Ethnosphere: Our culture uniform

     Davis' claims that the ethnosphere of our worlds are becoming continuously uniform, meaning many cultures and their languages are losing their traditions. Although I agree that many cultures dying would be a bad thing, I do believe that it is an inevitable consequence of modernization and what it brings and at the rate our population is expanding it is impossible for us to stop it.

     His fears of the ethnosphere dying rapidly is unfortunate and unexaggerated. Davis describes a language to be a representation of a tongue and a soul of a cultural group. According to sources, which includes Davis, the majority of existing languages is spoken by a minority of people and the minority of existing languages is spoken by a majority of the world.






Countries such as Canada have created differing reserves to preserve forests and by extension the indigenous people. Although all of these issues are unfortunate, but with the increasing population and the expansion of differing industries it is impossible to save all of these cultures. Also it may seem insensitive but many may ask, "Why is it a bad thing to have a more uniform language and culture?". Personally, I would hate the world to be more uniform because of how bland and boring it makes us as a species, but I do not believe it will ever be possible for us to reverse this process.

So here's the TOK Research Question: Is it morally wrong to allow certain ethnic groups to go "extinct" when it's impossible to save them all?

If you consider this question, many will say how obvious the answer is and that we need to save these ethnic cultures. These groups who believe this will look to the examples of Canada and see the large reservations they promise to leave untouched. However, if every country were to make room for these ethnic groups that take up 5% of the world's population it will hinder the progress of 95% of the world. There is definitely a conflict of interest between indigenous peoples and modern generation. It is also out of our control that many indigenous youth are pursuing careers outside of their cultures. This can be seen in the Native Americans leaving their people for financial reasons.

However the damage done to ethnosphere can be argued as a rather trivial problem, it does mean that our world is rapidly losing our indigenous knowledge which is the most unique knowledge system of them all: Polynesians knowledge of navigation is unique to their indigenous people. They were able to navigate the ocean and know the the proper time to sail and where islands would be located without the help of Western technologies. This is unique to only the Poleynisian culture and these types of indigenous knowledge dies everyday. And a world with uniform knowledge seems uninteresting and boring to me, personally.