Is multiculturalism compatible with democracy?
It has become a general belief that more democracy means more freedom. The annual reports of Freedom House (from the first year they started being compiled to this day) use the word democracy as a synonym of personal freedom. But from history we know that democracy needs a culture also, i.e. the Greeks of the ancient world, the British, the Swiss and the Americans in the modern world. This need of "a democratic culture" seems to be present in the works of many political theorists and it is present in De Tocqueville's Democracy in America, where he explains American institutions and norms as parts of a British culture that was inherited by the Americans.
Now we come with the question what happens in countries where there are no dominant cultures and apart from abiding to state laws, no traditions and no values are taken to be the norm.
In short, if you live in a country where everyone might look strange or distant to you (you have neither bad feelings nor good feelings toward someone, since the only thing you were taught in your life is that insofar as you don't violate the state laws, you can assume that you are the center of the universe and you definitely do not need to take advise from anyone on what is good and desirable), how are you supposed to be a part of the same "demos" with these (distant to you) people? How is democracy supposed to work in such a scenario (that seems very plausible in many developed countries)?
Now we come with the question what happens in countries where there are no dominant cultures and apart from abiding to state laws, no traditions and no values are taken to be the norm.
In short, if you live in a country where everyone might look strange or distant to you (you have neither bad feelings nor good feelings toward someone, since the only thing you were taught in your life is that insofar as you don't violate the state laws, you can assume that you are the center of the universe and you definitely do not need to take advise from anyone on what is good and desirable), how are you supposed to be a part of the same "demos" with these (distant to you) people? How is democracy supposed to work in such a scenario (that seems very plausible in many developed countries)?
Comments (73)
My personal experience is exactly the opposite.
The more democracy, the more petty regulations, the higher the taxes, and especially, the more numerous the statist invasions into your private life. Having an elaborate democratic voting circus tends to enlarge the state apparatus and the omnipresence of its interventionism.
In my opinion, the best places to live, are the ones where the government simply does not have the means to micromanage people's lives. A pleasant country to live in, may be too poor because most people are subsistence farmers, or it may recently have been destroyed by a war.
Quoting Eros1982
I am under no illusion that the government gives a flying fart about what I prefer or want.
So, I look at a country, stay there for a while, and if it works for me, I keep living there. If it doesn't work out, I pick another country. I currently live in SE Asia. As far as I am concerned, I go where I am treated best.
What are some places in the world that fit this bill?
Most of SE Asia. Example: Philippines, Laos, Cambodia. Much of Subsaharan Africa. Apparently, the Gulf states: Oman, UAE, Bahrain. They are low-statism rather for ideological reasons. But then again, I do not have personal experience with the Gulf states.
The devil is in the details, though. You won't know until you try. It also depends on your personal circumstances.
For example, you need to figure out visa and/or residence or work permit. These things may also drag you into a spiderweb of statist annoyances. You can't really use the official information on the internet, because in many of these places, you can use a local fixer to arrange simpler solutions.
Currently, I stay in both the Philippines and Cambodia. I am also regularly in Thailand and Vietnam, but that's just for long weekend trips. It costs peanuts to fly there with Air Asia.
Nothing. There are no such countries. In theory, if all cultures and ethnicities were considered equal, without animosities, long-standing rivalries or opposing religions, all you need is a fair and well-articulated constitution on which to build a legal system. A country can be democratic even if the population prefers to live in like-to-like communities. What happens is, the most commonly spoken language becomes the preferred language of trade and commerce. As long as the laws are applied without bias to protect everyone, why should anyone want to curtail other people's freedom?
Danger to democracy is more likely in countries where there has been a dominant culture for a long time, and it's suddenly challenged by an influx of people from a different culture. Especially if that different culture had previously been under the rule of the dominant one and the people have been regarded as inferior. Usually, this is fine, as long as the economy is strong and people feel secure. But should there be any kind of threat from outside - economic downturn, climate events, international hostility, a change in the dynamics of alliances and trade - people become insecure, anxious: it is then easy for ideological extremists to manipulate public opinion. Scapegoating is almost as popular a human pastime as sloganeering.
