Culture: It's not real.

[poxpower]

There's been lots of talk about mutliculturalism and how awesome and important it is in my province recently. I saw Facebook post after Facebook post call a politician some kind of evil Nazi for suggesting that ethnic violence in England is caused by their bad integration policies.

The endless horde of hipsters and "intellectuals" ( i.e. first year college students, sociology professors, social workers, writers, artists and feminists ) were outraged. That already should be a dead giveaway as to the right position to take on this issue.

It got me to thinking... What the hell is a culture anyway? Look at definitions online and you soon realize that anything and everything can be defined as a culture if you want.

All societies are multicultural if you define culture broadly enough.

What is most striking is that these people take it as a fact that multiculturalism is good. I once talked to some beret-wearing idiot about how it's suboptimal to have two languages coexisting and this SUPER GENIUS called me a close-minded Hitler etc. etc. despite the obvious fact that yes, it is suboptimal for a wide variety of economic and social reasons to have two languages. In fact every language you add on beyond the first is just creating more problems.

Then he retorted with what all people say: Multiculturalism is good because then we can have different viewpoints!

Excuse me dipshits but I thought that's what SCIENCE and DEBATES were for. You know, that process where we not only come up with new ideas but ACTUALLY FIGURE OUT IF THEY ARE GOOD?

What is the point of having "different points of views" when you have no desire to find out which one is correct?

=======

On the flipside, multiculturalism is just plain bad in socio-economic terms. It correlates fairly highly with crime and violence as well as poor economic growth.
( http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4553005/alesinassrn_ethnicdiversity.pdf?sequence=2 )
Africa, for instance, has a very high rate of ethno-linguistic frationalization. Africa is VERY culturally diverse, as well as is the Middle East.

Look at this world map:
http://cdn3.chartsbin.com/chartimages/l_9678_0ea7fa3da5858289f99cec497acd5911

You can see there is a fairly large correlation with where most people would want to live and where diversity is lowest.

When is diversity good? Only in small amounts. Diversity is beneficial in the form of, say, going to a restaurant, having one Indian friend, or going to Paris for a week. It is BAD when it comes to many large groups coexisting together.

You'll notice that the people who preach for "diversity" usually have a very non-diverse group of friends. Facebook helps alleviate this as it keeps you in contact with people who you have met at some point but are no longer part of your immediate social circle. Sadly, these same "diversity proponents" are the first to block people from facebook ( or to disable youtube comments, as is famously the case with the current ongoing Atheism + / feminism debacle ).

They mostly define diversity as "People of another skin color or country who agree with me".

Another advantage of "diversity" that is cited is basically taking highly skilled workers from abroad and letting them move here. It seems plain to me that we are not after their 'diverse viewpoints" but rather after their training. What's "multicultural" about hiring a skilled surgeon from France or Tokyo? We'd just hire him here if we could.

==========================

True harmony comes from integration and homogeneity, both for societies and for individuals. When we look for a spouse or a friend, we do NOT seek "diversity", we seek sameness. Even when you look at couples of different ethnicities / language / whatever, you find that they balance out those differences by finding sameness in other areas ( education, political views, religion, socio-economic status etc. ). So rather than seek diversity, we merely tolerate it or live with it when it comes to our close circle.

It's absolutely false that religious, cultural or ethnic diversity has any tangible benefits in my view. The only thing that really produces results are ideas that are not culture dependant: Science, democracy, skepticism, capitalism etc.

A computer works just as well anywhere. Math works for aliens too. That, to me, is the true sign of a useful thing. Speaking of aliens, imagine if they came to earth. What exactly do you suppose would benefit us the most: Their shitty space rap or their advanced equations on how to travel beyond lightspeed?

And that's why Thundercats was a stupid tv show. The end.

[24901miles]

I've never seen it, so I'll just take your word for it. Might Max was a pretty good show from that era, however. You should check it out.

[HibiscusMallow]

yeah multiculturalism is dumb and just to make ppl feel better being a minority but there was no need to write a wall of text about it, maybe you're a racist

[Camarohusky]

The person you responded to doesn't understand what culture is. Culture isn't a viewpoint. Culture is merely a lifestyle. It's not about science or politics. It's about entertainment. It's about tradition. It's about community. It's about the way you do things in life. Most of all, it's about identity.

That isn't to say that viewpoints, science, and politics all both affect and are not affected by culture. They very much are. Culture is the social portion of society. Culture is VERY real, though it is often overstated, and I will admit it can be a huge obstacle to progress and efficiency. However, I like culture. Culture is what makes life worth living and the World worth seeing. If everyone lived the same we'd be a dull and boring species.

I would rather have multiculturalism with the few pitfalls and obstacles it provides because it makes life much more worth living when you can go down the street and interact with someone whose life is almost otherworldly. The occasional loss of efficiency due to language differences and to differing priorities is an OK loss in order to have the benefits. Seeing another person's culture also helps me look at my culture and the world in a different way, knowing that the world isn't just a bunch of people like me.

[poxpower]

At 9/9/13 03:31 PM, Camarohusky wrote: If everyone lived the same we'd be a dull and boring species.

I have no idea where you ( and people in general ) base this idea that entertainment must necessarily come from multiculturalism.

I can assure you that tribes in the middle of nowhere think they are perfectly well entertained even if they have no contact with the outside world.

