The ridiculous story of the bloody and violent process of “globalization” and the empires that birthed our modern world.
Last week, I published an essay called ‘How it Feels to be a Young American in 2014.’ It ended up being the most controversial and heavily discussed piece that has ever appeared on this website. In it, I attempted to articulate the complex and various ways in which the sociocultural structures of the United States tend to do physical (death, disease, imprisonment, etc.) and psychological (cyclic feelings of inadequacy, guilt, anxiety, etc.) violence to the general public.
The response to the essay was overwhelming and inspiring, and of course plenty of people had criticisms and suggestions. Much of the feedback was constructive and resulted in numerous additions to the original essay, to the point where that piece should most definitely be considered a collaborative effort (as if any self-expression could ever be independent of the work/influence of other people).
Some of the feedback focused on the idea that many of the problems I discussed were not isolated phenomena that only affect young Americans (the demographic I ostensibly focused on), but are in fact much larger issues affecting all Americans, as well as (arguably) every person in the world. I was aware of this and had chosen to use the suffering of young Americans as an entrance point into the discussion because I am a young American and felt I had the most agency to write about my own demographic. However, my hope in writing was that it would be apparent that the issues I discussed are inextricable from the global situation circa 2014 and that many of them are common to most/all societies in our increasingly interconnected world.
In this essay, I want to go into more detail about how/why it is the case that the dysfunctions of America are inseparable from the dysfunctions of global society. I’ll first take a broader look at the last 10,000 years of human history to illustrate how modern history has been characterized by an exponential explosion of something I’ve called “cultural interchange.” Then, I’ll try to explain the process by which the problems of not only America, but of Western culture generally, became the world’s problems in the past 500 years or so via colonialism. Lastly, I’ll use my experience and study of Asia (I taught, traveled, and studied there for 16 months) to consider the various remnants of colonialism that (in many ways) define 21st-century Asia.
This is obviously an incredibly complicated and labyrinthine topic about which countless books have been written, so it would be foolish to think that I could really do justice to the situation in a single essay. However, my hope is to be able to communicate the main themes to help people arrive at a better understanding of the present historical moment and global situation.
American Square by Soymonk, 2014. Photo Credit: Wiki Commons
A Short History of Cultural Interchange
A major theme of the last 5,000-10,000 years of human history, is cultural interchange—i.e. the exchange of goods, ideas, and/or cultural products between different cultures. Another is cultural permeability, which can be thought of as a qualitative descriptor of the ease with which cultural interchange can occur (if cultures are very permeable, then goods, ideas, and/or cultural products are exchanged quickly, smoothly, and probably in high volume). In a recent essay on the presence of Japanese culture in my life, I wrote:
Culture has always been permeable—so much so that to conceive of cultures as distinct entities might be disastrously incorrect. Every culture is indebted to previous iterations of itself and/or to concurrent cultures for its form, and all cultures are linked/influenced by conditions of the natural world—the structures of the human brain, biological limitations, climate, all other Earthly phenomena, etc.—from which they are inextricable.
So a key thing to understand is that no culture has ever been a totally isolated set of beliefs and practices. Cultures have, however, varied widely in terms of the extent to which are influenced by other cultures. Arguably, about 5,000-10,000 years ago, with the rise of modern agriculture, cultures began to clash and influence one another more than at any point prior (due to population growth, fixed location, and revolutionary models of human social organization).
Agriculture gave mankind the ability to stake out permanent cities and allowed segments of populations to spend more time involved in affairs—astronomy, technology, organized religion, etc.—that were unrelated to the production or gathering of the basic necessities of life. This led to many of the inventions and belief systems that would gradually morph into the technologies and ways of thinking that characterize the world we occupy today. Permanent cities became centers of trade, manufacturing, and political power, eventually transforming into complex civilizations (first in ancient Mesopotamia about 5,500 years ago) with written language, recorded history, and elaborate religious beliefs.
