I’m concerned about The United States being perceived as arrogant.

Our own disinterest, ignorance and naivete about foreign societies represent danger. We’re in a global environment that is unprecedented. Colleagues and customers hail from all parts of planet earth. We should be putting more effort in to thinking on their terms, at least some of the time. But we American-born can be pretty parochial. Being closed off to the rest of the world isn’t only a cultural loss. It’s a business disaster. Economic progress is tied to the idea of being an active participant in the global economy. Fine! But how is that achieved?

The world knows more about us than we know about them. It can’t be in our best economic interests to know so little about the rest of the world. The more we know about planet earth – locality by locality – the smoother it becomes to sell and market over greater distances. The more money spread among more miles and people, the more money there is for USA products and services. Assuming that we go for it by accelerating exporting initiatives by SMB’s. Really big business already aggregates revenues by going global.

Until we’re better able to deal with cultures foreign to us, there will be struggles to combine profitably. It is foolish and shortsighted to keep going back to the same wells of affluent prospects.

We have technology, finance, logistics and communication systems and solutions for global undertakings, but world understanding – knowing about planet earth – is lacking. Business doesn’t get done with strangers and too many of us are strangers with the rest of the world. Keep this up and we dim economic prospects for American citizens in this and succeeding generations.

Rising standards of living and incomes across the world mean a larger economic pie is forming out there. Dividing that pie will always be a catch-as-catch can affair. After all, why should nations let us in just because we want to sell them things?

This brings us to the myth and mirage of free trade, with conditions negotiated and determined by government and special interests. Can there ever be level playing fields? By they time governments get all the issues sorted out we’ll all be dead!

Maybe part of the puzzle is absorbing a brand global local literacy and positioning ourselves to become more, let’s say, neighborly – even at far away distances.

Are we to live apart, or as partners? Maybe it makes sense for individuals to start on a road to form personal relationships with other nations in ways other than infrequent vacation travel and tourism, or pressured business travel?

Follow the money … globally.
“Much is not dared because it seems hard; much seems hard only because it is not dared.”
– Prince Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz; Austrian Statesman –