Most Choose a Healthier, Wealthier Life

Jeremy Rifkin (“World Culture Resists Bowing to Commerce,” Commentary, July 2) states that “commerce and government are secondary institutions” and that “only when cultures are well developed is there enough social trust to support commercial and governmental institutions.” However, he misses this point: The primary purpose of the society is to provide its members with reasonable security so that they can meet their economic needs. A society is strong and has enough “social capital” once it can reach this goal to the satisfaction of its members. And among the societies, the culture that satisfies this the best seems to be the beleaguered consumerism and commercialism of the United States, which is the driving force behind globalization. That is why globalization is synonymous with Americanization around the world.

When the choice is between your native culture and speaking your mother tongue, on one hand, and living a healthier, wealthier life, on the other, most people tend to choose the latter, as evidenced by the thousands of immigrants arriving to this country every day.

Shervin Shambayati

Glendale

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The true challenge to local culture around the world is not so much commerce, as Rifkin sees it, but, more fundamentally, freedom. The French, for example, may see McDonald’s as a threat to their culture not because an army of Ronald McDonalds has captured Paris but because a number of French citizens, exercising their freedom of choice, may prefer a Big Mac to a croissant. The golden arches may upset the picture-postcard aesthetics of a traditional French community, but the McDonald’s would not be there if it did not represent choices made by a number of people in that community.

If Rifkin believes that preserving culture is more important than individual freedom, he should say so. If he believes that the culture of a nation or community, its way of life, should be politically defined and imposed from above rather than represent the aggregate of individual choices made by a free people, then he should come out and say that his “enemy” is not big business, globalization or free trade, but freedom itself.

Frederick Singer

Huntington Beach