Brooks! Brooks! Brooks!

All Cultures Are Not Equal - New York Times: "Go into the field that barely exists: cultural geography. Study why and how people cluster, why certain national traits endure over centuries, why certain cultures embrace technology and economic growth and others resist them."

David Brooks is really coming in to his own as a NYTimes columnist. The gospel that he's preaching above, that of cultural geography, is, in my opinon, a more nuanced form of global sociology--something at which he himself excels in on a national level, with the fabulous books Bobos in Paradise and On Paradise Drive, as well as being one of the first to describe the breakdown of red and blue America and the variations and purple shadings found in states like Missouri or Pennsylvania (Philly in the east, Pitt in the West, Alabama in the middle). He has a knack for catchy labeling on sharp insights, much like Thomas Friedman.

As for the specifics of this study of "cultural geography"--I think I'm 4 years late and missed my calling. It is indeed time to summon a new Huntington to the fore--we are not, per se, facing a "Clash of Civilizations" but we certainly are facing something similar as we rapidly divide into a globe increasingly defined by the "West," the Islamic world, and Asia (primarily China/India/Japan). Culture and beliefs are incredibly pervasive, even in an era of global branding. Save for the Golden Arches themselves, a McD's in the USA is largely unrecognizable from a Japanese one or French one. And that's just consumerism, and this stuff runs much much deeper. S has reminded me of Geert Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions, a great business/marketing-modeling tool for analyzing the business repurcussions of the cultural geographic landscape. As for me, I'd like to turn to theoretical and political/diplomatic writing and examine the psycho-anthropology of the modern global landscape.....I think that'll be enough to keep me busy on weekends for the rest of my life....

Well I'm off to dream and define.