Even then, democracy may prevail, if the constitution, election process and law-enforcement are sound to begin with and maintained conscientiously.
Quoting Eros1982
People can't help but interact in transactions, in work situations, in public places. They don't stay distant or very long in the marketplace, the workplace, the public amenities and entertainments. Even if they begin by forming separate communities, curiosity will drive people to see what the other is like, look at the costumes, enjoy the music, sample the food. And then, of course, you can't keep the young from being attracted to one another, even if their parents are 'distant'.
Quoting Eros1982
Exactly the same way it works in any other country: the people in a district choose a representative, and give that representative a mandate for the interest of that community. If the rights are already equal, the political interest is most likely to be about economic regulations, infrastructure, public and social services - things that don't vary by ethnicity or culture.
Quoting RogueAI
Wiki sez https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_World_Liberty_Index
Or, as the title asks, "is multiculturalism compatible with democracy?"
A very resounding "yes" to this question, but only when all the differing ethnicities involved all commonly share the same non-authoritarian values upon which the notion of "democracy" is contingent.
Otherwise, what results is a bunch of opposing authoritarian values voting and electing their way into which authoritarian click/group shall despotically dictate what everyone else should do and be. After all, Nazis were elected so as to produce a fascist governance within an otherwise functional democracy, as example of this. It would be nice if we'd learn from our past so as to not repeat its mistakes ... but, sometimes, we learn nothing from history.
You might be right, but theocratists know what they want and they definitely have visions of woman, family, kids, behavior, duties, education, rites, and so on. They may be dead wrong, but they really know what they want (everything comes clear like crystal to their "blind" eyes).
And then you have nations and civilizations which at a point do not know anymore what they want (apart from economic growth). Who do you think will prevail? The crazy theocratists who have some definite goals or the moderate guys whose only daily dilemma is to live a pleasant life (only) or to suicide?
With the marriage -and birth rate gradually falling to statistically zero in secular demographics, it does not look like they are "dead wrong".
Marriage and divorce are part of what religion regulates. Hence, freedom of religion means that a government does not have the authority to impose rules that are incompatible with the religion.
Parents have the final say over the education of their children. Therefore, government has no authority to overrule the parents' choices.
Therefore, continued conflict with the Statists is inevitable.
But then again, since every next generation of Statists can be expected to be substantially smaller, the problem will gradually solve itself.
These days democracy is largely an imposter term. All one needs to do is look at who is in power and notice the glaring fact that the demos is not one of them. The rhetoric serves only to butter up the demos so as to exploit them for votes.
Given this, its difficult to reconcile democracy and personal freedom, especially when the vast majority of human beings within these states are under a yoke of some kind, whether it be through taxation, regulation, or the myriad encroachments the state makes into their lives.
As for multiculturalism (as for all collectivisms), the theory suffers at its first and most basic metaphysical assumption, the existence of distinct groups, each with their own cultures, goals, and interests. There can be no ethnic and cultural pluralisms because there are no ethnicities and cultures.
Yes, exactly.
You will invariably end up having to fend off the tax collector and the divorce-rape judge.
In my experience, a democracy is never the place where you are treated best.
Elsewhere is always better.
Even supposedly communist hellholes such as China or Vietnam are more pleasant places to live in.
Isn't the proof always in the pudding?
I agree with you. Whenever the state is weak, incompetent, or otherwise cannot reach, one can live relatively free. Nominal power, however frightening it may seem on paper, doesnt necessarily translate into actual power.
People are breaking down the door to get into America.
The bottom of other societies frantically try to insert themselves into the deepest gutter at the bottom of American society, because it often still represents economic progress for them.
But then again, even a SE Asian truck driver wouldn't do that. It's better to be a truck driver in Thailand than to go dumpster diving in New York.
So, either these young men are really desperate -- some are -- or else they are misinformed.
