Who decides matters of major interest

It seems to me that each culture has it's own perspective and it's own major points that it considers it's own area or very important in the world, like sauna for Finland or the military defence of the Finnish Bay. It seems like a miracle that not so many in the workld are so interested in these matters, so it is much easier to have an opinion about them, to influence them like we dearly need. Even bigger miracle it is that if we take a look at some Wedish text about some familiar subject, it uses typically somewhat different concepts, somewhat different values and is overly interested in things connected with Sweden. So we feel somewhat alienated and think that let the Swedes decide Swedish things and let us have all these important Finnish things, let us Finns decide about them fully, so we will have well all the major matters of our world. And since other countires and their cultures are propably much further away from our own, maybe we are the ones that rule the world in these matters - partly bacause we tend to think with an objective picture of the whole world and morally too. Is it so that each culture "rules the world" in it's major questions if it does not intentionally tie them to the major interests of others (that is just some landscape that the culture happens to lives in)?!