While novelty has a premium to it ( i.e. you'd rather watch a new movie than an old one, or try a new food you are unsure about than eat pizza again) it's not the primary way ( or only way ) to entertain yourself nor is it culture-dependent.

For instance, the computer revolutionized entertainment but it's not a cultural idea, it's just a machine.

The problem that you have now is that you have been given this mutlicultural status-quo and you believe that it enriches your life because, like all greedy humans, you would rather not give up the option to have it around because you think more things = more happiness.

But really, it doesn't matter. For instance, suppose we were in Star Trek and we were in contact with thousands of alien cultures. How much of an improvement would your happiness get do you think?

I'd wager: 0%

But were you to live in that world and then offered to live in the one you do right now, you would not, even if your happiness would not decrease. You would say what you do now: If we just lived with the culture of a single planet, how boring would that be!

If you're simply using culture as entertainment, think about it this way: Would it be ok to have one person die so you get one more season of a randomly selected sitcom? Maybe you'll like it, maybe not. But hey, more culture! So what if there's slight costs.

[Light]

cul·ture (klchr)
n.
1.
a. The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought.

By this definition, culture is most certainly real. It might not be apparent sometimes, but it definitely exists.

[KatMaestro]

At 9/9/13 01:26 PM, HibiscusMallow wrote: yeah multiculturalism is dumb and just to make ppl feel better being a minority but there was no need to write a wall of text about it, maybe you're a racist

Are you being sarcastic?

Multiculture is a fallacy. I'll use my country as an example. We have thousands of immigrants from Middle East every year. They come to Finland to look for a better life. But they refuse to accept our way of life. Recently some of the Muslims even discussed about setting up 'no-go zone'. In Helsinki and Espoo, you have pockets of immigrants all around, and rarely you see immigrants live together with the natives.

[Fim]

I just thought I'd mention 2 points for starters before I even begin to tackle this wall of incomprehensibly ill-conceived rant.

1. Claiming culture is not real is absurd. I'm not even going to bother outlining distinguishable cultural differences and traditions between countries because anyone should be able to think of plenty of examples off the top of their head.

2. This is the second time I've seen you make a topic which could be perceived as having racist undertones. Let me be clear that I'm not calling you Hitler or a racist, but why do you keep posting stuff like this that continually treads a little bit too far on the right?

At 9/9/13 01:18 PM, poxpower wrote: There's been lots of talk about mutliculturalism and how awesome and important it is in my province recently. I saw Facebook post after Facebook post call a politician some kind of evil Nazi for suggesting that ethnic violence in England is caused by their bad integration policies.

Are you saying that ethnic violence in England IS caused by integration policies then?

The endless horde of hipsters and "intellectuals" ( i.e. first year college students, sociology professors, social workers, writers, artists and feminists ) were outraged. That already should be a dead giveaway as to the right position to take on this issue.

Yes, stereotypes are what you should base your beliefs on, God forbid you base them on facts.

It got me to thinking... What the hell is a culture anyway? Look at definitions online and you soon realize that anything and everything can be defined as a culture if you want.

Well.... not really? Culture is a broad term but it is fairly well defined. If you were making the same claim about subcultures you'd have more of an argument, but culture needs to be a common national characteristic.

All societies are multicultural if you define culture broadly enough.

What is most striking is that these people take it as a fact that multiculturalism is good. I once talked to some beret-wearing idiot about how it's suboptimal to have two languages coexisting and this SUPER GENIUS called me a close-minded Hitler etc. etc. despite the obvious fact that yes, it is suboptimal for a wide variety of economic and social reasons to have two languages. In fact every language you add on beyond the first is just creating more problems.

I can't help but feel that you're ignoring the Dutch who do extremely well as a country, whilst speaking 4 languages, or maybe in 20 years will you possibly still be saying the same thing about India which will be the second largest economy after China whilst speaking 18 official languages? I think you just blindly ignore a load of contributing factors when you make claims like that.

Then he retorted with what all people say: Multiculturalism is good because then we can have different viewpoints!

Excuse me dipshits but I thought that's what SCIENCE and DEBATES were for. You know, that process where we not only come up with new ideas but ACTUALLY FIGURE OUT IF THEY ARE GOOD?

What is the point of having "different points of views" when you have no desire to find out which one is correct?

This is what I mean pox, you're desire to focus on points of view to do with race, multiculturalism, the differences in intelligence between different races, is what I find suspicious in someone who claims not to be pushing a racist agenda.

=======

On the flipside, multiculturalism is just plain bad in socio-economic terms. It correlates fairly highly with crime and violence as well as poor economic growth.
( http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4553005/alesinassrn_ethnicdiversity.pdf?sequence=2 )
Africa, for instance, has a very high rate of ethno-linguistic frationalization. Africa is VERY culturally diverse, as well as is the Middle East.

Yeh, because there's no other possible historical, financial or military factors that could otherwise contribute to the hot serving of shit pie in Africa or the Middle East. Again, very flimsy 'evidence'.

Look at this world map:
http://cdn3.chartsbin.com/chartimages/l_9678_0ea7fa3da5858289f99cec497acd5911

You can see there is a fairly large correlation with where most people would want to live and where diversity is lowest.

What correlation? Correl bullshit ation!

