Cultural Osmosis

Its darker side has yet to be fully understood. For decades its invisible tentacles have been spreading across the globe, just below radar. Like a tenebrific fog, its influence has been insidiously blanketing countries and mutating societies. A phrase that’s increasingly becoming a cliché is that ‘Asia is changing’. While there is no denying that obvious observation, the focus of that change however has been singularly limited to economic growth; dizzying growth rates, unprecedented capital inflows, exponentially rising employment, massive foreign exchange reserves and critical infrastructure development are what keep us in sway. So while the world stays mesmerized by its more obvious, commercially lucrative gains, globalization continues on course, uninhibited to change how we think and act. Yes, globalization is more than meets the eye.

Along with trade and technology, the more conspicuous accompaniments of globalization, something far more powerful has been crossing international boundaries. Something that seems immune to any resistance. Something that isn’t showing signs of abatement. And that something is culture.

For decades now we’ve sat glued to our screens watching, laughing, crying and in the end absorbing a lot more than entertainment from Hollywood. For an equally long time, we’ve hummed, sang, karaoked and moved our feet to music that has no context to our way of life. As we’ve opened up our economies, we’ve also exposed our minds to a deluge of western culture and thinking. Modernity itself has been redefined by western ideals. Free speech, free press and free sex are all vestiges of a new culture that is taking root. Take a look around you at the simpler, more commonplace things. Coffee is increasingly replacing tea, once our beverage of choice. The omnipresent pair of jeans is pulled up just about every day by the young and old alike and is so ingrained in our lives that we don’t give even a scant thought to its origin. Greeting people isn’t accompanied by a bow and folded hands but a ‘hi’ and a shake. And if you’re young, then even a hi-5. Now these might feel like minor transgressions in the face of all that is globalization but it’s important to recognize that these insignificant behavioral shifts have a far greater impact on our lives than money ever will. They alter our thinking. They’re an outcome of a process I loosely call ‘cultural osmosis’; the transference of ideas when the boundary between two cultures becomes more permeable. And when that happens the process becomes natural and outside control. In contrast both trade and technology are well within bounds of control and manipulation. It’s interesting though how culture actually traverses boundaries. The dominant carriers are often movies and music. And so naturally it is the young that are more susceptible to the influence of cultural osmosis.

Of course faster growing economies like China and India are seeing cultural osmosis dilute their cultures significantly swifter than socially insular societies like Japan and South Korea. Although the latter do provide evidence that cultural insularity and capitalism can go hand in hand, there is also no denying that both Japan and South Korea are losing their influence in Asia and the world to the former, more culturally open and accommodating economies. Despite this there still are governments in many Asian countries that are fearful, suspicious and hence apprehensive about opening up too much to this cultural invasion; at heart, worried about the social impact of cultural osmosis on their way of life. In most cases though the barriers they erect in its path have proved flaccid and ineffective at best. And the reason is simple. Cultural osmosis is driven by people. The acceptance or rejection of a new culture depends simply on whether people want it or not. It can never be forced. The culture must be welcomed. This brings me back to the carriers of culture. Western culture has been riding on movies and music for a long time. Long before western brands and ideas wind up on Eastern shores, these two elements ensure there is already a demand for them. The strategy is quite simple really. Use movies and music to create a demand for jeans by making them the ultimate symbol of rebellion, iconoclasm and defiance and you’ve readied a market for not just jeans but a whole host of brands that epitomize Western culture. It’s the perfect marriage of capitalism and culture.

And with the advent of digital, societies across the world are today exposed to more cultural influence than ever before. The internet is making political and cultural boundaries far more permeable. Cultural osmosis will take on a whole new meaning as the age of ideas takes root. Over the longer term there won’t only be a single global marketplace but in all likelihood also a single culture. Imagine that. A unified world. At last.