Thomas Friedman's 'World is Flat' was a revelation for me. It helped me truly apprecite globalization and its benefits on mankind. From then on I have always been looking forward to rapid globalization. So I was really irritated when I heard Baba Ramdev riling against globalization at 5.00 Am in the morning on Astha channel. Some people are just so archaic in their ideas and resistant to change.
But then everything else the Baba was saying made sense and all his arguments were based on sound logic. How could the Baba be so blind and prejudiced on this aspect alone? This thought kept running in the back of my mind. So I tried to put some thought to his reasoning. Ideally when examining the motives for someone's actions, the ideal starting point would be the driving purpose in the person's life. So what was Baba Ramdev's driving purpose? To revive ancient Indian traditions, especially in the field of medicine. How could globalization hamper this? Doesn't globalization provide more efficient means for dissemination of ideas, enabling pearls of wisdom from ancient India to reach greater number of people? So we seem to have reached a dead end here.
So I decided to pick a different thread and proceed. Why did the Indian traditions recede to the background in the first place? Even worse, why were the religion, culture and traditions of the Celts, Mayans and many other ancient civilizations totally decimated? We often hear of them having made so many valuable discoveries. Why they all were lost? A study of history would indicate they were not accidentally lost but systematically destroyed. Why did this happen? It is because the group of people who had established superiority in military technology used the superiority used their military victories to impose their ideas in all other sphere of life on the conquered people. So it happened that people in different regions independently developed solutions for problems in different spheres such as society, religion, medicine, culture etc.
Ideally the ideas in each sphere should have competed against the other ideas in the same sphere from other regions. The best idea should have triumphed and drawn in some of the best aspects of the other ideas. Then the different groups would have started from there and again developed parallel ideas. This process carried out iteratively would have lead to the most efficient system for development of ideas. But this is not what happened. Instead the battle of superiority of ideas was fought in a single sphere – the military battle field. So it came about that the ideas of the most brutal people who focused more on military became the standard for the world on all spheres.
Coming to the present times, have we wondered why in ancient times so many parallel technologies, art forms, music forms etc. developed in various parts of the world. But now there seems to be just a single stream of ideas centered on the American region. One cannot but avoid the conclusion that globalization is the reason for that. With the world so integrated, new ideas do not get the time and space to develop to their full potential. Instead they are exposed and evaluated at the nascent stage. So only a single idea gets to develop fully. All other get nipped in the bud. There is also another angle. The people in power are in power due to the current ideas. They would not want their power base to be eroded by emergence of new ideas. So they exercise their power to kill all new ideas. Earlier also the situation was the same. But the reach of these powerful persons were localized and new ideas could always spring up in areas out of their reach. But globalization has brought the entire world within their reach. There is no place one can be safe from the Microsofts, IBMs and Coca Colas of the world. We keep hearing how major pharmaceutical companies are strangling research by leveraging their patents. All major cities of the world are slowly beginning to resemble each other. We find McDonalds and Pizza Huts all over the world. Travel seems to be losing its novelty.
I can keep ranting on. But I guess I have conveyed the general drift of my arguments and I don’t see any more value to be added. So I will conclude with the refrain of a song from German rock band ‘Rammstein’
We're all living in America,
America is wunderbar.
We're all living in America,
Amerika, Amerika.
We're all living in America,
Coca-Cola, Wonderbra,
We're all living in America,
Amerika, Amerika.
This is not a love song,
this is not a love song.
I don't sing my mother tongue,
No, this is not a love song.
We're all living in America,
Amerika is wunderbar.
We're all living in America,
Amerika, Amerika.
We're all living in America,
Coca-Cola, sometimes WAR,
We're all living in America,
