I still remember the day our satellite dish was being installed at our home in Riyadh. The excitement, the curiosity, some fear of the unknown, accompanied the commotion surrounding the installation of this massive round circular dish. This magical dish that would open the world to us and for a while seemed to have brought the whole world closer. In my young mind, this was the beginning of a new era. An era where people will share ideas, cultures, freedoms, economies and the planet. Little did I know that this satellite dish 25 years later will show me the results of a globalized world that is so divided and has become so small that it no longer has any room for diversity.

The world has become smaller and products, people, ideas, culture, and capital, are transferred around the world creating a system of global integration. Homogeneity is replacing local and unique ways of being. But in this race each group is trying to create their own homogeneous brand with which they want to dominate the world. Be it the Islamic Extremist brand of Wahabism, Talibanism or ISIS, the Hindu fundamentalist brand of RSS or Shive Sena, and now the Trump brand.

What saddens me most is that we are not competing to create an inclusive homogeneous world free of discrimination, boundaries and disparities. Instead we are competing to create exclusive homogeneous brands. Each new brand promising to be more hateful, more exclusive and more superior than the other. And we are all guilty. As long as the brand belongs to our own faith, our own ethnicity, our own race, we support it. We are ok with religious intolerance as long as it is for another religion. We are ok with racial biases as long as they involve another race. We are ok with ethnic divides as long as our ethnicity is superior. We are ok with economic disparity as long as we are not the ones hungry.

There is a sameness or familiarity no matter where you are today. You can find McDonald, Starbucks, KFC wherever you go but you cannot find tolerance, humanity and freedom. We can share the same coffee, chicken nuggets and fries,  but cannot share God, ideas, or space.

Globalization has allowed us to open our palates to new tastes, our bodies to new fashions, our homes to new lifestyles, but it has closed our minds to new ideas and hearts to new people. As television, the internet and technology made the world smaller, they made our hearts and minds even smaller.