Hagrid is in the House!

A decade ago, while on Semester at Sea, I wrote a piece (I guess you could call it a poem) about Globalization, titled "The United States of Borg."

Today, I received an email from the copyright coordinator at the Ministry of Education in Alberta, asking to reprint it in some courseware they are producing. I gladly told them yes, under a Creative Commons license, if they would send me a copy of the courseware when completed.

It seems I have made a mark on the world. The United States of Borg has turned out to be the most successful meme I have ever created, having been reprinted or quoted several times: here, here, here, and here.

You know, I always wanted to be a footnote!

We are the United States of Borg.

You will be assimilated.

Resistance is futile.

We will assimilate your cultural and national distinctiveness into our own.

You will be made to serve the process of globalization.

You will adopt American values as your own. You will go to work for the global megacorporations which further the Americanization of the world. You will then spend your income on American products.

You will drink Coca-Cola. You will eat at McDonald's. You will smoke Marlboro cigarettes. You will drive Chevrolets. You will wear American-style clothing. You will listen to music by American artists. You will watch video entertainment produced in Hollywood. You will worship Mickey Mouse.

You will use Microsoft software.

Most importantly, you will speak English.

Resistance is futile.

We will co-opt your culture, so that we may draw off parts of you and make them into our own image. We will adopt words from your language into the English language. We will adopt foods from your culture and adapt them into our own diets.

Your culture will be assimilated. Your culture will be Americanized. Those parts of your culture which cannot be Americanized will be discarded.

You will re-make your economies into American-style market economies. You will re-make your governments into western-style democratic republics. Your people will be allowed to retain their own indivdualities, but only insofar as it furthers the spread of the consumerist values collective. You will be more concerned with individual freedoms than communal values, so as to further the cause of individual consumerism. You will be detached from the natural world. You will remodel your cities into American-style cities. You will live in the suburbs.

The process is global. The process is unstoppable. You will be assimilated.

You will follow the example of previously assimilated nations. The Borg nations of Europe. BorgJapan. BorgCanada. You will join them.

We are the United States of Borg.

You will be assimilated.

Resistance is futile.

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I wrote this in late 1997, in response to what I saw as I travelled around the world as a Semester at Sea student. In country after country, I saw the globalization process taking place, the Americanization of the world. Traditional cultures are dying out as the world is homogenized into one common culture, a McDonald's culture. It reminded me of the way the Borg operate in Star Trek, and so I wrote this comparison. As is probably obvious, I have very mixed feelings about the process of globalization.