Chapter 59, NPR podcast, WP article

 What I took away from chapter 59 the most was the concerns that the interview with Bharathi brought up about globalization in the work place. It is amazing that so many people can be interconnected around the world but when all those people who are connecting start to lose their individuality because of how much the shared work culture takes over that amazement loses its spark. The benefits of globalization are lost when we start to share one global culture too much, it is important to keep connection with your original roots too. Bharathi states how her work has become full of people who share one class, where she can guess all of their thoughts and opinions because it's the exact same for everyone. This is a fear a lot of people have with globalization, that everyone will become too similar and lose their individual cultures' unique traits. This is why I think it important to experience life both global and local when you can outside of things like your workplace where you have little choice in the matter. Keeping cultures alive is part of an individual's responsibility although not fully their own burden to bear. 

On the other hand the NPR podcast about the globalization of music takes about globalization in the opposite way. Music has always been a way to connect people and bring them together from all over, but with globalization we see this happening in music even more now. Artists are taking influence but different musical genres and styles from all over when creating new music. Not only are artists taking influence but artists from entirely different parts of the world are coming together to collaborate over music while staying so far apart. Globalization has also created the ability for smaller artists with more niche styles with no way to advertise their music in the same way that large artists can to become just as popular and well known globally because of our access to streaming platforms like bandcamp and spotify. Of course the podcast also makes sure to talk about the risks that come with the globalization of music like cultural appropriation and how easy it is for large audiences to spread hate when they don’t like how an artist did something wrong or not. It is always important to stay mindful of potential consequences when creating anything to post online. 

I would argue that the Washington Post article about the global culture war was wrong when they said that the world isn’t conforming to the idea people had right after the Cold War that cultures and countries could slowly become more like the US. As stated by the author the US focuses a lot on power over others and money in the global economy. Russia's war on Ukraine is a power play, they want to have control over Ukraine and other countries like they did when they were the USSR. What China is doing is similar too, the moves they are making within their country and with others seems to be mostly done in order to benefit their economy more. China wants to take over the global economy and be the hegemonic power in place of the US. I think these countries are conforming to our western culture exactly. We just don’t want to see it as that because it means we have competition on a global scale now. Even though they are using the exact same means to gain power that we did in the past we see it as terrible because we left those practices behind but are still reaping the benefits of it.