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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (90879)	4/7/2003 11:30:54 AM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

What we are debating about here is not whether culture is a static thing or not. Nor is it about cultural diffusion. Both are things I agree with. There are three points that I am making. The first is that most (all?) of the cultural diffusions you talked about here (coffee, kufta, etc) happened in the form of personal contact and in a way that allowed you to incorporate them into your identity. I don't see many TV shows in which the characters wear turbans and eat ta'jin. Derek talked about them feeling culture shock, and that is in some ways what I am talking about. You are not suppose to feel a massive culture shock in your own country. The second thing you don't seem to want to see is that by the virtue of being more advanced, being richer, stronger, more technologically advanced, etc, this competition between us exporting mass culture to them and they trying to counter it is not a fair one. It is unfair in the sense that a fist fight between a 200lb boxer and a 90lb woman is unfair even if the boxing rules are enforced fairly. And the third thing you are not seeing is that both MacWorld and Jihad are polarizing forces. Even though many would want solutions somewhere in the middle, that choice is not easily available. Therefore for many their support of one is more about the negation of the other. Are you disagreeing with these 3 points? ST