XENITH

I am less significant, in the broadest sense, than my great-grandparents. I represent less than one-sixth the percentage of the global population than they did when they were the same age I am now. Remarkably, despite two centuries of negative predictions that the globe could not possible sustain any larger population than whatever it happened to be at present, we continue to thrive as a species. Moving now, past the beginning of the 21st century and into the meat of it, something is happening that is revolutionizing the way human beings experience the world.

One of the most stunning examples of this Shahrukh Khan. You’ve probably never heard of Shahrukh, because he isn’t exactly famous in the United States, but nevertheless, he is one of the most easily recognizable people in the world. He’s an actor in India, Bollywood, as most people call it. In the last seventy-five years, the population of the world has exploded, with most of the growth coming in Asia. Two continents, Africa and South America, have yet to see the fulfillment of post-industrial growth, though Africa is now the fastest growing continent in terms of the number of people.

What Shahrukh represents is the reality that despite popular American belief, (even that of some Europeans) global culture is not being homogenized. In fact, it is getting to the point that it will soon be nearly impossible to be truly globally famous. Short of high-power world leaders and a handful of actors and actresses, most people will be relegated to being only known to a smaller group of people, mot of which will either be in their immediate locality physically, or in an immediate locality virtually.

Most of us have seen the humorous video entitled EPIC 2014, which details in a fantastic way, how the world is going to be changed over the next half decade. While obviously ludicrous in some regards (Google and Amazon will probably never merge), the comment it makes about how the average person is going to find out about things in the world is probably fairly accurate.

In the grand scheme of all of the nearly seven billion folks that call Earth home, none of us is really that big a deal, but we will find, I think, over the next several years, that we possess qualities of significance to our communities that most of us were never aware we had. Participation in the world will happen on many scales, ranging from small groups of five or six, like you find on some small message boards, to mega networks, like Facebook or MySpace. The interconnectedness of these spheres will allow (force?) ordinary people to contribute to a different kind of world, where the things that you share will be processed by dozens, hundreds and thousands.

This makes the arts so much more important than they ever have been. The fulfillment of the human desire for knowledge will leave most, I believe, longing for something more substantial, more meaningful, and this is where true significance will come into play. Artists, poets, writers, musicians and the like are going to be the cultural elite of the 21st century, by providing the beauty and mystery that comes from not the accumulation of knowledge, but it’s presentation.

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