Although the ability to interact with a diverse community is becoming more fluid on a daily basis, our contact with other cultures does not come without barriers. We are able to connect with people from all aspects of life and even with people from all over the world, however the ability to have contact does not automatically give us the ability to understand or relate to each other. While we feel curiosity about people outside of our spectrum, our curiosity is also tempered by a certain level of fear. The idea of ​​the citizens of the earth coming together in any kind of united front is very daunting to many people for reasons so numerous that it would be difficult to attempt to list them all. Human beings seem to be ingrained in the mentality of competition; we have the desire, as individuals and as groups, to be above, for someone to be above, someone else must be below. The human tendency to compete benefits us in some ways while in others it is our curse. Our increasing level of contact with other people and cultures is made possible by the mobility of our society and through many forms of media; the media has the power to influence cultural diversity in both positive and negative ways. The issue of human competition is not new, since the dawn of time there have been cases of human contention and conflict. Franklin Foer discussed the cultural divide in America in his book How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization (2004); in this book Foer attempts to use football to illustrate the division between classes and political groups in America. An excerpt from his book reads: “[Football] has drawn on conventional wisdom among yuppie pas… middle of the paper… bottom, it is also true that the top cannot be strong unless the bottom is also sturdy otherwise the entire structure would collapse. As human beings we have to decide what we want to become of our civilization, do we want to be at the top of a crushed heap? Or we want to be part of a structurally healthy and autonomous civilization. Works Cited Appiah, Kwame A. “Moral Disagreement.” Green, Stuart, and April Lidinsky. From investigation to academic writing. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin, 2012. 656-666. Print.Foer, Franklin. “How Football Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization.” Green, Stuart, and April Lidinsky. From investigation to academic writing. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin, 2012. 636-648. Print.Zayani, Mohamed. "Media, cultural diversity and globalization: challenges and opportunities". Journal of Cultural Diversity 18.2 (2011): 48-54. Press.