Читать книгу Global Issues - Kristen A. Hite - Страница 23

There are about 15,000 nations on our planet and about 200 nation‐states. The nation‐states are the political entities, what are commonly referred to as countries. They are often made up of several or many individual nations, or different cultures. The nation is a group of people that share a common history, a common ancestry, and usually a common language and a common religion. They often have common traditions, common ways of doing certain things and of interacting with each other and toward outsiders. Because of these similar features that make them different from other peoples, each nation’s people see the world and their place in it differently than others, approach problems differently, and have arrived at different solutions to situations humans face. The unique language of the culture is used to pass the common history and traditions down to the young. The United Nations now estimates that of the approximately 7,000 languages in the world, by the end of this century about 90 percent of them will be endangered.²³ The term “endangered language” means that the group that speaks the language – which is often unwritten – is becoming so small that there is a real possibility the group will die out or become absorbed by the larger dominant culture around it and will disappear forever.

For most of the twentieth century, “development” was associated with certain economic policies and associated consumption culture, particularly in the United States. The United States has been one of the largest producer of goods and services and its culture is closely associated with material wealth. Because of the worldwide popularity of US movies, music, fast food, and clothes, and of the English language, it is common to read that the American culture is replacing local cultures in many countries. But some recent studies indicate that only some rather superficial aspects of the American culture are being adopted, such as Coca‐Cola and Big Macs, while more important values are not.

Social integration is proceeding at such a rapid pace that one can say that there is the beginning of a world culture. Much of this culture is exported from the United States, but it is also truly international as foods, music, dances, and fashions come from various countries. Many European cultures place a higher value on leisure and government social services than did the dominant twentieth‐century culture in the United States, which emphasized earning higher income so people could acquire more material objects. The degree to which people seem to be happy to trade income for more leisure to enjoy life varies across the globe, and, maybe not surprisingly, those who do may have a higher “satisfaction with their lives” than those who prioritize primarily material gain.²⁴

What will be lost if a culture dies out? Cultures represent the amazing variety of human life on Earth that reflect the different ways members of one species – the human species – have decided to live. A culture represents the accumulated knowledge of one group, knowledge that is available to others to pick and choose from, so they can improve their own lives (some would call this “development”). In addition, the multitude of cultures makes life on Earth extremely rich and varied. The discovery of that variety often leaves an observer with a sense of awe and with a realization that the loss of any culture leaves life less wonderful.