Cultural revolution

Cultural revolutions

The idea that a civilization has a culture is difficult to quantify but understanding that culture is important in international affairs. The difficulty, in part, stems from a lack of understanding of exactly what constitutes a culture. There are those who argue the one who uses the correct fork is cultured while others point to the production of fine art constitute cultured societies. Confusion reigns on the relative weight of customs, values, history, environments, etc. on cultural identification.

Cultural measures lack of stability and precision of its variables further complicate research. One variable may change without cultural impact while a different change in the same variable may indicate a cultural drift. During the late 18th century American Revolution rebels signaled their independence by changing the way they held their forks from the European style of loyalist. This change encompassed only a small segment of the population in the 1770s. It had little impact on cultural measures then but a century later the practice was widely accepted and reflected an independent American culture that embraced symbolism over substance.

All babies are born without a cultural identity. Traditionally culture is learned from first the family, then peers and education and ultimately societal environments. In the traditional model by the age of 12 an individual’s basic values and culture are well defined. Subsequent life experiences may refine or modify one’s cultural perspective but the basic values remain as the deep bedrock of the individual’s social development.

The traditional models were generally reliable in the slow evolution of thousands of years. The increasingly rapid technological advances of the late 20th century are influencing wide spread cultural revolutions in the 21st century. Across cultures the modern generation is not following the traditional model but rather embracing different values and building new cultural norms.

There is no single 21st century culture but rather multiple competing cultural directions emerging from new generations’ perspectives and aspirations. To paraphrase an old automobile advertisement, “This is not your father’s culture.” There is a real generation gap emerging as the developed states age out and developing states with under 20 populations approaching 50 percent. This causes internal stress within cultures. In neither case is the respective cultures stable. The aging take a conservative view of status quo while youth embraces a liberal perspective of change as having it all, now no matter the cost.

Across the globe societies are fracturing along fault lines established a century ago. States are under stress as never before some are breaking up while others are attempting to apply Band-Aids to gaping wounds. From an international perspective failure to view cultural changes will contribute to conflict between emerging cultural changes. Conflict in the 21st century will be far more violent and less focused as cultural splinters begin to employ the principles of terror as a weapon of choice.

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