When is diversity good? Only in small amounts. Diversity is beneficial in the form of, say, going to a restaurant, having one Indian friend, or going to Paris for a week. It is BAD when it comes to many large groups coexisting together.

You'll notice that the people who preach for "diversity" usually have a very non-diverse group of friends. Facebook helps alleviate this as it keeps you in contact with people who you have met at some point but are no longer part of your immediate social circle. Sadly, these same "diversity proponents" are the first to block people from facebook ( or to disable youtube comments, as is famously the case with the current ongoing Atheism + / feminism debacle ).

great brainfart.

They mostly define diversity as "People of another skin color or country who agree with me".

Another advantage of "diversity" that is cited is basically taking highly skilled workers from abroad and letting them move here. It seems plain to me that we are not after their 'diverse viewpoints" but rather after their training. What's "multicultural" about hiring a skilled surgeon from France or Tokyo? We'd just hire him here if we could.

There's no need to put quotations around words like diversity or multiculturalism mate, if you take a surgeon from France or Tokyo you take them from one CULTURE to a different CULTURE, hence meshing the two together. The surgeon may incorporate something different from their culture into their new environment. In the UK we benefit hugely from immigration since we gain a load of skilled workers like your hypothetical surgeon who drive our economy and fill the demand we have for certain skilled roles.

It's absolutely false that religious, cultural or ethnic diversity has any tangible benefits in my view.

That's a great opinion you got there in an integrated, open world which is more connected now then it has ever been, what a progressive view. I'm glad you had the decency to add 'in my view' AKA fucking bullshit racist -

For the record, I know you're claiming not to be a racist. What I find ironic is that what you're trying to do is masquerade yourself as being liberal and open-minded because you're challenging conventional leftist ideals on multiculturalism and race, so by your own logic you're just as bad as those poxy beret wearing sociology teachers you despise ;)

The only thing that really produces results are ideas that are not culture dependant: Science, democracy, skepticism, capitalism etc.

I thought you said culture didn't exist? Didn't you just make a thread titled "Culture: It's not real."

A computer works just as well anywhere. Math works for aliens too.

OMG why am I talking to you.

[Korriken]

It's one thing to have slight variations in culture among a people (for example, regional food preferences based on food availability), or clothing styles based on climate.

The problem arises when you have people enter a place, and refuse to integrate. When you have various people who are all loyal to their native country, and not the one they live in, no good can come of it, especially when said countries begin fighting with each other, or the country they are in begins fighting with the country they are loyal to.

multiculturalism can weaken or even destroy a nation, especially when those loyal to other nations work their way into politics.

[poxpower]

At 9/9/13 06:14 PM, Fim wrote:

1. Claiming culture is not real is absurd.

I'm saying you can define it however you feel. You can select however large or small a group of people and call that a culture based on totally arbitrary boundaries.

but why do you keep posting stuff like this that continually treads a little bit too far on the right?

It's an interesting issue that the media never ever talks about.

At 9/9/13 01:18 PM, poxpower wrote:

Are you saying that ethnic violence in England IS caused by integration policies then?

I have not looked into it at all so I don't know.
But certainly we remember the Muhammed cartoons and Theo Van Gogh's murder in Sweden, for instance. There's also problems here in Quebec where Islamic men beat the shit out of their wives, who are not allowed to hold jobs or go outside to talk to other men.
But that's really besides the point here.

I can't help but feel that you're ignoring the Dutch who do extremely well as a country, whilst speaking 4 languages, or maybe in 20 years will you possibly still be saying the same thing about India which will be the second largest economy after China whilst speaking 18 official languages? I think you just blindly ignore a load of contributing factors when you make claims like that.

I don't know much about the Dutch. All I see is that they only have one official language: Dutch. Many Europeans speak multiple languages and that is not an advantage in the sense that if all of Europe spoke just one language, they would all be even better off. The solution is not to learn how to speak more languages, it's to all speak THE SAME language.
India also has only 2 official languages: Indi and English. But they do have many diverse groups of people there.
They will be a large economy but only because they have a large population. Their GDP per capita is still relatively low. I imagine their crime is also fairly high ( for what they report anyway ).

I also imagine that it would take me about 2 minutes to find 30 newspaper articles where a member of one group fought with a member of another group over some bullshit.

Yeh, because there's no other possible historical, financial or military factors that could otherwise contribute to the hot serving of shit pie in Africa or the Middle East. Again, very flimsy 'evidence'.

I certainly cannot see any case as to how diversity is helping them. At best you could claim it's neutral, in which case: Why invite it so happily? It seems far more likely to be a negative all over the world.

The surgeon may incorporate something different from their culture into their new environment. In the UK we benefit hugely from immigration since we gain a load of skilled workers like your hypothetical surgeon who drive our economy and fill the demand we have for certain skilled roles.

Yeah but you don't benefit from their culture, you benefit from their labor and skill.
Of course it's beneficial to let emigrate people with a socio-economic status or an education that is far above that of your average native population. That has nothing to do with culture.

OMG why am I talking to you.

Yeah why are you? You never say anything worthwhile anyway.

[poxpower]

Er whoops sorry, Theo Van Gogh was Dutch.

Now do you think that there is any way his murder was not motivated by religion? Which is part of how people define culture last I checked.

