Multiculturalism!

That's right. This is a discussion about multiculturalism and just culture in general I guess. Are they good? Are they bad? Why? I have my own opinions on this, but I think they'd best be reserved until the conversation really kicks off.

Here's a question you may want to answer just to get the discussion going: First off, what does culture mean to you?

I believe there's a tension between accepting cultures as being more or less of the same value, with whatever given traits to a culture which perhaps may not be. People will sometimes insist that some reprehensible things are essential to their culture, and tying yourself into not over not judging others is as much a mistake as always condemning others for being different.

I view different cultures the same way I view different languages - a society works better if everybody speaks the same language, and has the same culture (i.e. things like the role of Women in society, how to raise children, whether to tip in restaurants, how much respect is to be given to the elder, how late is it acceptable to get at meetings, how informal disputes are to be solved, and all the countless unspoken things that make life simpler ... and of course, language is part of culture).

So if multiculturalism means celebrating immigrants keeping their own culture, I'm against it, it's bad for society (it makes people trust and understand each other less, etc.), I'd rather they were encouraged to comform to the local culture as much as possible. That doesn't mean I think the foreigner's culture is necessarily inferior; I don't wish for pakistanis and mexicans in their own countries to adopt anglo-saxon culture either.

edited 25th Jul '11 8:29:01 AM by SlightlyEvilDoctor

As far as I'm concerned, multiculturalism just means acceptance of people from various backgrounds with their own traditions. Which goes both ways, and I would always see as a positive. It doesn't require anyone give up their own heritage and traditions, although it can include assimilation. And by goes both ways, I mean that if a person or minority isn't accepting of other people or the majority's culture and traditions, that would be as bad a thing as the other way around, and that the laws of the land are inclusionary rather than exclusionary in nature.

I'm fine with melting pot situations; that is, people openly living together from different backgrounds, discourse going on, and eventually things blending together into a hybrid. The problem is is you get segregation by choice in many cases... this is somewhat problematic but I you can't exactly force people to live together... not without fireworks at any rate.

In other words, I'm fine with it if its a melting pot... but not a mosaic. (My standard grade modern studies classes come flowing back.)

I'm ok with multiculturalism up to the point where it starts inflicting real harm on other people, especially children.

The best example I can give is the case in Toronto recently where an Islamic group is using a school for prayer services for the kids and is separating the boys and the girls (and worst of all, separating the menstruating girls from them all). That's the sort of multiculturalism that I don't like.

Or to be more precise, I'm a supporter of rationalistic morality. I think there are correct answers to questions of right and wrong. (Although the paths to the answers are often horribly complex)

I directly oppose your opinion because being insulated in your own cultural bubble will overstate the perception of importance you have towards all those little cultural bells and whistles you mentioned. It will also make it far more difficult for you to live with anything outside your comfort zone. It's a recipe for friction between two cultural groups and is to be avoided. Segregation of cultures poses far more of a threat to society.

Agreed. I think the collision of different cultures and values is good and beneficial as long as there's a definite sense where to stop (example: the way some disagreements end in blood feud in some cultures) and as long as it's not just confrontation but also meeting.

Hmmm... thing is, there are different degrees of assimilation. Language, I would think, is not so much a 'tradition' as 'a way of communicating', and as such, I would expect an understanding of a common language within a country. Mixing with others, socially and potentially as a life partner, is another aspect of being accepting of others' heritage and culture - you accept that they can be a part of your life, that their heritage is of no less value than your own. I also don't approve of self-segregation.

But, there are different degrees of assimilation, for example - I'm a fully assimilated American (secular) Jew as is my mother, I was raised with Ashkenazi Jewish traditions. I know the Hebrew alphabet, but don't understand many Hebrew words and no grammar. My father isn't Jewish, just about everyone I interact with isn't Jewish, the majority culture isn't Jewish. But I celebrate Passover and Hannukah and not Easter or Christmas. But I'm also very much a Bostonian, love the Red Sox, proud of our high esteem toward liberty and academics. Like most Americans, I'm American first and something else second, a sort of chunky stew rather than a fully melted, smooth cultural soup.

