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mik3capThree centuries ago, America began as a place of intermingled peoples. "The Great Experiment" was started, and people gathered from all over the planet to start fresh in a new world - free from persecution, able to live the way they pleased and believe whatever they wished. It was an idea whose time had come again, an ideal of cultural freedom - a melting pot of traditions and a free marketplace of mores where all cultures were treated as equal.
Today's America still embodies many of the ideals it was founded on, though perhaps expressed differently than they once were. The power of America is now in the hands of multi-national corporations that have successfully massified every aspect of our lives. It's clear that many people desire the fulfillment of the American cultural ideal - and they buy into it, and they buy it, insofar as consumer products can fulfill that desire.
Like any good virus, the American meme propagates well and is about to reach the tipping point of its epidemic. American influence is everywhere, brands are omnipresent, nearly every corner of the world has been touched - if not by rampant materialism and imperialistic idealism, then by pollution (mercury for eskimos) and global warming (shrinking glaciers and stronger monsoons).
The situation is undeniable, the evidence unarguable. So the question now is: what's going to happen at the end of all this? What do we, the citizens of the planet, want to happen? And is it in line with what America wants?
Others have called it globalization, or Empire, or McWorld. It has happened many times before, the creation of a globe-spanning empire. China and Rome come immediately to mind. Like those powers before them, America reaches out and co-opts alien traditions and cultures and makes them its own - the Roman empire made itself great by taking the armor and the weapons and even the gods of its enemies and absorbing them, amoeba-like, into its own cultural psyche.
Ultimately, these past empires could not succeed due to a lack of technology and logistics. This is no longer true today - today the most powerful military force in human history is controlled by the most powerful cultural ideal ever conceived. What would have happened if the empire never ended?
Maybe the world would have fallen completely under the sway of a monoculture. One world, one vision. What does that mean? Is that even possible? Subcultures and counter-cultures never seem to go away.
(to be continued)
Today's America still embodies many of the ideals it was founded on, though perhaps expressed differently than they once were. The power of America is now in the hands of multi-national corporations that have successfully massified every aspect of our lives. It's clear that many people desire the fulfillment of the American cultural ideal - and they buy into it, and they buy it, insofar as consumer products can fulfill that desire.
Like any good virus, the American meme propagates well and is about to reach the tipping point of its epidemic. American influence is everywhere, brands are omnipresent, nearly every corner of the world has been touched - if not by rampant materialism and imperialistic idealism, then by pollution (mercury for eskimos) and global warming (shrinking glaciers and stronger monsoons).
The situation is undeniable, the evidence unarguable. So the question now is: what's going to happen at the end of all this? What do we, the citizens of the planet, want to happen? And is it in line with what America wants?
Others have called it globalization, or Empire, or McWorld. It has happened many times before, the creation of a globe-spanning empire. China and Rome come immediately to mind. Like those powers before them, America reaches out and co-opts alien traditions and cultures and makes them its own - the Roman empire made itself great by taking the armor and the weapons and even the gods of its enemies and absorbing them, amoeba-like, into its own cultural psyche.
Ultimately, these past empires could not succeed due to a lack of technology and logistics. This is no longer true today - today the most powerful military force in human history is controlled by the most powerful cultural ideal ever conceived. What would have happened if the empire never ended?
Maybe the world would have fallen completely under the sway of a monoculture. One world, one vision. What does that mean? Is that even possible? Subcultures and counter-cultures never seem to go away.
(to be continued)