Eventually civilizations gave rise to the first empires (2,000-3,000 years ago)—states which made deliberate efforts to expand their territory and sovereignty through forceful means. The rise of the empire might represent the primordial soup that eventually resulted in what we think of as “globalization,” or the increasingly total cultural interchange of products, worldviews, ideas, technologies, pastimes, and art-forms that characterizes the contemporary world. Since the time of those first empires, cultural interchange and permeability have arguably accelerated dramatically (and violently, as we’ll see), culminating in the boundary-obliterating technologies of the 20th and 21st centuries that have turned the world into a giant intercultural smoothie where the artifacts and iconography of foreign cultures/economies surround most of us and where countless belief systems and ways of life can be discovered by pressing a few buttons. As I wrote elsewhere:
“With the rise of international trade, radio, television, and ultimately the Internet—technologies that can disseminate cultural products on a global scale—cultures are seemingly more permeable and piecemeal than ever, to the point where being “American” or “Japanese” or most any nationality means that one has grown up in close proximity to cultural products of countries all over the world.”
It seemed important to provide that longer historical context to try to give some sense of the exponential upward-curve that we might imagine as representing the rise of cultural interchange/permeability in human history. The fucking Internet(!)—a place where all human cultures, people, knowledge, and information can theoretically occupy the same space and interact instantaneously—is probably the ultimate manifestation of this trend to date (though admittedly the vast majority of people in the world don’t yet have Internet access, even if one can learn about them/their culture online).
All of this is to say that of course the dysfunctions of any society/culture are no longer exclusively the problems of that society/culture (if ever that has been the case). Everything on this planet is far too interconnected and interdependent. But to understand exactly how/why the dysfunctions of American culture are profoundly related to the dysfunctions of the rest of the world, we need to dig deeper. We need to understand how the Western world (Europe and eventually the USA) forcibly and fervently propagated its cultural systems and ideologies worldwide over the past several hundred years, and how this fact has caused irrevocable and inestimable changes in global society.
In a word, we need to understand colonialism. Although a few fine and wonderful things arguably resulted from the history of colonialism on this planet, it’s clear to many people examining the global situation today that the rampant spread of Western models of the nation-state, the modern city, the capitalist economy, modern warfare, the justice system, education, and organized religion has brought about not only global catastrophes (potential for nuclear war, destruction of the natural environment, etc.) but also a web of deeply oppressive structures that lead to discrimination, alienation, violence, economic inequality, dehumanization, and disempowerment in the general populace.
Colonialism: Shit is Fucked Up
Our story begins with the “Age of Discovery”—i.e. the period that began in the 15th century in which many European explorers began sailing the oceans, “discovering” land-masses (where other people had lived for thousands of years and gotten along just fine), and somehow seeing fit to claim ownership of them in the name of various crusty monarchs. This was the beginning of a period of colonialism and imperialism that is utterly indispensable to consider if one wishes to have any understanding of the present global situation and historical moment.
Basically, a bunch of Bible-beating Europeans thought that God had divinely mandated their superiority (“Yeah, God must be a racist!”) and right to take whatever land they desired, so they raced around the world, set up camps in the midst of several-thousand-year-old cultures, and had the audacity to impose their “superior” religion and “civilization” onto the peoples they encountered (or they just murdered them and stole their shit).
Over the next 400 years or so, these powers (Britain, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Russia, [eventually the USA], etc.) carved the world up into the distinct nation-states that we know today, with little to no disregard for the systems of tribes or clans or indigenous nations that were already functioning in many places (throughout the Americas, Africa, Australia, and the Middle East). As if that weren’t enough, the slave trade (like, really, putting people in shackles and forcing them to do your bidding . . . the fuck is wrong with you?) also boomed during this period—to such an extent that, as the political scientist David P. Forsythe wrote:
“The fact remained that at the beginning of the nineteenth century an estimated three-quarters of all people alive were trapped in bondage against their will either in some form of slavery or serfdom.”
Three-quarters of all people. It should be noted also that this obscene conquest was inseparable from the rise of capitalism in the 16th century and an implicit assumption of capitalist ideology—i.e. that nation-states should accumulate unbounded stores of wealth via trade, slavery, land ownership, any means necessary. I encourage all of you to take one minute to watch this incredible .gif-visualization of the unfolding of territorial colonialism from 1492-2008 to better understand just how much of the world was seized and forcibly re-imagined during this several-hundred-year period.
