See also the preview
for this review (found toward the end of the post).
I wrote the notes for this review a while ago, and don't remember
the book very well, which would be better if I were trying to write a
proper review. Here are the notes.
--
[Notes:]
p. 5
--Growing up in an out-of-the-way locale limits an individual's access
to the world's treasures and opportunities less than ever before. This
change represents one of the most significant increases in freedom in
human history.--
In my preview for Creative Destruction, I mentioned the phenomenon
of people finding (in Cowen's terms) "treasures" for the first time,
having had a real lack for them. So, there are two stases: the purely
local stasis, where you only have local culture, and the global stasis,
when you "only have everything", a limitation on your appreciation of
things given that all of them are so easy to find and so automatically
familiar. In between is the era when local stases break open by
contacting each other.
Maybe in a global stasis, young people always start in a relatively
isolated place, and then as they grow up eventually reach the point
where they have been exposed to the basics of all world culture, and
nothing can really refresh or surprise them. This implies that young
people start off as perhaps very similar newborns, and then as they
grow up, differentiate into their uniqueness by exploring, but further
exploration mellows them out and indoctrinates them by way of sarkar
and habitus into homogenized adults, who all have the same enormous
"desk of objects" and the same way of selecting them for consideration.
Traditional cultures maybe all resemble each other in certain ways,
because the basic "desk" of hunter-gatherer lifestyles and human
biology is fairly similar wherever you go, but they are not identical.
Maybe newborns are very similar to each other superficially, but by
age two or three children display distinct personalities, at least
prototypically. But all pre-school kids who live in the same society
and class tend to have similar "desks". In the era of cross-fertilization
of children (and cultures), which is already starting in pre-school (and
traditional cultures), and which continues for many years (or generations),
children (cultures) adopt ideas from each other and grow in maturity,
until -- with children, perhaps they start becoming less unique as they
develop, once they are fully out of adolescence, perhaps, as they become
more well-rounded -- but with cultures, we could only guess that that
will happen. Maybe it has already begun happening with cultures?
I remember reading in a book on the history of Hinduism (Hinduism
Through the Ages by D. S. Sarma) about how Western ideas affected
the practice of Hinduism, I guess how Indians looked up to Westerners.
For instance, the downregulation of caste, and the end of burning widows
with their husbands. Generally, I know that in the West, notably in
the 1960s, "Eastern thinking" has been brought in to make the West
more balanced. Arguably, a well-rounded human must be both Western and
Eastern. An archetype of a well-rounded human can be found in Jesus,
who seems (to me) to be both Eastern and Western. Presumably, we will
inevitably become well-rounded, because that's the "gravity" or "destiny"
of personal development. Which well-rounded person will we be? Will
we be Jesus? Or will we be someone else? Will we have a choice at
that point? Or will "well-rounding" always converge on "only
everything"?
If I want to criticize Jesus, or at least, the image of him, if not the
living person, I would say that the Jesus-like spirit leads to a kind
of end of thinking and of identity. Christianity is (or at least can be)
about ending the world, and ending being a human through a kind of blissed
out maturity (like casting crowns over and over). I fear that Christianity
is not about reality, or at least that it's easy for me to recall the
anti-real aspects of Christianity, and I don't feel like the Christian
culture around me makes me recall the pro-real aspects.
Immaturity intrudes on people such that they really want to be mature.
So it's good to have a picture of maturity to be a guide in the process
of becoming more mature. But maturity has its downsides. The
Jesus-focusedness of Christianity I think is a dangerous thing if mishandled.
I suspect that global culture will tend toward something similar to
Jesus-focusedness on its own. And I am concerned that in either case,
we are optimizing ourselves to fit a false ending. Like running a race
that has five laps instead of four, but everyone cheers and comes to
help you off the track after four laps -- the real finishers of that race
have to ignore social reality.
