Growing Together -- More Choices, More Cultural Homogeneity

We may not see how the choices we have in today’s world reflect how homogenous our society is becoming, noisy town hall meetings notwithstanding. But a recent moment in the White House found a country music star singing a song to the nation’s first black president -- a song inspired by and about him; a song with Civil Rights referenced; a song extolling the global world. It was more than a moment; it was a signature moment. When Brad Paisley sang his hit Welcome to the Future to President Obama the moment underscored two key notions: choice and homogeneity. We have choices that cross cultural boundaries, and these choices are bringing us closer and closer together.

Young people who’ve grown up on the Internet, "music sharing," cable TV, and Facebook take these for granted. But it is a quantum leap in communications from a generation ago. Truly there are significant problems with these technologies, but they provide people today with an incredible gift: choice.

A generation ago, news was owned by three main networks (and perhaps a single local station). Information was hard copy -- one had to dig up information in books, magazines and reports. The EM spectrum was a carefully controlled and monitored as a vital asset in the Cold War. But today information flows freely.

Last week I was driving across country. Whenever we needed directions (GPS, one a security priority, can now be utilized with your phone), opinions about restaurants, or tickets to some event, we could use a phone, from the car, for instant results. What is available online today is astounding.

When it comes to music, the technology makes the choices endless. At your fingertips you have current music and past music, local music and world music, urban music and country music -- along with reviews of songs, and the means to make your own music.

Yet with this wonderful portal of music choice, with its possibilities for using music to better understand people from all over the world, some people still use music to divide. "This is OUR music, and if you are one of us, it is YOURS too." And "If you like another style of music, you are not one of us." It’s music-as-a-weapon.

It is like bigotry. The generation with the greatest access and closeness to people different from themselves, the most diverse generation in history, seems to be the one using the language of intolerance and prejudice.

People should realize that as a society we are becoming more and more homogenous. In today’s world, nowhere is unaffected by the rest of the world. In the excellent Heard Museum in Phoenix, AZ, a showcase of Native American culture, there is a film about the Havasupai of the Verde River canyons. They chose to be isolated in the beautiful canyons, and yet they spoke English, wore jeans and t-shirts with rock band logos, and rode Toyota four-wheelers.

The people of this nation have been pulled together by three main forces: service in the military, education, and the Internet. The military was the first great integrating force. Not without problems, it nonetheless brought people of varying backgrounds into a merit-based system. The nation’s education system today teaches tolerance. Ninety-one percent of the nation’s children go to public schools like Edison High School in Northern Virginia. It is a high-performing International Baccalaureate school with a minority white population. Elite private schools, once lily-white, show a different, more diverse, more integrated face today. The newest trend is online education, where you can take classes in which you communicate with people all over the world in your "virtual classes."

This leads to the culturally-unifying force of the Internet. You wish to buy authentic Navajo jewelry from the Navajos themselves? You used to have to go to Arizona; now you can go online. I once tried to buy a product made in a city I was visiting. The woman at the counter told me I would be better off ordering on the Internet! Improbably, the language of the Internet is now known everywhere. It is a cultural commonality, in a homogenous world.

Today we have more choices than ever before, in a world brought together by these choices.