And, sure, it should be noted that many of these colonialist/imperialist powers built a lot of shit in the countries they occupied to try to establish the same sort of infrastructure with the same sort of architecture that they were used to, and some of the stuff they built was probably useful (much of it is still in use today). But we simply cannot underestimate how dehumanizing, frightening, belittling, and traumatizing this process was for the people worldwide who were enslaved and/or told, implicitly or explicitly, that their way of doing things was wrong, outmoded, inferior, backwards, or barbaric.
I mean, fuck, just imagine that for a minute. This tumultuous period was the beginning of momentous changes in virtually every corner of the globe, and how could it not have been? As I alluded to, innumerable peoples were forced or coerced into partially/fully integrating Western models of the nation-state, the modern city, the capitalist economy, modern warfare, the justice system, education, and organized religion. Each of these items are fundamental ideological institutions that have an unspeakable impact on the organization of a society and the day-to-day lives of its people.
We ought to be careful to note that it’s not as if the colonialist period created mirror-images of European countries in far-off places all over the world. European models/colonists intermingled with thousands of years of cultural history to create new, hybrid-like nation-states with totally distinct cultures. But, basically, if you want to talk about how/why the sociocultural dysfunctions of the United States tend to be found in many other places worldwide, look no further than the colonialist/imperialist history in which European models of societal organization were instituted on the American continents and in many/most societies worldwide.
That’s really how everything started, as far as the state of the modern world is concerned. Even the countries that largely evaded colonial rule have been all but forced to embrace the idea of the nation-state, the practices of modern warfare, a somewhat-capitalist economy, and the model of education that is best-suited for producing workers in a capitalist economy (more on that in a minute).
So what I’m really saying is that—make no mistake—the world you exist in today would simply not exist if a bunch of starry-eyed white people on ships hadn’t sailed the seas to “manifest destiny” and claim the riches that they thought their sky-daddy had promised them (“Yeah! I bet God doesn’t care if we put these people in shackles!”).
The Asia That Globalization Created
So far we’ve learned that what we think of as “globalization” (using my terminology, we might define this term as: unparalleled levels of global-cultural interchange/permeability) arguably had its early stirrings with the first empires 2,000-3,000 years ago and then experienced a massive upsurge during the period of colonialism and imperialism from the 15th to 20th centuries. The rise of mass media in the 20th century obliterated spatiotemporal limitations on communication, massively bolstering the potential for near-instantaneous cultural interchange and unprecedented levels of cultural permeability. And the remnants of this at-times horrifically violent, exponential trend toward cultural interchange/permeability can be plainly seen all around you—they are the conditions of the modern world.
In an attempt to further elucidate this situation and help you to understand the ways in which American/Western sociocultural problems are shared by or affect every country on the planet, I’m going to make a few scattered remarks related to my experiences traveling/teaching in Asia and studying Asian (more specifically, Southeast Asian and East Asian) cultures. I’ll try to articulate a few examples of the obvious remnants of the process of globalization and how those remnants result in many of the same problems that I highlighted in my essay on America. We would do well to remember that 4.3 billion people, or about 60% of the global population, lives in Asia, and that, therefore, Asia is arguably the best continent to study if one wishes to understand the situation of the humans of the world today.
The most obvious (and arguably most deeply influential) remnants of the process of globalization in Asia are the contemporary nation-state, the modern city, the capitalist economy, the practices of modern warfare, and the ubiquity of modern technology. These items constitute so much of the fundamental fabric of any society that the landscape they produce is unmistakable. You know it all too well, I’m sure—the skyscrapers, the traffic, the advertisements, the crowded subways, etc.
This is why, upon arriving last year in South Korea, a land 10,000 miles from home, I had the uncanny sensation of being reminded of the United States by much of what I saw and felt. That sense of simulation, artificiality, speed, futility, and coldness that characterizes any modern city was palpable in the Korean metropolises (and eventually the cities in 10 other Asian countries) in which I found myself. The signaling competitions (“I’ll buy this to show you that I’m “cool,” “successful,” wealthy, etc.) that seem somehow inherent in individual-centric capitalism were apparent in the expensive fashion and luxury automobiles owned by most all Korean people.
