1) AIDS is a big problem here and this country is the only large-scale contributor towards its prevention worldwide.
2) Americans are not as passionate about national sports teams and our place in the international community as the rest of the world.
Hearing the AIDS presentation made me feel a little sad, embarrassed, and frustrated. Sad because of how the world is not doing enough to help the poor people living with HIV/ AIDS. Why not? Who cares what their situation is? These are real people here, with a real disease that isn't just going to go away. On that note, I felt a bit embarrassed that I never really paid attention to this issue before for many of the same reasons people are not contributing money. I judged the people with the disease, people I don't know personally nor cared to. I judged people based on the little I knew. Finally, I was frustrated with myself and with those other judgmental people. The world should take a better stand in fighting HIV/ AIDS in the future. If only the world were more open-minded and accepting of other cultures and ways of life, we could probably come up with effective solutions to stop the spread of HIV/ AIDS across the globe.
The other thing I learned this week that frustrated me was America's apathy towards the world. We don't pay much attention to participation with other countries in sporting events and tend to hold a better-than-you attitude toward other countries. When Thomas mentioned our melting pot of a country, I was thinking about the difference between a "melting pot" and a "cultural mosaic" culture. Yes, we are a melting pot. We have all the other cultures of this nation mixed into ours. This does not mean, as Thomas said, that "America is globalization." If we were a cultural mosaic, one could argue that we are. If we just pieced all of our different cultures together, each keeping their individuality (as a mosaic suggests), then we could say we are globalization. But we have to care about other cultures, not just be so intent on making everyone else like us. We also have to branch out and be social with other nations through things like sporting events outside the Olympics. How do we do this? How do we get our country to be more of a mosaic? I believe this starts with us. This generation of college students must initiate the acceptance of other cultures. One day, we will be the ones in policy making positions. If we gain the acceptance of others now, we will be able to ensure others will later.
I guess, then, that the question returns to "What is globalization?" In my view, it would be undesirable to create any sort of "cultural mosaic", because if all countries were a mosaic of each other, they would all simply be an amalgamation of each other. No nation wants to play mix and match with its neighbors, or integrate another nation so fully into itself. If that were to happen, we may as well do away with individual nations entirely and simply form one huge, global society - which would be impossible, contrary as it is to humanity's natural instinct to tribally form groups (nation-states on a large scale).
ReplyDeleteI believe that a melting pot is the perfect form of globalization. We are not COMPOSED of other nations, but instead have a TASTE of many different cultures. This way, nothing is shoved down our throats; America (or any other nation who follows this globalization model) can pick and choose which tastes it favors, and incorporate that taste into its future national model. This way, a nation can hold on to its core flavors while modifying - and improving - as time goes on. There's no need to meddle with a country's make-up by wantonly forcing in unwanted foreign culture. If it ain't broke, don't fix it - and don't ask soccer to fix it either.