Depends what you mean by segregation of cultures. If you mean within a single country, or even between parts of a federation (Yugoslavia, the US), then yes, I agree it can be a source of problems, and that homogenization should be encouraged. But if you call a whole country like Japan a "cultural bubble", that doesn't seem like much of a problem (at least, it doesn't cause the same kind of problems as different cultures living next to each other in Paris or London can).

edited 25th Jul '11 8:49:11 AM by SlightlyEvilDoctor

The problem is more that if a person does not alter and change when they come into contact with another culture and others do, then the ones that do usually do better and the ones that don't tend to feel like they are the sole bastion of "moral decency".

You soon end up with a situation where battlelines are drawn for no better reason than which order you put tea in milk.

Oh no, it does. Just zoom out one step of magnification. It breeds resentment and distrust on a cross-country scale, and that's partly where national wars come from.

edited 25th Jul '11 8:52:52 AM by Gault

It's a thought terminating cliche and should be a banned phrase in a sociology circles.

The problem with heavily encouraging cultural stasis is that you not only deny your own culture from absorbing the beneficial aspect of another culture, but you discourage natural cultural shifts that are experienced over time.

For example, if the US was an insulated culture that strongly dis-favored cultural change, things like Women's Suffrage and de-segregation would have been further impeded by an even higher reluctance to accept cultural change than those movements already had to deal with.

Ideally, when two different cultures begin to co-exist, they will exchange with each other the most beneficial parts of each.

edited 25th Jul '11 9:16:31 AM by Meeble

I prefer multiculturalism. The point of the state is to create a common point of interaction, a way for everyone to exchange rapidly and easily, information between one another. Then you create a culture of not just tolerance but acceptance. What you get is natural assimilation, where the government does nothing and because your local people are so welcoming, immigrants that come in assimilate anyway despite accepting them the way that they are.

Most self-segregation isn't because immigrants come and go "Gee I came to France/USA/Canada/Whatever, hate everyone and don't want to speak their language." It's because they never got accepted into society, so the only support infrastructure they have to rely on are people of the same ethnic group. That's their best link with strangers, so they use it and then a community builds out of it.

Hmm, good point. Its somewhat self-perpetuating potentially.

Blenders do have different settings. You can puree everything together, or you can just mix a few items without complete homogenization.

Culture is awesome unless it is a chasm between you and the cultures around you (not speaking the dominant language), or if it causes you to actively hate said cultures (Islamists in the Netherlands). The first one, at least, is reasonably easy to remedy.

Only to an extent. You can't easily force people to work together and live in the same neighbourhoods. You can manipulate to a degree so it happens, but you can't make two cultures live beside one another.

Wot? Different countries having different cultures breeds resentment and war? Do you have any examples in mind? The national wars I can think of come from disputes over resources or territory or past grudges. The USA and Japan get along fine despite having very different cultures; India and Pakistan hate each other despite having pretty similar cultures. The lines in world wars 1 and 2 didn't have much to do with culture, they were about political alliances.

You get atrocities when two populations with different identities share the same territory (jews and germans, tutsis and hutus, turkish and armenian), not when two neighbouring countries have different cultures.

"Different people over there, they are not like us and we are nothing like them!" allows warfare a lot easier than "They have a large section of people here who might conceivably vote for me"!

It might make war easier to justify by demagogues, but I don't think it's often a cause of war in itself.

And anyway, different countries having different cultures is a fact of life, it's not like the UN should swoop down and make sure everybody has the same culture. How different cultures inside a same country interact is something the government can control more, and "celebrate diversity!" is a bad way of handling that.

Tell that to the Opium war. No-one spoke each others language and it ended up giving us one of the most morally unjustifiable wars of all time.

And why would you say that? Is having lots of differnet cultures a bad thing? If so, proove it.

Personally? There are some aspects of some cultures that need to see the bottom of a well. Parts of my own included.

edited 25th Jul '11 9:53:03 AM by JosefBugman

I think the more cultures around the better. Hell, one of my favorite restauraunt experiences ever was when I went to an art gallery or thgree with my college in kansas City and we ended up eating at a restauraunt themed to be flamboyantly, over the top gay. It weas fun and was nice to meet people who I'd never see around my own town out in force like that. We also drove through a mexican area of town with all sorts of interesting shops and roadside attractions.

Intolerence and an incorrect sense of inherent superiority is the root of cultural conflict and a barrier to the successful integration into society, not the presence of people who sound, act and/or dress differently from the majority.

Yeah, what he said.