The education system I taught within in South Korea (like the education systems in many other Asian countries) bears remarkable similarities to the US education system. It is characterized by hyper-competitiveness, teachers that are construed as almighty pitchers of knowledge, a one-size-fits-all approach, an almost exclusive focus on memorization, an absence of activities that promote creativity, an overwhelming emphasis on “results,” the next milestone, etc.—and I think this is hardly coincidental.
This factory-like, pitcher-cup model of education is designed to prepare students for the demands of working within a capitalist economy and a do-as-I-say, take-your-role-and-listen-up corporate work culture—yes, the very same capitalist economy and corporate work culture that would not be in existence in South Korea if it weren’t for the rise of capitalism and the corporation in the West and the eventual imposition of these models, by Western imperialists, onto Asian countries.
Capitalist economies and the societal arrangements that tend to result from them are in place in virtually every Asian country. In all 11 of the Asian countries I’ve visited and even in the so-called “communist” countries of China, Vietnam, and Laos, there are huge companies, massive income inequality, ubiquitous advertisements, and consumerist cultures. North Korea might have a system—people receive government rations for many things and advertisements do not exist—that seems vaguely to aim for the real ideals of communism (i.e. no social classes, no money, no state), but it still has large companies, consumer goods, and an inherently stratified society (societal stratification did not originate exclusively in the West, of course), so it too has in many ways inherited the norms of Western capitalist societies and is simply masquerading as something “communist.” This is not to say that I am an advocate of communism—I’m simply pointing out that capitalism has become a preeminent model of economic/social organization worldwide and that this state of affairs has consequences, some of them shitty.
One arguably shitty consequence of a capitalist economy is a culture of competition (definitely operative in the Asian countries I visited [though capitalism should not be considered the only cause]). The petty competition that is so prevalent in American culture is in many ways inherent in the capitalist system—capitalism is based on competition and accepts as a fundamental premise that some people will become “winners” and some “losers.” Institutionalized discrimination is also a nearly unavoidable consequence of capitalism, as the rich are given preferential treatment by the law, the education systems, and other institutions due to their ability to “pull some strings,” as we say, and because “money talks” (meanwhile, poor people are trapped in a cycle of poverty).
One can also see how violence and theft are inevitable by-products of a system that results in such a stark contrast of living conditions in the same area. I’ve seen luxurious penthouses next to shanties throughout Asia—a more striking manifestation of the situation in the states in which rich suburbs exist a few miles from deteriorating ghettoes. I don’t condone unnecessary violence or crime, but is it any wonder that people resort to desperate measures when they’re nearly starving and their neighbors are clearly basking in a surplus?
Further remnants: as a white person in Asia, one often gets the sense of an undue fascination or respect or resentment or even subservience directed toward oneself by the local people with whom one interacts. This is likely the result of A) a lingering set of complex feelings about the historical white colonizers who claimed “superiority” for centuries and changed everything, B) a set of complex feelings about the rich white tourists who constantly show up nowadays with absurd amounts of money and high-end possessions, and C) a set of complex feelings about the global popular culture that is utterly dominated by the presence of white celebrity faces (subtly reinforcing a much older sense of white people in higher positions).
These complex feelings often seem to involve feelings of inferiority or inadequacy, which is all sorts of troubling and sad and shitty. And it’s natural to assume that similar feelings exist in other places in the world where white imperialists “manifested destiny” and where white-world tourism/media permeates today. Based on literature by people of color that I’ve read, this is definitely the case in the states among what remains of the decimated Native American populations that once called the territory home and among most all people of color who have been historically enslaved, marginalized, oppressed, and discriminated against (and still are today in many ways).
And I should say more about the innumerable ex-patriots, tourists, and immigrants in the modern world—an obvious result of globalization. Recognize that the job I had in South Korea (English teacher) would certainly not exist without the world’s colonialist history. It’s astonishing, throughout Asia, how many people speak English and how heavily governments emphasize English-learning in school curriculums. This is of course a result of the fact that English is, more or less, the language of international business, the language in which most of the world’s written information can be reliably found, and the lingua franca (common-ground language) of world citizens whose native language is not English.
