Global Culture

This past week has taken me into other aspects of globalization, through a couple of documentaries. The first one “an inconvenient truth” is Al Gore’s crusade to educate us on the larger issue of global warming and its effect on climate change. The second one is “the end of suburbia” and its scary conclusion about the imminent collapse of the most common lifestyle in north-america as a result of always increasing oil prices. The common theme across these two documentaries is the unbelievable amount of energy required to sustain the growth of our civilization, at a time when the most important source of energy is quickly becoming a luxury item.

Globalization can be quickly misunderstood as a mandate for every person to move around the globe, pursuing their dream in an endless land of opportunities, without consideration for the energy output that is required to sustain such a lifestyle. A much more difficult implementation of this trend would be a carefully planned set of steps required to transfer as much value as possible from a community to others with the smallest cost possible.

Part of what this project aims to accomplish is to establish the mechanisms for different communities to exchange valuable information about their lifestyles in such a way that they enrich themselves by adapting those practices they lack. All this implemented by a legion of immigrants that far from being “frequent travellers” always foreign to the place where they land, are not afraid of leaving home behind knowing that their journey will not require abandoning their cultural heritage.

There is a common pattern that seems to emerge as a fundamental engine for all things that would lead to a solution: community living. So to conclude with a call for action, allow me to detail the various ways in which our project will lead to a more sustainable future:

• increasing the value of cultural activities and promoting an economy around them, displacing to some degree the modern obsession with consumism that requires tremendous amounts of energy to sustain
• giving small communities a tool for exploring the aspects that make cosmopolitan cities so attractive for the young generations, allowing them to improve their cultural profile and become more attractive as places to settle
• making destinations around the globe welcoming places by demistifying their fundamental rules
• helping in the creation of a common language to document local culture, counter acting with the increased influence of globalization as a purely commercial trend