A view from the periphery

My friend Archie and I worked for some time on an article about how we experience the peripheries we're from. Several of our conversations, brainstorming, questioning and exploring, resulted in this piece:

Impressionable Kid: Serbia Amids the Power Shift from the West to the East

Some bits and pieces from it:

American culture, in particular, influenced us growing up. We’d soak up undubbed cartoons such as Transformers, Saber Rider, the American family TV drama 7th Heaven—all were aired on Saturday mornings. Watching Rambo, Terminator, or whatever Van Damme movies before bedtime, and playing Mortal Kombat in between. The Sims taught us what American houses looked like, why some people had pools and others didn’t; it taught us that in American capitalism there actually were shortcuts: if you were lucky enough to have a special code, you could add dollars to your account without doing any work.

and

Sometime in the late ’90s, early 2000s, stores with cheap goods from China started popping up in all major cities and towns across the country. The first thing you’d notice as you walked into one of these stores was the strong smell of plastics; then you noticed the variety of goods. Chinese stores have everything, as we would say: “from a needle to a locomotive.” Kitchenware, clothing, cosmetics, appliances, fake flowers, suitcases, toys. Old Yugoslavs frown upon the tawdry merchandise, remembering the high quality of locally-made items in the heyday. But they still shop Chinese. In this impoverished market, low-quality, potentially cancerous products, shipped from across the globe with a high carbon footprint, are a rare offering of normalcy for shallow pockets.

and

The prism of the generational gap reveals another layer of how our periphery is shaping up with China’s digital lead: on the one hand, one has to acknowledge the parents who understand the analog indications of influence, such as the railroads and highways; and on the other, their kids who understand memes and emerging social networks—a universal language no matter where you are in the world.

finally concluding that

Some changes may seem to be taking us backwards. Others actually move us forward. At the end of the day, one thing is certain—we’re stumbling onward unguided by our own desires and goals, but by the force of external power shifts. Add technology into the mix, and you get a fertile ground for the rise of dictatorial regimes, strong divisions amidst bulging filter bubbles, and a demise of truth as a virtue. For this reason, the most transformative thing we, as citizens of a periphery, can do is to educate ourselves and the people around us about how our periphery is changing, why, and whether it is in line with what we want. Well, is it?