Go
into the field that barely exists: cultural geography. Study why and how people
cluster, why certain national traits endure over centuries, why certain
cultures embrace technology and economic growth and others resist them.
This
is the line of inquiry that is now impolite to pursue. The gospel of
multiculturalism preaches that all groups and cultures are equally wonderful.
There are a certain number of close-minded thugs, especially on university
campuses, who accuse anybody who asks intelligent questions about groups and
enduring traits of being racist or sexist. The economists and scientists tend
to assume that material factors drive history - resources and brain chemistry -
because that's what they can measure and count.
But
none of this helps explain a crucial feature of our time: while global
economies are converging, cultures are diverging, and the widening cultural
differences are leading us into a period of conflict, inequality and
segmentation.
Not
long ago, people said that globalization and the revolution in communications
technology would bring us all together. But the opposite is true. People are
taking advantage of freedom and technology to create new groups and cultural
zones. Old national identities and behavior patterns are proving surprisingly
durable. People are moving into self-segregating communities with people like
themselves, and building invisible and sometimes visible barriers to keep
strangers out.
If
you look just around the United States you find amazing cultural segmentation.
We in America have been "globalized" (meaning economically
integrated) for centuries, and yet far from converging into some homogeneous
culture, we are actually diverging into lifestyle segments. The music, news,
magazine and television markets have all segmented, so there are fewer cultural
unifiers like Life magazine or Walter Cronkite.
Forty-million
Americans move every year, and they generally move in with people like
themselves, so as the late James Chapin used to say, every place becomes more
like itself. Crunchy places like Boulder attract crunchy types and become
crunchier.
Conservative
places like suburban Georgia attract conservatives and become more so.
Not
long ago, many people worked on farms or in factories, so they had similar
lifestyles. But now the economy rewards specialization, so workplaces and
lifestyles diverge. The military and civilian cultures diverge. In the
political world, Democrats and Republicans seem to live on different planets.
Meanwhile,
if you look around the world you see how often events are driven by groups that
reject the globalized culture. Islamic extremists reject the modern cultures of
Europe, and have created a hyperaggressive fantasy version of traditional
Islamic purity. In a much different and less violent way, some American Jews
have moved to Hebron and become hyper-Zionists.
From
Africa to Seattle, religiously orthodox students reject what they see as the
amoral mainstream culture, and carve out defiant revival movements. From Rome
to Oregon, antiglobalization types create their own subcultures.
The
members of these and many other groups didn't inherit their identities. They
took advantage of modernity, affluence and freedom to become practitioners of a
do-it-yourself tribalism. They are part of a great reshuffling of identities,
and the creation of new, often more rigid groupings. They have the zeal of
converts.
Meanwhile,
transnational dreams like European unification and Arab unity falter, and
behavior patterns across nations diverge. For example, fertility rates between
countries like the U.S. and Canada are diverging. Work habits between the U.S.
and Europe are diverging. Global inequality widens as some nations with certain
cultural traits prosper and others with other traits don't.
People
like Max Weber, Edward Banfield, Samuel Huntington, Lawrence Harrison and
Thomas Sowell have given us an inkling of how to think about this stuff, but
for the most part, this is open ground.
If
you are 18 and you've got that big brain, the whole field of cultural geography
is waiting for you.