That's the situation for men. The situation for women is a bit different. If you are young and pretty, then in New York, the sky is the limit. Sugar daddies can be very generous. But then again, even that may no longer work because of oversupply.
No foreigner got caught up in the original Khmer Rouge conundrum.
Foreigners were supposed to report at the French embassy for the next military evacuation flight to Singapore, with the trip to the airport under protection of the Khmer Rouge themselves.
It is true that the evacuation from the rooftop of the American embassy in Saigon on the Hai Ba Chung avenue was much more chaotic. That was because unlike France the US wasn't really neutral. The USA did not really want to negotiate or coordinate with the Viet Cong either.
They preferred to organize a spectacular dog and pony show with helicopters from the rooftop of their embassy in Saigon.
The USA also had entire carrier groups sailing in front of the Mekong delta and the beaches of Da Nang. What was that good for?
With just one phone call, they could have arranged protection from the North Vietnamese for the civilian airport in Saigon and organized military evacuation flights to Bangkok. They just didn't want that, for political reasons.
It is not the actual belligerents that are dangerous to American civilians overseas. It is the American government that is.
For some....Quoting Tarskian
If you've been in a position to owe - and fail to pay - taxes, to cheat on your wife and rape someone. Not if you're the imported serf who was raped. Quoting NOS4A2
If that one is young, strong, male and economically privileged, yes. Until he gets up the nose of a war-lord, drug lord, or gang.
At that point, you don't see the tax collector anymore. Too late in the game already.
I have never owed and failed to pay taxes. The hack is to make sure that you avoid owing them in the first place.
The situation is much easier outside the West in that regard. In terms of taxation, they only pluck the low-hanging fruit. So, you are even unlikely to ever owe anything.
Even Europe is easier in that regard than the USA.
Quoting Vera Mont
The trick there is to never make a deal in which you promise exclusivity.
The female counterpart, on the other hand, may be interested in offering exclusivity because then the sexual access that she parlays in exchange for resources, is worth at least five to ten times more. Non-exclusive sex is dirt cheap in comparison.
The reverse is not true.
As a man, you don't get five to ten times more frequent (or five to ten times cheaper) sexual access if you offer exclusivity. While men are willing to pay for exclusivity, women are not.
By default, in Islam, the niqah, i.e. the arrangement, is not sexually exclusive on the male side. It can be, but that is not about sex but about legitimate heirs. The family of the woman may insist that only their daughter is allowed to produce them. In that case, there are always other, much more important financial interests at stake.
I guess it's just very, very good to be you!
If you ever meet European nobility, you will quickly understand that they think exactly the same. Only the peasants believe that it is about "love". Seriously, instead of avoiding the question, "What are you bringing to the table?", it is much more preferable to address the question openly and very directly. Asians understand this very well too. It is always a relief to them that I don't talk about ephemeral feelings but about what kind of deal I propose. That is why I would never "date" western again -- which is simply a pile of bullshit -- because in the end it is never about "love".
This is overly cynical. If you're not in love with the person, why bother marrying them? What's the point? I would never have married my wife if I had no feelings for her, and vice-versa. It's fun to experience life together, watch movies, go on vacations, etc.
There is no such country. And it doesn't sound plausible either.
Within a country, there is always a dominant language, dominant cultural sentiment, and beliefs.
At that point, you don't even know the person. In that case, how can you be in love already?
So, what you can see at first glance, is that she is young, pretty, and eminently suitable to provide you with sexual-tension relief. On her side, she (and her family) are sufficiently convinced that you will dedicate enough resources to the arrangement, given the mahr (sign-on bonus) and nafaqah (weekly allowance and cost reimbursement) that you are willing to pay.
Why do you absolutely need to have sex with her already before concluding a deal? It's all in the mind anyway. If you fancy her, you will surely be satisfied too. I don't even really trust women who agree to have sex before concluding a deal about the sex. There is a serious risk that she has been passed around in that way. I am not willing to pay five to ten times more for someone who sells expensive exclusivity but who is actually unlikely to deliver on it. In that case, it would rather have to be a non-exclusive one-off deal which is much, much cheaper.
