What a globalized society we live in...

[lecter]

I wonder how long it will be before most (if not all) country borders disappear. At least within regions (S. America being the next likely choice) it seems very much feasible. I just did a headcount of the people around me and these are the results:

My best friend + another good friend are Romanian (same as me)...other friends I have around here are: Brazilian, Indian, American, Irish, Ethiopian, Thai, Uzbek and Chinese.

The teachers I've had just this semester are from Moldova, Bulgaria, Myanmar and Thailand.

At one of my workplaces, the guy at the desk behind me is German, my boss is French, and two other people in the room are Russian and Trinidadian, respectively. At another workplace, my boss is Australian and a few people I know come from Poland, New Zealand and Canada.

At yet another workplace there is an Englishman, a Scot and a few Americans ranging in origin from Louisiana to Kentucky and California.

So on a weekly basis I constantly interact with people from 21 countries, considering that I don't work for any kind of organization that would entail such diversity and my university friends and teachers are generally not naturalized, or expats, just around for the ride.

This is Thailand

[Jessterw]

Reminds me of the people I grew up with. While they may have been American-born, their parents were born to countries covering most of the globe. Some of them, no, most of them not even from the same as that of their spouse.

I work for a company in Japan with an Australian, who we all know, as a coworker/manager. So yeah.

[KvHagedorn]

Won't it just be wonderful when we are all processed and homogenized and identically fitted cogs for ever larger corporations to utilize? When we are wonderfully confused and ungrounded, with no firm identities other than the drivel megamedia companies produce (all in English now.. forget Romanian, Italian, German.. they're all as extinct as Aramaic) to give us some shallow, plastic sense of commonality? Someday they might even find those nasty things called souls and find a way to remove them. Won't that be wonderful?

[Sasq]

Won't it just be wonderful when we are all processed and homogenized and identically fitted cogs for ever larger corporations to utilize? When we are wonderfully confused and ungrounded, with no firm identities other than the drivel megamedia companies produce (all in English now.. forget Romanian, Italian, German.. they're all as extinct as Aramaic) to give us some shallow, plastic sense of commonality? Someday they might even find those nasty things called souls and find a way to remove them. Won't that be wonderful?

Good, excelent, wonderful.
Now, while you sit there, in your chair, at your desk bitching and moaning ad nauseum about the decline in values, the evil mega corporations, you will have to excuse me, while I get about the job of making the world a better place by helping to break down 'artificially' created inter-cultural barriers and generally enjoying my lot in life.

[Jessterw]

Here we go...

If your identity only comes from your heritage and culture then you are severely lacking as a person. Culture will always play a part in our lives and who we are. Just because that culture isn't the same as that our our generations past doesn't mean it's any less. History is littered with the comings and goings of cultures and languages, each influencing the next and creating a more vibrant weave of those that came before and those that are emerging.

That said, falling back on that to define you or anyone else as a person shows a lacking. Of what I'm not sure. It has nothing to do with corporations, it has to do with people wanting to enrich their lives and move beyond the boundaries their culture and country has imposed on them, either by design or by chance.

Food for thought. You wouldn't be here as the person you are, genetically speaking, if this sort of thing hadn't happened before in one manner or another.

[Brian Ellis]

Isn't life wonderful. The one person here who is forever bitching about the pretended evils of multiculturism is the one who proudly claims his own multiculturism:



This shows the following flags:
St George (English, essentially Anglo-Saxon culture)
Norway (Nordic culture)
Germany (Teutonic culture)
Denmark (Nordic culture)
St. Andrew (Scottish, Celtic culture)
France (Latino-Gallic culture)

My God! What hypocrisy!

[schmosef]

Won't it just be wonderful when we are all processed and homogenized and identically fitted cogs for ever larger corporations to utilize? When we are wonderfully confused and ungrounded, with no firm identities other than the drivel megamedia companies produce (all in English now.. forget Romanian, Italian, German.. they're all as extinct as Aramaic) to give us some shallow, plastic sense of commonality? Someday they might even find those nasty things called souls and find a way to remove them. Won't that be wonderful?

And we'll all be driving Toyota's.

