To be More Contagious of Our Culture

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Many Americans are very proud of our culture. Our culture has been portrayed as the most contagious in the modern world.  Any movies or TV programs made in the US can gain popularity everywhere else in the world.  It seemed that all people across the globe brace our values, admire our life, and lover our people.  However, when come down to the reality, we are very surprised that we have enemies almost everywhere although we claim ourselves as the world police.

A careful look at our culture we can easily tell which parts of our culture that are really attractive to others – sex, violence, and luxury life style.  We can image, if we take away these three things from our movie and TV programs, how many people will be willing to pay to “enjoy” what we produced?  It is these three components that make our culture more “attractive” than many other cultures.  Even though people may say that sex and violence are basic instincts, how about our luxury life?  However, as our President Obama once expressed, if everyone in China will live like us, the earth cannot support!

We try very hard to sell our values to the world, but few countries/places in the world come of out poverty by following our footprints.  We try not to show our people the progresses made by people in other countries/places in order for our people to believe that our culture is the best.  I wonder, we have so many Nobel Prize winners, we produced so many great politicians, why seldom I see one come out to objectively show to us that our culture is most contagious?  What we heard often are the claims by some politicians when they run a position or give a talk in the international stage, plus a few “scholars” barking in the back and claiming the advantages of our culture.

As a great nation, the United States has leaded the world for more than half a century.  We need to re-think our culture as the world leader, not the leader of a fewer rich people.  American culture should be much more contagious than it has been.  We need to better crystallize our culture so that it will become a value for the humankind.  History is the best mirror – When many people laugh at ancient Chinese not knowing how to make money via the Silk Road, we need to think about why the industrialization started in Europe failed to bring the continent of Africa up via the “Ocean Road” that was sorround Africa.

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