cosmopolitanism

The lesson on cosmopolitanism and ethics surrounding globalization resonated deeply with me. I appreciated Kwame Anthony Appiah’s thoughts on the meaning and importance of cosmopolitanism: that “we’re responsible collectively for each other” and its main tenet is to “care about everyone, but not required them to be like each other.” And that his manner of presentation was not didactic or condensing but more straight forward in that he was providing his own view point, and made it clear that he felt strongly it is ideal to be cosmopolitan, but still an individual choice—which is certainly in the entire spirit of being cosmopolitan.

The kind of rhetoric on diversity that bothers me the most is a narrative with a fairy tale ending that summarizes an encounter with an Other as “and we realized we were really the same (despite being different races/living in different countries/have two moms) and lived happily ever after. Appiah’s video illuminated the reason—that kind of narrative doesn’t incorporate a cosmopolitan approach and is more similar to cultural relativism. Cultural relativism, as described by Appiah (and Ess) is kind of a moral cop-out—if everyone’s different, then who are we to judge what they do? Cultivating an exchange of ethical ideas, even if (or especially if) one particular view is not automatically championed, can never be bad. Appiah also highlighted the dangers of hypocritical and homogenizing “I’ll support your differences but only if you change to be like me” mentality commonly found in religious or political applications.

In a previous class that was a pseudo-survey of Western Lit, (entitled the Poetic and Ethical I) we discuss Otherness as a negative thing. Seeing someone as Other denied them Subjectivity; the struggle was for one already a Subject to act the Other as another Subject. Perhaps this is the same idea as respecting the Otherness of the Other as we have discussed, but since then, I’ve been more aware of the Others in my life. As someone who is strongly opinionated and intelligent, I do tend to have less patience when other people do things slower or just differently than I do. I guess what I mean is that when someone is very distinctly Other, like the French friends of my boyfriend we recently hosted vs someone less so, like my coworkers who grew up in New York city vs Wisconsin and are mostly different races than I, it can be paradoxically more difficult to respect their Otherness.

Returning once more to Kwame Anthony Appiah, he describes his multicultural background and the importance of the Ghanaian tradition being a “wafa” (sp??) to his nieces and nephews. In Ghana the wafa is the most important male role model to a child instead of their father, because he is blood-related to their mother. I agree that this is a valuable tradition, and I would not want to see it destroyed, but what about honoring both? Then the children will have two male role models in their lives. I know many people are worried about “diluting” cultures (especially indigenous ones) but I also think that it is natural for human cultures to be in a constant state of flux. In Jason Russ’s prezi, he has a video of visiting a Maasai tribe in Tanzania and asserts that their lifestyle might be negatively affected by Western technology. I would never go so far as to say that the Maasai culture is inferior because it lacks such technology, or that it would be improved or enriched by the addition of Western culture. But I don’t think it would be contaminated by exposure to another culture if it were in a non-assimilating/colonization manner. No one is worried Western culture will be damaged by the Maasai, shouldn’t we pay them respect by assuming the reverse? I’m not sure that I have the perspective necessary to make such a judgment—actually I’m certain I do not—but I’d like to hear other opinions.

On a last note, I think at times it is valuable to think about human culture as whole, especially in relation to its affect on other Others, like the other species on our planet.

Here’s a sort of meandering, philosophical look on the impact of humans on the globe:
http://all-geo.org/highlyallochthonous/2011/01/ten-million-feet-upon-the-stair/