Journal perfessor multigeek's Journal: "American" Hegemony: I Think That It's Grand 2
I've been thinking about the exchange I had with memfree about my last JE and the more I think the more confident of my conclusions I feel.
Yes, cultures all over the world are being dissipated upon exposure to certain global mores. So be it. While some aspects of this are undoubtedly troubling and just as certainly spreading on a wave of misleading propaganda (cigarettes, meat-centered meals, women pushed towards Playboy/Vogue ideals of appearance, a purely cash-based economy, "modern" families with one couple, some kids and everybody else gone, etc.), much, if not most of the stuff that is becoming omnipresent is becoming so because it is genuinely superior.
You don't like that tribespeople in the Amazon are listening to Snoop Dogg? Come up with something better and they'll switch. Voluntarily. Quickly.
"You were the first to know about Frankie Goes to Hollywood."
"And the first to see that they were shite."
Just that fast.
I *love* blue jeans. And so does everybody else. Not because David Hasselhof or Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jennifer Aniston wears them. Because they wear well, look good, go with most other stuff, are comfortable, can be designed to work in hundred degree weather or ten below, are cheap to make and hard to make badly, and look good when localized with anything from patches to tiny mirrors to leather to lace.
And, if you *really* want to get salty, have been a source of immense profit for many decades for a company that makes Ben and Jerry's look like a small-time operation with sweatshop procedures.
In my last JE I mentioned Chinese takeout. I'm sorry, but a system that makes it viable for me to go and get a double portion of greens and veggies with a quart of brown rice and a massive container of vegetable soup (in other words, the heart of two to five healthy, tasty, low effort meals) for a whopping eight dollars is a system that the world can use more of.
You can talk all you like about sweatshop conditions and terrible hours but a.) most people in the world would be deliriously happy to work in those conditions, b.) I see how much of their time the staff are sitting around reading or chatting and c.) the limited components of such systems that are so labor-intensive will be viably doable with robots in less than ten years. Cheap, reliable robots. Not to mention that if these only work so well in the US because of discrepencies between our local income expectations and what is paid to these workers, then why do such places thrive in Thailand, Russia, and the Philippines?
So if somebody wants to get all outraged that they see the same little Chinese/Mexican/Japanese takeout joints all over the world, then they should wonder if they are upset on behalf of what truly is making the locals happy, or if they're just annoyed at not getting the quaint, inefficient environment that their travel brochure promised.
Okay, so let's move on to the Big Kahuma of cultural badness, televison. The one-eyed monster. The consumerism beast spreading the need to spend and comply and be thin and competitive.
Well, the truth is I've only got so much to say on this front as I haven't had a television that got broadcast since 1985. So I only know what I've seen on video or at friends places.
But that having been said, while I readily concede that TV has, and promulgates a whole array of shallow, quick-fix values, the good sides count too. Let's start with my favorite. Watch a few episodes of Friends, Cheers, or the like and you'll periodically see a glorious thing. A problem comes up, the characters disagree, and THEY VOTE ABOUT IT. And then they stick by the results. They may bitch or try to get out of it, or ask for another vote. But basically they demonstrate over and over again something that many reformers say may the hardest part of building a pluralistic society.
Because they've found that through much of the world people think that a vote is something that you do to prove who has the majority. So if a vote goes your way, you get to abuse the losers. And if you lose, then you have no reason to adhere by the results. These days when groups working on social reform are training people from, say, the Middle East, they come up with as many excuses as possible to have votes. "What are we having for lunch? Let's vote" And they'll find that the winners happily chow down and the losers then immediately declare themselves exempt and go looking for food elsewhere or, perhaps, refuse to kick in their share of something like pizza that only works if the group cooperates.
So, where are people around the world being exposed to this essential thing, this crucial part of equitable civilization that people only seem to understand upon repeated exposure? On all those bad old television shows that we're supposed to dismiss.
Now, I would be the last to claim that nothing precious is lost when more and more people move to the same set of approaches and lifestyles. For example, there is a style of fermented bean curd that has since time immemorial been sold in beautiful pottery jars. I can go down to Chinatown and buy a jar that truly adds to the beauty of the world for $1.35 in a way that this whole transaction is profitable. And I can see eight of them of various styles from where I sit at this moment.
And over time I've watched as one bean curd maker after another has switched to plastic or glass jars. Anonymous, disposable shlock. But, then again, I also less frequently see the workers where I shop cleaning up after a box of pottery jars full of food has fallen over and spilled, wasting the food, trashing the jars, and generally cheapening everybody's day. I very much wish that somebody with the wherewithal would go to these people and explain to them that they have the option of being in the jar business. Preferably *before* they have thrown out their eighty-year-old molds and fired their sixth-generation pottery makers.
But, when you add it all up, chances are one or two places *will* figure this out. And they *will* redefine themselves. And two hundred or two thousand or twenty thousand other places will leave behind a tradition that was graceful and elegant and even (superficially viewed)ecologically sound. And I can live with that.
Rustin
Yes, cultures all over the world are being dissipated upon exposure to certain global mores. So be it. While some aspects of this are undoubtedly troubling and just as certainly spreading on a wave of misleading propaganda (cigarettes, meat-centered meals, women pushed towards Playboy/Vogue ideals of appearance, a purely cash-based economy, "modern" families with one couple, some kids and everybody else gone, etc.), much, if not most of the stuff that is becoming omnipresent is becoming so because it is genuinely superior.
