Unspoiled Beach Syndrome
Aug. 1st, 2005 11:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusWe live in a time when world travel is within the means of most, but when cultural differences are still quite significant. This certainly hasn't always been the case; although cultural differences before the age of global travel and global communication were undoubtedly greater than they are today, precisely the lack of communication and travel hid this fact from most people, who experienced reality in the form of a narrative dictated strictly locally.
Now we know about differences, and can experience them at first hand. But the global flows of knowledge about other ways of living do risk leveling difference, erasing specificity. That erasure hasn't happened yet, and it might never happen, but there is a "convergence model" which sees the whole world becoming one parking lot, one shopping mall. Let's call that vision "one world, one operating system".
What interests me is the fragile globalist period we're in just now, somewhere in between the "incommensurable differences" period of the past and a possible future with "one world, one operating system". In today's world, difference does exist, and you are able to experience it. I'm particularly interested in the use of this accessible system of cultural differences as an "elective affinities machine". Because it makes possible quite radically different life experiences for the individual.
Once upon a time the most you could do, if you were born in a small town, was drift to the big city. If there was no niche for you in a small place (no local paper to help you become a journalist, for instance, or no record label for you to send your demo tape to), you could head for the capital, where media systems existed. But now, in a global period when differences still mean something, you can drift to someone else's capital. A whole range of world cities opens up to you the way, once, the cities of your own nation did.
This matters because where cultures differ, criteria differ. You may be considered a duffer in your home town, but divine somewhere else. I remember the first time I went to Italy. I was at Rome airport. I saw old men dressed in incredibly sharp herringbone suits. "Here even the old men are groovy!" I thought. Later, on a holiday with my friend Babis in Rome, I was taken to the house of some Italian friends. I had zero confidence in my own looks, so I was astonished when a pretty Italian girl looked at me and said "E bello! He's handsome!" I didn't know how to react — no-one had ever said that in Scotland.
To this day, despite allegations that we live in a converging "world system" where everyone thinks the same way, I'm amazed by how an individual's fortunes in one city are totally different from his fortunes in another. In the last few years I've developed parallel careers as a journalist and an artist (what the French call un artiste plasticien contemporain) . But those doors have opened for me only in America, and specifically New York. Nobody in the other cities I've lived in—London, Paris, Berlin—has taken me seriously as either a writer or an artist. I've had hit records (my Kahimi Karie productions of the 90s) in the Japanese market, but never in the British market. I've been considered attractive in some cities (Tokyo, New York) and deeply unattractive in others (London, for instance, where a typical music press review would contain some line like "Momus makes Nosferatu look like a Chippendale"). If "location, location, location" makes all the difference in retail marketing, why wouldn't it make even more of a difference to your personal life?
One of the most important dates in my adult life is 1993, the year the Schengen Treaty lifted all boundary and visa restrictions for European citizens. I went immediately to live in Paris. In 1997 came The Amsterdam Treaty, designed to create within Europe "an area of freedom, security and justice without controls at internal borders for persons, whatever their nationality". Britain, Ireland and Denmark opted out of this treaty, and it has to be said that since 1997 the climate of opinion has turned against such free flows of people, especially when these people are seen as asylum seekers, migrant labourers, potential terrorists. The recent "no" votes in France and Holland in the Euro-constitution were widely interpreted as "fear of the Polish plumber" (not to mention the Turkish builder). Nevertheless, I still believe very strongly in the principle outlined in EEC Regulation 1612/68: "mobility of labour within the Community must be one of the means by which the worker is guaranteed the possibility of improving his living and working conditions and promoting his social advancement".
Trans-nationality has certainly worked for me. I don't see any downside, and I don't see why this basic privilege shouldn't be opened up to as many people as possible. One striking thing is that even when borders come down, the numbers of people who choose to move to countries other than their own is quite small. People from Britain didn't all rush to Paris when I did. Most chose to stay where they were.