[Entice]

At 9/9/13 05:27 PM, Elitistinen wrote: Multiculture is a fallacy. I'll use my country as an example. We have thousands of immigrants from Middle East every year. They come to Finland to look for a better life. But they refuse to accept our way of life. Recently some of the Muslims even discussed about setting up 'no-go zone'. In Helsinki and Espoo, you have pockets of immigrants all around, and rarely you see immigrants live together with the natives.

What about countries like the US? People are integrated, but they still often retain their native religious beliefs etc. even after generations.

@OP The problem seems to be with integration not multiculturalism, which is why you see more racial problems in European countries than the US for example. Now you could argue all you want about how blacks in the US are statistically more likely to murder someone, or perhaps, say that George Zimmerman was a racist murderer. But besides isolated incidents, do you really see stuff like that often here? All I see is people trying to exaggerate the factor that race played when things like that do happen or focus on things like gangs and extreme groups that are far more racist than the majority of the country has been for the past 50 years. Not to say that the US is devoid of racial issues, far from it, but we're doing a fair bit better than any other country that can claim to be multicultural and I'd say it's because there's a greater emphasis on integration.

[Warforger]

Pretty unconvincing to say the least mostly because of the whole "This pisses hippies off therefore it must be true" as though everyone who disagrees with you is a hippy.

At 9/9/13 05:27 PM, Elitistinen wrote: In Helsinki and Espoo, you have pockets of immigrants all around, and rarely you see immigrants live together with the natives.

I don't know about that. The Middle Eastern Arabic Muslims seem to get all the attention, but according to statistics they're only a small fraction of the Muslim immigrants much less all immigrants. The biggest Muslim group are the Bosniaks i.e. Bosnian Muslims and they're sure as hell not getting any attention. On top of that you also have counter protests from other Muslim Arabs against the ones who want to take over Europe, it's just no one cares as much about them. To me the whole thing gets blown out of proportion and this causes tensions to rise.

[Warforger]

At 9/9/13 01:18 PM, poxpower wrote: On the flipside, multiculturalism is just plain bad in socio-economic terms. It correlates fairly highly with crime and violence as well as poor economic growth.

In the short run maybe, in the long run it's a downright necessity. In a modern developed society people have fewer children, this means a declining population, this means a "graying of the core" where old people begin to strain social services which are getting less money because there are fewer people to tax and more people to spend it on. Thus what countries like America or Sweden do is take in immigrants who then beef up the tax revenue. Japan on the other hand doesn't and they're facing a huge crisis.

( http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4553005/alesinassrn_ethnicdiversity.pdf?sequence=2 )
Africa, for instance, has a very high rate of ethno-linguistic frationalization. Africa is VERY culturally diverse, as well as is the Middle East.

Look at this world map:
http://cdn3.chartsbin.com/chartimages/l_9678_0ea7fa3da5858289f99cec497acd5911

You can see there is a fairly large correlation with where most people would want to live and where diversity is lowest.

Wow. Just wow. So you don't see the huge error in your logic? Like the massive gaping hole in it? At the very least in the huge inaccuracy in your chart probably given by how those nations define ethnicity? To begin with ethno-LINGUISTIC fractionalization? China is perhaps one of the most multicultural countries in the world and it's listed as not that fractionalized at all, same with Russia. China for one has multiple languages simply within the main Han Chinese ethnic group i.e. Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka etc. after that it has other ethnic minorities with their own languages such as the Manchu, the Mongols, the Tibetans, the Turkestani's etc. etc. along with other subdivisions within the Chinese ethnic group. Russia has perhaps hundreds of ethnic groups native to Russia, along with many native languages such as Chuvash, Yakut, Tatar etc. not to mention it's gone into ethnic conflicts with its many peoples such as the Chechens.

All I see is data that you just randomly pulled out of nowhere and have no clue what it means at all.

When is diversity good? Only in small amounts. Diversity is beneficial in the form of, say, going to a restaurant, having one Indian friend, or going to Paris for a week. It is BAD when it comes to many large groups coexisting together.

You'll notice that the people who preach for "diversity" usually have a very non-diverse group of friends. Facebook helps alleviate this as it keeps you in contact with people who you have met at some point but are no longer part of your immediate social circle. Sadly, these same "diversity proponents" are the first to block people from facebook ( or to disable youtube comments, as is famously the case with the current ongoing Atheism + / feminism debacle ).

Yah I'm calling bullshit. Like huge bullshit. As in this is just your personal experience and you clearly have not had much experience outside where you live. By that I mean my high school classes had no ethnic majority and had a whole bunch of Indians, Asians, Latino's etc. all of which spoke English with no accent.

[poxpower]

At 9/9/13 08:59 PM, Warforger wrote:

In the short run maybe, in the long run it's a downright necessity. In a modern developed society people have fewer children, this means a declining population, this means a "graying of the core" where old people begin to strain social services which are getting less money because there are fewer people to tax and more people to spend it on.

That's really a myth perpetrated by liberals I've come to see.
1. Societies with high natality rates produce undesirable people who commit more crime, work lower wage jobs or end up below the middle class.

That means that if you import people simply on the basis of how fast they reproduce, you'll only attach more leeches to your system, not more people to support your elderly later on.

2. Your other options is to select only the middle class and above to be imported into your country. This creates two problems. One, for your country: Unless you create very strict immigration policies, they will import their whole family, many of which are likely to be underachievers. They are also likely to send money back home and thus have it "leave" our economy.
Secondly, this creates a brain drain on other nations, basically exacerbating their existing problems.