Now, as a Christian, I am partly encouraged by how in the long run (if
I am correct) the gravity of being a human bends individuals and cultures
toward being like Jesus and/or being compatible with Jesus. I think that
a very Jesus-oriented vision of human personality is an improvement for
most people over where they start. But we forget sometimes that Jesus
wasn't the point of his own religion, rather the Father was. And so
as we become more like Jesus, if we are getting "too good" at being like
Jesus or being compatible with him or his image, we should reset our
eyes on the horizon that is coming into view as we, like Jesus, relate
primarily to the Father. I don't think this is unorthodox at all,
but it isn't maximally "Christian" if Christianity has to be all about
Jesus, perhaps by its very name.
The Father's/Yahweh's relationship with the people of Israel feels
younger to me, about a young world with a long way to go. We all
have a long way to go, at least as individuals. But the overly
Jesus-like spirit makes us feel like life is over and that we are
walking step by step toward heaven. But in reality, we still have
to go through the long process of really learning to repent.
The world can feel very culturally "late" (maybe it is getting too
well-rounded), and on many dimensions we may be figuring ourselves
out culturally (thus, personally and morally), but we don't realize
that we have a long way to go toward really being in tune with God.
We shouldn't expect to go to heaven when we die, but rather to be
resurrected to "1,000" years of completely overcoming each sinful
habit we have, and growing in love for God until we really, literally
love God with all of our beings. Maybe we are like seniors in high
school, fading out into June. But most of life is after high school.
--
Societal change comes from people joining movements -- largely true.
People who join movements tend to be people who are in some way
unbalanced, people seeking identities from outside themselves, or
in other ways not self-sufficient psychologically. They hunger
and move, and join.
So maybe if people are trained by their cultures to be more well-rounded
at a younger age, the pool of people who will join movements is
reduced. If a civilization still needs movements, maybe it shoots
itself in the foot if it has a rich culture that everyone can access.
--
p. 8
Cowen talks about how Western materials like knives, and Western ideas
(like carving soapstone, taught to the Inuit by a Westerner), invigorate
indigenous art.
However, while this seems like something that could obtain for a while,
what happens when the indigenous people stop being "indigenous people
who happen to use Western elements in making their indigenous art" to
"basically not indigenous people, who can't make indigenous art anymore",
people whose "desks" have changed so radically that they no longer
can think in traditional patterns or have the natural appetite or longing
to produce those patterns? Could it be that in the long run, exposure
to Western ideas (or even materials) erodes that way of thinking or
those patterns? Probably in some cases it does, and in others, it doesn't.
Certainly prosperity and economic development ("prosperity" and "economic
development" as defined by the West, or perhaps really "the gravity of
human appetites") seems to threaten indigenous cultures, by giving them
a new, world-homogenized "desk" from which to naturally speak as artists.
The art itself might not suffer, since artists can always be into folk
patterns as professionals, or as amateurs but still as artists, rather
than as people who deeply belong to the folk culture, perhaps who almost
can't imagine not being part of it. [It's unclear to me what I meant by
"perhaps who almost can't imagine not being part of it".] If the creative
appetites of modern artists continue to value folk art, it will continue,
but if they don't happen to, the old art may die out. If the traditional
cultures persist, then the old art won't die out (probably; or by
definition of "traditional cultures persist").
--
p. 9
--In all of these examples, the notable creators are active, searching
artists, drawing on many sources to produce the sought-after aesthetic
effect. These points do not denigrate non-Western artists or imply
that they "owe it all to the West." It is the contrary emphasis on
monoculture that insults, by portraying non-Western artists as unchanging
and static craftworkers, unable to transcend their initial styles for
synthetic improvements.--
I guess the monocultural emphasis might insult non-Western artists by
portraying them as unchanging and static craftworkers if we think of
art in terms that I would guess are Western or modern (that good
artists are like little creator-gods who are judged on their ability
to make new things). But why should we think that those Western or
modern values about art are any more valid than to say that an artist
is good if, through perhaps a great deal of care and intention, they
bring about in the world that which was handed down to them?
