I think that what may be the last stanza in Blake’s “Jerusalem” consiously reflects the wish to be a successful, influential culture. It is something of an anthem among Britain’s elites, I suspect. As an American with a diverse genetic background which doesn’t include English ancestry it’s interesting that I identify overwhelmingly with them and their experience. I know “Jerusalem” is a hymn sung with great emotion at the death of some statesmen there; maybe one of our English cousins would care to elaborate about the consious impulse as it did/does exsist:

“I shall not cease from mental fight,
nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
’til we have builded Jeruselem, here,
in Englands green and gentle land.”

Is it possible American cultural products aim at the masses while other nations’ products aim at the elite? That might explain the worldwide attraction.

And, Pouncer, it is jazz, but it is also baseball. Jacques Barzun observed that you’ll never understand American culture unless you understand baseball. It is a bounded, individualistic game, balanced upon a meta-rule that “thou shalt not take unfair advantage.” Consider the balk rule or the infield fly rule. Both are designed, deliberately, to prevent a player or team from being ‘unfairly’ punished for deeds not done. Classic American attitude.

No.

We are jazz.

If I have to explain that, you ain’t gonna understand.

This is why it was a revolutionary statement when the French adopted the famous textbook starting “Our ancestors, the Gauls.” Gauls, not Franks, you see.

As to whether the Anglospere can somehow “take over”, I don’t know. I do not think this should be any sort of goal. Why ask for trouble? You do your thing, we’ll do ours, just don’t send us any suicide bombers. Other than that, minimal rule sets for trade.

As to our “charm” industries, our popular culture is a cataract of septic garbage. It is our weakest point, a strategic weakness. People hate us who would not hate us if they actually knew us. They hate the detestable image depicted in entertainment products which originate here. The half-baked attempts by the government to offset this tsunami of garbage by sending Karen Hughes on a speaking tour is too pathetic to even be funny.

“…watch for neat definitions of the Anglosphere to become less workable as its boundaries blur.”

Bennett has been talking about this all along. The Anglosphere is much bigger and more diffuse at the edges than any simple aggregation of English-settled countries.

“The near future may see the massive, yet bloodless, displacement of the language and folkways of billions of people.” Maybe, but this does not follow from the example of England. The displacements, even of elites, was a bloody process.

I am frequently bemused by the surprise and indignation many people in the US exhibit when they confront the hostility of other cultures towards Americans and our style of operating. The animus always shocks us, but the underlying cause is very clear and, really, very obvious:

The western belief in individuality is terribly threatening to most of the basic tenets of traditional cultures.

Whether expressed as religious tolerance, political debate, party factionalism, racial and gender equality, or the cultural tendency towards social informality, the concept of each person as a discrete entity with a wide range of options in any number of areas of life is shocking, and threatening, to members of a culture for whom difference generally equals death or banishment.

I have found this aspect of an analysis of how our culture affects others to be very helpful in understanding the various conflicts we have been engaged in over the last few centuries, and glaringly obvious in the current confrontation with radical islamicism. Religious tolerance and gender equality by themselves ensure an almost unsolvable conflict between the world views of the west and islam.

Indeed, there are repeated and relentless attempts to devalue the individual in our own culture, and impose a “rule of uniformity” from which no deviation is allowed. PC codes, multi-cultural tribalism, race/gender studies, and the current pronouncements of anathema against any who doubt the “approved” version of climate change dogma are obvious examples of the tendency in our culture to revert to the traditional, and retreat to the comforting collective ideal of a culture in which everybody thinks and believes all the same things.

I suppose, in a very real way, it is the cultural cacaphony of individualism that disturbs people in other, more traditional, cultures. We’re like an orchestra that is always tuning up, every instrument bleating and honking up and down its own scales, indifferent to the others.

We are all seeking to reach our own, individual “perfect pitches”, without regard to the noise from the rest of the band. I would imagine it does seem rather noisy and chaotic when viewed from the back of the auditorium.

I can’t imagine how it’s received when, every once in a while, the whole orchestra plays together, and a man walks on the moon. It must seem like witchcraft or something.

The common pattern in human society is one or more ethnic groups subjugated by a militarily dominate minority ethnic group. Usually group A invades and subjugates group B (quite often while group B was trying to do the same thing to group C). Group A becomes the upper class and group B the lower classes. Class conflict in most pre-industrial societies is actually the conflict between the occupier and the occupied. The dominate group quite often speaks a different language and has a substantially different culture than the vast majority of the population. Only over many generations do the two cultures amalgamate into something looking like a unified culture.

In order to hijack and entire society of this kind it is only necessary to replace the most elite of the dominate group. Language and custom percolate down the status hierarchy as lower status individuals mimic those of higher status. It is really only necessary to transport a few thousand elites to a new region to spread a culture and make it appear through the distance of history that some kind of mass migration occurred.