Strong community ties can endure the toughest global conditions

It is possible that war in Iraq could be the precursor to a new period of international insecurity and warfare. After all, there are at least two other countries on President Bush's hit list, AKA the "axis of evil", who will definitely feel the heat. There are fears that we might even see the kind of "clash of civilizations" that Samuel Huntington warned of as the Islamic world responds to what they see as a Western crusade against them. Such cultural wars are inevitably brutal and messy affairs.

But hopefully the idea of collective security will rise again and the United Nations will regain authority. Hopefully the period of outright warfare will be short, and the people of the world can return their attention to the other issues facing them. Like revitalizing the economy, and doing something serious about global warming.

Today's is a much more complicated world than when my mother faced depression and war as a child. It is also a harsher, colder world where community has mostly given way to a 'mind your own business' individualism represented by big fences, security alarms, four-wheel-drives and home entertainment theatres. Where people sell up and move on before anything like real community evolves. As the people who suffered in the recent bush fires found out, such material things can disappear all too easily.

In some ways, it doesn't look like we've learned a thing from our past mistakes. Perhaps it is high time that we did.