Quoting RogueAI
European nobility, Muslims, and SE Asians all have the same opinion on that matter: You do not marry whom you love. Instead, you learn to love whom you marry.
Mary of Burgundy did not marry Maximilian of Austria because she "loved" him. That would have been utmost ridiculous. There were more important interests at stake than just frolicking in the hay with some pretty boy. She married him because she needed him to fend off the attempts of the French king to confiscate the Burgundian Netherlands from her after her father Charles the Bold had died in the Battle of Nancy. So, Maximilian brought over a thousand pike men from Tyrol, recruited some more in Flanders, and defeated the French king in the Battle of Guinegate. Seriously, it is not about "love". It is always about the interests at stake. Only people who have nothing and own nothing can afford to randomly copulate like the animals.
Most people date for awhile. My wife and I lived together for about six months before we got married.
Quoting Tarskian
I actually met my wife trolling on AOL 25 years ago. It was awhile before we exchanged pics and agreed to meet. Quoting Tarskian
Most people aren't rich or nobility so the only real concerns are, do I like this person enough to marry, are their hangups relationship-ending, and will they be a good parent?
I never do that.
I am actually lucky over here because SE Asians don't like to do that either. Why waste my time on a bout of simping to the woman? It makes you look ridiculous. I will never behave like a sexual beggar. I offer a deal, and if she takes it, we get going. Otherwise, next.
I also find "test-driving" sex a dangerous and counterproductive practice. She would be doing exactly what I expect her not to do later on: sex with someone that she has never made a deal with. Furthermore, over here, there is always a sign-on bonus involved. Why would I pay one, if she would also do it without?
Quoting RogueAI
Yes, but it is not by copying their practices or their views that you will ever get rich.
If you behave like the peasants, then all that you will ever be, is a peasant.
Furthermore, Muslims or SE Asians are not necessarily rich either.
Even though I am very opposed to Statist paperwork such as civil marriage certificates, I don't see why there would ever be a need to have sex without first making some deal about the sex.
Before going further, Let's remember first that democracy is a system of government and a state or a country is a different thing. Even if the OP doesn't take this into account, I think it is very important to understand that "people not feeling part" of a country is a very alarming issue for any state, be it democratic or not.
First and foremost the "demos", meaning the people, is inherently important for any state or country to exist independent of the system of government. The people that make the inhabitants of the state have to share an idea about their state. This is why for Empires and states that have in themselves clearly separate people with separate languages and cultures, even religions, have structural problems today. And even quite established democracies like the United Kingdom or Spain can have secessionist movements. Empires like Russia and China have obvious problems and have resorted to what some can rightly call genocidal actions (Russians with the Chechen's and China with the Uighurs).
This wasn't what the OP had in mind, but I think it's very important to understand this aspect before answering further the OP.
Quoting Eros1982
This is something that is argued to happen especially if what is promoted is "multiculturalism". And that multiculturalism destroys the norms, traditions and the values.
It would be good to observe first how actually norms and traditions change before talking about their destruction. Because I would make the claim there indeed still are norms and even traditions.
Then the question about "no dominant culture". Well, our global culture has morphed into something quite similar to a dominant culture. We read the same books, listen to the same music, look at the same films. How our own "nation state culture" survives in the Global village is a difficult question. And this isn't about just the system of governance either. I would argue that this globalization and this melting pot of cultures is the real force behind how the specific culture that a specific people falls from a dominant position it perhaps enjoyed earlier.
Quoting Eros1982
A democracy following it's will of it's people will look quite clueless about what they want simply because the people will have different opinions and goals. And this is what always should be remembered about democracies: they appear far weaker than they are.
On the other hand, totalitarian systems look far more stronger than they actually are. The collapse of the Soviet Union is the best example of this. Never had an empire collapsed due to the bankruptcy of it's ideology as peacefully and rapidbly as the Marxist-Leninist experiment did. Yet unfortunately the "normal" way how Empires fall through war and blood is now played in the war between Russia and Ukraine, something that the last Soviet leadership was able to dodge and what the current revanchist Kremlin wanted to do.