This is not a coincidence, quite clearly. There are hundreds of millions more native speakers of Mandarin (14.4%) than English (5.43%) worldwide, yet English is the dominant tongue because it was spread by the vast British empire of yesteryear and reinforced as an international precedent by both world wars. Post-WWII, English was seen as a prestigious language because of the great material wealth of the United States and Britain. So, if you are a native speaker of English, you likely don’t realize that a history of linguistic imperialism and a couple of favorable war outcomes resulted in a world in which you possess an enormous advantage in the global marketplace. I could not have taught in my program in South Korea if I was not a native speaker of English.
For this reason and others, consider that the mere presence of people like myself (Western workers, tourists, etc.) in Asia is both a remnant and an extension of the colonialist history. The US State Department estimated in 2011 that 864,000 Americans were living in the Asia-Pacific region. That’s a pretty heavy saturation of ongoing direct Western influence (and doesn’t even account for the massive number of Europeans and Australians that are also living in Asia). I imagine that these occupants tend to have a more cosmopolitan and open view of the world than the average American institution and the underlying values of American culture, but I can’t be sure.
I’ve certainly seen some fellow Americans behaving rather foolishly in Asia. I’ve also seen many Americans (myself included, I hope) behaving totally respectfully, thereby contributing to mutual cultural understanding and a healing of past wounds (ideally). Still, there are countless aspects of the modern tourism industry throughout Asia that have clearly arisen for no other reason than to appease rich white travelers from the states and elsewhere, and the resulting dynamic/state of affairs involving tourists and locals is in many ways deeply troubling (I’ll be taking a closer look at this situation in subsequent essays on Beacon).
There’s also the matter of millions of Asians immigrating to or studying abroad in the states and other Western countries, absorbing many of the cultural norms, and returning to Asia where they doubtlessly contribute to further internalization of various Americanized/Westernized attitudes in the general populace. This dynamic is, of course, not one-way: America has taken a fair share of influence from Asian cultures as well—the American countercultural movements and “spiritual” renaissance of the 1960s are in many ways traceable to the proliferation of the ideas of Buddhism and other Eastern schools of thought during that time period (personally, I see this as an example of a positive result of cultural interchange; and as I said earlier, presumably there have also been positive results of Western cultures impacting the East). Once again, the key words are interchange and permeability.
Consider that most everywhere I’ve traveled in Asia (even very rural, nearly untouched places), I’ve found American pop music (seriously, a grocery store in the Philippines was blasting Eminem). I’ve also found kids/people wearing American sports jerseys or hats. I’ve found working class people who say “Obama” and smile. I’ve found American fast food restaurants and advertisements for American products. Everywhere. One can imagine how American norms (like labeling and judging other people, being extremely competitive, etc.) are, to some extent, codified into American pop-cultural products and shipped all over the world to be internalized by the youth of other countries.
Consider also that every taxi driver in the Philippines (where 93% of people are Catholic/Christian) seems to have a crucifix hanging from their rearview mirror, and that multiple elderly Korean men have tried to talk to me about Jesus (one of them went on to suggest that a “Korean virgin” would be “very good for [me]”). As has been mentioned previously, Judeo-Christian religions were the primary ideologies—“It’s God’s will!”—used by European imperialists to justify the atrocities they committed. These religions were propagated heavily throughout much of Asia during the colonialist period under the guise of “enlightenment” and spreading the “good word,” so many Asian people have inherited those really fun, helpful sets of beliefs that tell them they’re inherently sinful scoundrels who need to work their asses off to please God but are likely going to incinerate for eternity in Hades anyway.
The absurd demonization and dehumanization of recreational drug users (certainly recreational drugs are potentially quite destructive in the case of some substances but likewise utterly benign and even therapeutic in the case of the responsible use of cannabis or certain psychedelic drugs) throughout Asia—people literally get years of jail time for possession charges (victimless crimes) or the death penalty for trafficking in many Southeast Asian nations (e.g. Indonesia, Malaysia, etc.)—is also in many ways a result of the colonial period and the Judeo-Christian intolerance of recreational drugs in the West (though the British were certainly distraught in the 19th century when the Chinese told them to stop selling them opium). Many of the policies surrounding drugs were instituted during the colonial period, and the distinctly anti-drug attitude that permeates much of Asia was further reinforced by the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs in 1961, an international treaty that undoubtedly reflected the United States’ and larger Western world’s ‘War on Drugs’ agenda at the time. Research and rehabilitation? Nah, just lock ‘em all in cages.
