Ala Carte Culture
Sep. 10th, 2002 07:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jamesqI love the twenty-first century, it has so many choices. And it's only going to get better.
I got to thinking about this on the weekend when![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
garething and I went to Wendy's (the restaurant, not the Airdrie Ranchero). Looking at the rather diverse menu, I said to garething "Imagine if you went back in time 50 years. You would go nuts for the lack of variety in the food".
Think about it, in the 1950's:
The Few That Want To Think For The Many want to turn back the clock. Too bad - the Ala Carte Culture is here to stay. I sometimes think that the amount of close-mindedness in the world is a constant. As more people open their minds, the remaining close-minded ones are pushed to greater and greater extremes.
I read an article about Saddam Hussein in The Atlantic a few months ago. The gist of the article was that Hussein believes the west has a mere technological superiority to the Islamic countries. When the Islamic countries can match the west's technology, the west will be defeated because of its inferior culture.
A lot of people far less fanatical than Saddam Hussein believe this or a variant (substituting whatever culture they think is the cat's ass). Sometimes they want to eliminate some small fraction of western culture (gay rights, say), sometimes a lot (women's lib), all for what they think will be an improved society.
They all miss the point. Namely, western culture is powerful and advanced precisely because we have these freedoms and this openness. The world of sports provides a useful analogy here.
Speed records for humans (in the track events) and speed records for horses (in equestrian events) have increased over the last one hundred years. However, the magnitude of increase is much larger for humans than for horses. Why is that? I think the improvement for horses is mostly better training of the animals. For the humans most of the improvement comes from the increased talent pool that we have to draw from. At the first modern Olympics, the athletes were men who could afford the time to train for running and could afford the time to compete. This pretty much meant students and/or the wealthy. By extension this meant that you were a white European or American. Today, potentially anyone with sufficient raw talent could compete - the whole world is our talent pool. Assuming you can demonstrate your ability to a scout, you will be trained regardless of your background. Training and Kinesiology help, but no amount of training is going to make me a track star - I just don't have the right set of genes.
What makes us human? Our brains - it's why we're king of the beasts. If you have a culture where half the population is systematically excluded from getting an education (women under the Taliban say), then doesn't it stand to reason that you're only going to get half as many good ideas? If everyone is free to pursue their own ends (within reason - I can't take your stereo for example), then won't we get better ideas?
Alan Turing was one of the British mathematicians who helped break the German Enigma code during WW2. He was one of the brightest minds at the dawning of the computer age. He died in 1954 after being hounded by the British government for being gay. If it was suicide (and nobody knows for sure), would he have lived a longer life, producing more scientific advancements, if gays weren't discriminated against?
How many geniuses have we hounded to death because they were different? Would we have a cure for cancer by now if the equal rights movement had started a hundred years earlier?
The ALA Carte Culture thrives and advances precisely because it is so open. As fewer people are restricted in what they do, and are given more opportunities, more good ideas will be produced. The more open we are to each others differences, the more likely those ideas will spread to the benefit of everyone.
I got to thinking about this on the weekend when
garething and I went to Wendy's (the restaurant, not the Airdrie Ranchero). Looking at the rather diverse menu, I said to garething "Imagine if you went back in time 50 years. You would go nuts for the lack of variety in the food".Think about it, in the 1950's:
- There were no exotic toppings for pizza.
- Nachos were unheard of outside of the southwestern States.
- Diners and fast food restaurants gave you the choice burger or cheese burger.
- Only Montreal natives could get decent smoked meat sandwiches and poutine.
- Chinese food was the blandest sort of Cantonese-American - unless you were lucky enough to live near a Chinese community (and good luck reading the menus)
- Sushi was unheard of outside of Japan.
- Most people of my generation would be scouring the ethnic food stores in search of anything spicy.
The Few That Want To Think For The Many want to turn back the clock. Too bad - the Ala Carte Culture is here to stay. I sometimes think that the amount of close-mindedness in the world is a constant. As more people open their minds, the remaining close-minded ones are pushed to greater and greater extremes.
I read an article about Saddam Hussein in The Atlantic a few months ago. The gist of the article was that Hussein believes the west has a mere technological superiority to the Islamic countries. When the Islamic countries can match the west's technology, the west will be defeated because of its inferior culture.
A lot of people far less fanatical than Saddam Hussein believe this or a variant (substituting whatever culture they think is the cat's ass). Sometimes they want to eliminate some small fraction of western culture (gay rights, say), sometimes a lot (women's lib), all for what they think will be an improved society.
They all miss the point. Namely, western culture is powerful and advanced precisely because we have these freedoms and this openness. The world of sports provides a useful analogy here.
Speed records for humans (in the track events) and speed records for horses (in equestrian events) have increased over the last one hundred years. However, the magnitude of increase is much larger for humans than for horses. Why is that? I think the improvement for horses is mostly better training of the animals. For the humans most of the improvement comes from the increased talent pool that we have to draw from. At the first modern Olympics, the athletes were men who could afford the time to train for running and could afford the time to compete. This pretty much meant students and/or the wealthy. By extension this meant that you were a white European or American. Today, potentially anyone with sufficient raw talent could compete - the whole world is our talent pool. Assuming you can demonstrate your ability to a scout, you will be trained regardless of your background. Training and Kinesiology help, but no amount of training is going to make me a track star - I just don't have the right set of genes.
What makes us human? Our brains - it's why we're king of the beasts. If you have a culture where half the population is systematically excluded from getting an education (women under the Taliban say), then doesn't it stand to reason that you're only going to get half as many good ideas? If everyone is free to pursue their own ends (within reason - I can't take your stereo for example), then won't we get better ideas?
Alan Turing was one of the British mathematicians who helped break the German Enigma code during WW2. He was one of the brightest minds at the dawning of the computer age. He died in 1954 after being hounded by the British government for being gay. If it was suicide (and nobody knows for sure), would he have lived a longer life, producing more scientific advancements, if gays weren't discriminated against?
How many geniuses have we hounded to death because they were different? Would we have a cure for cancer by now if the equal rights movement had started a hundred years earlier?
The ALA Carte Culture thrives and advances precisely because it is so open. As fewer people are restricted in what they do, and are given more opportunities, more good ideas will be produced. The more open we are to each others differences, the more likely those ideas will spread to the benefit of everyone.
