Assigned Blog #2: The World is Flat as a Pancake

In our discussion of the Friedman’s flattened world we continually alluded to or discussed the dissemination of American ideas and culture in this flattened world. I think is certainly true of our commercialization principles and our companies but not necessarily in terms of our entire culture. Over the past few years, I have been fortunate enough to travel a great deal all around the world; while I have seen many tenets of America’s consumerist ideas and business, the heart and culture of each place I have traveled has very must remained true to itself. Although in many places the American business’ presence did create an odd juxtaposition, I saw it from neither Friedman’s positive nor Morozov’s negative perspective.

One of the most prominent examples I can think of regarding the pervasive nature of our consumerist culture is our food. From the KFC on the side of the dirt road in Cambodia, to the McDonalds in the beautiful marble building in Rome, to the Subway around the corner of my house in Guatemala, American food enterprises seemed to be everywhere when I traveled. However, I don’t see this as a bad thing. Just as we in the U.S. have tex-mex, chinese, and thai chains as our exotic cuisine, so too do they have other countries have their ‘exotic’ American cuisine. The presence of American food chains did not seem to affect the culture or mentalities of the individuals I met in the respective countries.

If anything the presence of these stores stood to highlight the vibrancy of the local culture. They seemed to illustrate the depth and strength foreign cultures contain when compared with our own. As much as I love Subway, a 6-inch BMT just does not seem as elegant, nor as artful as the homemade carrot soup my Guatemalan mother made from scratch. In several of our discussions we talked about whether it was right or just to impose our culture and ideals on other countries. However, I don’t think the spread of the consumerist lifestyle is doing any imposing; to me, it seems as though it is simply the natural progression of the global scene as we move into this technologically dominated world.

So in viewing cuisine as a proxy for American ideals, I would venture to argue that neither the Freidman nor Morozov was correct. Yes, we may be presenting our ideas and culture to those around the world but not in an eclipsing manner. From my experience, it is being taken with a grain of salt and altered different in each country to determine how it will fit amidst rather than in place of what is already there.