In 1999, the tenth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, while the business press swooned with giddy proclamations of the sustained “victory” of capitalism over communism, and even proclaimed an end to the business cycle, a street battle closed down the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Seattle, Washington. 

Organizers were trying to put the brakes on the so-called culture-destroying globalization juggernaut. But most of the world’s growing population still demands a better life; and it is capitalism, we are told, that is the only vehicle able to make that happen.

On the other hand, it seems that the advent of American-style capitalism threatens cultures everywhere as McDonald’s, Starbucks, and Hollywood create a bland sameness and undermine local sensibilities wherever they spread. It is for this reason that many people are concerned about the impact of capitalism even while enjoying the fruitsof its creation.

Since the dawn of religion over twenty-five hundred years ago, we have been cautioned about the evils of excessive “materialism” and have been implored to moderate our choices to retain our true values, a pious way of life, a culture in service to the will of a higher power. 

Globalization reduces  people’s ability to focus solely on living a spiritual life because it sweeps everyone it touches into a monetized economy that requires that we all work in impersonal organizations to make a living. It isn’t globalization per se that is the problem. It is the economic system itself, embraced virtually everywhere today as the one true religion of modernity. It is the real culprit of culture change both here and around the world.

The driving force undermining confidence in the globalization phenomenon is the set of values and operating rules that make the economic system work. It is the uncanny symbiosis between people’s immediate self-interest and the fundamental rules of the game that places profit above all else that insidiously transforms cultures.

The dominant economic model espouses free markets; minimal government, including privatization of all public assets and the deregulation of business; and the protection of capital via removal of corporate and capital gains taxes. It assumes (conveniently for those with capital) in this race to riches that disadvantages, weaknesses, and failures are due to the lack of individual effort and the shirking of personal responsibility. The poor have only themselves to blame. In this new world, consumption for its own sake, financial freedom, and organizational power replace striving to become a good person, to earn salvation in the hereafter, or to find enlightenment. The money economy, and the need to be employed to make a living, make living a life in service to spiritual ends and philosophical beliefs increasingly difficult.