some thoughts on ambition, culture, and globalization

Another semi-quick post. I´ve been reading The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman during my travels. I´ve found the book to be generally insightful about the globalizing forces that are reshaping the world and what it will mean for individuals who want to compete in the new marketplace. In it, his basic point is that due to a series of flattening forces that include technological advances and changes in geopolitics, work is increasingly going to whoever can do it the cheapest, fastest, and best. And of course, countries like china and india, with their large supply of eager, educated and hard-working people, are deriving the greatest benefits from this.

Reading the book has made me think a lot about brasil and its prospects for being competitive in the global marketplace. Brasil has incredible natural resources, being bigger than the contiguous united states, and containing many fertile lands with great biodiversity, and also possessing minerals and other resources. Brasil is also just a gigantic market as well and a dominant player in south america. But brasil´s culture, an attracting force for many tourists, also seems to me to put it at a disadvantage when it comes to global competition. Brasilians, at least outside of Sao Paolo, don´t seem to take seriously many things beyond looking good at the beach, which they do phenomenally well. My perspective may be skewed by having spent most of my time in rio, which has some striking similaritie to southern california, but overall, my outlook on brasil´s future in the international marketplace is lukewarm.

It´s also made me reflect on the conflicting values in myself. First, the ambition and drive the characterized much of my high school years. I worked my ass off and spent my summers studying and researching mathematics and science (yes, i was a big nerd). I wasn´t only doing it to get into a good school but I did recognize that I was competing for a limited number of places and that the harder i worked, the better chance I had. I think that sense of competition has in the last few years been fairly dormant. I´ve moved away from trying to compete for the sake of winning and moving towards finding something that i´m going to be passionate about and engaged in. I think that this process has been a healthy one for me overall but reading this book has also made me appreciate the culture of my childhood that stressed education and hard work. My upbringing and culture may have lacked some important things but I see with greater clarity that it also contained some very valuable elements as well.