You don't like that tribespeople in the Amazon are listening to Snoop Dogg? Come up with something better and they'll switch. Voluntarily. Quickly.
"You were the first to know about Frankie Goes to Hollywood."
"And the first to see that they were shite."
Just that fast.
I *love* blue jeans. And so does everybody else. Not because David Hasselhof or Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jennifer Aniston wears them. Because they wear well, look good, go with most other stuff, are comfortable, can be designed to work in hundred degree weather or ten below, are cheap to make and hard to make badly, and look good when localized with anything from patches to tiny mirrors to leather to lace.
And, if you *really* want to get salty, have been a source of immense profit for many decades for a company that makes Ben and Jerry's look like a small-time operation with sweatshop procedures.
In my last JE I mentioned Chinese takeout. I'm sorry, but a system that makes it viable for me to go and get a double portion of greens and veggies with a quart of brown rice and a massive container of vegetable soup (in other words, the heart of two to five healthy, tasty, low effort meals) for a whopping eight dollars is a system that the world can use more of.
You can talk all you like about sweatshop conditions and terrible hours but a.) most people in the world would be deliriously happy to work in those conditions, b.) I see how much of their time the staff are sitting around reading or chatting and c.) the limited components of such systems that are so labor-intensive will be viably doable with robots in less than ten years. Cheap, reliable robots. Not to mention that if these only work so well in the US because of discrepencies between our local income expectations and what is paid to these workers, then why do such places thrive in Thailand, Russia, and the Philippines?
So if somebody wants to get all outraged that they see the same little Chinese/Mexican/Japanese takeout joints all over the world, then they should wonder if they are upset on behalf of what truly is making the locals happy, or if they're just annoyed at not getting the quaint, inefficient environment that their travel brochure promised.
Okay, so let's move on to the Big Kahuma of cultural badness, televison. The one-eyed monster. The consumerism beast spreading the need to spend and comply and be thin and competitive.
Well, the truth is I've only got so much to say on this front as I haven't had a television that got broadcast since 1985. So I only know what I've seen on video or at friends places.
But that having been said, while I readily concede that TV has, and promulgates a whole array of shallow, quick-fix values, the good sides count too. Let's start with my favorite. Watch a few episodes of Friends, Cheers, or the like and you'll periodically see a glorious thing. A problem comes up, the characters disagree, and THEY VOTE ABOUT IT. And then they stick by the results. They may bitch or try to get out of it, or ask for another vote. But basically they demonstrate over and over again something that many reformers say may the hardest part of building a pluralistic society.
Because they've found that through much of the world people think that a vote is something that you do to prove who has the majority. So if a vote goes your way, you get to abuse the losers. And if you lose, then you have no reason to adhere by the results. These days when groups working on social reform are training people from, say, the Middle East, they come up with as many excuses as possible to have votes. "What are we having for lunch? Let's vote" And they'll find that the winners happily chow down and the losers then immediately declare themselves exempt and go looking for food elsewhere or, perhaps, refuse to kick in their share of something like pizza that only works if the group cooperates.
So, where are people around the world being exposed to this essential thing, this crucial part of equitable civilization that people only seem to understand upon repeated exposure? On all those bad old television shows that we're supposed to dismiss.
Now, I would be the last to claim that nothing precious is lost when more and more people move to the same set of approaches and lifestyles. For example, there is a style of fermented bean curd that has since time immemorial been sold in beautiful pottery jars. I can go down to Chinatown and buy a jar that truly adds to the beauty of the world for $1.35 in a way that this whole transaction is profitable. And I can see eight of them of various styles from where I sit at this moment.
And over time I've watched as one bean curd maker after another has switched to plastic or glass jars. Anonymous, disposable shlock. But, then again, I also less frequently see the workers where I shop cleaning up after a box of pottery jars full of food has fallen over and spilled, wasting the food, trashing the jars, and generally cheapening everybody's day. I very much wish that somebody with the wherewithal would go to these people and explain to them that they have the option of being in the jar business. Preferably *before* they have thrown out their eighty-year-old molds and fired their sixth-generation pottery makers.
But, when you add it all up, chances are one or two places *will* figure this out. And they *will* redefine themselves. And two hundred or two thousand or twenty thousand other places will leave behind a tradition that was graceful and elegant and even (superficially viewed)ecologically sound. And I can live with that.
Rustin
Just because we are told (Score:2)
While "thin-ness" is considered a virtue nearly everyone who sees Kalista Flockhart says "wow, she is gross!" and doesn't associate that with reality.
It is only the truly weak and impressionable who can truly believe that they would be better off if only they drove a jaguar. But some children grow up and move beyond and what ends up happening is that which is pragmatic.
keep up the good werk.
but criticisms are good! (Score:1)
One of the better things about this country is that I can find fault with it, and announce it loudly. I think of it as an obligation to do so; a way to keep our merits intact, and improve the points that could be better.
The part that galls me is that we export much of the worst of our culture -- the violence and shallowness of hollywood, the sub par food chains, faceless corporations, and an oft unwanted military force that may seem like bullying even if deployed for good, humantiarian reasons.
I'd rather the world employ secret ballot voting (which we didn't originate, but certainly support vigorously), less class consciousness (though we could use some work there), a greater ability to accept differences, and free speech. I'm glad we export technology, drugs, ad equipment, but I don't see those things as being particularly likely to induce others to our way of thinking.
By the way, thank you for not nailing me on the pettiness of griping about crappy market choices at home in comparison to human rights abroad.