Perhaps the most consequential development is the transformation of the world into that ubiquitous patchwork with which we are now suddenly confronted. Technologies and market mechanisms are subjecting the diversity of cultures to uniform standards, causing them to merge into a global civilization. This globalization is accompanied by increasing fragmentation, which has also spread to Europe since 1989. The end of the blocs has unleashed centrifugal forces and migration flows that the classical framework of the nation-state is increasingly unable to withstand; at the same time, European integration seems to be stagnating. Are we on the verge of transforming into the cultural patchwork and fractal societies of Asia or Africa? Is the program of Western liberalism, with its claim to universality, in jeopardy?.