Globalization's Effect on Society

Globalization's Effect on Society

Globalization is the progressive movement of one cultures economic and social groups towards the coexistence with another culture. However, whether or not globalization is a good path for the world to take or not, is up for debate.

Globalization enhances cultures by uniting countries and creating a peaceful existence, however it also contributes to the destruction of cultures when one country simply overwhelms another. Uniting cultures is essential for peaceful existence because treaties and truces between two waring countries are able to be formed. When countries becomes allies it not only secures peace, but it also allows for the two cultures to mingle with one another, spreading their beliefs and practices. It also allows for a universal language to be established, effectively removing all language barriers from one culture to another. Just as it is in modern times now, English has become the dominant language of the 21st century (Wiki: Universal Language). The United Nations and the European Union are two of the most important advances in globalization. The UN, being the most in fact "global", is solely responsible for uniting 192 member states, which actually consist of all sovereign states in the world with the exception of the Vatican city, under the belief of peace and prosperity throughout the world (Wiki: United Nations). Not only does the UN help all of their contingent members, but they are also responsible for reaching out to many third world and developing countries who need assistance that they are too underdeveloped to handle problems of drought and starvation themselves. The EU also plays a vital part in globalization, but it's effect is slightly more localized, mainly focusing its concerns on Europe as opposed to reaching out to other continents.

There is one major down side to globalization however. Globalization can actually cause the extinction of a culture, such as when western influences hit japan in the 1800's, the Japanese abandoned their age old philosophies in order to conform to the new and more exciting culture of the west, and this is most notable in the eventual extinction of the Japanese samurai. Another notable case of this, but much a more forceful form of a culture taking over, is when the European's colonized North America, they saw the Native American's as a barbaric people, and rather than trying to preserve the ways of their culture that had been in existence for hundreds of years, they wiped them out and appropriated many of them as slaves, causing the Native American's to adopt the new American culture in order to preserve their own lives.

Economically speaking, globalization has almost next to no downsides. By multiple countries agreeing to coexist peacefully, trade between the societies is soon to follow. This not only stimulates the economy by incorporating more buyers into the market, but it also creates more jobs for the selling culture because now more products are having to be supplied in order to meet the demands. The North American Free Trade Agreement is the most notable form of economic advancement. NAFTA was an agreement made between Canada, Mexico, and the United States that made it so a regulated tariff was established between the three countries. This made it so that the countries were able to trade freely between each other without having to worry about one country choosing to trade with another country based off of lower tariffs(Wiki: North American Free Trade Agreement). True globalization will be most easily achieved when there is an accepted world wide currency put into effect that can replace all other currency and has the capital to back of the value of the currency, and the EU is on it's way to establishing just that. The EU put into circulation the Euro in 2002 as a form of universal currency throughout Europe. It has become the most valuable form of standardized currency in the world, though not the most accepted form of currency ( that title still belongs to the US dollar), and is increasingly growing in popularity with seventeen of the twenty-one EU members now accepting the Euro as a main currency. With one Euro now equating to the value of 1.40 US dollars, the Euro is on a firm