Race prospective from America to France and the lefts culture clash

[Specter Von Baren]

Well, I don't think I'm really complaining about capitalism here. It's more that I don't much like certain aspects of an increasingly homogenous global culture.

Homogeneity of at least a certain extent is inevitable. Just look at Japan, one of the only countries considered to have not been ruled by or heavily influenced by "western" culture until modern times and see all the ways "western" culture has influenced it, like just a small example is I've noticed Japanese people referring to their parents, not as Okaa-san and Otou-san but as Mama and Papa.

 

[Agema]

Homogeneity of at least a certain extent is inevitable. Just look at Japan, one of the only countries considered to have not been ruled by or heavily influenced by "western" culture until modern times and see all the ways "western" culture has influenced it, like just a small example is I've noticed Japanese people referring to their parents, not as Okaa-san and Otou-san but as Mama and Papa.

I expect cultural mixing, and in any cultural mixing generally the culturally weaker a place, the more it will adopt outside influences. Often transmission of culture is a good thing: the spread of ideas helps creativity, and in theory positive advances should replace the inferior. But there's also a certain element where there's only so much head space to hold culture, and something has to go to fill it up with new things: stories, legends, traditions, customs, dialects and whole languages. Some of those that make way have a beauty of their own.

Secondly (and with relation to Starbucks) some of these are not in my view positives. They're just brute force advertising pushing identikit tedium, and difference is also nice. Don't we often travel to "broaden the mind" - experience something new? Surely there's a lot less fun going to other countries and finding they're just like your own: speak the same language, eat the same food, have the same architectural and artistic styles, etc. If you like anime, to a large extent you like it because it is the product of difference - another culture. The more alike that Japan and the USA are, the more anime would be just like a US cartoon. Would that not be a form of us losing something?

 

[Cheetodust]

Don't worry, lots of other people do!



Apologies: to be clear, I think there are lots of cafes - independents and some chains - that take a great deal of pride and have a great deal of passion in what they do and I don't want to diss every person who works in a cafe as a dumb, semi-skilled grunt.

Fun fact, when I was 16 I worked at a cinema, caught a look at my file and saw my job title was "grunt".

But the Starbucks model vastly overinflates the training and skills of their staff as advertising to create this image of a crafted product, when the very nature of having that many stores is that the set-up must be for a routine product to be easily supplied in a relatively foolproof fashion by staff who may be mediocre. Passion and skill is to be treasured in any job, but it's also uncommon so such people can only support so many cafes. They will tend to gravitate to high standards, lower willingness to compromise, and many of course have a sense of vision and prefer to start their own. Thus for a chain to have a lot of outlets, it necessarily means employing much more average workers and downgrading the skills required and quality accordingly.

Haha yeah I know you weren't actually taking a dig at all baristas don't worry. Your absolutely right. Starbucks, kinda like McDonald's trades off it's history a lot too. The early days of starbucks really did help popularise things like origin and roast profile with more consumers. But they make crap now. Mcdonald's might have been a good place to get a burger at one point but not today.

 

[McElroy]

BLM certainly had a trend going with it. A couple of our "immigration-critical" politicians shared some edgy jokes (pink Floyd) and that boosted the reaction the whole thing got. Of course we can see how culture of the USA is spreading its homogenizing tendrils our way with how disproportionate the coverage was. There's even a person in my extended family who shared the black square on social media, but they still unironically call Asian people 'chingchongs'. It ebbs and flows like that.

 

[deleted20220709]

DELETED

 

[Specter Von Baren]

I expect cultural mixing, and in any cultural mixing generally the culturally weaker a place, the more it will adopt outside influences. Often transmission of culture is a good thing: the spread of ideas helps creativity, and in theory positive advances should replace the inferior. But there's also a certain element where there's only so much head space to hold culture, and something has to go to fill it up with new things: stories, legends, traditions, customs, dialects and whole languages. Some of those that make way have a beauty of their own.

Secondly (and with relation to Starbucks) some of these are not in my view positives. They're just brute force advertising pushing identikit tedium, and difference is also nice. Don't we often travel to "broaden the mind" - experience something new? Surely there's a lot less fun going to other countries and finding they're just like your own: speak the same language, eat the same food, have the same architectural and artistic styles, etc. If you like anime, to a large extent you like it because it is the product of difference - another culture. The more alike that Japan and the USA are, the more anime would be just like a US cartoon. Would that not be a form of us losing something?

Thing is, it's cross-cultural exchange. In this particular example, Japan has also made a huge influence on "the west" or at least America. Do note, I'm not advocating any kind of particular argument now, I'm just "shooting the breeze" with you now about general cross-cultural stuff. Something of interest is that, there's plenty of people talking about countries losing what makes them them but whenever these people are brought up they are considered racists or old, or "out of touch". I feel we have to remember that we're doing the same thing our own mothers and fathers did and in all likely hood we will be equally ineffective at actually curbing it.