Cultural Puzzle

We all remember putting simple puzzles together when we were little. Sometimes they were frustrating, other times really easy, sometimes we could see where the exact pieces fit together, and others they never fit sometimes we got down to the last whole in the puzzle and a piece was missing, and other times every piece fit exactly perfect with none missing. But I bet your asking yourself what does a puzzle have to do with globalization? In reality everything. My whole life my parents taught me to live each day to the fullest and experience all the the world has to offer: to me this means taking a piece of each place I visit and meshing it into my own view of life. To me that is what it means to have a global culture. We see the mix in our food, music, architecture, clothing, dances, television, etc - we are all moving towards a cultural gumbo where we soon will have one a mix of cultures in every aspect of life. Some view this as a bad thing and to some extent it is, but others would see this as something good, where we are able to mix all the best parts of culture into one. I don't know what the best explanation is, but I hope that people are able to still maintain their unique cultures, while combining the best aspects of other cultures into their lives. To me, when we loose our own identity and begin taking on others this is when culturalization becomes bad: BUT HOW FAR IS TOO FAR? 

What piece of the cultural puzzle will you add to this global world we live in?

Questions:

1. Do you think places like Starbucks and McDonalds are taking the cultural process too far by being on every corner in places like Japan and China?

2. Do you think we are going to become one "superculture" where there is no distinction between continents and the unique cultures that we used to have?

3. What thing do you think is the single most "cultured" item that is being shared across continents (i.e. food, clothes, music, etc.)?