I guess that question is one that implies that there is a radically
different way of viewing the world than Cowen's, and I know Cowen
limits his book to being about specific things, which may exclude
considering that more traditional, family-based, perhaps political
view of the world, by defining the project of his book to simply
answer questions within his own worldview, which is more modern,
individualist, and economic.
P. 5 talks about how Cowen is
limiting his book's project, but I can't figure out if that supports
what I said in this paragraph about him possibly defining away
concerns about his fundamental worldview by limiting his book's
project. It may be the case that his (p. 5 words) "artistic
creativity" can be construed broadly enough to include a question
of what creativity really is, deep enough to question the modern
worldview. On the other hand, he is clear that wants to ask
about freedoms available "in the marketplace", and the word
"marketplace" may be defined by him to be inherently modern /
economic. In any case, despite how Cowen may or may not be
limiting himself, readers of his book are not limited in that
way, and can consider deeper questions.
--
Finished Chapter 1.
--
Finished Chapter 2.
--
In Ch. 3, Cowen talks about "ethos", the look and feel of art, which
develops in tandem with the world view of a society. Art's ethos
is threatened by the artist knowing too much, perhaps by losing their
"delusion" (p. 54) to being special or important, or their particular
worldview, which must be one of many worldviews, none of which is
exclusively true. What kind of people can believe in their worldview
strongly enough to produce truly excellent art, when they are surrounded
by many other worldviews? Isn't it probably false to believe in anything
deeply?
This may mean that much art can only be produced in isolation, even
from a cosmopolitan market that would like to be able to look at all
art. From an MSLN point of view, though, all such art can be seen by
one "cosmopolitan", at least, God. God values all good things, including
the ethos and art of all traditions, insofar as they are not sinful.
Cowen notes (p. 53)
--Many Third World and indigenous artisans view their crafts as imbued
with great religious and mythic significance, and as having central
importance for the unfolding of history. In reality, they may be
"just another craftsperson" in the eyes of the outside world, but their
creativity will be greater if this knowledge is not rubbed in their
faces.--
Maybe the outside world puts them in a box, refusing to consider that
they (among so many other worldviews) might be correct? If there is
to be a unified worldview for all people (helping prevent international
competition and conflict), then how can it minimize the damage done
to these artisans (and by extension their home cultures who share their
ethos)?
I think a simantist way to deal with this is to say "everything is a
word which stands between and connects a person to God". Let's suppose
that all the religions are at least partially wrong. Perhaps Calvinism
is wrong, but is uniquely beautiful in some way. (I'll pick one concrete
example that I've used before.) Calvinist devotion becomes a prayer
between the Calvinist and God, a poem which both share. God, even
supposing he is not the God of Calvinism, finds a kind of (perhaps
austere) beauty in that vision of him, and knows that that beauty
speaks to the hearts and minds of Calvinists, motivating them to
love him. Even if ex-Calvinists on some level know that God is not
literally the God of Calvinism, they can retain that old image, as
something more than mere art but something less than the literal truth.
And we could extend this idea to all the religions and quasi-religions,
all with their visions of God, beauty, truth, and the good.
(Perhaps people of a certain background would talk about their old
gods as parts of the imaginal world, in which they are real.)
So, the artisan is doing something important by preserving a culture
that has given way, in the literal realm, to a universal culture. This
does change the quality of the importance (by which I mean, not how good
the importance is, but more like, what specific kind), for better or worse.
(Perhaps you can't believe that your artwork prevents the universe from
collapsing or brings the rain.) But the magnitude of the importance might
remain, as your art becomes a way to pray to God. A God, who loves
everything that is good, including much of what is in every culture that
has been loved by people.
--
Finished Chapter 3.