3. Our society produces more than enough resources for a small % of the population to take care of the elderly. What is a bigger drain are high crime, high and useless incarceration, lax disability policies and impoverished beneficiaries of government aid

4. Japan has the same declining population problem and rather than import undesirable people, they are inventing BADASS ROBOTS to take care of their elderly. Automating jobs that would need to be done by nursing staff is a great way to increase care quality and decrease needed manpower.

All that importing mass amounts of Africans, Haitians, Indians or whatever else does is seed large population of non-integrating groups that basically cause more problems than they solve ultimately.

Wow. Just wow. So you don't see the huge error in your logic? Like the massive gaping hole in it? At the very least in the huge inaccuracy in your chart probably given by how those nations define ethnicity?

This data is not provided by the nations themselves but by researchers who have set up their own standard for measuring diversity.

All I see is data that you just randomly pulled out of nowhere and have no clue what it means at all.

Well feel free to read how they arrived at their numbers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_ethnic_and_cultural_diversity_level

I didn't make this up nor is it some "obscure racist concept" or whatever. It's an actual number used by economists. You can see that there are many different ways you could calculate this that yield slightly different world maps, but generally they would be quite similar to the one I linked.

I'm not going to argue with the numbers as I'm not about to go look into every country to try and prove that Russia or China should have a different number. I am not an expert in this ( neither are you ).

Yah I'm calling bullshit. Like huge bullshit. As in this is just your personal experience and you clearly have not had much experience outside where you live. By that I mean my high school classes had no ethnic majority and had a whole bunch of Indians, Asians, Latino's etc. all of which spoke English with no accent.

On an individual basis, there is usually no problem as individuals will associate based on sameness. So for instance, there is usually not issue with a class like you describe where there are very few people of many ethnicities who all share the same language, religion and general tastes in entertainment or ideas about the world.

That's why a lot of these "multiculture" proponents come from colleges, where it's very common to have various ethnicities mix in a classroom with no problems.

However when there are large portions of various ethnicities, then trouble ensues and integration slows exponentially. Case in point: There are still racial conflicts in the USA centuries after the two people mixed.

It's the same everywhere that large populations of XYZ race coexist with large populations of another race. The same is typically true for religion ( Israel, Ireland, Iraq, Afghanistan) and to a lesser extent, language ( as is the case here in Quebec ).

[Gario]

At 9/9/13 01:18 PM, poxpower wrote:
It is BAD when it comes to many large groups coexisting together.

If the groups are coexisting together, why is that a bad thing?

Ultimately, one culture would be more efficient. It's also impossible without either some form of assimilation or genocide, so I don't see why you're upset at the idea of people being forced to intermingle. Different cultures developed over time due to geographical differences and the inability to communicate with one another over vast spaces. Now that we can, we'll inevitably converge and EVENTUALLY share one culture together. Being accepting of other's cultures is like the band aid that helps ease the tensions that result from this, so I don't see why you'd be upset at this.

If the idea of integration is what bothers you, understand that isolation makes the problems of more than one culture worse. People used to be able to get away with having different cultures because they really just didn't know of others existences, or they had easily defined barriers that allowed easy separation. Nowadays, isolation only means that your self-imposed barriers or borders will get crossed eventually (like the Theo Van Gogh incident), and due to that person's cultural inability to coexist with others the person will lash out more aggressively, causing the very problems that you're getting upset about. What is your alternative, do the impossible and eradicate culture on the spot, or do the unthinkable and rid the world of global communications?

Integration is a step toward getting rid of multiple cultures, while isolation encourages mankind to separate from one another for arbitrary reasons. I don't see how you can hold the opinion of making culture irrelevant on the one hand and yet discourage various forms of integration on the other.

[AxTekk]

Oh Jesus Christ. This thread. Please get a hobby.

Camarohusky pretty much summed it all up for me.

[Korriken]

At 9/10/13 01:12 AM, Gario wrote:

If the groups are coexisting together, why is that a bad thing?

Because, in reality, they don't coexist in harmony. There's a reason why in a multicultural settings, people tend to segregate themselves. In America, it really doesn't help matters when the government tries to force these peoples to mingle when they don't want to.

Ultimately, one culture would be more efficient. It's also impossible without either some form of assimilation or genocide, so I don't see why you're upset at the idea of people being forced to intermingle.

Place 2 Alpha male wolves together, what happens? they fight.

Different cultures developed over time due to geographical differences and the inability to communicate with one another over vast spaces. Now that we can, we'll inevitably converge and EVENTUALLY share one culture together.

bullshit. Different cultures have different values, which inevitably clash. The only way to bring all of the world together in 1 culture would be to eliminate about 90% of the Earth's population. Pakistani honor killing is part of their culture, but is completely unacceptable in most civilized parts of the world. Should we accept it when a Pakistani in America beheads his daughter because he feels that she dishonored her family? I think not.

Being accepting of other's cultures is like the band aid that helps ease the tensions that result from this, so I don't see why you'd be upset at this.

That naive concept would only work if various cultures decided on which bits and pieces each find acceptable about the others and all sides discard the rest. Not going to happen.

[poxpower]

At 9/10/13 01:12 AM, Gario wrote:

yet discourage various forms of integration on the other.

