TheBoost said:
But there's never been a static culture, and those that try to be (the Amish, the Japanese in the past) are completely defined by their unnatural desire to be static.
The "German" culture we know today is a moment in time, an snapshot of cultures meeting, merging, taking, losing, changing, adapting. Anything we might call the "English"/"UK" culture is a total and constantly changing hodgepodge; the "American" culture even moreso. I toured the beautiful mosques in Spain, and have seen the first Christian monasteries in Scotland; antique signs that no culture ever stays the same.
The idea of "preserving" a culture is completely artificial to what cultures are. It's even a little paternalistic when we apply it to people like un-contacted tribes.
I agree with you that the American culture is a deep, and wonderful thing, and from sea to shining sea I love it (except South Carolina... they know why). But I can't sit listening to my Irish-inspired Appalachian banjo music, eating my tex-mex lunch, sitting in my Tudor style living room, and think outside influences somehow lessens a culture.
Oh, I completely agree about any given culture today merely being a snapshot in time that will inevitable be different just a mere generation down the road. But the thing is, I myself am also subject to time, I can't go visit Germany in the 1920's, or see 1960's England for myself. The best I can do is visit these places within the period of time I am locked into. It is the thought of all these places becoming more and more alike that is disappointing to me. Seeing the same shops and brands and food and television, regardless of what borders I am behind.
I grant you that my complaint may be kind of pithy, and the threat isn't as dire as I am sure to make it. I want England speckled in red porn plastered phone booths, and hole in the wall pubs, not a bunch of Eastern looking Mosques. For my Eastern looking Mosques I want to have to go to places like Turkey, Albania, or further East. I love the variety the world has to offer, and the idea of cultures beginning to merge and the world continually shrinking always makes me a bit sad.
Also, I am not denying that every culture inevitable has influences from other cultures. It is part of what is cool about it. It is really fascinating picking out the foreign influence and the historical reasons for why those influences exist. It is not as fun when that influence is a bunch of massive golden "M" shaped arches around any given city with American capitalism as the reason.