--
p. 87 - 88
--In economic terms, the countries of Western Europe are more likely to
resemble each other than are the American states. Most of the American
states have no steel industry, no automobile industry, and no wheat
industry; instead they buy the products of these industries from other
states or countries. But typically a nation of western Europe has its
own steel, automobile, dairy, and agricultural sectors, largely because
of subsidies and protectionism. Free trade within the United States
allows states and regions to specialize to a high degree and causes
their economic profiles to diverge; in a freer economic environment,
the economies of western Europe would take the same path.--
I wonder if this has anything to do with political polarization.
Perhaps certain economic roles are taken by people of certain political
views. Or, performing certain economic roles predisposes people to
taking certain political views. In America, perhaps we can segregate our
country on economic and thus political lines more, with greater geographic
and thus social separation, more because we have free trade within it,
and this causes us to be more polarized. If we could interact in person
and on a local level, it would do more to reduce polarization than if
we interact online or quasi-interact by consuming news that talks about
the same events. But geographic specialization keeps us from doing that.
(A thought / theory.)
[We could always have "pen pals" or the equivalent with people in
non-"Our Tribe" parts of the US. Say you are a blue state person and
you send a conservative an email saying, "Hey, would you like to be
my one 'red state' friend?" (or that's the spirit of it and soon enough
both of you realize that). There might be suspicions of "carpetbagging"
in the conservative's mind. It might feel weird to you as a blue-stater,
as something not following from your real life and real interests. But
the virtue of the local world is that it is a limited thing. You are
limited in the local world. You can't move in an out of it as easily as
in the virtual world, and there are fewer people to pick from, so you
might associate with people less like you. You might have some reason
to be "forced" into interaction with the conservative, so that you're
not saying to yourself or them "I am a blue stater who is going out of
my way to befriend a red stater for political reasons" (even if those
political reasons are "to reduce polarization"). I think this might
obtain in a small enough town, although in cities we have ways of
effectively segregating ourselves -- whole suburbs or tracts of the
main city that we never frequent, where the "other tribe" lives.]
If AGI causes a lot of economic growth, could it free people to adopt
new ways of life, and thus new political views? Perhaps to have a way
of life that is chosen for political reasons, rather than first as
a way to make a living. In parallel to choosing a lifestyle for
religious reasons -- and maybe politics and religion would begin to
merge, because they would both be about values or ideals and less
about "secular" concerns that really are parameterized by the
difficulties in making a living (the mechanics of economic production,
for instance, or the struggle to keep your body and mind functioning
such that you can do a job). How can we really be the kind of
people who support depolarization (or any other Cause X)? Maybe people
would move into different parts of the country to try to depolarize it.
[Even in a world with advanced VR, the very limitedness of physical
locality could make it more effective for certain tasks than VR. The
aforementioned benefit of having less choice and thus more forced
interaction with "other" people is one. Another being that identity
is about being something, and the harder it is to not be that thing
anymore, the stronger the identity can be. To choose to live in the
same physical environment is a more costly signal than to frequent
the same VR space. (You could say "well, isn't body modification
even costlier than moving to the same place?" I suppose there's
precedent with pre-modern tribes tattooing their members or the
like. How do you know that someone has really modified their body
unless you're in the same locality as them? Maybe there could be
some kind of "certificate of authenticity"? I'm not sure I would
want my identity signaled by any irrevocable body modification,
but some people would want to do that, I guess.)]
[On the other hand, maybe identity is also signaled strongly not
just by how you're forced to choose it, but by how much you choose
it, out of freedom, despite your options. Still, to decide to limit
yourself (by moving to the "goth hub" or "libertarian rural state" or
"Catholic neighborhood" or whatever, thus keeping yourself out of all
other neighborhoods to a large extent) is you choosing something
strongly. The choice, in this view, is stronger the more you know
about other options. And, perhaps is stronger the more you have the
opportunity to leave -- "I keep choosing you even though I could leave
if I wanted to." I guess this means that the possibility of divorce
makes marriage more meaningful, even though marriage is about making
it hard to leave someone.]
--
Finished Chapter 4.
--
Cowen talks about "least common denominators" in culture (pp. 107 - 108).