Perhaps that's just as well, considering "unspoiled beach syndrome". Although I like the idea of Jamaicans and Bangladeshis defining what it means to be British just as much as Anglo-Saxons do, there's clearly a point after which the whole idea of Britishness would become vague and synthetic. That applies even to super-synthetic America after a certain point. What happens when America is mostly non-white, and mostly non-English-speaking? Is it still "America" if the President speaks Spanish? What makes America American? Its Middle Eastern religion, its German skyscrapers and hamburgers, its French jeans, its Australian-owned media, its Asian-financed budget deficit? Or some delicate association of all its cultural appropriations? Right now, that question isn't a critical one in America, but there might come a time when it is.
Do I consider that my presence in Germany is changing the definition of Germanness? Not really. I'm quite happy to let Germans define their own identity. On the other hand, on the level of cities (and really I'm much more comfortable thinking in terms of cities as slightly incongruous guests in the countries that host them) I do think that the Turkishness of Kreuzberg or the Bangladeshi feel of Brick Lane is an important part of the identities of cities like Berlin and London. It seems that cities have a much more flexible identity than nations do, to the extent that you can almost forget national identity when living in a big city. You can hang out in immigrant quarters, enjoying a different mindset from the national one. I like that feeling, it's one of the great things about big cities. In London I gravitated to South Kensington for its French feel, and Brick Lane for its Asian atmosphere. In New York my favourite place is Chinatown. Even in Tokyo, it's areas like Okubo, the pan-Asian district.
I'm absolutely the opposite of an assimilationist; I don't think people should be forced to speak in the language of the country they live in, or take lessons in its history, or pledge allegiance to its flag, or follow its dress codes. But in this, too, I seem to be out of step with the feeling of the times. Post 9/11, people equate difference with malevolence, with "the enemy within". Those "unspoiled beaches" we once thought would be spoiled by tourism ended up being spoiled by terrorism and neo-conservativism. We thought they'd be opened up to everyone, but instead they're private, hushed, patrolled 24/7 by paramilitary guards. Maybe what's happened is that "one world, one operating system" did arrive, but not in the form we expected. Instead of shopping and the free flow of goods and people we got the global operating system of war, "security" and internment; instead of "no borders" we got higher fences. What a disappointing 21st century it's turning out to be.
Now we know about differences, and can experience them at first hand. But the global flows of knowledge about other ways of living do risk leveling difference, erasing specificity. That erasure hasn't happened yet, and it might never happen, but there is a "convergence model" which sees the whole world becoming one parking lot, one shopping mall. Let's call that vision "one world, one operating system".
What interests me is the fragile globalist period we're in just now, somewhere in between the "incommensurable differences" period of the past and a possible future with "one world, one operating system". In today's world, difference does exist, and you are able to experience it. I'm particularly interested in the use of this accessible system of cultural differences as an "elective affinities machine". Because it makes possible quite radically different life experiences for the individual.
Once upon a time the most you could do, if you were born in a small town, was drift to the big city. If there was no niche for you in a small place (no local paper to help you become a journalist, for instance, or no record label for you to send your demo tape to), you could head for the capital, where media systems existed. But now, in a global period when differences still mean something, you can drift to someone else's capital. A whole range of world cities opens up to you the way, once, the cities of your own nation did.
This matters because where cultures differ, criteria differ. You may be considered a duffer in your home town, but divine somewhere else. I remember the first time I went to Italy. I was at Rome airport. I saw old men dressed in incredibly sharp herringbone suits. "Here even the old men are groovy!" I thought. Later, on a holiday with my friend Babis in Rome, I was taken to the house of some Italian friends. I had zero confidence in my own looks, so I was astonished when a pretty Italian girl looked at me and said "E bello! He's handsome!" I didn't know how to react — no-one had ever said that in Scotland.
