5 years in the 21st century: what has or hasn't your country learnt?

The 21st century officially started on January 1st 2001, but I think that the real new year's day was September 11th 2001.

We practically lived the first 8 months of 2001 still in the 20th century entering the new millennium full of hope, curiosity, challenges and even humanity, thinking that the world was a better place to live in and that was going to get better and better, with even the toughest people being available to learn more about the others.



Today is September 23rd 2006 and after 5 years and 12 days we are almost running out of battery power with 93 years or so in fromnt of us to change ... what we realy wanted to change during last century.

The new millennium was a new threshold for us. A challenge we underestimated because we are now crying in fears mostly because of our mistakes.

western people are notoriously not humble and when 9/11 happened instead to think about "why it happened", we mostly thought "We are good people, why these "brutal" people did this to us?".

The problem is that in our being "good" people we tend not to think about other people's miseries and problems, so thinking in black and wait with almost no sound it's much easier in the wealthiest countries, rather than thinking in color, cinemascope and dolby surround.

We were just coming out of the closet that they forced us to quickly go back there.

So, now we are facing topics we wouldn't want to face at this very high pace ... and we have to anyway:

• terrorism
• religious integralism
• secure traveling
• bigotry
• gay marriage
• separation of state and church
• immigration
• multi-language countries
• global warming
• nuclear proliferation
• border security
• health care
• social security
• worldwide isolation
• oil crisis
• privacy invasion
• lack of diplomacy
• tortures and human rights
• AIDS spreading

I live in New York and I believe the people here felt a little bit more close to what the Europeans felt after the end of World War II: "we need to rebuild it quickly and let's try not to forget the importance of diplomacy not to come back in this hell again".

But what do you think each country in the world has or hasn't learnt during these last 5 years so to go back quickly to the right path? What we have or haven't understood about other people thinking and acting?