We Are Globalized, But Have No Real Intimacy with the Rest of the World

[The2ndWheel]

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0417-30.htm

I have just read Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. It is a classic. Published in 1947, it analyses the nature of Japanese culture. Almost 60 years and many books later, it remains a seminal work. Like all great works of scholarship, the book manages to transcend the time and era in which it was written, aging in certain obvious respects, but retaining much of its insight and relevance. If you want to make sense of Japan, Benedict's book is as good a place to start as any. Here, though, I am interested in the origins and purpose of the book.

In June 1944, as the American offensive against Japan began to bear fruit, Benedict, a cultural anthropologist, was assigned by the US office of war administration to work on a project to try and understand Japan as the US began to contemplate the challenge that would be posed by its defeat, occupation and subsequent administration. Her book is written with a complete absence of judgmental attitude or sense of superiority, which one might expect; she treats Japan's culture as of equal merit, virtue and logic to that of the US. In other words, its tone and approach could not be more different from the present US attitude towards Iraq or that country's arrogant and condescending manner towards the rest of the world.

This prompts a deeper question: has the world, since then, gone backwards? Has the effect of globalization been to promote a less respectful and more intolerant attitude in the west, and certainly on the part of the US, towards other cultures, religions and societies? This contradicts the widely held view that globalization has made the world smaller and everyone more knowing. The answer, at least in some respects, is in the affirmative - with untold consequences lying in wait for us. But more of that later; first, why and how has globalization had this effect?

[oscar111]

1. UN .. a billion into poverty, another billion into extreme poverty

a UN report on glob. about last month, had those bottomline conclusions.

A third of humanity crushed.

PS nine million starve to death yearly. While Kozlowski spends two million dollars on a birthday party.

[Kutjara]

2. Perhaps because globalisation is an imposed ideology.

Many commentators have remarked that the indemic social and economic problems in sub-Sahara Africa largly arise from the fact that the formerly tribal political structures were replaced wholesale by the imposed systems of the colonial powers. While the colonials had varying degrees of success in establishing the form of Western democracy (or, in some cases, monarchy), they were less successful in planting the substance of these systems. Africans acted out the dance of being 'modern' but, because this modernity had not grown organically in Africa, it had no claim on the African heart.

I think of globalization in the same way. It is an imposed system (imposed largely by the US and UK, with some more or less enthusiastic support from other Western nations), inextricably wrapped up with our own political, commercial and, to an extent, religious (i.e. Protestant work ethic) ideologies. While non-Western nations may adopt the form of globalization, it does not claim their hearts.

In China, for example, personal relationships and obligations are still far more important than legal considerations. Gift giving (particulary money) is an accepted part of life. The Chinese therefore have a difficult time understanding the Western opposition to bribery and nepotism. Close relationships between banks, government and industry are completely natural in Japan (and, to some extent, in Germany). The French value their way of life and the variety of their food and culture more highly than simple profit. And these are fairly well developed countries.

When we look at the so-called 'Third World', the disconnect between the ideals of globalization and the realities of local culture and politics is even more stark.

Personally, I don't believe globalization will be anything more than a transient phenomena. It will be superceded by the emergence of a global community based on shared values, not imposed ones.

[Imperialism Inc.]

3. It is an important problem , and one that I admit I often ignore

myself. Still, I think the bigger problems are the economic results of the unlevel playing field, that leaves people working for the west while owning nothing of their own... in their own country.

[Demeter]

4. Globalization Doesn't Work In the US Either

We've been colonized--plantation-ized--by multinational corporations who spit on their own motherlands.

There is no good reason to keep globalization alive, as far as 99.9% of the earth's population is concerned.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. Pundits like to refer to anti-interventionists as "isolationists," but

they themselves are the real isolationists--they're isolated mentally, emotionally, and culturally from the rest of the world. They think that everyone should be like their 1950s vision of America, and they get angry when others don't want to play along.