Lexus and Olive Tree

Lexus and Olive Tree

Thomas Friedman's "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" and "The World Is Flat" praise globalization. The message was for countries with backward cultures to quickly embrace American-style advanced capitalism and join globalization. It suggests that if countries with backward cultures quickly adopt the systems of advanced countries and upgrade to cultures with high productivity, cultural differences will gradually diminish worldwide, leading to a reduction in conflicts between nations and a better life for everyone.

So, if cultures were the same, would there be no conflicts? How is culture formed? Culture is distinguished by accumulated ways of life and historical content over thousands of years. And when broken down, language differences are also significant. Of course, recent cultural creations are converging and accumulating faster than ever.

However, despite that, pursuing cultural uniformity is almost impossible. In most people's minds, only about 5,000 to 10,000 words out of tens of thousands of words in a language are stored. And most people form personal habits centered around the words commonly used while remembering vocabulary. Therefore, it is impossible for individuals within one country to have a culture that is familiar to everyone worldwide.

In "The Clash of Civilizations" by Samuel Huntington, globalization is also not considered the right path. If everywhere in the world looked the same, would there be a reason to leave home? A single culture is the imagination of companies that ignore people and nature and pursue only profit. Did globalization and neoliberalism truly make us free? If not, what are the alternatives?

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