To this day, despite allegations that we live in a converging "world system" where everyone thinks the same way, I'm amazed by how an individual's fortunes in one city are totally different from his fortunes in another. In the last few years I've developed parallel careers as a journalist and an artist (what the French call un artiste plasticien contemporain) . But those doors have opened for me only in America, and specifically New York. Nobody in the other cities I've lived in—London, Paris, Berlin—has taken me seriously as either a writer or an artist. I've had hit records (my Kahimi Karie productions of the 90s) in the Japanese market, but never in the British market. I've been considered attractive in some cities (Tokyo, New York) and deeply unattractive in others (London, for instance, where a typical music press review would contain some line like "Momus makes Nosferatu look like a Chippendale"). If "location, location, location" makes all the difference in retail marketing, why wouldn't it make even more of a difference to your personal life?
One of the most important dates in my adult life is 1993, the year the Schengen Treaty lifted all boundary and visa restrictions for European citizens. I went immediately to live in Paris. In 1997 came The Amsterdam Treaty, designed to create within Europe "an area of freedom, security and justice without controls at internal borders for persons, whatever their nationality". Britain, Ireland and Denmark opted out of this treaty, and it has to be said that since 1997 the climate of opinion has turned against such free flows of people, especially when these people are seen as asylum seekers, migrant labourers, potential terrorists. The recent "no" votes in France and Holland in the Euro-constitution were widely interpreted as "fear of the Polish plumber" (not to mention the Turkish builder). Nevertheless, I still believe very strongly in the principle outlined in EEC Regulation 1612/68: "mobility of labour within the Community must be one of the means by which the worker is guaranteed the possibility of improving his living and working conditions and promoting his social advancement".
Trans-nationality has certainly worked for me. I don't see any downside, and I don't see why this basic privilege shouldn't be opened up to as many people as possible. One striking thing is that even when borders come down, the numbers of people who choose to move to countries other than their own is quite small. People from Britain didn't all rush to Paris when I did. Most chose to stay where they were.
Perhaps that's just as well, considering "unspoiled beach syndrome". Although I like the idea of Jamaicans and Bangladeshis defining what it means to be British just as much as Anglo-Saxons do, there's clearly a point after which the whole idea of Britishness would become vague and synthetic. That applies even to super-synthetic America after a certain point. What happens when America is mostly non-white, and mostly non-English-speaking? Is it still "America" if the President speaks Spanish? What makes America American? Its Middle Eastern religion, its German skyscrapers and hamburgers, its French jeans, its Australian-owned media, its Asian-financed budget deficit? Or some delicate association of all its cultural appropriations? Right now, that question isn't a critical one in America, but there might come a time when it is.
Do I consider that my presence in Germany is changing the definition of Germanness? Not really. I'm quite happy to let Germans define their own identity. On the other hand, on the level of cities (and really I'm much more comfortable thinking in terms of cities as slightly incongruous guests in the countries that host them) I do think that the Turkishness of Kreuzberg or the Bangladeshi feel of Brick Lane is an important part of the identities of cities like Berlin and London. It seems that cities have a much more flexible identity than nations do, to the extent that you can almost forget national identity when living in a big city. You can hang out in immigrant quarters, enjoying a different mindset from the national one. I like that feeling, it's one of the great things about big cities. In London I gravitated to South Kensington for its French feel, and Brick Lane for its Asian atmosphere. In New York my favourite place is Chinatown. Even in Tokyo, it's areas like Okubo, the pan-Asian district.
