Globalising culture

By Mohamed Sid-Ahmed

An important effect of the information revolution has been its contribution to a sense of planetary affiliation. The realisation that we all share the same habitat has, by developing the notion of globalisation, helped crystallise the concept of 'liberation from size'. Recent discoveries in the fields of science and technology have made it possible to explore worlds lying beyond the realm of our own, whether because they are infinitely small (the world of the atom, even of the quark) or infinitely large (the world of the galaxies). These new developments have shaken the long-held belief that the human species is at the centre of the universe and driven home the point that while man's ability to reason does place him apart from other living creatures, it does not qualify him to see himself as the exclusive frame of reference.

Changing our perceptions of both space and time, globalisation has made not only for a "shrinking" planet but also for the acceleration of history. Moreover, the expansion of the notion of affiliation to encompass the planet as a whole rather than merely a given geographical location or, more generally, a given nation, has been accompanied by a still more fundamental mutation. When scientists like the Egyptian-born Ahmed Zuweil can measure time to the closest one trillionth of a second, one finds oneself placed in a wider context extending beyond the planet to the Cosmos at large, with wholly different space and time parameters.

These new frames of reference come up against such inner biological rhythms as the cadence of the human heartbeat, the rate at which the mind registers signals transmitted through the senses, the speed at which the nervous system transmits messages to the brain, etc., a dissonance that is bound to disturb man's psychological equilibrium. As far as the space dimension is concerned, changing perceptions also come up against issues of identity and patrimony. With globalisation, the other can seem to be so close as to create a feeling that he is encroaching on one's space, as it were. Moreover, logic itself has been affected following the discovery of quantum mechanics, which revealed that the rules of logic as applied to our world are not those that apply to the micro-world. Such disturbances to man's psychological equilibrium, to the rules of logic itself, are bound to change the meaning and undermine the stability of culture as we have known it since the dawn of civilisation.

Today we are witnessing the emergence of a new duality that is not defined in terms of an East-West or a North-South divide, or even in terms of the discrepancy between forward-looking people who consider themselves capable of coping with the challenges of the future, and backward-looking people for whom the basic frame of reference lies in the past. The new duality holds between people who believe they can cope with the globalisation process and those who, unable to meet the challenge, are frustrated, alienated and convinced they are up against a critical threshold that they will never be able to cross. The former group is made up of a privileged few, who are becoming fewer by the day, while an overwhelming -- and growing -- majority of humankind is being pushed below the critical threshold. In the final analysis, it seems the globalisation process is a mechanism which, by marginalising most of humankind, will ultimately produce the very opposite of its declared aims.

With science and technology expanding the horizons of nature beyond the range of the "natural" environment that we can perceive through our senses, culture is faced with a challenge it has never come up against before. The adjective "natural" has hitherto been used only to describe things with which we are familiar, if not directly, at least in terms of collective experience. The new thing is that it can now be used in connection with phenomena only accessible through mathematical formulae, not through our senses. Not surprisingly, this paradox is provoking what can best be described as culture shocks throughout the world, with implications in the fields of art, literature, philosophy, ethics, etc. Nor is it only the marginalised who have been affected by this paradox, but also the privileged few who have made the breakthrough and are paying the price in terms of nervous tension, stress and mental disorders.

The United States, the most developed country on earth, is seen as the driving force behind the globalisation process, and hence as more responsible than any other country for the problems the process is provoking. From this vantage point, it is identified by some with modern day imperialism. However, I am against demonising any given society a priori, or even at seeing it as an indivisible whole. True, the United States, which is better equipped than any other to implement the globalisation project, is in a position to highlight the best and worst features of the project. But it is significant to note in this respect that throughout the period globalisation was becoming the most salient feature on the world scene, the US witnessed the rise to power of conservative forces, notably the eight years of Ronald Reagan's presidency. This was probably no accident but a reaction to a bewildering new phenomenon. For many Americans, conservative policies may have appeared to be less a force in opposition to progressive policies than a bulwark against the growing threat of incomprehensible chaos extending to the world as a whole, a means by which sanity could be preserved.

As a phenomenon, globalisation is irreversible. But the current mechanisms by which it is being implemented are not the only form the phenomenon can take. So far, culture has been a victim of the globalisation process. There is no fatality that compels us to believe that it need always be so. When culture will reflect man's ability to master the changes underway, instead of betraying his utter failure to cope with the very different world he finds himself inhabiting on the eve of a new millennium, then and only then will there be grounds for optimism.