Upgrayedd wrote:BigBallinStalin wrote:Upgrayedd wrote:Multiculturalism.
If leftists were smart and not retarded they'd realise that the trend over the past thousands of years has been a homogenizing of cultures. As technology grows, distances vanish and invariably one culture begins to spread, dominating all others. Today this culture is Westernism - characterized by it's value of material wealth, leftism and rejection of higher ideals.
If you sincerely care about that kind of subject matter, then you'd enjoy Tyler Cowen's
Creative Destruction: How Globalization Is Changing the World's Cultures
(pm me for details).
Book description makes author sound clueless.
Example:
Scrutinizing such manifestations of "indigenous" culture as the steel band ensembles of Trinidad, Indian handweaving, and music from Zaire, Cowen finds that they are more vibrant than ever
So music becomes more vibrant when based on Western music theory? Indian handweaving more vibrant when done in sweatshops (and not by hand)?
He's a typical Westerner looking at things through Disney goggles. As long as he gets to have fondue parties with his limp wristed, all white, "cosmopolitan" friends the world is the most vibrant culturally alive place of all time... so he claims. Best way to know the truth about something is to take the opposite stance of a leftist.
Well, if you're willing to base your assumptions on a paragraph summarizing 190 pages, then what does that say about you?
He talks about cross-cultural exchange, which when introduced in many places, it produces changed forms of music or even new music--like the steel band ensembles of Trinidad and music from Zaire. It's not just Western music theory, which IIRC he doesn't even mention. It's about the development of markets and seemingly unrelated markets across countries which stimulates change and new forms of cultural products.
The steel drums of Trinidad didn't grow out of the ground; it come from petroleum companies, whose metal barrels were re-purporsed for making music. Zaire music, which developed alongside the introduction of new instruments from the West or Middle East, expanded greatly beyond Zaire, and into other cultures, which took it and changed it. This happens through trade, whether it's trade in ideas, instruments, theories, or whatever.
You wouldn't even have reggae and dub if Jamaica existed in autarky.
Indian handweaving expanded with an increase in trade with European and Middle Eastern markets--before it wasn't much, and without trade, we'd never know about Indian handweaving and what India would have to offer us. When machines replaced manual labor, it didn't replace all of handweaving (which some neglect to mention). It expanded greatly in the low-quality markets and fared poorly in the higher quality markets. This enabled developers to seek a comparative advantage in development of higher quality products. When the machines outsourced the production process for most basic parts of production (making wool, yarn, etc.), this left more time for handweavers to increase quality or produce higher quality goods because they didn't have to spend countless hours producing basic materials. New dyes were also introduced through trade. Without the trade, they would be left with the same range of colors (or lack of colors). The fact is that all this trade developed the handweaving industry, increased quality, and enabled many people around the world to enjoy these products--contrary to other opinions.
If you want to read the book, see the index, and you'll see what I'm talking about.
I hope I can live to 200, so I can bitch at them in my old man's voice.
.