I'm absolutely the opposite of an assimilationist; I don't think people should be forced to speak in the language of the country they live in, or take lessons in its history, or pledge allegiance to its flag, or follow its dress codes. But in this, too, I seem to be out of step with the feeling of the times. Post 9/11, people equate difference with malevolence, with "the enemy within". Those "unspoiled beaches" we once thought would be spoiled by tourism ended up being spoiled by terrorism and neo-conservativism. We thought they'd be opened up to everyone, but instead they're private, hushed, patrolled 24/7 by paramilitary guards. Maybe what's happened is that "one world, one operating system" did arrive, but not in the form we expected. Instead of shopping and the free flow of goods and people we got the global operating system of war, "security" and internment; instead of "no borders" we got higher fences. What a disappointing 21st century it's turning out to be.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-01 10:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-01 11:10 am (UTC)<cite>although cultural differences before the age of global travel and global communication were undoubtedly greater than they are today, precisely the lack of communication and travel hid this fact from most people, who experienced reality in the form of a narrative dictated strictly locally.</cite>
I'm afraid this is nonsense. (Re-)read Montaigne. Shakespeare. Defoe. Boy's Own adventure stories. There was plenty of communication before the internet. (And plenty of travel, too, especially during the long periods of wartime that have characterized modernity.) It was slower, and perhaps (perhaps) less immediate. But you're buying into a myth of a localized "merrie England" (or France, or Germany) if you believe that global consciousness only began in (what?) 1910, 1945, 1972...
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-01 05:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-01 05:35 pm (UTC)And, again, I disagree. Mostly on the second point. To talk merely about the UK: people had a steady diet of all kinds of discourses about travel, otherness, foreigness, and so on. From the massively popular semi-invented travellers tales of writers such as Hakluyt to the Great Exibitions of the late nineteenth-century, ordinary men and women were confronted with all sorts of images of otherness, rather than simply local narratives.
And while travel was no leisure pursuit, hundreds of thousands of working class men found themselves in places like the Crimea or Flanders thanks to the dictates of war, Jamaica or Burma in the service of Empire, Australia as a form of penal servitude, or all over the world as members of either the navy or the merchant marine. In any given community, these people were husbands and sons, neighbours and objects of gossip or scandal.
Yes, of course the modes of travel and communication have changed with the arrival of package tourism, cheap telephony, and email. But to suggest that these economic and technological developments are the first time that most people have stepped out of resolutely local frameworks is, well, daft.
NB the history of travel and communication is rather different for those who lived outside the colonial metropolis; but then it still is; you won't find many Bolivian Aymara sitting next to you on your next overseas flight.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-01 09:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-01 11:11 pm (UTC)I just wanted to emphasize that there were other forms of (what's now called) globalization at work earlier, and have been since, well, at least 1492. I spent my summer in Seville in the Archivo de Indias looking at particular versions of such internationalism, while the mezquita in Córdoba up the road reminds us of another one.
Meanwhile, on family history, my grandparents often talked about "Uncle Percy" (I jest not) and his postcards from exotic places as he travelled the world in the merchant marine. Apparently he's buried in Cuba--I've often wanted to go visit his grave and find out more about his story, in some pale imitation of Bruce Chatwin's similar reconstruction of globalized family tales in his In Patagonia.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-01 11:14 pm (UTC)Oh, and Dubois. How did I forget Dubois?
OK, now I have to get back to reading Gilroy rather than nattering on about him...
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-01 02:01 pm (UTC)For me, it was the opposite. When I lived in Brooklyn I felt like a needle in a haystack. That interesting article of clothing you have on gets lost in a sea of airbrushed trucker hats, sleeveless pink flannel shirts and zebra striped belts. Since I've moved back to a southeastern state I've gotten alot more attention when I go out. Go figure.
Thankfully, nobody is required, at least in America, to pledge allegiance to the flag, follow a dress code, or learn a national language. In the interest of being PC, many in California believe that hispanics should be taught in Spanish and blacks should be taught in Ebonics. However, since 99% of the business conducted in this country is done in English, we would be putting these kids at a tremendous disadvantage once they graduated into the real world (all for the sake of "fairness").
