CULTURAL DIFFERENCES AND WORLD UNITY: THE EVOLUTION OF A GLOBAL CULTURAL ECOSYSTEM DRIVEN BY PRODUCTIVITY

Abstract

Divergences in globalization are often attributed to conflicts of interest or ideology, yet their profound origins lie in the hierarchical and differential nature of cultural systems. Culture is essentially a nested set system: with individual culture as the atomic unit, it aggregates through kinship, geography, and institutions into familial, regional, national, and global cultures, adhering to the Law of Commonality Attenuation (i.e., the expansion of a cultural system's scope dilutes its shared cultural core and weakens emotional bonds among its members). This inherent variability in human social organization constitutes a fundamental barrier to world unity. However, it is not immutable. With transformative advances in productivity and technology, a path to unity beyond coercion and upheaval is becoming clear: its objective is not cultural displacement by a dominant model, but the natural evolution—driven by productivity—of a nascent world culture. This process entails the non-coercive selection, integration, and sublimation of global cultural essences. Catalyzed by the information revolution and centered on individual emancipation, it ultimately propels humanity from discrete "regional cultural assemblages" toward a "global cultural community of harmony in diversity."