Alek Nyberg

Comm 211

Reflection #3

I found this reading to be particularly striking, for it gave a rather insightful look into the rapidly evolving and paradoxical world we live in today.  Naturally with so many people in the world, there are going to be differing views on how the world should be run, and this article has neatly split the ideologies into two main camps; the Jihad and the McWorld.  The Jihad side focuses on the more fundamentalist, traditional ways of living while the McWorld is more focused on the new and the innovative way of living.  The main issue that splits these two apart from what I see is the concept of progress.  While reading the article I couldn’t help but think that that is the fundamental concept that each of these groups is built upon.  The Jihad group has no use in progress, their ideology is rooted in either their religion or time tested tradition, and they see the McWorld as a threat to their lifestyle.  This is because the McWorld is all about progress, new innovations, new ways of thinking, new ways of living life are all treasured and sought after.  This in a way focuses once more on the individualistic vs.  collectivist way of living.  The Jihad focuses on older cultures which treasures group identity over all, while the McWorld focuses on individual representation and power.  I found this very important, because these two styles are nowhere near compatible, yet they both exist in this world in some form or the other.  Compromise is most likely impossible, and how this will bode for the future is a huge issue.

Even though this article did an excellent job of describing the conflicts between these two ideologies, I believe it is impossible to pinhole the entirety of the world in these two factors.  The article spoke of the paradoxical nature of countries which would argue against the value of a certain way of life (such as entertainment) and then hand out awards to those who partake in it.  This generalizes everyone in that country into either the Jihad or the McWorld culture, when that simply cannot be done.  Just because a number of people live in a certain region doesn’t mean they all have one collective mindset.  Humans are dynamic creatures, and it’s not like everyone who would take part in the Jihad or McWorld culture would agree with every aspect of said culture.  The article seemed to downplay this and lump everyone into either group, which downplays the humanity in the situation, which is a huge flaw, because humanity is the main part of why this conflict exists.  Humans are capable of choice and action, and ultimately, that is why not all aspects of culture are reconcilable.  It is simply improbable that everyone can agree on a single way of life.