Its of the concept of globalization and the human relations miracles it supposedly can create are likely to have their ardor dimmed by a recent Ralph Peters article in USA Today. He contends that the conventional “one world” notion has major flaws and that the Internet has become “the greatest tool for spreading hatred.”

It is not a piece that generates optimism, yet it merits consideration and reflection.

Peters is a member of the USA Today board of contributors and the author of a forthcoming book, “New Glory: Expanding America’s Global Supremacy.”

Peters says every generation has its illusions. One of these is that “globalization” – the internationalization of trade, services, investment and information-sharing spurred by the Internet – will shatter states and change humankind for the better. He adds: “While globalization itself is real enough, the visions imposed upon it by idealists and con men alike only make it harder to grasp what’s happening – and what isn’t.”

Among the many myths surrounding globalization, Peters writes, two stand out: “The notion that this phenomenon is new and, more dangerously, the claim that globalization will lead to an age of utopian peace. Those who see globalization as unprecedented simply don’t know their history. Those who imagine that greater understanding, courtesy of the Internet, will deliver an idyllic peace don’t know their history.”

Peters traces the various “exchanges” among civilizations of the past and notes how they have failed to produce the “peace” so many think will arise if “we just learn to meet, talk and respect each other.”

“Globalization today may proceed at a swifter pace, generate greater wealth and touch more lives, but its essence is at least 2,500 years old,” Peters says. “Over the centuries, the process has changed international relationships but it has never changed human nature.

“Which brings us to the second myth – one that also has ancient roots – that globalization will bring about peace. The human desire to believe in a worldly paradise is as old as it is understandable. And it always proves illusory, foundering on humanity’s capacity for mischief, our deadly good intentions and our ineradicable selfishness. Just as hippie communes fell apart because somebody had to do the dishes, predictions that war will become unthinkable fail because they embrace a dream and ignore human reality.”

Peters and many like him believe that historical eras of relative peace never came about because competing cultures agreed to cooperate, but because both sides were exhausted by war or because a hegemonic power laid down the rules. No peace lasted, he emphasizes.

“:the Internet, for all its practical utility, has been the greatest tool for spreading hatred since the development of movable type for the printing press,” Peters writes. “Islamist fanatics, neo-Nazis and pedophiles can now find each other with startling ease. Those who hid in dark corners a dozen years ago are all but unionized today. The real global brotherhoods of the Internet age are conspiracies of hatred. : The latest edition of globalization may do many things, positive and negative, but it will not change human nature. Another enduring lie is that the future belongs to the dreamers. It belongs to those who go forward with open eyes.”

Not a pretty picture, to be sure, but one that should be viewed with reality, not rose-colored glasses.