Globalization
I think that culture is the highest goal of human development. At least, it is the goal I value the most. In era of globalization, we get global economy, English as international language, easy access to worldwide information in exchange of our national identity, culture. I think that countries lose more than gain trough this exchange. Mostly that reflects to less influential countries, like the Baltic States. Those are not the Americans, British or Russians that lose their national identity - they are the ones whom small countries adapt to.
As I see it, those are the English-speaking nations whose culture suffers the least from globalization… or - does not suffer at all. The reason is that language is one of the cornerstones of culture. Nowadays people listen to music and watch movies in English, adapt fashion, art and celebrations from English-speaking countries. We even add English words when we speak in our native language. Off course, English-speakers are not the only ones responsible. For example, the same can be said about Russia and Russian-speakers in other part of the world.
Latvians, for example, are a mixture of history from Russian culture and contemporary innovations of Europe and the USA. That means we prefer not only hamburgers, hotdogs and coca-cola, but also pizza and shashlyk instead of stewed sauerkraut and sour milk. But the overwhelming majority of innovations nowadays come from English-speaking nations.
Not only our national values should be more important than economy, but the global economy itself is failing. Now the entire world suffers because of banks in the USA. Or the whole EU because of Greece. But nations have already lost their culture and independence from the rest of the world. The developed countries like Germany, France, USA etc. can recover relatively fast (cheap labor; export), but the small countries, they have accustomed by forcing to shut down their small factories, continue to drown.
In the end, the only good thing about globalization, that has no drawbacks, is that we have no problem finding out needed information and world headlines in ten minutes. Was that really worth it? I would say no, but the fact is that there is no other way… at least, not anymore.
