Cultural Preservation In Culture

You wake up in the morning, brew a cup of Colombian coffee, put on your Swiss watch, and get in you Japanese car, and go to work with people from around the world. This is the reality we live in, a globalized world where all cultures and nations are involved with one another. Globalization is a process that brings the whole world together in a culturally and socioeconomically way. Some people think this process has been affecting humans since the start of industrialization, but in truth globalization has affected us since humans started trading five thousand years ago. Trading was an impulse that brought cross-cultural contact across the different civilizations. A few centuries later, with the advances in sailing then came the spice trade era.

Critics say that it is affecting and taking away traditions long established in different cultures. But in reality is not because we are living in a more globalized world, it is because even though traditions are important humans have a tendency to evolve, to keep looking forward and learn new thing and adapt them in their own way. Kwame Appiah says in his essay “The case for contamination” that critics of this issue look at this as a whole, as nation, tribes or people are leaving behind traditions they used to have. But we should analyze this from the point of individuals. Every person is entitled to choose and do what they want, so if societies and traditions are changing, it is due to the fact that people are choosing to do so, not because globalization is forcing them or their nation to change. Cultural preservationist also say that people have no choice, for example in Africa they get Western clothes that are cheaper than the traditional silk clothes they used to wear, so of course if it is cheaper they are going to choose to wear them instead of following the tradition. But Appiah argues that even the rich people who have the money to afford traditional African clothes choose not to wear them. In my opinion, it is true that traditions are important to preserve, but human beings are evolving coming up with new traditions, so there is no problem in changing the way of living because is it our nature.

As everything in the world it has its consequences and benefits, but I think the benefits surpass the consequences. Thanks to it people from remote places now are able to have electricity and water when they used to struggle to get food to survive. Globalization is about evolving and adapting our society to the future, it has been driving us for centuries, and some people fail to realized that it is the force that has pushed humanity to the point we are today. The fact that every nation are working together, and sharing their cultures is making the world smaller everyday. As Appiah states in his essay, globalization may cause a homogenous society, but it is also a threat to homogeneity because it mixes the different nations of the world. The most important thing of globalization is to try to improve this process, in order to make the least consequential so everyone can benefit from