I am not discouraging integration, I am saying they don't do it and instead promote this idea of "multiculturalism" which is not integration but basically separating everyone into their little corner.

Once again it's low-education, low-income and low-IQ populations that have the hardest time with integration. They are mainly the reason why you don't want mixing, because they beat each other up constantly and generally their bad behaviour trickles up to other socio-economic classes who also become more divided.

A good example is jails. Jails are segregated because blacks and latinos constantly murder each other. They are morons. Diversity offers us nothing when we're smart and it just destroys lower classes.

So yeah I am for aggressive integration and tight immigration controls.

[SmilezRoyale]

At 9/9/13 01:18 PM, poxpower wrote: There's been lots of talk about mutliculturalism and how awesome and important it is in my province recently.

Your title is somewhat misleading. I thought you were going to argue that culture wasn't real.

Notwithstanding, You didn't bring up the strongest major criticism of diversity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Putnam#Diversity_and_trust_within_communities

A harvard political scientist more or less comes to the conclusion that diversity reduces the amount of trust between *and* within ethnic/racial/cultural groups after spending years trying to disprove said conclusion.

[poxpower]

At 9/10/13 08:38 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

Notwithstanding, You didn't bring up the strongest major criticism of diversity.

This is how we learn!
I think it just proves we need MORE integration and more money spent on PR campaigns. When will people learn?
lol

[Warforger]

At 9/9/13 10:59 PM, poxpower wrote: That's really a myth perpetrated by liberals I've come to see.
1. Societies with high natality rates produce undesirable people who commit more crime, work lower wage jobs or end up below the middle class.

That means that if you import people simply on the basis of how fast they reproduce, you'll only attach more leeches to your system, not more people to support your elderly later on.

That's not it. Countries don't end up doing that, and in the case of the United States they're pretty selective to the point where immigrants come up and end up joining the Upper class (particularly graduates of the IIT).

2. Your other options is to select only the middle class and above to be imported into your country. This creates two problems. One, for your country: Unless you create very strict immigration policies, they will import their whole family, many of which are likely to be underachievers.

Really? Just because they're family? The group which mainly does this in the US are Asians, and according to your racial standards they're genetically superior to whites.

They are also likely to send money back home and thus have it "leave" our economy.

.....Which would then come back when that money is used to buy goods from the host country.

Secondly, this creates a brain drain on other nations, basically exacerbating their existing problems.

That is true but it contradicts your earlier points.

3. Our society produces more than enough resources for a small % of the population to take care of the elderly. What is a bigger drain are high crime, high and useless incarceration, lax disability policies and impoverished beneficiaries of government aid

lol. Look up first a population pyramid, then slap yourself in the face for not reading anything about the medicare crisis.

4. Japan has the same declining population problem and rather than import undesirable people, they are inventing BADASS ROBOTS to take care of their elderly. Automating jobs that would need to be done by nursing staff is a great way to increase care quality and decrease needed manpower.

Really? You've got to be fucking kidding me. That is so goddamn stupid, for one the #1 cost is medical care, which robots cannot decrease the cost of. After that that does not change the fact that in Japan Nursing Homes are overcrowded whilst schools are underpopulated, with many having to close down because they simply don't have any students.

All that importing mass amounts of Africans, Haitians, Indians or whatever else does is seed large population of non-integrating groups that basically cause more problems than they solve ultimately.

Indians no

This data is not provided by the nations themselves but by researchers who have set up their own standard for measuring diversity.

Well feel free to read how they arrived at their numbers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_ethnic_and_cultural_diversity_level

Your link says that they got the numbers from ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA and then used other sources to fill in the rest meaning that it's more of a cute high school project than a professional measure. No EB is a credibly source, but for measures like this they're supposed to be second hand middlemen for information not the main basis of the argument. By that if you wanted a serious measure you would use the UN or some international research group which goes country to country.

The problem arises that EB would then take that data from the governments themselves, and when you have countries like Japan which want to have ethnic unity they often cover up ethnic minorities, which may be why China is ranked so low on Cultural diversity. Furthermore there's the problem with the definition especially in places like China where the definition isn't so concrete.

I didn't make this up nor is it some "obscure racist concept" or whatever. It's an actual number used by economists. You can see that there are many different ways you could calculate this that yield slightly different world maps, but generally they would be quite similar to the one I linked.

What economists? Because if any economist uses it they might as well have learned their entire trade from reading Wikipedia articles.

I'm not going to argue with the numbers as I'm not about to go look into every country to try and prove that Russia or China should have a different number. I am not an expert in this ( neither are you ).

I'm not saying they should have a different number, what I'm saying is that you don't know what it means and it doesn't seem to be related to what you're arguing. Basically "Look at this map which says something about multiculturalism" and then saying what it means. Furthermore this definition is ambiguous "the odds at which 2 people chosen at random are the same as each other", this sounds like it's open to interpretation because if there are two people in China who speak Mandarin are they exactly the same? Is a person who speaks Cantonese and someone who speaks Mandarin as different as one who speaks Mongol and one who speaks Mandarin? What if those people are multilingual? Are they less different than those who are not? For these kinds of studies you need strict definitions that can be argued, you need independent data you collect yourself through survey's and interviews. What you referenced does not do that, all it does is take EB data and use it to determine if people are the same.

