The primary refuge of the rag-tag post-socialist left is among various sects of monkey-wrenchers collectively self described as the anti-globalization movement. They aren't actually opposed to globalization, they are opposed to capitalism and liberty, but they try to conceal their true agenda since trying to sell an authoritarian program that denies self rule and local decision making didn't work well in the past and has no chance now that the world has had ample opportunity to observe those societies that suffered socialist revolution and subsequent collapse after decades of misery.

One of the reasons that those closed societies collapsed was that information from the free world leaked in despite state censorship and attempts at information control. Weakened by bad governance their oppressed populations longed for release. A pair of blue jeans or training shoes weren't just clothing, they were information bombs that communicated the stark differences between controlled and free societies. The same is true of popular music and other cultural products, even words. They all carried an information load that challenged the lie of socialism. Globalization - free interchange of ideas and materials between societies - makes closed authoritarian societies impossible except among small groups of ideologues.

There is a credible argument that socialism, real socialism, has never had a fair trial, that those deformed societies of the twentieth century betrayed the socialist ideal and had as much or more in common with fascism as socialism. They were premature attempts to impose post-capitalist structures on societies that hadn't yet experienced the development that capitalism brings, a necessary pre-condition of true socialism. This argument is weakened by the lack of a credible alternative to capitalism that doesn't rely on technologies not yet developed. It's still too soon and still unconvincing, a primitive idea formed during the early years of industrialization harking back to an earlier time rather than usefully anticipating probable futures.

Those who are still confused, able to perceive the defects of existing societies but unable to understand either current realities or probable futures, give up and dedicate themselves to destruction. Rather than working to improve society by correcting the defects of existing capitalist societies they seek to undermine those societies. To combat the liberating effects of free information flow they champion closed societies arguing that their unique cultural heritage should be preserved, sealed in amber, since cultural diversity is only possible when physical and cultural isolation is enforced.

They are wrong, cultural diversity doesn't disappear in free societies, it increases. Timothy Burke says it well.

I don’t see in the outpouring of global popular culture the monolithic, unvarying homogeneity that most of the chief complaints about cultural imperialism attribute to modernity. I don’t see expressive culture as a zero-sum game. But it’s true that those forms of expressive practice which are fundamentally antagonistic to a cultural marketplace—the equivalent of usufruct ownership of land, the kinds of cultural practices that are unowned and unownable, collective and communal, and that require a protected relation to power, are threatened by the explosive force of market-driven popular culture. My feeling about that is the same feeling I have about gemeinschaft in general: good riddance. There is a thermodynamics to hermeneutics: almost no meaning, no idea, is ever truly lost or destroyed forever. The solids which seemingly melt into air are still there, and any sudden cooling of the atmosphere crystallizes them anew, often in surprising or unexpected places and forms. All that is lost are the forms of social power that reserved particular cultural forms as the source of social distinction or hierarchy, all that is lost are the old instrumentalities of texts, performances, rituals. The achievement of liberty loses nothing save the small privileges of intimate tyrannies. Culture, even in the premodern world, is ceaselessly in motion and yet also steady as a rock. In getting more and more of it for more and more people, we lose little along the way. The existence of South Park does not kill opera or gamelan.

Injustice and inequity exist widely in the world we have inherited. They matter, enormously, and we all bear responsibility for their existence, some of us more than others. The luxuriousness of my life against the poverty of many other lives matter. I have no easy answers for this, but I know we must answer to it.

But against the traditionalists, the censors, the snobs, the moralists, the monochromatic, those who want less not just for themselves but all the world, who want only their own vision of what is refined and elegant to propagate, who so fear the authentic popularity of global popular culture that they imagine its successes to be impossible save by conspiracy, subversion and subjugation—against them, I have an answer, from whatever ideological point of origin they hail. The answer is no.

Consider this example of confusion about culture.

The current mass extinction of different cultures is a catastrophe for humanity. But this is hard case to make for many people, especially when you see the benefits for the spread of English for commerce and it's you that's getting the lion's share of the gain. The case for cultural diversity is complicated by its problem type. That is, like the environment, this is one of those slow-fuse public good disasters. Having said that, a good case can be made on many levels: practical, aesthetic, social and moral lines.

The practical case is simple. We lose much social ingenuity and knowledge every time we hobble or destroy a culture -- ideas which may help us now and in the future work on practical problems. Deep wisdom often runs through many cultural practices, such as the rice paddy water cult in Bali, which after researchers studied it, found that it was an amazingly sustainable and resilience system which was able to maintain the precise biochemical balance of the soil for thousands of years. Similarly, the revival of ancient water harvesting practices is already helping countries in the Middle East manage their supplies more sustainably.

