“cultural schizophrenia”

The summary of the article, Globalization Unchecked: How Alien Media is Suffocating Real Culture, reads:

Globalization is creating “cultural schizophrenia” in developing nations, which lack the ability to protect their traditional ways of life against the constant bombardment of a dazzling and well-packaged Western culture. The author, reflecting on his travels in the Muslim world − a Muslim family watching a barely-clad Beyonce on MTV or Turkish youths playing an American video game that involves the killing of terrorists − concludes that the aspects of Western culture that permeate developing countries promote a set of ideas that ultimately sell products. Interactions between cultures have historically been beneficial, but the difference now is the speed with which these interactions happen. The constant bombardment of Western culture fails to give cultures in the developing world time to adapt and change. The result is that small and poor countries are left trying to benefit from economic globalization while cultural globalization undercuts their traditional ways of life. −YaleGlobal.

Read the article here.

Is Golablization Inevitable, Irreversible?

These two oft-repeated words, inevitable and irreversible, used often with the term Globalization, lack my respect. Yes, I degrade them as they do it to me. A process that is not strictly happening according to a Divine and Natural Law, but that which actually is a function of the choices humans make, has come to suggest that it transcends human beings. Is it fair? The later question would be raised more forcefully and more provocatively by those who believe in Iqbalian philosophy of humanism, not quite same as Western humanism, however. Iqbalian philosophy of Selfhood gives central place in the universe to humans, who are of best composition. Thou art not for sun and moon, it is they who art for thou. If humans give up to live, to say the extreme we shouldn't say, would globalization be inevitable and irreversible? That is not to denounce increase in the interdependency and inter-connectivity between people, but to show the dominance of humanity over non-human, cosmic elements or forces.

Apart from this, such annotations and connotations for a process called globalization raise logical questions about the certainty and finality of these ideologies. If globalization (the exact opposite of tribalism) is supposed to be an unstoppable phenomenon, which it is called upon by some academicians, then why still its definition is termed too dynamic to be explicitly stated as a whole? That is, you cannot limit its definition or even define it fully by assuming that this process has shown all of its manifestations; and that now no further study of historical processes is required to deduce an all-rounded and exact definition of this phenomenon, process or philosophy ('3 Ps' as called by Ali Muqteda). To be precise, my question is: Why this process has not completed and turned into a condition?

There is no argument over the fact that since globalization has never been a modern or post-modern phenomenon, it has evolved over hundreds of centuries and still continues to be so. But is it correct to label such a phenomenon, process or philosophy, which may be as lethal for humanity as tribalism, unstoppable? Are we becoming a victim of arrow of time, which has inherited in its forward flow some diabolical cruelties, so much unavoidable? Is this whole notion human?

Globalization: The Pathos of Circular Definitions

'Sir, what is globalization?'

Coincidentally, just coincidentally, I am attending a special sociology course on globalization, and we are also supposed to know it the way it is taught and not the way things are. A common spectacle, I presume. Not know what scholars say and contest. Not know what history says. Not follow where history goes, and thus to analyze it properly. Not think outside of those trite, rotten and dry textbook definitions, which being absolutely devoid of any intellectual stimulation and enthusiasm only dull our minds.

'Son, it comes from the village', the answer comes back like a bullet.

[What about it???]

'You see, a village is were we all come from, or perhaps from urban areas, but villages are more prestigious, right? So all the problem it has got to do is not with the globalization, but with the village. And since there's always an outrageous chaudhary, (financially and socially the elite person(s) in a typical village, who dominates others in one way or another), out there, hence there are certains problems, you know'.

'No sir, I'm asking where did it come from, that globalization thing?'

'Oh! I see. It comes from the global village. And now, I know, you'd be intrigued enough to know, where did that come from. Therefore, I must tell you - from the village. Yes, I think. Now. Enlarge that village. Stretch it on a globe, one available in our library (a round model of globe). And, here we have a fine example of a global village. Further, son, the process of turning and transforming this village by stretching it on a plastic globe is what we, academically and commonly, refer to as globalization'.

*Huge applause*

The converstaion thus naturally ends here.

A sound echoing in our minds, 'And where did that come from, the village, SIR??? From globalization???'

Conclusion: We are but victims to the circular definitions of enlightened professors, who can profess it so easily and in the same fashion slip away.

'O earth! show me your nets!'

* Image source: http://www.cartoonweb.com/images/globalization/globalization5.gif