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Mankind has become one, but not steadfastly one as communities or even nations used to be; not united through years of mutual experience, neither through possession of a single eye, affectionately called crooked, nor yet through a common native language, but, surpassing all barriers, through international broadcasting and print. An avalanche of events descends upon us - in one minute half the world hears of their splash. But the yardstick by which to measure those events and to evaluate them in accordance with the laws of unfamiliar parts of the world - this is not and cannot be conveyed via soundwaves and in newspaper columns. For these yardsticks were matured and assimilated over too many years of too specific conditions in individual countries and societies; they cannot be exchanged in mid-air. In the various parts of the world men apply their own hard-earned values to events, and they judge stubbornly, confidently, only according to their own scales of values and never according to any others.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn#23

CultureMediaValuesCommunicationGlobalization

About this quote

What does it mean?
Global media connects events instantly, but we lack shared standards to interpret them, leading to conflict in values.
In plain terms
We see the world together but judge it differently.
What can you take from it?
Global awareness needs shared values.

Where it applies

  • international news
  • cross-cultural work
  • diplomacy

Putting it to work

  • learn other cultures
  • contextualize news

Questions to consider

  • How do we understand each other?
  • Is global unity possible?

Another view

Shared values are difficult to establish.

More from Alexander Solzhenitsyn

  1. From time immemorial man has been made in such a way that his vision of the world, so long as it has not been instilled under hypnosis, his motivations and sca…

    Permalink to quote #22
  2. The divergent scales of values scream in discordance, they dazzle and daze us, and in order that it might not be painful we steer clear of all other values, as…

    Permalink to quote #24
  3. A work of art bears within itself its own verification: conceptions which are devised or stretched do not stand being portrayed in images, they all come crashi…

    Permalink to quote #21

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