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-01 02:31 pm (UTC)Perhaps trans-nationality needs time - the human DOS is often fear. We live in hope that war's resurgency is a surface-to-air death rattle, a monotheistic Stone Age machine catching distant sight of its own redundancy.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-01 02:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-01 03:28 pm (UTC)On the flip side of the coin, of course, I doubt a mashed-up AFL player with a spikey blonde mullet would get a second glance from most London women. "You play Australian rules football? Oh, OK..."
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-15 06:57 am (UTC)what you were probably picking up on was that we're not a country of risk takers when it comes to romance.
I was reading Thoughts for the day...
Date: 2005-08-01 05:17 pm (UTC)I find it funny that you also happen to be so visually oriented as well as musically oriented (as you can tell probably, I am NOT so word oriented..but felt an affinity with you and loved how when skimming through your thoughts for the day, that the "Life during wartime" theme was so cleverly tied into the entire story, as songs so frequently do set the scenery for life and the events that unfold.)
I felt moved and noticed how today your theme is also going in that direction..thought I should add you (if you don't mind).. seeing that I may have the chance this month to see Howard Devoto in Manchester with Pete Shelley and Richard Boon at Urbis the 12th of August.
Best wishes,
Dorian
The Global OS
Date: 2005-08-01 05:26 pm (UTC)Robert Sharl
robert.sharl@gmail.com
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-01 07:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-01 09:41 pm (UTC)1. The poppadom paradox
As life-transforming events go, the arrival of poppadoms at the table hardly counts as the most dramatic. But it gave Saskia the kind of mental jolt that would profoundly alter the way she thought. The problem was that the waiter who delivered the poppadoms was not of Indian descent, but a white Anglo-Saxon. This bothered Saskia, because for her, one of the pleasures of going out for a curry was the feeling that you were tasting a foreign culture. But the more she thought about it, the less it made sense. Saskia thought of herself as a multiculturalist: she positively enjoyed the variety of cultures an ethnically diverse society sustains. But her enjoyment depended upon other people remaining ethnically distinct. She could only enjoy a life flitting between many different cultures if others remained firmly rooted in one. For her to be a multiculturalist, others needed to be monoculturalists. Where did that leave her ideal of a multicultural society?
David Goodhart replies:
"Saskia is not so much a multiculturalist as a cosmopolitan - someone who enjoys crossing ethnic and national boundaries. In a superficial sense we are all multiculturalists/cosmopolitans now, but on closer inspection neither ideal turns out to be a very desirable one. We are familiar with the conservative monoculturalism that Saskia discovers at the heart of multiculturalism, but cosmopolitanism is also flawed. As Ulf Hannerz once wrote, "There can be no cosmopolitans without locals." Even if somehow all of us could be cosmopolitans, a world in which no one comes from anywhere or has a distinct culture is a nightmare.
Saskia highlights one of the great inconsistencies of contemporary western liberalism. The Canadian scholar Eric Kaufmann calls it asymmetrical multiculturalism, meaning that minority groups should express their ethnicity while dominant ones should transcend theirs. But surely in a good society both ethnic majorities and minorities should feel equally comfortable with - or indifferent to - their ancestry, history and myths (comfortable with does not mean uncritical of). Multi-ethnic societies will not work by trying to suppress the dominant ethnicity but rather by erecting a civic nationalist "roof" of political and cultural norms that all groups - majority and minority - are committed to. The materials used in the construction of that roof will come predominantly, but not exclusively, from the historic experience of the ethnic majority. But how could it be otherwise? This is Britain, it is not anywhere.
(David Goodhart is the editor of Prospect magazine)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-01 11:03 pm (UTC)Thought I would share an very recent happening I just had happen to me. I wasn't sure where I was going to put it but once I arrived at this day's entry title knew it had a fitting place.
I was listening to "nosonyfor mai".
"the war between the sky and the sea...
the war between your arm and your throat...
the war between the fish and the birds..."
As this last line was said my eyes made contact with these words:
"More Dead Birds, Fewer Fish Seen on Pacific Coast"; ( http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20050801164009990011 ).