It should now be fairly easy to understand how/why many of the deeply embedded American sociocultural problems that I addressed in my essay on being a “young American” are, in the 21st century, prevalent in Asia (and the rest of the world). The mechanisms of the societies in Asian countries are terribly complex, so we should be careful not to presume that we’re dealing with identical situations, or that universal solutions to these issues exist. I merely wish to point out that much of what I discussed in my last essay can be observed in Asia too (and presumably most of the world)—the coldness, the artificiality, the sense of futility, the hurtful competitiveness, the quiet desperation, the seemingly purposeless labor, the alienation, the judgment, the taboos, the feelings of shame and/or guilt and/or inadequacy—and that there are obvious, well-documented historical reasons why this is the case.
Though there is certainly a fair share of conviviality and positive energy (the human race always seems to find those somewhere) as well, these unfortunate conditions seem to be almost inherent in the model of mass society that arose in the West and was eventually exported most everywhere else. The specific iterations of the issues might differ, but the very conditions that give rise to them would not exist if it weren’t for the global propagation of Western modes of life and understanding. Even the rare people in the world who have largely evaded these models (certain indigenous peoples) are nonetheless affected and endangered due to the global-cataclysmic potential of hypothetical nuclear war and/or continued environmental decimation. A quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. seems germane, so I’ll just leave this here:
“What I’m saying to you this morning is communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social. And the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism, but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both. Now, when I say questioning the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated.”
In Sum
So there you have it—a totally-incomplete-but-hopefully-illuminating story of how the sociocultural machinery of America (or, originally, Europe) was reproduced across the world in the past few hundred years (in accordance with a larger trend toward cultural interchange) and wrought/wreaks physical and psychological havoc on Americans and the people of most other countries. Let me stress yet again that this essay is scattered and insufficient, as I promised it would be. The topic is simply too huge, but hopefully this piece has accomplished its aim of broadly sketching the origins of our global situation and can be a launching-off point for further study.
Furthermore, this essay has sort of consisted of me defecating all over Western (and, subsequently, global) culture, but I want to make it clear that every culture has committed demonic, hideous acts, and that every culture has ostensibly positive and negative attributes. We cannot change the past, and I don’t think we should hold grudges against individuals living today for what their ancestors did decades or centuries ago. We must, however, remember the bloody history that resulted in the modern world and strive to not repeat the mistakes of our forefathers. Unfortunately, I think Aldous Huxley said it best when he wrote:
“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.”
So one moral of this story is that we ought to be vigilant and aware of the global situation, lest we turn a blind eye to contemporary manifestations of the same greed, racism, and superstition that drove my ancestors to enslave and dehumanize most of the world. We ought to feel a sense of responsibility to atone for the failures of our predecessors by being generous, conscientious, kind humanitarians. Another moral of this story is that a healthy amount of cynicism about human nature is probably an indispensable defense mechanism in this world—because people suck, and they will disappoint you, I’m sorry.
A final moral of this story might be that the circumstances of any society or of the entire world are never and can never be ideal. Many/most people in the contemporary world eventually come to see problems with the culture, society, and/or belief system into which they were indoctrinated. We can and must (unless self-destruction sounds cool) try to change our sociocultural structures to make them more human-friendly, compassionate, sustainable, and liberating for the people and animals of the world. But they will never be perfect.
So in the final analysis, each person alive today is faced with an ultimatum: give up on life (commit suicide or fall into self-destruction), or find a way, via whatever possible means, to cope with one’s cultural baggage and be content in spite of the ways in which one was abandoned, marginalized, and/or screwed. It seems that most all of us have, in some way, been done a disservice by the structures of this outrageous world into which we’ve been born. We can curse those structures and see them as reasons to hate ourselves and everything else, or we can do our best to see through the set of preconceived values and assumptions into which we were indoctrinated to perceive something (arguably) magnificent lurking beneath it all—the opportunity to experience and love and form communities and express ourselves and discover our own way of thinking and being in this sprawling, marvelous cosmos.
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P.S. If you missed part one of this essay, I encourage you to read it here for more context.