Cultures are not destroyed. They don't go extinct. There's a multi-way flow that spreads culture, increases culture, rather than diminishing it. As noted above, "All that is lost are the forms of social power that reserved particular cultural forms as the source of social distinction or hierarchy, all that is lost are the old instrumentalities of texts, performances, rituals. The achievement of liberty loses nothing save the small privileges of intimate tyrannies."

IS cultural change new? Well, no, and parts of our minds are at least dimly aware that the deep history of the human species has been one of continuous migration and cultural blending. Everyone came from somewhere else except perhaps a few Africans but even they are a mixture of those who stayed and those who returned after a long sojourn.

All cultures are mutts, a stew of various influences over time, just as the people are a genetic blend. So is it true, can it be true, that "We lose much social ingenuity and knowledge every time we hobble or destroy a culture"? No, it is obviously false, and once we remove the biased judgement by changing the word "hobble" to "enhance" and the word "destroy" to the word "evolve" it becomes obvious that this is a core human behavior and the mechanism by which all cultures came into existence. They evolved rather than sprang full formed from the mind of some ancient diety.

Consider Bali, the example used by Boyer and refuted by Burke with his reference to gamelan, an indigenous musical form that not only still exists in Bali but has enriched European and American music. What is its cultural evolutionary history? Over deep time its inhabitants migrated there from nearby islands that had in turn been populated in a similar way from populations all over the region. Trade with other islands enabled a continuous cultural exchange. Since the beginning of recorded history there have been several significant cultural migrations as well as genetic change. Hinduism swept Bali over a thousand years ago, changing it along with the rest of what we now call Indonesia. After that Islam emerged and swept the region more than 500 years ago. Refugees from Islam came from all over Indonesia to settle in Bali, again altering its genetic base and culture dramatically and though remaining Hindu was a vassal of Islam.

Soon after the age of European expansion swept over the region, bringing new religions, technologies and culture on Portuguese ships. In the mid nineteenth century Bali was again conquered and large numbers of people killed by the Dutch and a completley new system of rule overturning existing systems of lords and vassals was installed, a blend of Dutch culture with the existing.

In the mid twentieth century things began to change again. The Dutch empire dissolved as did many European colonial empires after WWII. Indonesia gained independence and Bali became part of that sprawling, populous Moslem nation. In the 1970s change accelerated. There is the often told story of the failure of green revolution agriculture but an even more important change came in the late 1970s; television. For the first time the Balinese people got a glimpse of where all those conquerors and tourists came from and how they lived.

When we speak of preserving cultures today what we are advocating in most cases is freezing cultural evolution at the European colonial stage, and many Europeans find this a compelling idea which preserves vestiges of their former world dominance though they are in continuing decline. But as with their attempts to preserve their own peasant cultures it is impossible. They become parodies of real societies with actors performing for tourist gratuities to supplement their wages from remote governments. There is no cultural preservation and most of the children of the people trapped in cultural amber escape into the real world glimpsed on TV.

European boosterism is the tap root of the the sickly anti-globalization trope, expressing itself often as Anti-Americanism since the US has emerged as the poster child for liberty and progress, and more ominously with an increase in traditional European anti-Semitism. Europeans, especially the French, are eager to ally themselves with any power no matter how corrupt that strengthens their anti-American stance.

The Chinese President, for instance, was here in Paris during Chinese New Year, the event trumpeted with an unprecedented parade down the Champs-Elysées, the first ever featuring any non-French ethnicity (not including the involuntary parades, like when the Germans marched into town). You can see the quid pro quo already between this Sino-Franco relationship. In the EU, Chirac is unabashedly trying to push through regulatory changes that will favour China. Lucrative arms contracts and deals for French companies will emerge from this current overseas tour. And while very different cultures, one can see how these two countries might find some deeper affinities which may facilitate such a collaboration. Both China and France, for instance, share a political culture favouring centralization and continuity versus change; both feel that they are a "Middle kingdom." That their long-lasting cultures gives them a claim of superiority if not leadership. Indeed, Chirac's bemoaning the spread of English and its negative impact on different cultures is something that will endear him to Beijing and Chinese people more broadly. The ironic thing is that English, according to some studies has actually peaked in terms of its world market share of languages. (See The Future of English/) In the long run, Chirac really has nothing to fear, except the clear downward trajectory of French usage around the world.

