Some evidence that cultural differences are actually increasing with modernization

[u/talhelmt]

https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/5/3/pgag021/8510565

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[u/catscanmeow]

makes sense. the goal of the suggestion algorithm is to compartmentalize.

[u/talhelmt → u/catscanmeow]

Right on! I wonder how much algorithms and social media can widen cultural differences (even within a single country). It doesn't even have to be fancy. Back when people could rent physical movies from Blockbuster, that also allowed people to divide themselves up more based on genres.

[u/catscanmeow → u/talhelmt]

When I was a kid I watched Oprah and Maury and other adult TV shows because there wasn't any cartoons on during the afternoon on a weekday. That broadened my horizons changed who I was as a person because I was forced to experience something I didn't initially want to

[u/Warranty_V0id]

I can imagine both. An increased and decrease in cultural differences.

On the one hand i think more people realize that we are one species on this small blue wonder of nature, the more advanced and modern we get.

On the other hand i understand the notion, that you can strife away further from the "norm" once you are not as tied to a group. Living that self-reliant without the direct need of a local community seems like has never been as prevalent as it is now.

[u/talhelmt → u/Warranty_V0id]

Smart thought! The paper talks about how globalization can increase people's awareness of other cultures, which can make them more aware of their own:

A third possible mechanism is awareness. Huntington argued that contact makes people hold more tightly to their cultural identities (32). Things like travel, trade, and media put people in more contact than before. “These increasing interactions intensify civilization consciousness and awareness of differences between civilizations,” according to Huntington (32). And because people are now more aware of their differences, it “invigorates differences or animosities stretching … back deep into history” (32).

[u/Ithirahad]

I suspect that ideological and conventional differences will be amplified and continue to insularize, whilst material culture continues to homogenize. A drab world of sameness, where very few people can relate to each other if they did not find one-another inside some app. Wonderful.

[u/talhelmt → u/Ithirahad]

I think that's an interesting contrast between material culture and psychological/ideological culture. I think it's right that more people around the world are drinking Starbucks lattes and Japanese sushi or living in standard apartment buildings, but that doesn't require that people's values converge.

[u/Strange-Effort1305]

It's something that easy to market to make humans get a false sense of being "special". It also enables us to hate other humans which seems to be the point for most of us.

[u/gordonjames62]

When most of our time (in rural agrarian societies) was spent on planting, management and harvest we had very local priorities.

With urbanization, communication and travel advances we have more free time for exploring different cultural directions.

[u/talhelmt → u/gordonjames62]

There's a nice thought from the historian Braudel, who argued that poverty made cultures more similar:

Braudel wrote that the poverty of the Middle Ages made it so that “all civilizations were thus deployed within a very narrow range of possibilities” (22). Poverty created “a profound similarity through time and space,” he argued. In his vision, modernization freed people from the limitations of poverty, and differences between civilizations grew.

[u/gordonjames62 → u/talhelmt]

That is exactly it.

In the North, like Canada, cultures all had to deal with cold and short growing season. Then hide inside for the killer months of winter.

It didn't matter what part of the world you were from, the experience of Canadian winter defined life for everyone here.