[agallag]

So, KvH, what are you going to think of my children (when I have them in another couple of years). They'll be English/Irish/Scottish/Mohawk/Malaysian/Chinese.

Or how about my two nieces? They're English/Irish/Scottish/Mohawk/Polish/German/Jewish. How's that grab ya?

Jackass.

[Nowhere]

They're surely evil monsters desrined to destroy the world. Devils, I tell you!

[Brian Ellis]

So, KvH, what are you going to think of my children (when I have them in another couple of years). They'll be English/Irish/Scottish/Mohawk/Malaysian/Chinese.

Or how about my two nieces? They're English/Irish/Scottish/Mohawk/Polish/German/Jewish. How's that grab ya?

Jackass.

Well, when your eldest girl reaches 18, in a couple of decades, post a picture, because she will probably be stunningly beautiful. Pity I won't be here to appreciate it!

[agallag]

A friend of mine is a Jewish guy (canadian born), and he's about to get engaged to a girl who's half Newfie (from Newfoundland, Canada), and half Chinese. She's pretty stunning herself, and I'm sure their kids will be more so...

[cjolley]

How globalized is it when it's legally simpler to adopt a child that lives 11,000 miles away in another country than one that lives in your own city?

When ChooChoo gets older I'll see if I can explain this thread to her.

[Jammrock]

My kids are Italian/Norwegian/Swiss/German/English/Scottish/Irish, and damn cute!

[Dr Mordrid]

Sounds like the population at the University of Michigan Hospital since at least the 60's to my personal knowledge. People from every freakin' corner of the planet, and a few who I knew just had to be ET's

Dr. Mordrid

[KvHagedorn]

How globalized is it when it's legally simpler to adopt a child that lives 11,000 miles away in another country than one that lives in your own city?

When ChooChoo gets older I'll see if I can explain this thread to her.

Well, she will have a good perspective. Adoptees have differing feelings about things like where they came from, even if it was just another set of parents in the same town. Some want to know their birth parents and some do not. Since you have been so good with learning some Chinese for her (just extremely admirable on your part, I gotta say), she will have some understanding of where she comes from.

Individuals are individuals, and we all have individual needs. When you are 22 and in college, things seem far different than when you are 40 and trying to give your kids an identity that does not involve current pop culture and celebrity worship or mammon of some sort. We are not only individuals, but also members of groups.. and to feel grounded, most people, whether they acknowledge it or not, need to feel themselves as belonging to one of these groups. Many children in America are so ungrounded that they form gangs so they feel like they can belong to something. It's no surprise that these people are often minorities that feel alienated from the culture they live in. It would be much better if they had a more constructive way to fill this need.

Would you all gang up on JRR Tolkien as you have on me? Somehow I doubt it, though his whole body of work is steeped in old-world European culture which he felt was being lost because of the blind drive to industrialize that was going on at the time of his youth. He felt he had lost something precious and spiritual. I feel exactly the same way. I have absolutely no ill feelings toward any other culture or people who come from that culture.. unless they expect me to trash my own and replace it with theirs. The European nations should never have inflicted this on Africa or India or Indonesia or America or wherever else it happened, but that does not make the opposite any more justified. The motive in both cases is greed. Greed is terrible thing. It destroys everything decent in search of an illusion.

So you will not misunderstand me, let's look at some of the films coming out of China in the past few years. Hero, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, House of Flying Daggers, are all about a mythical Chinese past which many Chinese seem to long for now that industrialization is destroying much of what they had, so in many ways, this literature has similarities to Tolkien. I would MUCH rather watch one of these films than most of those set in contemporary times, even though I am not from that culture. People are more relaxed and concentrate on living their own lives rather than having to constantly deal with the huge schism we have created in this world today. Watch one of these films, and then watch Crash, and tell me which one makes you feel more comfortable, and you will see where I am coming from.

Once again, let me emphasize that I am only speaking in a very generalized way about the big picture here, and not addressing any individual case. Every individual is different.. especially here, where exceptional seems to be the rule, though most of you are exceptional in mathematical/computer based pursuits, and as such, cultural anthropology is not really your cup of tea. Sorry to bore you with it, but when it does come up in a starry-eyed way like this, I just feel obliged to inject some counterpoint.