GLOBALIZATION
Sunday night I went along with Steve to a sports bar near the town square where he was determined to watch his Chicago Bears play the Green Bay Packers in the NFL playoffs in Chicago.
By the time we got there it was almost halftime and the Packers were ahead 21 to 3 and it looked as if his team was doomed although he had some hope since they always played best in the 4th quarter.
What struck me during the game was how I was in two places at once. I was in a Mexican sports bar, but the show on the huge center screen was in English in Chicago and the advertisements were about American consumerism. On another smaller screen to one side the show was in Spanish and the advertisements were about Mexican life although the products being advertised were often the same. We live in an intertwined economy, in Mexico often American products and the other way around. Much of what is sold under in the USA by global companies is made in Mexico or other countries with cheaper labor. We are all mixed together.
This effect was heightened for me by a two man band who set themselves up just under the large screen partially blocking the view who began playing deafening rock music in during the 4th quarter. We had to look around them to see the game. At the same time we were watching a game and advertisements in Soldier Field in Chicago and being bombarded by Mexican rock music as we ate nachos and drank Modelo beer in San Miguel de Allende.
To heighten this feeling of being in two places at once was the Facetime call I made to my son in Asheville to show him Mexican sports bar. Along with an earlier Facetime meeting with my daughter who is sick with flu or a bad cold in my apartment in Marshall I have the feeling of being both here in San Miguel and being with my family at home in Western North Carolina.
I cannot escape the feeling that this globalization, world wide shrinking of the world and being completely intertwined, which comes largely in my mind from the technology based on the computer that has developed in my own lifetime is at the heart of the polarization that is dividing people everywhere. Globalization is the future and local fundamentalism is the past. Half of the United States, mostly rural, is conservative, trying to return to protect the values of the past by building walls of steel or tariffs and half of the United States, mostly urban, is liberal, open to the intertwining of cultures and cultural values. These two poles threaten our different identities and are the major cause of friction and even violence in the world.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 