The phenomenon of making markets bigger enables people to try to capture
really big audiences by being really bland or mainstream. But simultaneously,
the number of viable audiences, sufficient to overcome fixed costs, also
goes up.
My thought: So it's possible to have a more intensified mainstream and a
more intensified fringe at the same time, which means that you can have
greater division between the part of the culture that is into the mainstream
and that which is not.
I feel like there is a shear between the "San Diego" world (in the sense of,
the people I know locally) and the "Internet" world. I live in both, but
my habitus-brain for each is significantly different. In "San Diego",
life will go on, business-as-usual. But on the "Internet" I see AGI
coming. Perhaps this mainstream-fringe shear produces some of the difficulty
in getting people to notice things before it is too late. Could it be
that if there was some way to resist that shear (not necessarily by being
against globalization), it would allow us to have a more politically
effective and better informed populace, greater national unity, and
mass culture that is better for people?
--
Somewhat of an aside:
One advantage of globalization is that it helps people have global
consciousness, which I think is a good in itself, and which helps
people to do the most good. Is it possible to have global consciousness
and maintain local culture? I am not really sure.
Despite the fact that ever since the Internet became available to me,
roughly 20 years ago, I could have looked up Indonesia, I mostly
haven't until this year. Perhaps that says that local culture can be
preserved through sheer inertia. I started out as an American, reading
mostly Western literature and listening to Western radio, and that was
pretty satisfying for a long time. But then I started to go out to find
new things. The real distance to travel was in my life, in my brain, in
how I thought of things, in who and/or what I was over time. That's
something that external forces don't automatically get rid of, and which
enable me to have a somewhat "local" identity as well as a "Internet"
identity.
Maybe it is possible to maintain both, both a local self and a cosmopolitan
self, and to support both kinds of culture, and this is a somewhat adequate
compromise between globalism and the opposite of globalism.
Does the local self inform the cosmopolitan self, and vice versa? Maybe
what is most important from each must be expressed in the other. An image
for how to organize unity-in-diversity is to have an essential self, or
an essential culture, which needs to be exactly how it is for more or less
life-and-death reasons, and which probably could be relatively simple,
and then a diversity of personalities, cultures, selves, etc. which are
not essential to the same degree. At all times, you should strive to
be your essential self (perhaps), though you clothe yourself with different
non-essential selves at different moments. And all people at all times
should have within their essential selves a component which is universal,
the same as everyone else, which means they share a certain essential
culture, despite whatever non-essential differences they have.
One challenge here is to actually retain that essential self at all times,
rather than splitting into an essential time and one or more non-essential
times. This is one way of looking at integrity.
--
p. 112
Cowen discusses the phenomenon of consumers of culture facing the selection
from producers. If the consumers have more refined taste, they choose the
best from the producers, creating competitive pressure on all of them to
be of higher taste. But, any one consumer of culture has (according to
Cowen), effectively zero ability to sway a producer to have higher taste:
--If I improve my taste in food, the local Chinese restaurant does not
respond with a better product. The chef does not care what I think, given
that I comprise a very small part of his market.--
Therefore it might not be worth me improving my taste:
--In addition to the time and energy I would have invested, I may simply
end up frustrated by my new and higher standards for food. Yet if we
could all improve our taste in Chinese food, and learn to discern
the better product, the chef would be compelled to upgrade his offerings,
to the benefit of customers more generally.--
Maybe we could look at the state of the world as something which is made
the way it is by "producers", and we are "consumers" who can choose what
standards of the world we will push for. Should we develop choosier
tastes in "a good world"? Then, like Cowen in the Chinese restaurant
example, we may be disappointed, in a desert of "not so good" states
of the world. We can be happier if we keep ourselves from refining our
taste in how good the world is.
