01-Sep-2008
Whence Global – How me?
Sometimes I think we live our entire lives by the buzzword and the catch phrase. I am so over him. I’m all Advil. Give peace a chance. You deserve a break today. Where’s the beef? He’s just not into me. Mortgage meltdown. Extreme rendition. Collateral damage.
Such phrases seek to reveal some truth about our lives or our activities but, as often as not, they conceal as much as they reveal. Often, too, they seem to clarify some issue so well that any further thought is unnecessary. As that great Finnish philosopher, St. Urho, once said, however: further thought is always necessary.
Case in point: I haven’t given much thought to the use of the word “global” these days. It seems to function as a sort of opposite to “provincial,” its use, then, pretty obvious. We live in a global world. Okay. True enough, we did think it was flat for a time, but when all those ancient explorers kept failing to sail off the edge of it our thinking gradually changed. Then there’s global warming and global economy – buzzwords suggesting that the buck doesn’t stop just here anymore, or that the proverbial butterfly’s breath in Nepal can indeed cause a tornado in Alabama.
What about me, though? This guy in the midwestern U.S. This small-town guy with no apparent, certainly not immediate, need to think beyond the boundaries of a few cornfields. Am I global (disregarding the occasional weight-loss question)?
“If so, how?” I asked myself one day, then surprised myself at how briskly the answers to that question came.
Granted, I’ve heard of Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, though my dealings with Venezuela have always been highly limited. I know the capital of Georgia and that the Taliban is a greater threat to Pakistan than is al-Qaeda. China will be part of the legacy I bequeath my children, and I am curious how the Londoners will begin preparing for the 2012 Olympics. Not long ago I spent three days at a conference celebrating the culture of Finland, this in a midwestern port city that ships corn and wheat all over the world.
My sunglasses, of course, were made in Mexico, as was my Zenith television. A shirt was made in Indonesia, a sweatshirt in Mexico, one of my dress shirts in Thailand, my good old American Fruit of the Loom T-shirt in El Salvador. My favorite City Lights Bookstore T was made in Haiti. My favorite pair of shorts, Croft and Barrow, was made in Bahrain. I own two Honda automobiles, once had a Honda motorcycle, and eat bananas from Central America. I’ve always eaten bananas from Central America.
Speaking of eating, I love those butter cookies that come in a can from Denmark, excellent with a cup of coffee, said coffee, naturally, coming from any of about a dozen countries south of the equator. I consider a can of Argentinean corned beef to be a special treat, but I confess to being a bit hesitant to eat tilapia imported from fish farms in Honduras. Not long ago, my wife made us swear off of eating canned mushrooms since, Kennett Square be damned (once the heart of mushroomery in the U.S.), they all seemed to be coming from India. Still, I’d give my right arm (not as drastic as it sounds since I’m a lefty) for a meal of Icelandic cod or a prime rib of imported Kobe beef. I guess we have a new buzzword here: global dreaming.
The computer on which I write these words is a potpourri of Chinese-American technology, as is my Sharp calculator, and even my homepage is that of the BBC. When I refresh the ink in my printer, the package says it is made in the U.S.A. from imported parts. I tend to wonder which parts of my ink are imported. I probably shouldn’t wonder about that. Nor should I wonder about the friendly DSL support person who worked with me on the phone for over an hour one day. She was in India, as is the publisher of several of my short stories.
I almost took a job in an Iowa town thoroughly immersed in its Dutch heritage, and did take a job one time that enriched me in all things Pakistani. In similar employment contexts I’ve known good people from Nepal, Iceland, Malaysia, France, England, Canada, Nigeria, Kenya, Spain, Ireland, and Algeria.
I buy my cigarettes from an Indian family and have for years had my hair trimmed by a Korean. Years ago one of my best friends was a charming Greek with a Korean wife. Speaking of wives, my wife, back in high school, had a young student from Indonesia live with her for a year. Occasionally, we try to track her down but have had no luck so far.
The Catholic church half a block from my house has a Spanish Mass every Sunday. My weekly Time Magazine always translates every quantitative measure into the metric system, and my publisher sold my first novel to Hayakawa in Japan. I buy my gas, just down the street, from British Petroleum.
One morning, as I was taking a walk, I came upon a major street reconstruction, the kind my town does where they dig down to the Ice Age and then begin the new street. Two monster diggers sat idle that early in the day, but they were big boys named Hitachi. Sitting where? Right at State and Main. Is that America or what?
After this cursory analysis I began to suspect that thinking global wasn’t all that bad. Better, it seemed, than wondering if my town was better than your town, or my country better than your country, or my religion better than your religion. Thinking globally means that the only thing I have to worry about defending is the one thing absolutely none of us can do without.
G. K. Wuori © 2008
Photoillustration by the author
