Scattered thoughts on Globalization

The demerits of Globalization are evident enough culturally, if not economically; in Roger Scruton's apt phrase, all too often it seems that the world is "reduced to an ubiquitous nowhere."

In On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life and Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche considered what spoke for and against the burgeoning "historical sense" of his day, a knowledge (and habit of mind) whose advent was surely symptomatic of a nascent globalization. One paradox, for Nietzsche, is that nobility becomes merely a curiousity, a specimen, an object of inquiry - through the study of past, nobility-exemplifying cultures. Partly owing to the scattershot quality of modern intellectual and cultural life, nobility ceases to be a live option as an ethos that can suffuse society. Hence it can only be realized for he who in some sense(s) withdraws from the hurly-burly of the nation-state; "solitude" becomes a cardinal virtue. Zarathustra left his home and the lake of his home ...

An interesting concomitant of current attitudes towards globalization is the extent to which certain members of the (Western) Intelligentsia take it upon themselves to protect other cultures from the depredations of globalization. The weapon some bring to the fight is a strangely blunted one: cultural relativism. Since our culture, so the argument goes, is no better intrinsically than any other, we have "no right" to "impose" our norms, customs, values, etc. on any other. But that argument collapses, either as itself asserting a trans-cultural right - an entitlement not to be infused with the alien - or entailing that every culture can actually do whatever it wants, because no trans-cultural standards exist to measure inter-cultural intercourse anyhow.

Another way to look at it (in a dual sense) is that globalization presents a dizzying boon for the syncretist - he who wants the richness of life and Truth, and recognizes that no culture - whatever overall estimation it merits in a global order of rank - has a monopoly on either. Hence cultures could be seen to complement and correct one another in various particulars, each serving up their own best. (In a Hegelian schema, truth is a polyhedron, and the one- or multi-sidedness of various cultures can function as counterparts vis a vis the whole).

A simple way I'm struck by this possibility is how, for example, the Western portrait of the sage can be "consummated" - helped to actuality - by the Eastern "internal arts" of following and disciplining the breath (which in a way recalls the scholar's controversy as to whether and the extent to which Plotinus was influenced by Indian Philosophy - a possibly prototypical cross-pollination). On a much more visceral level, think of how our dinner tables are so much the richer thanks to many arrivals and adaptations from foreign shores. This is a surprisingly recent development.

But perhaps the syncretistic ideal will only "work" for a few anyway, as they fashion, in relative solitude, a new kind of psychic cosmopolitanism; the overall tendency for the rest might be for the current levelling towards homogeneity to carry on. Nietzsche vindicated?