What does it take to defect from this [or, maybe, break free from
this equilibrium despite its personal costliness], and thus move the
world toward a more "tasteful" version of itself? Perhaps believing
in God, we maintain a stricter taste in the world, since he is always
someone we can share that taste with. Or we can reflect on the fact that
the "arc of progress bends toward a more 'tasteful' world", and that
this higher taste is something morally required of each person in the
end so that they do not die the second death. These two thoughts put
a thumb on the scale of a person, causing them to be willing to desire
the "Chinese restaurant" that is best, though hard or even impossible
to find, or for the "Chinese restaurants" of the world to offer better
"food" at some cost. Perhaps one can learn to love "cuisine" because
God loves it.
--
Finished Chapter 5.
I feel like there is probably more in that chapter for someone other
than my present self to find.
--
Starting Chapter 6.
This chapter looks like it will be most relevant to the questions
I asked in the preview.
--
Why is cultural homogenization a good thing? According to p. 128,
while --Germany and France are more alike today--, --[o]nly in a world
of globalized culture can I collect nineteenth-century Japanese
prints, listen to the music of Pygmy tribes, read the Trinidadian
author V. S. Naipaul, and enjoy the humor of Canadian Jim Carrey,
while my neighbors pursue different paths of their own choosing.--
In other words, while cultures have homogenized, this has created
more freedom and diversity within cultures.
I imagine Cowen (or a Cowenian-type person) sitting in his living
room, reflecting on all the different cultural treasures available
to him, and an equally Cowenian neighbor, laughing at the comedy of
Nollywood movies, reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez, listening to
French coldwave, and collecting high-quality prints of
Russian icons. But then, we could imagine a different kind of
person, a more or less non-Cowenian person. This person is
deeply connected to their families, to the people alive and dead.
They only have one perspective, and therefore their moral emotions
are more intense. When someone is in need of help, they will
act to help, not considering the bigger picture so much that they
don't help at all. If we take the Old Testament as a possibly
idealized memory, in some respects, of this kind of person, then
the ideal calls us to weep for our wayward sons, to make irrevocable
vows, to listen to a god who wants us to bless the whole world,
and to long to have children of our own.
[The Old Testament is an ambivalent book and cautions us not
to make rash vows -- but at least it presents the kind of person
who even want to make irrevocable vows.]
Is it likely that this kind of person can exist, can be a neighbor
of Cowen? Or are they (or people like them, who perhaps aren't
as literally Old Testament) dying out as globalization comes?
To be fair, Cowen intentionally limits his argument to avoid this.
This is a valid move for an author to make, as a professional.
But Cowen himself (or people who like Cowen's ideas) are citizens
or amateurs, that is, people who have to live in reality, whatever
it actually is. I think for the purposes of my writing, it's fine
that I talk about the amateur reality rather than professional one
that Cowen chooses, although I acknowledge that as a professional
he has written the book he has "legally", as it were.
The critics of Cowen (the ones he's addressing "off-stage" in his
book, that he's thinking about), do not want the world to be Cowenian,
in some sense. I've presented in the previous paragraphs one possible
non-Cowenian person. The critics may not want to resurrect an ancient,
agrarian, pastoralist, way of looking at the world, or a way of looking
at things that is too adjacent to that way of looking at the world.
But they want something other than what Cowen wants. They don't want
to sit in a living room with their prints, music, novels, and movies,
or their personal equivalents. Or, perhaps they do, but recognize that
there is something -- perhaps a depth of emotion, or a connection to
something outside of pain and pleasure, or experiences-as-experiences,
which calls for intense loyalty, an external reality -- which
is lost if we take on the cosmopolitan way of seeing things. Maybe
non-cosmopolitan people really love, and wise and experienced people
only will and experience a fake or paltry love. We have lost a lot
if we have lost the ability to love.
Secular critics of Cowenian-type thinking might not put things in those
terms, might not be aware of what I'm talking about, but still sense
it, and then make a bunch of arguments that Cowenians can find flaws
with, which are motivated by a more fundamental concern. I think that
Cowen is aware of the deeper questions, my evidence being that he
explicitly limits himself from them. He can make his case by avoiding
(maybe) the thing that is subtext for the arguments that are made. Maybe
his purpose is to push the debate onto the more religious or
quasi-religious ground?
