Globalism, as a concept, has many strange facets that can each dazzle and blind in their own way.  The basic principle is that the people of the world are somehow coming together and forming a single marketplace.  Since the start of this thing called “civilization”, however, a marketplace has been the center of social life and the two have not been easily distinguished.  Culture and commerce are ultimately, the same thing right down to the bare bones like contract law and the principles of incorporation.

The greatest friction between culture and the marketplace so far has come in the form of entertainment.  The line between literature and ordinary fiction is always a bit strange, and each generation has a chance to elevate some of its own entertainment to cultural status.  Some of our movies have been banned in other nations, but the real problem has come in what we call “piracy”, or “illegal copying”.  It’s illegal because under our laws, which protect such “intellectual property” carefully, we don’t want them to be copied in places like India or China.

That seems straightforward enough, but it starts to seem a bit strange when you see how many Yoga and Tai Chi Chu’an studios are opening up across the urban landscape.  These are ancient and highly cultural practices, so we see no reason why they should not be available to everyone.  They are clearly not property, by our laws, and they are not protected.  Is the person leading the studio properly trained in Yoga to be calling themselves a “Master”?  Caveat Emptor, to use the west’s ancient language, let the buyer beware.

This isn’t a huge cultural rip-off in the name of commerce, but when you get to “Core Power Yoga”, or “Yogarobics” as it is often called, there’s another problem.  If you think of Yoga as a brand name for something deeply cultural, which is to say owned by a culture, isn’t an aerobic variation of it so much of a departure that it dilutes the brand?

There are bigger examples.  Horst Rechelbacher learned the secrets of Ayurvedic Medicine while in India, which was a good thing for him.  A very good thing.  His company, Aveda, turned out many high quality products that sold very well until Horst sold it to Estée Lauder for $300 million.  The name “Aveda” is a registered trademark regardless of its ancient origins in India.

While we routinely use the cultural property of nations like India, globalism as a system hangs on their ability to stop people from using the intellectual property of individuals from our land.  In short, they have to value individual products as sacred and allow us to regard cultural products as being in the public domain.

Doesn’t sound like a big deal?  It is when you consider that the marketplace has always been the center of society and culture.  Our relationship to nations with cultures very different than ours is not a business deal, it’s simply a new kind of imperialism.  The many benefits of globalism can easily blind us to this.