The globalization of cullture.

Sent: Tuesday, July 13, 2004 7:25 PM Jon Kofas writes: "Hank Levin and Ronald Hilton correctly observe that western culture is indeed homogenized and becoming more so as time passes. John Heelan's observation regarding the European media conglomerates in the age of globalization confirms that under a western-style homogeneous media it is inevitable that nuances of national cultures are withering away in favor of an international commercial culture. How can Bavarian or Saxon culture survive when they are superceded by an international MTV-CNN-Hollywood culture which may have been influenced by a trend that started in the West-End of London, but was commercialized by advertising executives in New York or Chicago trying to convince consumers to buy hair color, pants, shoes, etc? Some scholars maintain that the globalization of culture is a positive development as it will diminish ethnic, racial, religious, and other prejudices that people have around the world. Others lament the loss of ethnicity and cultural autonomy in the age of globalization. Is there much cultural difference any more between London and New York, Copenhagen and Hamburg, Athens and Madrid, Lisbon and Rome, etc?. Large urban cities of the west are so homogenized that the restaurants, theaters, shops, clothes, etc. look the same. The people in these cities look the same, in this age of alienation and anxiety where commercial products try to fill the emptiness of the urban homogenized soul searching for identity and meaning in materialism. The absence of local culture accompanied by the increasing use of the English language around the world is the true face of cultural globalization. Commerce always dilutes and shapes culture today as much as it did during the age of Plato, Machiavelli, Voltaire, or Dickens. The age of the masses is the age of globalization after all! Viva Jose Ortega y Gasset: La Rebelion de las Masas, "Civilization is nothing more than the effort to reduce the use of force to the last resort."