Defending the family naturally connects to defending the nation. A
nation is really just a bizarre elaboration of the family. The political
and the familial are related. The economic and the individualist, and/or
the mechanistic, are related. To see things in terms of wealth is to
see many impersonal things, and to not connect with people. So the
economic approach pushes down against families, is (positively) a check
against bad politics and bad families but (negatively) could go on to
destroy family. Natural culture is on a spectrum which also includes
extended and immediate family. So desire to protect the many families
of the world from globalization may be a desire to protect the familial,
a foundation for what it means to be human -- or, a full-fledged personal
being.
--
Is it possible to unify the Old Testament sensibility with the truth,
given that the truth is complex? The truth leans in a cosmopolitan
direction.
Also, what is it that really matters? It is possible that to truly love
means that we must love with emotional depth and intensity that is
rarely seen in polite Western society. Maybe this is required for
salvation, because we don't know how to love like God otherwise, and
thus are not in tune with him. Maybe we are limited in what emotions
we can feel or express, either by temperament or by culture. But there
should perhaps be a pressure on culture to make it more Old Testament (as
I've used "Old Testament" in these notes), and individuals need to come,
in who they are, to desire that emotion, even if some may be basically
incapable of it in what they are.
That's an argument for why that kind of love is necessary, but family
(human families) is somewhat less directly connected to that love, in other
words human families are not absolutely necessary for this love and don't
always work in favor of it, and tribal or national culture is even less
directly connected.
It's dangerous for "Old Testament" love to be out of the picture culturally,
and familial, tribal, and national instincts may be helpful in protecting
it, and when relatively costless should be preserved as much as possible.
(Maybe that's a guide for people who have to choose between different
courses of action, whether to be economic or political, as they influence
the way the world works).
--
Finished Chapter 6 (and thus the whole book).
My impression of Cowen's response, right after finishing the book
(with whatever memory issues that entails), of things I thought he might
write about, that I wrote in my preview for this book review:
-Why is cultural homogenization a good thing? (I.e., why is it good
for different cultures to become more similar to each other?)
Cultural differences can be good for creativity, but individual
diversity outweighs that loss.
-Is homogenization going to go as far as anti-globalization people fear?
From the last three or four pages, it seems like Cowen expects
cultural differences to last for a long time. But, I'm not sure
what he would say about cultural change over "longtermist" timescales.
-Is artistic innovation going to never end, despite globalization?
I think Cowen thinks that some artistic innovation relies at least
to some extent on non-cosmopolitanism. So the lifespan of art as
an innovative process is hindered by excessive cosmopolitanism /
globalization. I don't know what he would say whether art was
something that is "mined" or is more or less infinite.
-Will economic growth outweigh whatever cultural losses come
from cultural homogenization?
I don't know what Cowen would say to this.
--
And here are some more issues that I raised in the preview -- what
can I guess Cowen would say to them, now that I've just finished reading the
book?
-Might having coherent (unmixed) traditions allow people to go deeper into
them?
I don't know what Cowen would say.
-Might belonging to a family (thus an ethnic group) have inherent value?
I don't know what Cowen would say.
-Might traditions that prevent us from being fulfilled in this life help
us to learn to long for what is not-here?
My guess is Cowen would think of unfulfilled longings as being a bad thing,
at least if he's "wearing his economist hat".
-Might such longings for what is not-here enable us to be especially
blessed when we find an until-now-unknown culture?
I'm not sure what Cowen would think of this.
-Might some cultures be more in tune with true value (holiness, the output
to the Long Reflection) than others? (I guess the fear might be that
in the short run there is damage done by homogenizing away those cultures,
until the new consensus culture can become holy / truly valuable. Or,
that we are likely to forget something, some aspect of holiness or
value, which can only be seen in a living culture that has a certain
kind of integrity which homogenization prevents.)
I'm not sure what Cowen would think of this.
