I'm trying to connect some vague dots in my mind and hoping they will evolve into something dot's coherent. A rather silly thing – Thai snack foods – triggered a notion.
Thomas Friedman, in his book, The World Is Flat: A Brief History Of The Twenty-First Century, tries to make the case that globalization is a happening thing and humanity will soon level itself off as developing nations (through technology) begin competing effectively with first-tier countries. Mr. Friedman's book is about economics. Reviewers who know much more about literature and economics than myself have lambasted the book. They make it sound as if his book is an even more specious read than this blog. I haven't read it. (The only thing I know about global economics is that my current salary, which is based on US dollars, has taken a helluva beating because of the recent devaluation of the dollar and I'm receiving fewer Thai baht in my paycheck because of it.)
The thing that strikes me most about the book is its title (which has also been criticized and pulverized). The World Is Flat suggests to me that all citizens of the world will soon look alike, think alike, speak the same language (English, of course) and share and develop ideas through similar technologies. There are many indicators pointing in that direction and a certain global leveling is evident, but wait a minute... Let's put the microscope over some minutiae that might refute the overall flattening of Mr. Friedman's world. Let's look at taste buds.
Everyone who travels to Asia from a western country encounters a few exotic items on the airline's menus as they endure the long flight. Obviously, many, if not most, of the passengers are Asians and they appreciate a certain amount of pandering to the Asian palate. Traditional western foods are available as well, but many westerners opt for the Japanese, or Chinese, or Thai breakfasts – which certainly ain't bacon and eggs, or beans on toast, in the English style. Ordering an Asian breakfast usually leaves the western palate wishing it had ordered bacon and eggs.
Okay... let me try to connect a couple of the dots here. Taste. That elusive tongue thing that makes us love foods that others hate and makes us hate foods that others love. It's inexplicable. It's conditioning and its triggers are embedded in the first tastes to soothe our palates as well as the social customs of the culture we grow up in. Once installed – once conditioned to an array of satisfying flavors – our preferred cultural tastes occupy the highest rungs of our preferences, even though many other essences, exotic to our conditioning, may also become familiar favorites. But there are limits.
Flavor boundaries separate cultures as effectively as lines on a map. Oh sure... We say, "Let's order Chinese take-out," or "go out for sushi," or "let's try that new Thai restaurant around the corner," and so on, but one never sees monkey brains (raw and fresh killed at your table), or red ants in chile paste on the menu. Those, and many more, are the favored delicacies that separate cultures.
Snack foods here in Thailand tell the tale for me. The packaging is attractive and as alluring as any of the saturated fat traps found on American supermarket shelves, but the flavors they advertise can make a western mouth pucker in disgust. I mean... you ever cracked open a beer and reached into a bag of shrimp flavored potato chips? How about dried cuttlefish, or crab flavored curly snacks? Red snapper nochos? The labeling alone on these Thai snack delights suggests a malodorous experience to my western tongue.
Well sure... we exchange and delight in the fragrances and tastes of a whole veneer of foreign flavors that we all seem to gravitate towards, but it's the radical, not so appetizing to all, tribal flavors that remain unique to the people of a particular culture and which creates a closed society populated by initiated palates.
My point (not well presented, I'm afraid) is this: The taste bud subtleties that separate cultures, even those within the same country (hog jaw, anyone?), are tribal demarcations that protect the tribe and tend to discourage intruders from joining the enclave. Unique tastes reside under the surface of all tribes. They are formed over hundreds of years of geographic, agricultural, nationalist and economic conditioning. They quietly, diligently and effectively prevent the realization of Friedman's proposed Flat World and I don't believe that shared technology will change it a bit. Tribes protect their territories in subtle and effective ways.
[Of course we have sugar, salt, tobacco and alcohol – the four universal addictions and the flattest spots on the human palate.]
So you see... Yep... It's all about snacks... and here you probably thought it was religions, national borders, soccer and Hollywood that determined the demarcation lines of our various cultures.
Pass me the burger, fries and Coke. Hold the fried seaweed and shredded cuttlefish.