The first line says, "Marine biologists are seeing mysterious and disturbing things along the Pacific Coast this year: higher water temperatures, plummeting catches of fish, lots of dead birds on the beaches...". Then came the line "Unspoiled Beach Syndrome". Those three lines lay in wait to describe a larger picture I'm considering a venture towards tempering in some way; botany, landscape architecture, or neurobiology.
I take it synchronicities aren't very welcome here as they carry little academic value, but the dreamlike atmosphere conjured by Mai's convicting orchestral samples and Nick's vertiginous bard lyrics steeped a languid furl around the idea that this might be a welcome payment of a sort. You do good work, lover of man, you.
"A shekel, an obol,
a seashell on the shore
has bounced up'on my oar,
and landed in my view,
from me, from here, to you."
-liplex
unspoiled cultural imperialism
Date: 2005-08-02 02:29 am (UTC)How very noble of you. But are the Germans capable of defining their own culture without your help?
I'm absolutely the opposite of an assimilationist; I don't think people should be forced to speak in the language of the country they live in
No, when you stay in places like Berlin and Tokyo, you expect the Germans and Japanese to address you in English.
Being the opposite of an assimilationist presumably means forcing your hosts to go the extra mile to accommodate you.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-02 02:32 am (UTC)>district.
Stop trying to fool yourself. You know that 9 times out of 10 you'll go to places like Daikanyama, Aoyama, or Urahara.
Hey, why don't you try hanging out in Okinawa for that nifty Japanese/American Military ethnic group vibe that's in bloom?
English language and where you live
Date: 2005-08-02 02:42 am (UTC)How many Berliners under 45 don't speak much English? Does it matter if they are Ossies vs. Wessies?
From earlier postings I take it that you speak French, Nick, but I don't know about your German. We also know you cherish the "fremdichkeit" (sp?) of Japan. But while living in Vienna 14 years ago, I was quite pleased with myself by being able to get by in German and get beyond English speaking Viennese society. Is that assimilationist? I always thought that as an American with decent German grammar I was a bit of a trick dog...
(Budapest is recommended for an almost complete experience of language strangeness. The alphabet is latin, but latin based words are few and far between. Yes, I did learn a few words of Hungarian, just to step outside of that English/French/German bubble.)
Re: English language and where you live
Date: 2005-08-02 07:41 am (UTC)I live here therefore I speak the language.. everyone should speak more than one language because language gives a whole different perspective on the shape of how things operate on a cultural level, you live there for longer than 3 months, ok, you SHOULD try to learn it, not for "THEM" but for your own understanding of the culture. Its not being assemilated but rather educated, an education you need not feel "brain washed" by.
My first lanugage was actually not English and the very first city in the world I was born in and lived was actually in Greenwich Village, NY, My first language was Chinese although I'm so called "white" born of mixed background "European" immigrants.. it made me different from the start not being able to communicate to members of my own family until I was four years of age. And although I was blessed (or cursed) with memory of the times I for the life of me can only recall these troubles since about 6 years ago when I was switching over to Swedish.
Although my difficulties in Swedish were short lived I empathise exactly why people don't want to learn a language other than the one they speak for the reason it leaves one feeling vunerable, open, seemingly without "crediblity" one can hang over the heads of anyone else Speaking English, and being "above" others... thankfully, having "other things" going for me, I'm not treated with disrespect due to the fact my Swedish may not be up to par... but the fact that I actual try to speak it as well as I can, in a land where one does NOT have to learn...
I recall being here only 3 months and could speak enough Swedish to get by, and they say its not an easy language.. but I overheard a woman who happened to be here in Sweden for 7 years at the time speaking English to the woman in the shop that she's never learned Swedish but lived there when asked, "How long will you be staying in Stockholm?"..and people do this and actually work here and get by like this. It rings true of other countries as well... and the large cities of Europe... (Budapest ect)..but here in Sweden the entire country can pretty much speak English no matter how old, unless they are for example Finnish immigrants like my in-laws. I mean for the most part a Swede who has been in school in the 50's here CAN speak English.
