David's World

July 16, 2005

Globalization II: Caviar in Ketchup

I received complaints about my last post. Globalization is great, says my friend Roderich - he likes the cheap deals at the grocery store. But, he continues, the disadvantages are grave, in particular culturally. While people may be getting wealthier financially, cultural diversity is on the decline.

But, culture is always a mélange. Culture has evolved over many decades. We don't even have to look to the cultural hot pots of London or New York City. There are simple examples: our languages for example are pretty much always a mixture of supposedly "foreign" influences. The fact that some of us don't like franglais stems from our lazy habit of preferring the known and call that "pure".

People will decide what goes well together, culturally. The process organizes itself, it's not up to intellectuals, and it's not up to the friendly, big-mouted idiots from the marketing department, either.
Some of the results may sound awful, and Roderich promised to serve me caviar in ketchup next time I see him. The French may say computer or still ordinateur, but in the long run and overall, Rodi is right: cultures will converge - and new ways of communicating and interacting with each other will emerge.

It is up to all of us to not succumb to Hollywood movie culture and Japanese electronic culture, just because they manage to produce boring, mass-market-compatible products that satisy the least common taste demoninator. I prefer computers designed in California and movies made in Japan.

The big change we call globalization is a gigantic speed-up of this process. Cultural transactions, the exchange of information in a form shaped by individual cultural standards, happen instantaneously. My e-mails reach people in New Zealand with no delay. Physical distance does not help delinate cultures any more. So how earth can different cultures still emerge?

Just because a person in India has an e-mail account doesn't mean I will engage in a furious e-mail exchange with them. Cultural transactions are driven by common goals, and I one possibility is that "the new kind of culture" will form within groups that share common goals.

Consequences? Travel may be less exciting in two hundred years. Once all those old things, I mean, cathedrals and temples, castles and monuments are gone, all that will be left are Coca Cola, the same eurasian fusion food, a few big languages like Chinese and English, in short, all the stuff we have at home as well.

Causes and scapegoats? Probably not the G8, not simply free trade. I believe that the cultural globalization is a result of electronic data networks, of television and dubbed movies and,
yes, cheap flights around the globe.

I would not want to miss any of these conveniences. But I consider myself lucky that I, as a European, can enjoy the cultural diversity that might be gone by the time my grandchildren retire.