By most expert accounts, the world today is experiencing its own significant "awakening" of religious fervor, one triggered -- in my opinion -- by globalization's rapid expansion around the planet over the past three decades. By penetrating previously off-grid societies and challenging their traditional identities, globalization's seeming -- if exaggerated -- capacity for reformatting everything in its path generates widespread fear of civilizational miscegenation (i.e., Americanization). In the face of such frightening assimilation, individuals naturally turn (or return) to religion as a way of retaining their collective identity.

The emergence of a global middle class is part and parcel of this global religious awakening. Suddenly thrust from centuries of economic subsistence or survival to new possibilities of abundance, individuals in emerging markets naturally glom onto all manner of religious faiths as a source of guidance for a life well-led. Civilizations might not be portable, but religious identity is: Anywhere an individual goes, it connects him or her with already established networks of the like-minded.

In sum, religion's natural networking dynamic both feeds, and is further enabled by, globalization's advance.

At the same time, globalization, with all its disorienting complexity, increases social demands for clarifying teleologies. Everybody wants to know, Who's running the show, and to what end?

Answering that question is traditionally the role of religions, whose teleological narratives purport to explain the sum of human existence. But when it comes to trying to explain the teleology of globalization, religions face significant secular competition. The current field of play -- from a Western-centric viewpoint, anyway -- is dominated by 10 narratives, all of which combine, to a varying degree, utopian visions and nightmare scenarios, with a sprinkle of paranoia thrown in for seasoning.

If you believe that somebody virtuous is in control of globalization, you typically belong to one of three schools of thought today:

1. The "Exceptional" United States. The U.S. is the world's sole, full-service superpower -- if an over-leveraged one. So long as America remains militarily strong and true to its founding ideals, its mix of hard and soft power remains impossible to beat. The big dangers here are declining morals, our mounting debt, and -- of course -- increased Hispanicization through immigration and higher Latino birth rates.

2. The Advanced West. In the past, the West developed the source code for capitalism, democracy and industrialization, and remains the world's "great white hope." So long as we Caucasians stick together, civilization -- as we've come to cherish it -- will survive. The big danger here is that, outside of America, nobody in this group is having enough babies or letting in enough of the "right" kind of immigrants to prevent the West being overrun by those fertile -- and inevitably radical -- Muslims! (This version has a narrower variant, focusing on the "Anglosphere" of English-speaking nations.)

3. The Almighty (read: Christian) God. The God of the New Testament continues to guide human existence in matters both profound and mundane. Globalization presents Christians with the challenge of environmental stewardship (e.g., global warming) and the responsibility to spread the faith in the "10/40 Window" -- the rectangular area of North Africa, the Middle East and Asia located between 10 degrees north and 40 degrees north latitude. Inside that box is found the bulk of human souls still requiring salvation through missionary work. The danger? Too many of them are already Muslim or headed that way.

If you believe that somebody unvirtuous is in control of globalization, you typically belong to one of these four camps:

4. Rising China. If the Chinese don't produce or own everything already, they soon will. They will also consume the entire planet in the next couple of generations. Representing a fifth of humanity, they march in lock-step according to the dictates of the Chinese Communist Party. Like the Chinese people in general, the CCP remains completely inscrutable -- primarily because it thinks in such a long-term fashion as to be unfathomable to our puny, attention-deficit-disordered minds. Remember when you were told all the same things about the Japanese 20 years ago? Well, this time it's true! Whatever dangers China faces, the Party can simply order out of existence -- like the Falun Gong.

5. Global Insurgents. Whether terrorists, narcos, smugglers, mafia, rebels or hackers, they all work unconsciously toward the same objective -- i.e., the end of the nation-state. Though disparate entities, they already rule this world from below. Constituting globalization's dark side, these system-disruptors can bring down the world's networks at will, and will do so when and where it serves their evil purposes. Humanity's only sustainable alternative is to match their non-hierarchical and distributed structure, and their capacity for off-grid, survivalist lifestyles. Y2K was the warning, but 9/11 was the shot across the bow. Start stockpiling -- everything!

6. The Devil, or the Antichrist. Though his current form is always subject to change, he commands this world until the "end times" are triggered by his actions. There is no sense in trying to manage our existence or improve this evil world in the meantime. Indeed, it's better to cut oneself off from the unsaved and simply wait it out. The Antichrist is most likely to be a politician, and since America is the most God-fearing nation on the planet, he's likely to come in the form of a U.S. president. If you have a half-hour, I'll be glad to explain how the name "Barack Obama" actually means "lightning from the sky" in ancient Hebrew, which is how Christ allegedly originally described Satan. If that doesn't work for you, there's always Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Apocalypse-triggering plan to destroy Israel.

7. The Elders of Zion. This handful of Jewish bankers secretly run the global economy (out of Manhattan, naturally, because that's where you can find the best kosher delis -- and these guys gotta eat, just like everybody else). Seemingly omnipotent groups such as the neocons, the Trilateral Commission, and the United Nations are mere pawns at their disposal. AIDS, 9/11, Saddam's nukes and global warming are nothing but confusing plot lines they've fabricated to throw off the scent from their day-to-day tactics and ultimate intentions. Resistance may very well be futile, but it remains honorable and necessary. But don't take my word on that. After all, you can't trust anybody in this world.

Finally, if you believe that nobody is in control of globalization, you'll probably fall into one of these three groups:

8. Chaos. Since the modern world is ultimately random in terms of its apparent pathways, there's no point in trying to make sense out of globalization's many trends. The most likely outcome for this constantly growing complexity is a system-wide collapse through some combination of pandemic and resource-depletion -- in short, man's infinite stupidity and insatiable greed. There might be one way out of this strategic cul-de-sac, but it involves letting scientists -- the only people capable of understanding chaos -- run everything.

9. Markets. Fortunately, globalization is defined by their spread, because they ultimately allocate resources to meet human needs better than any top-down political system ever devised. Yes, as reflections of human desire, markets will regularly fail us. But in their creative destruction, more durable paths to future progress are constantly being discovered. The key is for transparent pricing to arise across the board, meaning every resource is suitably valued and everybody has equal access to that information. Under the right conditions, the reality that nobody controls globalization is not a problem, but rather the result of the super-empowerment of individuals through the extension of markets worldwide. As for democracy? It is a dish best served cold to an aging and expanding middle class.

10. Humanity. If none of these explanations sound right to you, you can always place your faith squarely on the shoulders of humankind itself, which has demonstrated a fierce will to survive for hundreds of thousands of years, along with infinite ingenuity in confronting problems of ever-increasing complexity. That's not to say you need to become an atheist or agnostic. This category also works if you believe that God's final acts of shaping human existence await our best efforts at perfecting ourselves and this world, despite our tendency to act like it's every man for himself.

I don't mean to suggest these are exclusive categories. To the contrary, I encourage you to avoid trapping yourself within any one explanation. After all, faith in the future is a tricky thing to maintain.

**Thomas P.M. Barnett is senior managing director of Enterra Solutions LLC and a contributing editor/online columnist for Esquire magazine. His latest book is "Great Powers: America and the World After Bush" (2009). His weekly WPR column, The New Rules, appears every Monday. Reach him and his blog at thomaspmbarnett.com.