WordUp by Chad Gramling

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It’s been a while since I have posted an IEAD post, but I have been lacking in vision I guess.

Anywho, to continue with my last post, which was on Karim Rashid’s Design Your Self book, there is another passage that I very much agree. It has to do with the globalization of our cultures.

I love globalization. It is not frightening but rather inspiring and interesting. We will eventually have one world, one beautiful place without prejudice, borders, or wars. All ideas, styles, and forms will merge and then fragment into diversities based not on cultural traditions and myopia, but on the new autonomy of individual diversities and our creative minds.

While Rashid and I probably have different concepts in mind with regard to how all this will come about and be, I do think we are on the same page. Technology has taken the concept of “pen pals” to a new level. Now, you could say that we have “blog pals” or “net pals” – but the fact really is that there are MySpace and FaceBook friends. There is a LinkedIn Network and social platforms that unite various people from all walks of life.

It’s great. People truly get to connect with other people. And businesses are trying to find ways to tap into those social networks. That being the case, if your business starts down that path, you can’t help but become a global entity.

So yes, we are heading toward globalization in a commercial sense. But what about the humanistic sense?

Rashid makes it sound like we will all converge to have unified ideas and lifestyles and, in the process, lose our traditions and ways of life. This is where we differ in our concepts.

I tend to think along the same lines of Toby Mac. In a recent CCM issue, he is featured in a piece that largely presents his conceptual view of a humanistic globalization. It’s a different path toward form of harmony that is often idealized by many.

Whereas most people will suggest we “forget about our difference and not talk about them” Toby Mac suggests it is only through discussion of them that we will be able to understand and accept them.

This is not about preaching tolerance; rather, it is about inspiring a brotherhood (brotherhood being used in a universal sense):

“In our band, we would sit around on the bus and just talk about coming from different socio-economic levels, different parents, different races, different cultures, different parts of the nation; and we just found it so interesting,” Toby says. “And we thought, “The world needs to be more like this. Then they would find out that, although we’re different, our differences are interesting; and if we just communicate about them, the myths go away. You begin to see who that person really is, and not be so intimidated or judgmental.”

Yes, globalization is coming and it will be here one day. In a sense, it is here now. But it is not going to mean there will be one country with one government, one set of ideals and one set of traditions. The human race is evolving in its knowledge, skills and culture. Hopefully, our ability to accept and understand one another as equals continues to evolve at a pace that will continue to a point where prejudice and segregation is one of the extinct by-products of an uneducated past.

I hope I live to see that day.

[tags]Globalization, Toby Mac, Karim Rashid, equality, humanity, E.R.A.C.E[/tags]