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This concluding chapter provides an overview of major trends that continue to shape the world as we know it. Human migration and demographic change will influence politics and social institutions. The aging and shrinking of Europe's population will put great pressure on the welfare state. Certainly the expanded and increasingly influential role that women are playing in modern societies will remain a central element in Western society for the foreseeable future, particularly regarding the way the workplace operates and the way children are raised. Future decades will undoubtedly see a greater sharing of all job and familial responsibilities between the sexes. The student experience, once limited to a relatively small, elite, male group in Western society has broadened to include a much wider cross-section of European and American societies. Although the 1960s are considered the high point of student activism, today’s students are involved in a number of political, environmental, and social issues. Dramatic growth of the university community has brought vast realms of scientific and humanistic learning to a growing number of individuals and social groups. Students from all social and economic classes travel as never before. Beyond schools and universities, the electronic "Information Revolution" provides the means for a rapid and radical transformation of how increasing numbers of people perform many socially significant activities. Marxism's revolutionary influence appears to have passed, as has the philosophical pull of existentialism. Christianity, meanwhile, is growing into a truly global religion. Radical political Islamism has already resulted in terrorist attacks on the United States and a split between the US and most of the nation's traditional allies in Europe; there is undoubtedly more to come. After reading this chapter you should understand:
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