Showing posts with label cultural enrichment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cultural enrichment. Show all posts

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Let’s Not Confuse Globalization With Cultural Homogeneity

Cultural Enrichment – When one culture learns something new from another culture, without losing its own characteristics.

Cultural Dilution – When one culture picks up new characteristics and practices from another culture, and loses its own characteristics in the process.

While Globalization has given us the opportunity to experience the first one, it has also made us vulnerable to the latter.

Now it is our responsibility to have a balanced approach towards Globalization, wherein we can successfully pick up the gems of other cultures that we come across, without losing the assets of our own culture.

On one hand we must not indulge in any flawed idea of cultural purity, therein tying to make futile attempts to “save” our culture from any sort of foreign influence. Rather we should have a proactive approach towards learning new things from other cultures.

However, on the other hand we must be able to retain our own cultural specialties, which help us have our own national identity in this multicultural world.

Let’s remember that Globalization stands for a harmonious and thriving co-existence of various cultures, and not a dull Cultural Homogeneity.