration of the entire bi-polar conception. The comforts of the Cold War era, with its pleasing simplicity and secure stability (which we learned to appreciate in retrospect) have been brought to an abrupt end; the new world order which replaced Pax Americana turns out to be not at all what we expected, given our naive notions of reality, and we feel forced to search for new ways of understanding and organizing it. But this new world order is not that new, and its bewildering complexity obscures the very same striving, however multifaceted, that has moved humanity for the past several centuries. It is the striving to invest our finite existence with meaning and dignity, a striving exclusively focused on this world and on that most human aspect of our existence in it - society. This striving is intensely spiritual and secular at the same time. Everything is put to use to satisfy it, including the great religions of the past."