I think Western culture will never obscure or eliminate any ancient culture: for one thing, it is modern and shallow (at least the commercially visible parts that get transported), anymore than Japanese anime will make Americans into Japanese. And thank God for differences.

These kind of things may be like post-Colonial fads; the next fad may be something different. There’s some interesting cyberpunk lit that reverses the notion: some steampunk stuff and the movie “Serenity” are about the West being heavily influenced by Chinese culture, and “Robocop” was about Japanese corporations taking over the US (how 80s).

It is interesting to me as a Western person though that the giddy exterior is so popular, when there’s so much confusion and lack of coherent cultural narrative below the surface. And trying to hard to create one can have monstorous or inauthentic results.

On that note, having also read your note about teenagers, I wonder if the US model of teenager years is necessarily so great. Maybe cultures that do have an enduring deeper tradition needn’t go through six years of formulating one’s own individuality. Perhaps rather something is broken about the way in which the collective idenitity is taught and though about.