A few months ago, I sat in a restaurant in Accra watching a group of young people take turns recording videos for social media. Nothing about that was strange at first. What caught my attention was how one lady carefully performed a version of herself that did not feel natural.
I heard her speak with a Ghanaian English accent before, but she switched to an American accent as soon as the camera was turned on. And before that, she pushed aside the ‘asanka of fufu’ they were about to eat, and picked up her glass of cocktail to display more visibly. She laughed and jovially said, “No room for localism” Everyone laughed, but something about that sentence stayed with me.
Part of me understood her. Well, largely because we live in a world where visibility often determines relevance. Nobody wants to feel left behind. So people are literally adjusting parts of themselves just to fit into certain spaces and with certain people.
However, there is a difference between consciously evolving to fit the right spaces and blindly copying. One expands you; the other slowly erases you. Cultural adaptation, is the ability to learn, grow, and integrate useful ideas from other cultures without losing your own grounding. Blind copying, however, happens when people adopt behaviours simply because they appear superior, modern, or socially rewarding.
I began noticing how often this happens around me. I’ve observed recently, that weddings these days even feel more like imported performances than meaningful ceremonies. Even relationship expectations have changed due to the influence of movies and online trends. None of these things is entirely wrong on its own. The real issue is unconscious imitation.
Honestly, I think many of us adapt quickly because human beings fear exclusion. We want belonging, we want acceptance, we want to feel modern, exposed, and connected to the larger world.
At the same time, I have also seen the extreme opposite of people rejecting anything foreign as though preserving culture means resisting all change. But culture has never been static. Even our traditions have evolved over generations.
The question is not whether we should change. The question is whether we are thinking while changing. Are we adopting ideas because they genuinely improve our lives, or because we are afraid of seeming outdated? Are we building identity from conviction or from social pressure?
I sincerely believe, that healthier cultural adaptation requires both openness and rootedness. Openness allows us to learn, improve, and evolve. Rootedness keeps us from becoming empty copies of whatever is currently popular. Without openness, people become rigid and without rootedness, people become lost.
What worries me most today is not that cultures are changing. I mean, change is inevitable. What worries me is how many people are changing without awareness. They are slowly becoming strangers to themselves while calling it progress.
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