To travel internationally is to become increasingly unnerved
by the way American culture pervades the world. We cringe
at the new indoor Mlimani shopping mall in Dar es Salaam, Tan-
zania. We shake our heads at the sight of a Mcdonald’s on Tianan-
men Square or a Nike factory in Malaysia. The visual landscape of
the world has become depressingly familiar. For Americans the old
joke has become bizarrely true: wherever we go, there we are.
    We have the uneasy feeling that our influence over the rest of
the world is coming at a great cost: loss of the world’s diversity and
complexity. For all our self-incrimination, however, we have yet to
face our most disturbing effect on the rest of the world. Our golden
arches do not represent our most troubling impact on other cul-
tures; rather, it is how we are flattening the landscape of the human
psyche itself. We are engaged in the grand project of Americanizing
the world’s understanding of the human mind. . . .