On an individual basis, there is usually no problem as individuals will associate based on sameness. So for instance, there is usually not issue with a class like you describe where there are very few people of many ethnicities who all share the same language, religion and general tastes in entertainment or ideas about the world.

That's why a lot of these "multiculture" proponents come from colleges, where it's very common to have various ethnicities mix in a classroom with no problems.

Yah, because they also live in multicultural societies.... Do you seriously think that if there is say an equally large group of Pakistanni's, Chinese, Koreans, Whites, Blacks and Latinos in a school that they would all only hang out with their own race? Because I can sure as hell tell you that does not happen.

However when there are large portions of various ethnicities, then trouble ensues and integration slows exponentially. Case in point: There are still racial conflicts in the USA centuries after the two people mixed.

? Like what?

It's the same everywhere that large populations of XYZ race coexist with large populations of another race. The same is typically true for religion ( Israel, Ireland, Iraq, Afghanistan) and to a lesser extent, language ( as is the case here in Quebec ).

No not really. Switzerland proves you wrong, as does India.

[Korriken]

At 9/10/13 08:38 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

A harvard political scientist more or less comes to the conclusion that diversity reduces the amount of trust between *and* within ethnic/racial/cultural groups after spending years trying to disprove said conclusion.

It took a Harvard political scientist years to tell you what I could have told you within moments using the power of common sense.

[AxTekk]

At 9/9/13 08:45 PM, Warforger wrote: On top of that you also have counter protests from other Muslim Arabs against the ones who want to take over Europe, it's just no one cares as much about them. To me the whole thing gets blown out of proportion and this causes tensions to rise.

This. It doesn't get spoken about a lot, but certainly in my country, the vast majority of Muslims are like the vast majority of Christians who just aren't bothered if other people don't drink their Kool Aid.

[poxpower]

At 9/11/13 12:04 AM, Warforger wrote:

That's not it. Countries don't end up doing that, and in the case of the United States they're pretty selective to the point where immigrants come up and end up joining the Upper class (particularly graduates of the IIT).

In Canada, the average immigrant pays less taxes than he costs the government.
http://www.fraserinstitute.org/uploadedFiles/fraser-ca/Content/research-news/research/publications/immigration-and-the-canadian-welfare-state-2011.pdf
"He estimated that as a result of the immigrants’ low average incomes and the operation of the welfare state with its progressive income taxes and universal social benefits, in 2000 immigrants received from all Canadians an annual net fiscal transfer of $18.3 billion."

It is doubly true for the USA where large populations of illegal immigrants pay no taxes at all.

.....Which would then come back when that money is used to buy goods from the host country.

No they don't always come back.
Here.
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/business/story.html?id=0d8ac839-1277-4dc0-bbdc-31028cc62ba3
"Statistics Canada says remittances by new immigrants alone account for up to 30 per cent of the gross domestic products of some developing countries, including Haiti, Lesotho, and Jordan. In Jamaica, the Philippines and the Dominican Republic, these money transfers account for as much as 20 per cent of their respective economies."

They basically come here, enjoy our welfare, pay lower taxes than they cost, then send spare money that they make abroad to support other economies.

Secondly, this creates a brain drain on other nations, basically exacerbating their existing problems.

That is true but it contradicts your earlier points.

No.

lol. Look up first a population pyramid, then slap yourself in the face for not reading anything about the medicare crisis.

That's because the funds are mismanaged and the economy badly allocated.
At the very least, if you read the study I posted, you'll see that immigrants don't solve this as they cost more than they bring in, so all they do is make it worse.

Really? You've got to be fucking kidding me. That is so goddamn stupid, for one the #1 cost is medical care, which robots cannot decrease the cost of.

Yes, automation actually decreases the cost of making things.
Welcome to the 19th century, Time Traveler.

Your link says that they got the numbers from ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA and then used other sources to fill in the rest meaning that it's more of a cute high school project than a professional measure.

No, it's a serious concept used in many economics papers.
Good look it up all you want.
http://journalistsresource.org/studies/international/development/ethnic-fractionalization-and-aid-effectiveness
http://ideas.repec.org/p/upf/upfgen/660.html
A quick google scholar search turns up countless papers using or referencing this index.
http://scholar.google.ca/scholar?hl=en&q=ethnolinguistic+fractionalization&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=

It's not a perfect measure of "diversity" by any means but it does have its uses.

this sounds like it's open to interpretation

Yes it is, but that's besides the point. The point is to come up with a number that has predictive power and that is also possible to gather.

Yah, because they also live in multicultural societies.... Do you seriously think that if there is say an equally large group of Pakistanni's, Chinese, Koreans, Whites, Blacks and Latinos in a school that they would all only hang out with their own race? Because I can sure as hell tell you that does not happen.

Just that question shows you are ( wilfully ) misunderstanding what I am saying.

? Like what?

You're asking me what racial conflicts there are in the USA between whites and blacks?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_racial_violence_in_the_United_States#Later

And just recently, George Zimmerman...
There's also endless amounts of gang violence between black and hispanic populations.

Here in Canada we constantly have debates about religious clothing ( same as they did in France ) because, again, we foolishly let large unintegrated populations of Muslims establish themselves into self-segregated communities.

Here is another example with the Hasidic Jews: http://www.vigile.net/Not-in-my-backyard-either
Note that even being non-violent and ...somewhat... employed, they cause problems simply be means of their culture being so starkly different.

