the future of civilizations: are cultural dialogues possible?

To Huntington's argument of the inevitability of cultural clashes in a globalizing age (and his call for cultural dialogues in his conclusion), many argue that a global culture is not only emerging, but should be built.

Peter Berger believes a global culture is already formed in four different areas:

• Davos or yuppie consumer and business culture with Western origins.
• Faculty Club Culture or the internationalization of the Western intelligentsia.
• McWorld or Western popular culture.
• Evangelical protestantism.

Cultural dialogues are not only inevitable, but to Berger, commonly shared cultural patterns have already formed.

Drohan and Freeman further push Berger's argument to say that whether to like it, because of American political and military power, English is the most widely used language in the world and can function as a global language.

Fishman twists the previous argument to give the universal language concept a more nuanced analysis: different languages will continue to be spoken, but languages will come to acquire more and more sophisticated meaning, even with English, as it becomes indigenized and as it comes to be perceived as different things by different people.

Rothkopf argues the West, especially the U.S., should aggressively export its culture to avoid cultural conflicts. This is because

• historically it is proven that social structures, laws, and institutions that transcend culture have been successful in accommodating different peoples, and different countries have developed workable integrative models. (O"Meara, p.445)
• The American culture is a melting pot and allows individual freedom and cultures to thrive (p.450), hence a good model for global culture.
• The U.S. dominates international information technology and exporting American culture helps to facilitate export of American technology.

"Culture Wars" argue that Americanization in a global culture is inevitable, and cultural subsidies from various countries to protect indigenous cultures do not help to deter it. On the other hand, even though American culture is powerful, it does not monopolize world culture.