By Dr. Robert Thorson

Globalization. For most people, this word describes the expansion and integration of modern commerce and culture. For me, the term is worse than misleading. It’s just plain wrong.

If globalization means “the process of becoming a globe,” then this hardly describes what’s happening today. Earth experienced its one and only epoch of globalization about 4.5 billion years ago. What had been a lumpy, bumpy place became large enough to soften and assume the shape of a globe. Such globalization is an inevitable outcome for liquid or dough-like substances — whether planets or soap bubbles — because the sphere is the most efficient way to pack the most stuff into the smallest package.

Human inventions have contributed nothing to globalizing the earth beyond the tearing down of high places and the filling in of low ones. What our inventions have done is to homogenize human cultures, mostly in the name of capitalism and commerce. Warm clothing, oceangoing vessels, automobiles, weapons, interstate highways and airplanes homogenize us physically. Smoke signals, trumpets, telegraphs, radios, satellite communication and, now, Blackberries homogenize us by making us part of the same information stream.

As a consequence, biological, racial, political, ideological and cultural barriers are dissolving faster than ever before. Nowhere is this more evident than with the worldwide spread of the English language, right over the top of thousands of disappearing indigenous languages.

The history of life, when seen through the lens of the fossil record, is the story of barriers and bridges to the dispersal of (in this case) genetic information. For example, the creation of the Isthmus of Panama, several million years ago, allowed creatures to spread from north to south and vice versa. Simultaneously, it created a barrier for marine creatures that used to move east and west between the Pacific and what is now the Gulf of Mexico.

With few exceptions, barriers are not being created today. Instead, the world is being homogenized in response to the migration pressure or rising human populations, the efficiency of transportation and the reach of communication devices. The only thing that prevents homogenization today is the deliberate intent on the part of human groups who are attempting to keep separations intact.

Conservation biologists, for example, fight homogenization by working to prevent invasive species from monopolizing local ecosystems. Educational institutions, government agencies and large corporations promote homogenization by requiring a diverse workforce while simultaneously fighting it by supporting the value of maintaining racial, ethnic and gender diversity. Religious leaders fight homogenization by reinforcing old-time religion.

Variety is often called the spice of life. Actually, it’s the essence of life because without variation there would be no evolution. And without evolution, life on Earth would not exist as we know it. Without variation, marine worms could not have evolved backbones; fish their limbs; reptiles their eggs; mammals their milk glands, apes their big brains; humans their civilizations; and columnists their opinions.

Throughout the history of life, every species fine-tunes itself to ambient conditions while simultaneously attempting to expand its range. The only thing that kept Earth from being genetically homogenized was the separation of its physical and behavioral places, whether on islands or island continents. Biodiversity — kangaroos in one place, giraffes in another — was the result. Humans were part of that biodiversity, developing in one place before surmounting the climatic and geographic barriers of northeast Africa, spreading throughout the planet and evolving into regionally distinct races and cultures.

But we now have a problem never faced before. Homogenization is diminishing human variation faster than it’s being created. I don’t yearn for a pre-colonial era when cultures were relatively isolated from one another. What concerns me is the lesson of the fossil record: that the best way for a group of organisms to survive for the long haul is to maintain diversity. The theory is that when push comes to shove, some of us will make it through.

I suggest we call a spade a spade. Homogenization is the right word for what’s being called globalization. Too much homogenization will be a bad thing, perhaps the end of us all.