You save for years, skimping and sacrificing. You book a flight to somewhere twenty thousand miles away. Jetlagged and discombobulated you go through immigration. The advertising billboards show Nike shoes and Channel perfume, the airport is the same concrete and glass of every other international airport in the world. The same carpet squares, the same exact airport benches with armrests. The taxi is a Honda, you pass the Golden Arches on the way to the hotel, there is Pizza on the menu and the house beer is Heineken.
The most popular soft drink in Kazakhstan is Coca-Cola, of course it is. Of the 195 countries in the world, only 10-12 countries sell more of something else. For five of those its Pepsi. Russia, Cuba and North Korea don’t count as they can't get it at all. “I was now in a country utterly different from any I had ever seen before.” Said Karamojo Bell. Well he can’t have written that from the lobby of any of the 9300+ marriott hotels in 144 countries.
Despite a lack of university education and to the surprise of everyone who has letters after their name, I do understand convergent evolution. That disparate animals evolve towards an optimum form to suit the task or the environment. It’s why sharks and dolphins share a similar hydrodynamic form, a tail for propulsion, fins. In a free market it’s also why all smartphones look and function identically. I know why it’s happened, I just wish it hadn’t.
The problem I think with globalisation is homogenisation. It’s hard to find oneself, to adventure, to get a change of perspective when the four corners of the earth look increasingly like your own backyard. The cynic might quote Hemmingway ““You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.” but that’s kinda my point, I want to feel that because I’m in a place so completely different, that I must have changed too. In the office I’m a businessman, doing emails in my work voice. In the mountains I am the same man but at the same time now an adventurer transformed by the choice and followthrough of an adventure. I want that on a bigger scale. Ruark said the same thing of himself, he became a hunter by definition because he was hunting.
The theory behind globalisation is fantastic but each nation/region/city used to have its own bright colour of culture. Foods, fashions, music, smells, accents, identity. But we mixed all the bright vibrant oilpaints on the pallet until we ended up with a muddy brown, thank god it hasn't bled all the way through into every bit of countryside quite yet.
The thing is I’m going through a rich vein of books written before my parents and grandparents time, Days and Nights of Shikar by Mrs Baillie, Kingdom of the Elephant by Temple Perkins, John MacNab by John Buchan, The River runs through it by Norman Maclean, and I am struck by the vibrancy of them all, and how rich the world was pre-globalisation. Now maybe I’m looking at a glamourised past through rose tinted spectacles but it struck me that I’m a half boiled frog reading about how cool the water in the pot used to be and before too long it’ll be too late and even the tibetan monks will stop wearing orange just like the japanese stopped wearing robes and the world will be worse off.
Guess it’s time to stop whining about it and google ‘where has the lowest number of netflix subscriptions per capita’ and book a trip before it’s too late.
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