No not really. Switzerland proves you wrong, as does India.

I'm sure, I'm sure.

[KatMaestro]

At 9/11/13 06:02 AM, AxTekk wrote:

At 9/9/13 08:45 PM, Warforger wrote: On top of that you also have counter protests from other Muslim Arabs against the ones who want to take over Europe, it's just no one cares as much about them. To me the whole thing gets blown out of proportion and this causes tensions to rise.

This. It doesn't get spoken about a lot, but certainly in my country, the vast majority of Muslims are like the vast majority of Christians who just aren't bothered if other people don't drink their Kool Aid.

Yeah, excluding they're trying to teach anyone about Islam and "banish" those who accidentally cross them.

[Fim]

At 9/9/13 06:54 PM, poxpower wrote:

At 9/9/13 06:14 PM, Fim wrote:

It's an interesting issue that the media never ever talks about.

I really don't buy that pox, you don't just stumble across a random 2003 study about this sort of shit, you obviously have the notion first and then google to find something that backs up your claim. I think you should just openly admit that you have an agenda here.

At 9/9/13 01:18 PM, poxpower wrote:

Are you saying that ethnic violence in England IS caused by integration policies then?

I have not looked into it at all so I don't know.

So lets backtrack slightly, you're having a go at people for expressing a viewpoint, which you haven't even read up on yourself. That's doesn't seem fair.

I don't know much about the Dutch. All I see is that they only have one official language: Dutch. Many Europeans speak multiple languages and that is not an advantage in the sense that if all of Europe spoke just one language, they would all be even better off.

Completely wrong there, there's extensive research out there pointing towards the model that different languages actually channel people's thought processes differently, for instance there are words in other languages for things and ideas that we simply don't have a word for in English. Id say that being bilingual actually makes you a richer person because you have more of a vocabulary of ideas to choose from. Like these.

India also has only 2 official languages: Indi and English. But they do have many diverse groups of people there.

Well if I was being pedantic I'd say they have No official state language, and speak at 7 divergences of Indian as well as English. While the Dutch speak Dutch, english, German, and to a lesser extent French, while still maintaining a very well functioning country politically, economically and educationally speaking.

I also imagine that it would take me about 2 minutes to find 30 newspaper articles where a member of one group fought with a member of another group over some bullshit.

Similarly I could probably find examples of members of THE SAME group fighting. It really wouldn't prove anything.

OMG why am I talking to you.

Yeah why are you? You never say anything worthwhile anyway.

Meh, debates online are by definition an absolute waste of time.

[poxpower]

At 9/11/13 01:11 PM, Fim wrote:

I really don't buy that pox, you don't just stumble across a random 2003 study about this sort of shit, you obviously have the notion first and then google to find something that backs up your claim. I think you should just openly admit that you have an agenda here.

No, like most everyone who eventually comes to learn about this topic, I thought just like you only a few years / months ago.
It's by looking at race debates on youtube that I eventually came to this belief. Go look at them for yourself, they are quite one-sided in my opinion.

So lets backtrack slightly, you're having a go at people for expressing a viewpoint, which you haven't even read up on yourself. That's doesn't seem fair.

What I'm attacking in this topic is not the particular integration system of England.

Completely wrong there, there's extensive research out there pointing towards the model that different languages actually channel people's thought processes differently,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_advantages_to_bilingualism
I find these studies dubious as some countries and populations are highly bilingual ( or multilingual) while still not exhibiting any particular difference in mean IQ or academic achievement.

For instance: http://dana.org/uploadedImages/Images/Content_Images/Cerebrum-bilingual-Fig1-L.jpg
I don't see a correlation here with a country's number of bilingual speaker and their average IQ or their economy.
http://www.statisticbrain.com/countries-with-the-highest-lowest-average-iq/

More likely than not, it's being smart in the first place that makes you fluently bilingual and not the other way around.

If anything, it's simply smart to learn English because then you can compete on the world market, so the advantages here really come from MONOCULTURALISM and pushing your own culture towards American culture and one world language.

Similarly I could probably find examples of members of THE SAME group fighting. It really wouldn't prove anything.

Again I know this argument. Let me put it to you: "Religions are cool. Every conflict of religion ever was really about something else, and not religion. Yep."

Oh how I have heard this again and again when debating the merits of religion.

[Cynical-Charlotte]

Poxpower, I am having trouble piecing together your thesis (perhaps because it was inspired directly by Facebook posts). Is your theory that culture does not exist - which is ludicrous? Or, is it that culture is a meaningless form of categorization - which is also ludicrous? Normally, I enjoy discussions on this subject because it is my field of study, but your posts are extremely sporadic and devoid of any real structure. The only concrete "arguments" I found seem far too simplistic to warrant so many paragraphs.

I would like to contribute, but I simply cannot understand the point of this topic.

[poxpower]

At 9/11/13 03:12 PM, Cynical-Charlotte wrote: Poxpower, I am having trouble piecing together your thesis

Multiculturalism is worthless.
All parts of any culture should either be destroyed or integrated to a larger world culture.

Example: McDonald's is an American invention, but they are all over the world. It is no longer the propriety of any one culture. The same is true for sushi or Beethoven or Star Wars.

Example 2: Beating women and children is part of many cultures. It's a shitty idea. Let's stop it.

IT'S SIMPLE PEOPLE.