One of the curious facets of anti-American bigotry, especially the French strain of this disease, is the failure to understand language. English isn't a fixed language, it is a made up language reflecting the waves of invaders that defeated and colonized the British Isles, the inventiveness of its people, and the continued importation of words and ideas from other regions. It's a fast evolving language suited to the fast paced technological world.

Perhaps more importantly, Chinese isn't a language, it's a language family. To call one of these languages Chinese, and elevate it to universality, is analogous to selecting one European language and calling it European. But it is a curious language family in that the written form is more widely understood than the spoken form. Chinese characters are not phonetic, they are conceptual. The same characters can be read by those speaking different languages.

In attempting to find some parallel between France and China history is ignored. Unlike China France is not a middle kingdom with a long lasting culture, it is a province of the fallen Roman Empire. The Chinese empire of antiquity never fell. The geography of France is fluid and has changed markedly over the centuries as it lost or conquered surrounding tribal areas, colonized them and tried to stamp out their languages and cultures. France has long aspired to be Rome's replacement, but never had the required skills. France is not a lesser Rome as it is not a lesser China. It is merely a tribe with illusions of grandeur too unstable to even govern itself durably.

Local cultures are of course already fighting back in many ingenious ways. The Anti-Globalization movement did much to help this and channel interest into younger generations, while governments and international organizations have been long working on a variety of strategies to help preserve and protect cultural diversity. But what's working and what's not working? I'd like to learn more about these strategies. What looks interesting, successful and effective? A friend of mine, Zaid Hassan, is fleshing out a paper called "cultural aikido" which will be a blueprint for how local cultures can defend themselves against these strong forces of globalization. When I do read it -- I think it's still a work in progress -- I'll report back when I learn more.

Nonsense. The Anti-Globalization movement does not wish to impede globalization, it's merely the rump of socialism, which had as its central tenet world domination. It's anti American, anti English and anti capitalist but not anti globalization. It will happily destroy every culture, eliminate all diversity and self rule and ravage the ecology of the planet in the quest for power and control of humanity. Claiming to favor cultural diversity is merely a tactic to impede the progress of ad-hoc globalization without central control or ideological conformity.

That lack of control means that we can't predict the result. Will one language dominate? Of course, there will be a spoken trade language that all speak with varying skill. Will it be English? Possibly, but Spanish is another possibility. Since there is no spoken language that can be called Chinese but there is a shared non-phonetic written language the possibility exists for a non-phonetic global written language based on concepts rather than sounds that can be spoken in many ways. Mathematical and scientific symbols have this attribute as well.

Perhaps the emptiness of the anti-globalization movement's thinking can be grasped by considering the bewildering variety of cultures that one can find within the borders of the US. Some are the residue of various waves of migration from all over the planet and some evolved in place. They all are aware of and have some ability to use English, at least by the second generation after immigration, but many other languages are in every day use and others are created regularly. The need to be able to communicate with society drives the growth of a common trade language, but the very human need to differentiate drives the preservation and creation of local spoken languages. Every child is a potential rebel and possible heretic who will adopt or invent language incomprehensible to elders. Only the most severe repression can prevent this and even then it only partially succeeds. It has always been so, it will always be so. Linguists study the evolution of language the way geneticists study genomes to read the history of the species.

Another post, Nativism, mused about "quasi-religious naturalism that skirts very close to post-colonial nationalism and identity politics while not truly serving any legitimate environmental purposes. It seems related to some of the hysteria about genetic engineering as well and various other dietary dogmas, none of which have any environmental basis or grounding in any rational scientific principle." Many policies advocated by the anti-globalization movement resonate with this central confusion. Their nativism isn't restricted to ecosystems.

Chirac warned Thursday of a "catastrophe" for global diversity if the United States' cultural hegemony goes unchallenged. This, he said, would lead to a "general world sub-culture" based around the English language, which would be "a real ecological catastrophe".

This is very similar to the National Socialist view which comprehensively sought preservation and restoration of purity in the genetics of every species including humans and their cultures. It's important that we expose the ideas lurking behind the rhetoric of the anti-globalization movement because they are frequently reactionary attempts to preserve the worst aspects of the old world. The new world is not free of defects, it needs improvement as we can probably all agree, but anti-globalization is not making useful contributions. Rather it is squandering energy and resources that could be better spent.

» Just Ducky from Crumb Trail
A new M&M rant, Quack Science, whinges about the way misinformation from environmental advocacy distorts society and leads to poor decision making. A main factor contributing to doubt about dire predictions of ecological doom is that the claims are so......[read more]
Tracked: October 21, 2004 02:58 PM