The Convergence of Civilizations

For all the talk of the global "clash of civilizations" — the theory of inevitable conflict between cultures and religions, coined by a founder of this magazine, Samuel P. Huntington — the interesting thing about the decade after the 9/11 attacks, when so many prognosticators and pundits championed this argument, is just how wrong they got it.

The view that Islam in particular is on a collision course with the West thanks to a yawning cultural divide got a second look when the Arab Spring didn’t instantly lead to deals for Cairo Disney and Hooters Tunis. But, if anything, shared values are converging across countries and time zones and, yes, across cultures and religions. Granted, not all this convergence is universal. We’re not about to see the end of history in a world where everyone’s a fan of Justin Bieber (inshallah…), practices yoga, and understands the intricacies of feng shui. But there is a growing global cosmopolitanism that by and large reflects a vision of a better planet, despite the unfortunate fact that there are now a whole lot more Yankees fans.

Take global views on democracy, as reflected in the World Values surveys conducted throughout the 2000s. In Egypt, 98 percent of people thought that having a democratic political system was a good thing, an overwhelming figure echoed in other places we tend to think of as being less than democratic: 94 percent in China, 93 percent in Vietnam, 92 percent in Iran, and 88 percent in Iraq. (Oddly, in the United States, only 86 percent of the population voiced support for democratic systems.) In fact, in every country where the question was asked, considerable majorities backed democracy. Across the countries surveyed between 2004 and 2006, the average was 87 percent support for democracy as the best form of government.

Another value emerging worldwide is concern for the environment. Even in the United States, popular opinion has moved behind doing something about climate change. Americans are far from being completely sold on the issue: Sixty percent also support more offshore drilling, and (among those who have heard of it) two-thirds want to build the Keystone XL pipeline that will funnel sulfur-rich oil sands from Canada to refineries in the United States. Still, three-quarters of the public supports tax rebates for purchasing fuel-efficient vehicles or solar panels and regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant, and nearly 65 percent supports an international treaty requiring the United States to cut carbon dioxide emissions 90 percent by 2050, according to George Mason and Yale University polling. Ask people the world over whether they are willing to give up part of their income for the environment, and according to the World Values Survey, two-thirds say yes, including 82 percent in China and 68 percent in India.

What about attitudes toward people different from ourselves? On average, only 13 percent of respondents in countries surveyed suggested they did not want to live next to a person of a different race in the 2006 wave of the World Values Survey, down from 17 percent in 1993. Three-quarters of countries surveyed in both waves saw this measure of racism decline. Furthermore, the average percentage saying that they didn’t want to live next to someone of a different religion fell from 44 percent to 33 percent — backed up by declining rates of religious intolerance in 91 percent of surveyed countries. Over the same time, the average percentage of people saying that homosexuality is "never justifiable" fell from 59 percent to 34 percent, with declines in 93 percent of countries surveyed both years. That still adds up to a world with billions of bigots, but almost everywhere intolerance is at least in the minority now.

These attitude changes reflect dramatic changes in actual behavior. Take schooling for girls. By no means was this a global norm 50 years ago. Today, however, parents the world over are sending their daughters to school in far greater numbers. In Ethiopia in 1996, for example, only about six girls attended school for every 10 boys, according to World Bank data. By 2010, that had climbed to nearly nine girls for every 10 boys.

Or think about changing attitudes toward sex. There’s no evidence that people are having less of it, but they are producing a lot fewer babies. The total fertility rate in Spain halved between 1970 and 1990, for example, and the trend is global. Parents everywhere, rich and poor, educated and not, religious and atheists alike, appear to have decided that life is better with fewer kids. Countries from Iran to Vietnam already have fertility rates low enough to suggest local populations are likely to shrink over time, and global fertility rates are converging in that direction. Simply put, women with more control over their bodies are deciding to have fewer kids.

Besides, the whole clash-of-civilizations hypothesis makes the mistake of assuming that culture and national identity trump other factors, when in fact, as Spanish sociologist Juan Díez Nicolás and others note, values within "cultural groupings," whether Islamic or Latin American, vary as much as they do across such groupings, largely because socioeconomic factors — how rich and educated you are — appear to determine beliefs more than historical cultural roots.

The cringe-worthy YouTube video about the Prophet Mohammed released last year (and the considerable overreaction to it across the Islamic world) might have suggested we are heading in the wrong direction. But if television is any barometer, consider that today there is an Arab Idol, an Afghan Star, and a Turkstar — just like similar singing competitions in almost every Western country. Even our TV shows are converging.

Indeed, one of the more amusing WikiLeaks involved a 2009 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh reporting on a conversation between diplomats and television executives in Saudi Arabia about the comparative impact of the U.S. government-funded channel, Alhurra, and local networks MBC and Rotana (partially owned by Rupert Murdoch). No one really cared for the long interviews with George W. Bush broadcast on Alhurra (a channel that costs U.S. taxpayers more than $100 million annually — considerably more than Sesame Street‘s budget). But, the diplomats reported, MBC channel 4 showing reruns of Friends and Desperate Housewives was far more influential and popular — even in remote, conservative areas of the country.

Talk about soft power: We know that the spread of television had a dramatic impact on values regarding the role of girls and women in countries from Brazil to India. As TV signals and cable access spread, school enrollment went up and fertility rates went down. Even in Saudi Arabia that could well hold true. And with the "digital divide" increasingly a thing of Davos conferences past, YouTube now represents this phenomenon on steroids.

We’re hardly at the point of global comity and the end of national differences, of course. World Values Survey experts Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart point out that the survey shows no consistent decline in nationalism across countries, for example. And converging values don’t necessarily translate into American values. For one thing, on issues like the environment and attitudes toward homosexuality, there have been considerable changes in U.S. values over time. So American values are a moving target too. Perhaps we’re really all converging on the Nordic Norms of Scandinavia.

In fact, there’s plenty of global convergence that Americans might not feel so comfortable about. Take recent Pew Research Center polling on attitudes regarding U.S. drone strikes: It shows that in only one country out of 20 did the majority approve of American strikes on terrorist targets — and that one country was the United States. In Egypt, 89 percent were opposed; in China, that figure was 55 percent. Even America’s close ally, Britain, saw more people (47 percent) disapprove of rather than condone (44 percent) the unmanned aerial war on terror.

So if you’re American, don’t expect to be welcomed with open arms by the average Pakistani anytime soon. But here’s a silver lining: If you’re black, Mormon, or gay, at least take some comfort in the fact that they probably hate you most of all because of your president’s foreign policy — not because of your color, creed, or sexual orientation.