Today's New York Times Magazine article "Not-So-Cold Comfort" (print title), by Maggie Koerth-Baker, stirs up enough questions and answers to last until Sunday afternoon tea -- for me, at least.
Koerth-Baker's essay focuses on the effects of globalization on energy consumption, but it opens the doors to other "comfort" debates as well. To her point, globalization provides an opportunity to improve efficiencies as well as reasons, such as streamlining, to ignore them -- but it also has effects on culture.
First, an answer to a question that had puzzled me for years: Why on earth do men wear full suits to work in Houston in July and August, when the average high is around 94 degrees Fahrenheit? It's because the buildings they work in, according to the article, are engineered to make a man wearing a full suit comfortable -- i.e., via high levels of air conditioning on even the hottest days. (No wonder I always needed to keep a sweater at my chair when I worked in Texas.)
Second, some light on the ways that globalization comes at the cost of local cultures. The siesta is the only icon shown here to have significantly eroded (how terrible!), but it doesn't take much pondering to see that energy-efficient fluorescent lightbulbs, necessitated by diminishing fossil fuels, could endanger the Norwegian koselighet. And the artwork accompanying the story hints at additional "global standard" trends, including ones I've seen in my own life: fashion (women in India often wear jeans and t-shirts to their tech company jobs, rather than the traditional sari) and holidays (shops build snowy December window displays in San Francisco, where a white Christmas simply does not exist).
Third, the piece raises the question of what brings general comfort to a citizen of the world in the 21st century. Take food. We can assume that comfort food is what we grow up with. For me, for instance, my mom's super-simple chicken soup -- chicken mixed with rice cooked in chicken broth -- is still the perfect antidote to a sore throat. But in such an inter-connected world, we share these comforts with each other, creating new traditions. When I have a sinus infection, I now instinctively reach for spicy kung-pao or Thai curry, and I dare say that my family's homemade stromboli is as much a comfort for my Indian husband (it's said to have settled his love for me) as his family's soy-sauce chicken is for me (it's what we cooked the night he proposed).
So what will the world look like, as we continue to work, live and cook together, in 50 years? A hundred years? Will the needs for efficiency and standardization in business find us all wearing business suits to climate-controlled buildings from 9 to 5? Or will everyone go to work in salwar kameez and take a siesta to beat the heat, saving energy in summer days so that we can all practice koselighet at home in the winter evenings? Will the next generation see cultural lines in food, or will they eat and find comfort in a standard -- albeit delicious -- global buffet?
Here's hoping that, whatever direction we go, we avoid sacrificing taste and tradition for mere efficiency or streamlining.
Koerth-Baker's essay focuses on the effects of globalization on energy consumption, but it opens the doors to other "comfort" debates as well. To her point, globalization provides an opportunity to improve efficiencies as well as reasons, such as streamlining, to ignore them -- but it also has effects on culture.
First, an answer to a question that had puzzled me for years: Why on earth do men wear full suits to work in Houston in July and August, when the average high is around 94 degrees Fahrenheit? It's because the buildings they work in, according to the article, are engineered to make a man wearing a full suit comfortable -- i.e., via high levels of air conditioning on even the hottest days. (No wonder I always needed to keep a sweater at my chair when I worked in Texas.)
Second, some light on the ways that globalization comes at the cost of local cultures. The siesta is the only icon shown here to have significantly eroded (how terrible!), but it doesn't take much pondering to see that energy-efficient fluorescent lightbulbs, necessitated by diminishing fossil fuels, could endanger the Norwegian koselighet. And the artwork accompanying the story hints at additional "global standard" trends, including ones I've seen in my own life: fashion (women in India often wear jeans and t-shirts to their tech company jobs, rather than the traditional sari) and holidays (shops build snowy December window displays in San Francisco, where a white Christmas simply does not exist).
Third, the piece raises the question of what brings general comfort to a citizen of the world in the 21st century. Take food. We can assume that comfort food is what we grow up with. For me, for instance, my mom's super-simple chicken soup -- chicken mixed with rice cooked in chicken broth -- is still the perfect antidote to a sore throat. But in such an inter-connected world, we share these comforts with each other, creating new traditions. When I have a sinus infection, I now instinctively reach for spicy kung-pao or Thai curry, and I dare say that my family's homemade stromboli is as much a comfort for my Indian husband (it's said to have settled his love for me) as his family's soy-sauce chicken is for me (it's what we cooked the night he proposed).
So what will the world look like, as we continue to work, live and cook together, in 50 years? A hundred years? Will the needs for efficiency and standardization in business find us all wearing business suits to climate-controlled buildings from 9 to 5? Or will everyone go to work in salwar kameez and take a siesta to beat the heat, saving energy in summer days so that we can all practice koselighet at home in the winter evenings? Will the next generation see cultural lines in food, or will they eat and find comfort in a standard -- albeit delicious -- global buffet?
Here's hoping that, whatever direction we go, we avoid sacrificing taste and tradition for mere efficiency or streamlining.
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