A Small World

With globalization, the notion that the world has become smaller has reached the level of tired cliche.

But, what does a small world really look like?

I would propose that the "small world" everybody talks about, the one wherein cultures on separate ends of various spectra come together, cannot be found in what our funny elites call "multiculturalism". Watching this phenomenon in the West, one gets the feeling that "multiculturalism" is just a shallow manifestation of this new smallness of the world. There is no authentic mingling of cultures when ethnic-specific parades come marching down Manhattan every month. There is nothing genuinely unifying about the artificial celebrations of, say, Philippine Independence Day in Toronto. If any, these occasions of ethnic and ideological chest-thumping illustrate the opposite irony of the "small world"; here you have an ethnic or ideological group living within a cultural melting pot erecting gaping barriers of ethnic or ideological culture and identity between them and the rest of the world around them. They make small blocks of living space seem continents apart.

A more genuine example of this new smallness of the world is the recent celebration of the feast day of Nuestra Señora de Peñafrancia in the Bicol region (among other places) of the Philippines. Here, we have a holy icon discovered by a Frenchman in Spain, one which a later devotee brought to the Philippines, where it is now one of the most venerated icons in the country. This is not some multicultural posturing handed down by over-eager social engineers, but a genuine co-mingling of different cultures. The fact that people on either end of the world can sincerely venerate the same icon (the same juxtaposition can be made with the Guadalupe icon) is a testament to a universality that has, indeed, made the miles between both ends seem meaningless.

Those who worship at the farcical altar of multiculturalism would denounce this phenomenon as "colonialism", the willful imposition of one cultural artifact over an unwilling foreign culture. However, take one look at the celebration. There is neither the equivalent of a hallowed recital of "White Man's Burden", nor a yearly smashing of symbols the Left seems so fond of (flag-burning, anyone?). These people take their worship seriously. One can also look at history and see that the banishment of all things Spanish Imperial does not coincide with a banishing of these icons. Our Lady belongs as much to the people of Bicol as She does to the people of Caceres. Such an understanding is rooted in a deeper meaning, one that resonates in a heart, whether it be Basque or Bicolano, Aztec or Castillan. As such, the distance becomes meaningless when the hearts of people on either end of the spectra resonate to the same music in the soul.

Now that is a small world.