Today, despite information technologies such as the World Wide
Web, there is no "'global village culture" and we have not reached
Francis Fukuyama's "'end of history". Repeated measurements of
culture show that countries that get richer get more
individualistic. For the other dimensions, no such trends are
apparent. Since worldwide differences in wealth are on the rise,
this would point to increasing cultural differences, not cultural
convergence.
To be sure, there are major worldwide problems that can only be
resolved in collaboration: environmental issues, world populations
sizes, pandemics, food provision. And today, humans are trying to
solve problem globally, as in worldwide climate conferences.
Unfortunately our loyalties are still more limited, and as a result
we suffer from major international confrontations, both military
and economic. But these are confrontations between countries or
groups of countries, not between cultures per se. Cultural
differences will remain whether we can solve our global problems or
not. But fault lines between groups based on ideologies, in which
all members of the other group are labelled immoral in some
way, need to disappear, if we are to stop destroying one
another and the world of our children. We need to come to terms
with a culturally distributed world that can still act coherently
when necessary. Cross-cultural understanding is one of the vital
ingredients of this capacity. Yet we are threatened at many levels
by traps of in-group / out-group conflict. We need to wake up to
these threats. The more we know, the greater our
responsibility.