Global Village

[Kumabjorn]

I am sitting in an Italian leather couch in my Swedish house, designed by a Danish architect, reading a Japanese author about a North Korean dictator on an American Kindle, produced in China that I was able to convert through a software developed by an Indian, sipping my Brazilian coffee in a mug from Thailand, munching on some nuts from Kenya and dates from Iraq. Ohh, and I am listening to an Australian radio station playing classic music composed by Germans and Austrians on a WiFi radio designed by a Dutch company that produced it in Indonesia.

I guess Marshall McLuhan got it right.

[AJ Starr]

[wizwor]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

I am sitting in an Italian leather couch in my Swedish house, designed by a Danish architect, reading a Japanese author about a North Korean dictator on an American Kindle, produced in China that I was able to convert through a software developed by an Indian, sipping my Brazilian coffee in a mug from Thailand, munching on some nuts from Kenya and dates from Iraq. Ohh, and I am listening to an Australian radio station playing classic music composed by Germans and Austrians on a WiFi radio designed by a Dutch company that produced it in Indonesia.

I guess Marshall McLuhan got it right.

What does your carbon tax run?

[RainingLemur]

I'm sorely disappointed by your lack of Canadian goods.

[Kumabjorn]

Only when I eat pancakes.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

I guess Marshall McLuhan got it right.

Partially.

As reading between the lines of your post illustrates, corporations have clearly gone global, seeing a mutual value in pursuing profit across borders.

However, people still tend to be nationalistic and isolationist residents of that village, many not seeing any value of global cooperation. We still have a ways to go.

[Kumabjorn]

Reading a Japanese author about a North Korean dictator, listening to German and Austrian composers from an Australian radiostation was an attempt to show that in behind corporate expansion we also find cultural expansion. I guess I failed.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

.

However, people still tend to be nationalistic and isolationist residents of that village, many not seeing any value of global cooperation. We still have a ways to go.

A ways to go before people are totally homogenized and devoid of any cultural distinction, all forced to conform to the ideals and values of a single world government? I hope it stays a ways off. I fear we're not nationalistic and isolationist enough.

(The only thing worse would be being nationalistic and NON-isolationist, leading to Crusaders, Jihadist, Missionaries, etc.)

[5thWiggle]

Originally Posted by RainingLemur

I'm sorely disappointed by your lack of Canadian goods.

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

Only when I eat pancakes.

Well, I've got a fair amount of IKEA furniture, so I hope you'll be eating a lot of pancakes to balance that out.

[Belfaborac]

Originally Posted by ApK

A ways to go before people are totally homogenized and devoid of any cultural distinction, all forced to conform to the ideals and values of a single world government? I hope it stays a ways off. I fear we're not nationalistic and isolationist enough.

Surely it's possible to be both proud of one's country and retaining one's national heritage and peculiarities without being either a nationalist or an isolationist? I certainly find it quite easy myself.

[Kumabjorn]

Originally Posted by 5thWiggle

Well, I've got a fair amount of IKEA furniture, so I hope you'll be eating a lot of pancakes to balance that out.

Most IKEA furniture is actually produced in countries like Poland, Romania, Moldavia, Russia, Thailand etc.

But yes, I tend to have one pancake breakfast a week, simply because I enjoy the natural sweetnes of maple syrup. At my age you have to hang on to those little picadillos, reminds you that you're still alive.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Belfaborac

Surely it's possible to be both proud of one's country and retaining one's national heritage and peculiarities without being either a nationalist or an isolationist? I certainly find it quite easy myself.

Didn't prove so easy for the Native Americans.
I guess it depends on what exactly you mean by "nationalist" (ie, do you think, as many seem to, that both 'nationalist' and 'patriot' are synonymous with 'jingoist'?) and if "retaining a heritage" means allowing your customs and ways to be outlawed and stamped out, relegated to museums and reenactments, by foreigners who disapprove of them.

The 'isolationist' part might be little hyperbole on my end, but, like the "all or nothing" copyright poll, if it came down to all or nothing isolationism or one-world homogenization, I'd probably side with the isolationists. As long as the country I was isolating myself in had a viable space program.

By the way: what the heck forum section did I stumble into here? I'm quite sure I never opted into the P&R!

[Belfaborac]

Originally Posted by ApK

Didn't prove so easy for the Native Americans.

No, I guess not.... The same could no doubt be said for the Anglo-Saxons when the Normans took over, or, if we go even further back, the inhabitants of Mari when the Assyrians sacked their kingdom around 1800 BC. Neither, however, has overly much to do with what happens today.

do you think, as many seem to, that both 'nationalist' and 'patriot' are synonymous with 'jingoist'?

Not necessarily, but all too often they are synonymous.

and if "retaining a heritage" means allowing your customs and ways to be outlawed and stamped out, relegated to museums and reenactments, by foreigners who disapprove of them.

Not sure how that could possibly be construed from what I wrote.

By the way: what the heck forum section did I stumble into here? I'm quite sure I never opted into the P&R!

You ought to know though, since yours was the first post designed for the P&R section.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Belfaborac

Not necessarily, but all too often they are synonymous.

And all too often they are wrongly characterized as synonymous.

Not sure how that could possibly be construed from what I wrote.

I didn't construe it from what you wrote. I asked the question to illustrate my concern.

You ought to know though, since yours was the first post designed for the P&R section.

One, I had go back and reread the OP to figure out a tenuous-at-best ebook connection at all, and two, I was commenting on STEVE's post regarding nationalism and isolationism, so don't pin that on me! I'm merely the fool who followed him.

[Apache]

The history of the world is a history of people absorbing or pushing out others that were there before them.
The Anglos and Saxons that were conquered by the Normans themselves conquered and pushed the Welsh into a tiny corner of Britain.
The so called modern American Indians of the southwest pushed out or killed the Anasazi Indians.
Look at the history of Asia and Europe with the Mongols, Tartars, Vandals and others.
Apache