Successfully colonized I'd have to say.. but there is the other point..this country has alot more things happening historically, and language-wise, beneath the surface, for example there was a time where the second offical language of Sweden was in fact FRENCH...yes I learned the history of the place I live in, because it is actually interesting (and other places I don't live) more than American history because I felt 200 years of dry rubbish was not as interesting as the notes written down by the Swedish Scientist Karl Fon Linné... on the topic of "the sexual reproduction of flowers"
I can only imagine Budapest!
Once you get over the exotic of being someone from somewhere else all the time, why not learn the language? Why not make yourself vunerable? or is that the problem? excuse my dyslexia...
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-02 05:39 am (UTC)Just a shallow point - The media in the U.S. isn't Australian-owned, in the sense that Murdoch is not an Australian citizen. But I do feel communal shame for living in the nation responsible for the Big Brothering of global media.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-02 06:02 am (UTC)Somewhere between its availablility to me and it's actual composition,
my experience of the jet set community here is really quite boring, outside of one story about a charming copper skinned man with an indistinct European accent. He said he was from 'wherever he slept', and unfolded a rhetorical series that surprised and amused me at every turn. I told my friend there was a man around who reminded me of Momus. He worked at the International Monetary Fund.
Anyone with first hand knowledge of the city: I go to a place like, for example, the 18th St lounge and I see a really bland kind of internationalism. But then again, that's not my scene, and I don't know what lies around what corners. And I am willing to concede that, after all, it's politics that brings people here.
Pope Awesome VI
North vs South
Date: 2005-08-02 12:08 pm (UTC)And R. says: Isn't it telling that all of the combinations are occuring between combinations of Northern Hemisphere countries?
a disappointing 21st century
Date: 2005-08-03 01:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-03 06:36 pm (UTC)For a few months now, I've been enjoying your perspective on global culture, and the fantastic replies to them. This article is very relevant to my recent experience of traveling to Melbourne for a Buddhist Youth Conference I attended. I am only young, and this was the first time I've had the chance to travel to another real city. The thing that struck me most about Melbourne, was when compared to Brisbane (which is where I'm from), I didn't have to labour nearly as much in conversation as I feel we had more in common. My craving for culture was completely sated in Melbourne, and I'm seriously questioning whether I can stay in Brisbane for much longer.
Your question of convergence vs diversity is very close to me, as my organization, Soka Gakkai International, is committed to creating a global culture of peace. In answer, I'd like to suggest that, rather than being contrary, a one-world operating system and a diversity of cultures might actually be very suited to supporting each other. A tree with it's many leaves, catches the light of the sun, and allows it's supporting trunk to grow ever upward toward the sky. As this tree grows, glorious flowers bloom as an expression of it's health and vitality. I believe a one-world operating system that cherishes diversity, will not only ensure it's survival, it might very well allow all cultures to thrive in ways we cannot yet imagine.
I feel the Buddhist perspective of Oneness of Self and Environment has a lot to offer in terms of explaining why the world is so bleak at the moment. No matter what bargains governments make, what laws they put in place, real peace cannot come from above but is instead determined by what is in the hearts of every human on this planet, as our environment is really just a reflection of this. Your entry on post-capitalist slow life was appealing to me, as I felt it addressed this very point. I think it's interesting to note that London and New York have hardly been known for their slow-paced, easy-going and laid-back lifestyles.
Forums such as the one that you provide, will go a long way in challenging the narrow thinking that appear to be dominant and threaten to overwhelm us. Thank you, and please don't give up on the 21st Century. It's only just beginning, and it's destiny is ours change.
Liam
willyoucomeandfetchme@hotmail.com (mailto:willyoucomeandfetchme@hotmail.com)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-03 06:37 pm (UTC)