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Anti Islamic immigration movement rises in Germany

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pietillidie 



Joined: 07 Jan 2005


PostPosted: Sun Mar 01, 2015 9:25 pm
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Wokko wrote:
Something that truly bothers me about the narrative that the left like to put on anti immigration groups is to conflate anti-immigration with racism. I could happily travel anywhere in the world and immerse myself in any and all cultures and see their value, appreciate the diverse and amazing scope of humanity. The funny thing about diversity is that it is destroyed when you mix two cultures together; the dominant culture subverts and destroys the less dominant. When a nation allows unrestricted immigration, particularly from cultures that are far removed from that of the nation itself, the nation is just asking to have its own culture become subverted, either rapidly through simple numbers of entrants or more slowly through demographic shift.

I don't want to see England, France or Germany lose their rich, deep and valuable cultures, any more than we should accept as 'right' the cultural take overs of colonialism; even when they resulted in net positive outcomes (education, health care, modern advancements). I don't see any net positive coming from unfettered Arab immigration into Europe, that doesn't mean that there should be any action against Arabs already living in and assimilating into European or Western cultures, just that nations shouldn't be so willing to commit cultural suicide on the alter of 'progressive' politically correct ideology.

I would agree with the idea that not everything is "racism". A nation could be culturally homogenous and we would still have to drag certain resistant, fearful brains into the future. David would probably want to call that xenophobia, or a purely fear form of racism (David?). But often the two are mixed, so I agree you have to argue the case by seeing if what people are saying is self-consistent, or just a PR front for racist hate. I think you'll find most people have a pretty clear track record when it comes to these things. Very often, people conveniently rouse the genuine racist haters as a political tactic for getting what they want, such as the Glibs and asylum seekers.

But aside from that valid point, that's a very strange socio-cultural fundamentalism you've outlined there. I would be surprised if you actually hold to the definition of culture you've just put forward.

Culture is a dynamic and adaptive entity by virtue of evolutionary brain design. Genetic evolution is slow, so if environments are changing fast and the human population is growing, you need something more--such as an enlarged fore brain.

As an example of cultural adaptation based on human cognition and social intelligence, Korean culture today looks almost nothing like the late Joseon, which was the last distinct cultural form before the colonial and post-war periods. People may marvel at history or go through "good old days" moments, but no one wants back in to the late Joseon. There is nothing holy and pure about culture except in the immediate sense that it sets our psychiatric boundaries and physical and emotional limitations. It's a live means of getting things done in the world, not a piece of artwork to hang in a lobby for all time.

So, the view you're espousing is the equivalent of being in the midst of Joseon culture, marveling at all about you, and saying you just don't want to lose what you've got, so you won't engage in global trade. Meanwhile, Japan goes through the Meiji Restoration and industrialises, becoming the regional powerhouse.

We all know what we've got now will not and cannot last in its present form. The very wealthy often use versions of this tactic in order to block competition and technological change, but our brains still see progress as linear under conditions of change (contra the far left and its fantasies of primitivism).

Importantly, granting a reified status to culture is the same thing as asking for the reification of the economy. Did you enjoy the steam engine? Well, we could ban cars and return to the geography of the railway or canal route, giving you quite a different culture. You could even walk to the factory on the edge of town.

I don't know what you think culture is, but it's subject to permanent change, unless you live in an isolated, perfectly balanced ecology. It's a dynamic interplay based on the socio-economic parameters of the day, and is fixed to the extent the environment is fixed. Under highly dynamic conditions of capital and people movement, culture is, ipso facto, just as dynamic.

So, that effort to use the importance of culture as a concept to freeze cultural change makes no sense at all. Yes, that causes generation gaps and job skill challenges, but that's post-agrarian human existence, isn't it?

On a five-year scale, people are constrained by the routines and embedded conceptual models of culture. But at the decadal scale, plenty changes, from interest rates and economic growth, to technology and law. At the generational scale, you go from horses to cars, punch cards to PCs, and PCs to the Internet. You also go from first-generation Vietnamese immigrants, to second and then third generation. All the while, culture is changing quite dramatically for everyone, regardless of their status. But you get those many half-decades in between to adjust, while immigrants naturally face much greater pressure to adjust, especially in the first generation.

The people who don't adjust can get bitter and isolated, so we just have to do our best to educate folk and try and pull them along with reality. That applies to locals every bit as much as immigrants.

