There is an ongoing discussion about a Clash of Civilizations as an explanatory model of what is happening on the planet. I was sent this Wall Street Journal article on the topic authored by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I would suggest that there is something far more basic going on. There is an active process of speciation happening.
Some contextual ontology may be useful before we get into the dynamics. The underlying model being applied is one "simple rules generate complex behavior" ala Conway's game of life. What simple rules can one hypothesize that could show this behavior we are seeing that is being classified as a clash of civilizations. I propose speciation.
With our evolutionary development, both in the physical domain as well as the noosphere, we have created a new level / degree of complexity that we have to contend with / survive in. A certain (significant) proportion of the civilization find that complexity overwhelming. It is adjusting to that complexity by binding to simpler models of the world ( fundamentalism, in religion, philosophy, politics, ethnocentrism, and various other ontologies). This is the beginning of speciation. Can you imagine a person with a universal world view being able to mate with a paragon of ethnocentrism, e.g., a white supremacist? Over generations, if this continues, you may develop separate species that actually can not mate anymore.
This ontology also explains the rise of fundamentalism ( in religion, politics, philosophy, ethnocentrism, ...) in the west that the clash model does not. The species bifurcation is happening across the globe, not just in a given ethnicity, "civilization", or philosophy.
The problem of course arises with the level of technology we have achieved. At our current bifurcation point, the diverging sides have access to a destructive power that can eliminate the "aberrant" (from their perspective) emerging species from existence.
Which way this bifurcation goes is the undiscovered country we are now traveling through!
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