Havel’s global civilization is a thin veneer over deeper cultures

Evidence

Vaclav Havel, for example, has argued that “we now live in a single global civilization,” and that this “is no more than a thin veneer” that “covers or conceals the immense variety of cultures, of peoples, of religious worlds, of historical traditions and historically formed attitudes, all of which in a sense lie ‘beneath’ it.” Only semantic confusion, however, is gained by restricting “civilization” to the global level and designating as “cultures” or “subcivilizations,” those largest cultural entities which have historically always been called civilizations. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 154

Categorization

• XREF: Havel’s veneer metaphor connects to debates about globalization flattening vs. masking local difference, echoing themes in the reader’s notes on communication technology and culture.
• SHARE: This Havel quote plus Huntington’s rebuttal is a compact exchange worth sending to anyone tracking debates about global culture.