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Mugwump 



Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne

PostPosted: Sun Mar 01, 2015 9:49 pm
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^ ptid, your post above seems to me correct, but then to me, you draw the wrong conclusion. culture is organic, like the human things of which it is made, and it is analogous to personhood. You have an identity composed of beliefs, meanings, shared stories etc. However much you change dynamically through time, and some people do change dramatically, you remain you. So with culture. The first world war was once seen as a glorious sacrifice, now it is seen as a pointless tragedy. Yet the culture that makes those judgements has a deep family resemblance to itself between 1920 and 2000. Its change does not make it insubstantial, or without intrinsic value.

Immigration at a certain level of numbers and with a certain level of cultural distance is like inviting people with very different values into your house to live with you. You remain you, but your experience of being you may be diminished, especially when a small number of the co-tenants want to kill you. You're therefore wise to control your environment.

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Last edited by Mugwump on Mon Mar 02, 2015 12:25 am; edited 1 time in total
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David Libra

I dare you to try


Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda

PostPosted: Sun Mar 01, 2015 11:48 pm
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This is a really good discussion. I'm 100% in agreement that culture is a nebulous, dynamic phenomenon—not some concrete way of life handed down on stone tablets, like the "Judeo-Christian values" brigade would have us believe—but there's also something centrally important about it; which is why the idea of (even glacial) radical change discomforts me, and why I don't judge those who get scared into embracing aggressive xenophobia.

What makes one society different to another, besides culture (if we define it as a loose collection of dominant attitudes, habits, behaviours and beliefs)? People are people, and laws emerge from culture (and can always be changed to suit it); what else is left? What else makes Saudi Arabia, North Korea, the USA and Australia such different places to live? Socioeconomics and technology play a role, I guess; but beyond that, culture's really all we've got to separate us from a Nazi Germany or imaginary utopia. We don't have much else to cling onto.

When conversations like these turn up, PTID, you often talk about the fallacy of cultural superiority. Personally, I don't think that paradigm is nearly so prevalent. What I think is at the centre of these issues is cultural familiarity and simple fear of the unknown. Few of us are scared by mild change, but the concept of radical change is terrifying on an instinctive level. And so, people conjure up images of strange, hostile people with beards and headscarves pouring in and disrupting their familiar suburban existence.

I think you and I need to acknowledge that there are limits to our support for multiculturalism. We support immigration from all corners of the globe because we know that it's a low-risk exercise; that fears of Muslims/Chinese/Greeks taking over is fanciful nonsense because minority immigrant groups and their descendants always conform to the dominant culture far more than the dominant culture changes for them. But this is nothing more than a numbers game; what would you do if, in some highly unlikely scenario, we were to accept 25 million devout Wahhabist Muslims tomorrow in one hit and give them the vote? Would the cultural change brought about by this immigration not be alarming? Would the winding back of many of the progressive Western values that we have achieved (rights for women, LGBTI people, etc.) not strike you as disturbing? It damn well should be; I'll put it out there right now that I have no interest in living in a country like Saudi Arabia. If that happened, I'd be packing my suitcases tomorrow.

Of course, this is a completely absurd hypothetical. But if you can suspend your disbelief enough to go with me on it, you can gain some insight into the minds of the xenophobes and hate speakers amongst us. For them, the scenario I described doesn't require 25 million radical Sunnis; it only requires the few scary foreigners in boats and that one guy walking down their street in traditional religious garb for the downfall of Western society to begin. They have no idea how to grasp statistics; to realise that the foreigners they keep noticing everywhere are vastly outnumbered by the white Anglo Australians they accept as part of the wallpaper.

Their failing, then, is not so much one of morality or tolerance so much as a distorted sense of numbers, and a misunderstanding of how the interplay of dominant/minority culture works. But beyond that, their fears are our fears, whether we want to admit to it or not.

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Mugwump 



Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne

PostPosted: Tue Mar 03, 2015 2:23 am
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^ Actually David, sorry to disturb the cosy liberal consensus, Smile but I think the paradigm of cultural superiority is both common and justified. Liberal capitalist democracy has been associated with the greatest explosion of human potential, freedom, tolerance, prosperity and creativity in human history. It's so superior that most people around the world want to join it if they can, despite the difficulty migration entails. It certainly has its discontents, inanities, stupidities and callousness. But it is a great historic gift to those that inherit it. I think it is very superior to most other cultural structures. What we should not do is assume that because we inherited it, we are somehow better than those who did not. I disagree with much of what Ptid believes, but I agree with him that we should not judge too easily or dismiss those who have to struggle within forces that we cannot appreciate.

We are just lucky, and we're prone to the usual vices of those who inherit conspicuous wealth - we take it for granted, spend it too easily, look down lazily on those without our advantages, and forget to do the hard work to defend it.

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