Variety is the spice of life. To each his own. These are great old proverbs that seem to be losing their weight even as we attempt to hype-up modern buzz words like diversity and tolerance.  “Blue doesn’t make a rainbow,” handy hubby cleverly adds, as he shakes up a 10 pound bag of 4 bean varieties to throw willy-nilly into the field,  and so perfectly punctuates my point.  I need to know, who else is tired of the homogenization of this country and the world?
I realize this has been happening for some time, but I for one am really annoyed with it. A Youtube video forwarded by an RPCV friend, among a few other things, has my feathers ruffled this week. In case you don’t have time to take a quick peek, it’s a Czech pop group dressed like American gang-bangers singing  some Ragga jungle mish-mash on a beach in Mexico. When it comes to this video, all I gotta say is: Synthesis does not quality make, nor does it define originality, which is the true measure of creative talent, not to mention the only thing that deserves to have any real value to the public.
In the farmer’s world creating a synthesized monoculture may have worked for us, for a while, but we see now we should have listened to those few wise and truly creative dissenting voices like Sir Albert Howard and J.I Rodale who worked their lives away in order to buck the system and predicted long ago such industrial crop calamities as soil erosion and mineral depletion.
I used to think at least in this country, if not the Western world, we valued both creativity and the individual, but it seems the opposite is happening all around me: the further homogenization of food, and integration of cultures, and reduction of language, and simplification of education, and elevation of mediocrity, and especially the pathetic political correctness that has us all talking the talk of the PR agent. Instead of the individual trying to find their own unique voice, the world is flooded with sheeple all trying to bellow the loudest. When the music becomes all the same, the fashion all the same, the food all the same, the thoughts all the same, the cultures all the same, I guess then we’ll finally be able to focus on fixing all those dreadful languages too.
And speaking of languages, what’s happening to our own? An article about Twitter I read not too long ago comes to mind about the dismal reduction of language and social interaction. I know some shiny-toothed, syrupy-tongued, plastic people who are offended by any sentence that does not have a smiley-faced emoticon attached to it. I don’t even care if everyone in this country speaks English, just speak your own language well, and hopefully with individual color. In the meantime, it wouldn’t do us any harm to become multi-lingual, and therefore truly multicultural, but we can’t even be bothered to learn the language of our neighbors. I say let’s try it, if for no other reason than to prove we’re not as dumb as the rest of the world thinks we are.
But what I really wanna know is, are there are so few truly inventive people out there because, while we purport to value diversity and tolerance, we simultaneously continue to over-value monoculture in our lands, our schools, our governments, and our cultures? We really don’t need more integration, that just leads to a new strain of homogenization. What we really need is polyculture and the balls to handle real diversity.
And what about these absurd, useless regulations, like one I heard of recently in a NYC restaurant about a chef who dared to serve homemade cheese made from his wife’s breast milk. The Department of Health decided human breast milk cheese is not suitable for the human adult. Good grief, but the milk of every other mammal is suitable? If those folks want to eat momma’s milk cheese over cow’s milk cheese, who the hell cares? Let people do their thing, for goodness sake!
Monoculture might be convenient, homogeneous might be safe, but it’s already proven itself to be unsustainable in every way. Do we really want to regulate, integrate, placate and suffocate the entire world into one bland boring pre-wrapped slice of American cheese?
Dare To Dissent, Sheeple!
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Creativity and the individual? Thanks to the internet, your opinions are shared across the globe in nanoseconds. The number of published books has probably trippled within the last five years because of Print-On-Demand. There ae lots of ideas, lots of creativity.
It stands to reason that if human breast milk is the perfect food for human infants then human breast milk cheese is the perfect cheese for human cheese lovers. I, for one, would love to try it! How is it offensive to eat cheese made from human milk but it’s not offensive to eat cheese made from the milk of a barnyard animal!!!! Is this another example of how we devalue what women can do and provide???
BTW, love “sheeple”. Is it yours?
When I get a chance to read it, I always chuckle and smile. You put into words so many of our thoughts.
In terms of breast milk, sounds good to me.
Perhaps the monoculture dominates because it is the synthesis of the best from various cultures. I like Mexican food and so do many more to the point that Taco Bell is the largest purveyor of tacos in the world and the biggest Taco Bell is located in Mexico City. I also like Italian food but rarely eat it out since I make better than any you can get in a restaurant. But you can get a pizza from Mongolia to Mozambique. Modern kiddie music prevades the world because it has a sound young people everywhere like. Personally my knowledge of music ends with Mahler or perhaps Kathchaturian.
If a culture’s product is enjoyed by outsiders it will spread to other places. Conversely if it is not enjoyed outside its own culture, it will remain local. I don’t see homoginization, rather I see the cream rising to the top.
wish i could take credit for “sheeple” but alas no. first time I heard it was A. Napolitano, I believe. thanks for the comments!
I love every kind of food myself, and am glad I can sometimes find good ethnic food here, but just because Taco Bell is huge in Mexico City hardly qualifies it as rising cream. I see more like the masses getting accustomed to curdled milk, because it’s the cheapest, and their poor.
“Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.” The reason something is picked up and spread around the world is because it is a good product. No amount of ballyhoo will get people to consume a poor product. You may not like the product but many others do. The best products like the cream rise to the top.
So how do you explain successful advertising and marketing? Crappy products are sold all the time, look at Wal-mart and IKEA. And let’s not forget cigarettes. We are socially trained and influenced, quality rarely has anything to do with it.
Mishelle.
Well with my house in Mallorca, Spain furnished by IKEA and I consider shopping at WalMart to be shopping upscale, I guess I am on a different planet than are you. I have been in the business of international trade for 45 years so have a fair idea of why a product or service succeeds. Believe me, if a product is really “crappy” it won’t last long. Perhaps what you believe to be “crappy” may be good value to others. I submit IKEA as a good example.
I just redid my kitchen from IKEA, and have severals friends with bedroom sets from there, our combined experience: of 6 light fixtures, 3 were burned out after 3 months, of 4 bedframes, 3 were unfunctional after 1 year–I guess quality is also a matter of opinion.
And i wonder, when is the last time you had a tasty tomato from Wal-mart, or for that matter, anywhere else in the US, whether in season, or out? The last time i had a good tomato was living in Spain, so I guess since you are living there you are quite lucky indeed. I haven’t had a good tomato or strawberry in this country, in season or out, since 1986, no matter what the price. I guess I really am a snob.
oh, except for those i have had homegrown!!
Mishelle.
You can be sure that if you eat a strawberry in the USA it was picked by a Mexican, either in Mexico or in the USA. We get great strawberries from Plant City near Tampa. Funny thing about the Mexican field hands picking fruit in Florida. Those who pick strawberries do not pick tomatoes and those who pick tomatoes do not pick strawberries. Talk about job specialization.
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