I am a twin.  I have an identical twin brother.  Many people we encounter often tell us how cool it is to have a twin and that they wish they had a twin themselves.  The truth is that it is very cool and fun to have a twin, but there are also some disadvantages.  First off, it is very easy for identical twins to get attention.  All they need to do is simply stand next to each other and people will ask the number 1 question twins are asked, “are you twins.”  On the other hand twins do not receive the individual attention most people receive throughout their lives.  People often mix up the names of the twins and many times just call them twin to make it easier on themselves.  So being a twin is great, but not all that great.  This is what I have come to learn about most things on this earth, is that it’s not all black and white, but a little bit of both or a mixture in between.  So how can we look at globalization not as a “love it or leave it” binary but as a mixture of both that we have to accept.

            In the novel “A Question of Power,” by Bessie Head, the author tells a story of a woman that seems to resemble herself, named Elizabeth.  Bessie describes Elizabeth as a woman that has no frames in her life.  Elizabeth is an immigrant with no family or religion, and also is somewhat of a lonely person.  Head explains that these frames that Elizabeth is missing are what help shape the person that we are and without them a person can go insane, but having frames can also prevent or block out certain things in the world from getting in your head.

            Based on what Bessie Head has explained as to what helps frame our lives it seems that the local community or culture you live or grow up in has a tremendous influence on the frames of an individual, and as I have learned in reading the novel “A Question of Power,” a person can not fully function if they have no frames in addition to not fully functioning if your frames are to strong, blocking any outside influences on yourself.  The way frames are linked to the idea of globalization is that the inside of the frame is local, a small community or culture, and the outside of the frame is the rest of the world.  The idea I get from Bessie Head in relation to globalization is that you need a balance of local and global, not a frame that is too small, not a frame that is too large, but a frame that is a little bit of both.

            In the novel “An Artist of the Floating World,” by Kazuo Ishiguro, the main character Masuji Ono is an artist in post World War II Japan who is always thinking about is own past and why things are the way they are.  Ono was a well-respected artist who, during the war, started to help the Japanese military by creating propaganda.  After Japan surrendered to the United States the mood towards the propaganda that Ono once created changed dramatically from favor to distaste. 

            While reading this novel I looked into the idea of whether or not propaganda could even be considered as art, is good art or tasteless propaganda.  Many people have there own opinions on whether propaganda is art or not, but what I feel I learned from reading this novel is that many if not all forms of art can be viewed as propaganda in some way or another.  Art and propaganda coexist together, just like good and bad, Hestia and Icarus.  The purpose of propaganda is to invoke an individual to take action, many great artists used their art to provoke action by individuals, even if the art only initially sparks an emotion.  That emotion can grow into an action depending on how much the individual is affected by that emotion.  Local and global are both part of the other.  A local community is equally part of the globally community.  You can’t hide from the fact that the rest of the world isn’t the same as you.

            We can’t hide from the fact that we all live on this globe with many different cultures, religions, and languages.  I don’t feel that there is any justified reason for any person to not be exposed to the diversity of our planet.  Our planet is hundreds of thousands of local communities all next to each other affecting each other.  I feel that everyone on the planet is or can be related as one large community.  It is just a matter of how large of a picture you want to allow within your frame, to decide whether your community is as big as the globe or as small as your bedroom.  It is important, as stated illustrated in many novels, that we accept what is outside of our frames, but equally important that we have frames to hold on to.