It could go Either way

By Cynthia Chang | Published: SEPT 29, 2018

A class consists of individual students and their interactions and interdependence between

each other; they have to communicate and learn how to work together. If we regard a class as the

miniature and expand it to a larger scale, it will be the world and those interactions and

interdependences will be what we generally say as “Globalization”. Many people assume that

globalization is gradually bringing the society

closer, while others are insisting that

globalization instead divides it further apart——

there are always dissenters before finding out

Figure 1: Globalization https://fee.org/articles/the-losers-of- the final answers. Although I respectfully

globalization-didnt-lose-from-globalization/

acknowledge their minds, at the same time, I

will tell them that they are both wrong as well. Standing on different perspectives of culture,

technology, and economy, globalization has effects of both bringing society together and

separating it apart.

Cultural Output and Dissemination

Globalization allows different individuals to gather and communicate and during this process,

it spreads the cultures. Let’s have a look at some vivid daily life examples:

We can read foreign novels and watch foreign movies; Chinese children learn to sing English

songs while more foreigner friends know how to say “hello” and “goodbye” in Chinese. According

to an article Globalization: Bringing The World Closer, “A large number of global multinational

brands such as Coca-Cola, Google, Microsoft, and Mercedes-Benz are successfully operating in
India”. This article also mentions about the diffusion of American culture which makes more and

more people now embrace American pop

music and love to eat junk foods like

McDonald's, the world’s largest multinational

chain restaurants which have now sprouted

36,900 outlets on a global scale. In a

YaleGlobal Online paper, the author also talks

about the influences of American culture,

Figure 2: McDonnell Dormitory Building shot in Bucknell University
saying that “Culturally speaking, globalization

is largely, though not entirely, the spread of Americanization -- from Big Macs to iMacs to Mickey

Mouse -- on a global scale”. And one more instance is teenagers from more than thirty countries

live in one university dormitory building where on a wall there are words saying “welcome” in

different languages.

We move around and bring cultures to other places and at the same time we learn from others

and take their cultural essences back to our home; within such a cycle of culture mixing and

diversifying, people will be able to realize that with different identities they also share similarities

that pull them spiritually closer.

Internet Platforms build up Two Spaces

It’s just like that old saying: “Every coin has two sides.” Globalization brings society closer,

but at the same time, it’s also separating us apart from other aspects.

Tracing back to the ancient times, our ancestors only had pigeons to convey written letters,

horses and wooden boats to move; when it was dark, there were just fire and candles. Fortunately,
with the development of high technology, we can enjoy the convenience of various kinds of new

products like telephones, vehicles, and electricity.

As we all know that, the American President Donald Trump is a big fan of Twitter, which

makes him so unique in the political history. Besides his habit and interests, we can also find that it

is attributed to the rapid growth of internet development. Globalization enables these internet

platforms to be built up, and thus more populations are now allowed to use software like Twitter,

Facebook, or Instagram, which means that even we have family and friends on another distant

continent, we will be able to talk to them on the phone or even have a video call to see their faces.

In Globalization: A short Introduction, Chapter 1, the Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells also

pointed out that: “the creation of a global network society fuelled by ‘communication power’

required a technological revolution.”

However, this can also cause some negative impacts. Because of too much indulgence on the

Internet, especially for those teenagers, people are having fewer interactions with each other in real

life. Every day we read news on cell phones, communicate and work on laptops, and play games on

other electronic devices; the time we leave for our interactions, in reality, is reducing and sometimes

people even have no chances to talk to their family members. We do have shorter distances on the

internet, but beyond that virtual world, we are separating further apart.

Pyramids—A Perfect Model

The Internet isn’t the only thing dividing the world; another one is economy, and actually, it

contributes more.

What does the shape of a pyramid remind you? For me, it reminds me of this global wealth

disparity graph. Just like what it shows us, in the green piece there are most populations (68.4%),

but their income levels are also at the bottom——within range of less than $10,000 and occupy
 only 4.2% of the total world wealth. However, at the

top corner, the only 0.5% population here own $1

million income and hold 35.6% of the sum.

Early from the age of colonialism, the globalization

started, and countries began to have their trades

Figure 3: The Global Wealth Pyramid https://
www.prisonplanet.com/a-detailed-look-at-global-wealth-
distribution.html
transactions and build up own economic systems.

However, what this brings is “An unequal but changing

world”, just like what Human Geography: A Concise Introduction Chapter 4 says, the way that

western countries proved to be successful doesn’t fit the rest: “the West rose largely at the expense

of the rest”. According to a report released by

Oxfam, the world's richest 85 people own the

same amount of wealth as the poorest 50% of

the whole population. Such a sharp visual

contrast does strike on everyone’s heartstring

and warns us that without any solutions, the

Figure 4: world’s wealth shared among population http://
assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/11/FT_WEF-
only result for wealth disparity is to continue inequality.jpg

increasing. The richer get richer and the poorer

get poorer and finally different levels of the society are separated further and further apart. The

overall balance of the global economic system will be broken.

Globalization is continuing going on like an unstoppable trend; it separates us but also gets us

closer to each other. The only thing and the most important thing for people to do while keep

developing and moving forward is to take any advantages of globalization but meanwhile be

prepared and take actions to any problems it may or already brought us.