After reading some of these works, history is what pops into my head. Remembering Mr. Stevens talk about the Mycenaeans and the Minoans. I remember that the Mycenaeans were known for the Lion's Gate and the thick, local stone that was used to make many of their entrances and walls. The Minoans were a colorful bunch that used very vibrant colors in their architecture and frescoes. I also remember the inverted columns that they were also known for.
The main thing that both of these civilizations have in common is that they are now extinct. No one really knows what happened to them. Many suggest that during the fall of these civilizations, some of the citizens moved into other more thriving cultures. I'm assuming that this is what happened.
Now...my point...maybe we are like the Mycenaeans and the Minoans. Maybe now our local culture is dying because many people move to other cultures, other places, and other people. Instead of letting the culture completely die, we live with the memories of what it once was or we take what our local culture once was, and we combine it with another culture (like the once Mycenaeans and Minoans may have done). We now use colors in our designs. Italy is now known for beautiful frescoes. Maybe this is what global or universal means. Maybe it's one culture with subsets of many cultures. If this is what globalization means, then maybe this is our progress. Is this destiny? Is globalization progress? Is there a way to stop this cycle? Is it really a bad thing?
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I had actually been curious about what globalization actually was and decided to read up on it when i did the readings. According to some it is the process of transforming local or regional things into global ones, while one defined it as "the development of worlds cultures and interdependent economy," which in the technical sense is the interaction between organizations, both economical and industrial, not just between cultures.
ReplyDeleteYou made a good point about how cultures do not completely disappear but where they go is in the blending of others. I agree, because I believe to learn and to survive we thrive on other's resources and economy. Unfortunately, we have gotten in that cycle, and it should have been better to not have come to that. (That is why, I believe, when we accomplish some even small victories overseas, it does affect us as a country. Just a side note of my own opinion!)
Yet, somehow I don't think that globalization is necessarily the future or the past, it has just been the way our world works together to keep our economy going and demands met. I do believe culture runs even economy and vice versa, but the focus is now more on that economy runs the interaction and relationships between each culture. So, I guess my opinion is that culture has been more defined as the character or appearance of our society than rather the heritage of our past and the integrity of its values in the present time. I believe to define globalization for yourself is to see what culture means in this day and age, and also what is our part in the cycle, which I believe is can be a good and bad thing.
Hope that made some sense to you, I may have interpreted it differently!
Just to clarify what I was saying...I feel that we-Americans are like the Mycenaeans and the Minoans because we create things like McDonald's, DisneyLand, lifestyles, etc. as a representation of what American culture is about. This is much like the Mycenaeans and the Minoans who wanted to be known for their vibrant colors, frescos, and inverted columns. Those items began to define what their culture was, how they felt about life, and who they were.
ReplyDeleteNow, it is clear that our culture is not just about McDonald's, DisneyLand, lifestyles etc. America has become more than that. It's become a "melting pot" of other cultures. In return, American culture has become a part of other cultures around the globe. McDonald's is located all over the world. Other countries have their own forms of DisneyLand. Italian frescoes are reminiscent of Minoan culture. Like you stated, cultures don't disappear, they merely become part of another culture. This process of "culture sharing" is what I feel globalization is in a nutshell. Is that what you interpreted? My idea would go with you definition of "transforming local or regional things into global ones."