Vive la différence!

"I don't think that cultures have tried systematically or methodically to differentiate themselves from each other. The fact is that for hundreds of thousands of years mankind was not very numerous on the earth; small groups were living in isolation, so that it was only natural that they developed characteristics of their own and became different from each other. It was not something aimed at. Rather, it is the simple result of the conditions which have been prevailing for an extremely long time.

Now, I would not like you to think that this in itself is harmful or that these differences should be overcome. As a matter of fact, differences are extremely fecund. It is only through difference that progress has been made. What threatens us right now is probably what we may call overcommunication - that is, the tendency to know exactly in one point of the world what is going on in all other parts of the world. In order for a culture to be really itself and to produce something, the culture and its members must be convinced of their originality and even, to some extent, of their superiority over the others; it is only under conditions of undercommunication that it can produce anything. We are now threatened with the prospect of our being only consumers, able to consume anything from any point in the world and from every culture, but of losing all originality".

Era il 1978. Ed era Claude Lévi-Strauss (Myth and Meaning).