I was actually raised in the same worldview as yours until I understood that there are better ways to deal with the matter. Other people around the globe do things differently and I took an interest in that. In the meanwhile, I have made myself compatible with people who are much more likely to perform well in these matters.
I am rather a traditionalist.
There are good reasons why European nobility behave in the way they did, and still do. For example, they value honor highly. The peasants don't. I prefer to identify with the nobles than with the peasants. There are worthwhile ideals. They truly exist, but they are not the ones of the peasantry.
This looks a bit like myself:
I also believe that Islam is not so far away from European Christianity as some Europeans may think.
I certainly also recognize this very much. Muslims are generally very accepting of people who sympathize or even convert to Islam. They will certainly seek to befriend you. It is almost as if I would be worth more as a former Catholic than otherwise native Muslims. That is probably why western negativity towards Islam disturbs me so much. I know Muslims in a completely different way. They are absolutely not like their western detractors depict them.
Besides that, Guénon is a little bit esoteric to my taste:
There may be merit to studying Hinduism, but I have never done it. I have the impression that, unlike Islam, it is too far away from my frame of reference. I guess that I simply don't get it.
While Islam is another version of the same thing, Hinduism is something else altogether. Islam is the continuation of the tradition of the Jewish prophets, very much similar to Moses et alii. There are a few subtle and unique differences but it is very recognizable. You can actually read about Moses and think that he was actually a Muslim, because a Muslim would most likely have said and done the same things.
Hinduism? That is a lot of work. I leave it up to people like Guénon to figure it out from the outside.
In the modern-day context, I would suggest that 'multiculturalism' is essentially a doctrine adopted by states with which they try to encourage migration to their country, thus increasing the amount of souls under their yoke, and thus increasing their power. (and also sucking power away from other, potentially rival, states - the so-called "brain drain")
The historical United States is an example of a state that rose to prominence through migration, and various modern-day European states are trying to replicate that feat in order to keep their social security systems afloat.
The question: "Can people of different cultures coexist?" is easy enough to answer - obviously, yes, under the right conditions. But this is fundamentally not the question at hand whenever politicians rant about multiculturalism. They use this implied context in order to make disagreement more thorny (if you disagree "you're a racist!"), when in fact the real context is what I described in the first paragraph.
Questions like: "Should migration be used to jury rig unsustainable social security structures?", while much closer to the real context, are for some reason a lot less popular among politicians.
Then again, socialism without open borders is, well, national socialism. Also quite unpopular.
With that out of the way, I think it's clear that mass migration is doomed to fail for countries with elaborate social security (like European countries).
What made the historical United States successful is the fact that no one was getting a handout. So people went to the United States with a plan and an intention to build something. If they failed, they would likely become homeless or worse. Harsh, but ultimately a formula by which mass migration could succeed.
In modern-day Europe, the opposite is true. While the US accepted mass migration on the condition of "succeed or starve", the EU is giving a handout to literally everyone. That's why Europe is flooded with migrants who have basically no prospect of successfully integrating into European societies, which has lead to no end of trouble.
The end result will be predictably tragic.
Ha! I like it when someone else sees it too. National socialism is actually the most fundamental doctrine of European so-called democracy. I've actually got nothing against it, as long as they admit it. The only saving grace of the erstwhile marxism was its internationalism.
Quoting Tzeentch
All roads lead to Rome. Regardless of how they do it, failure is the inevitable attraction point of European civilization. Not taking in migrants won't work either. Without spirituality, there is no hope for the future and no incentive to make children. Migrants are not the solution but they are also not the true underlying problem either:
If only pure reason is allowed to provide the meaning of life, then there simply is no such meaning.
Voting for far-right politicians, i.e. the modern national-socialists, is the national European rebellion against the absurd, of a society that will ultimately commit suicide. Anti-natalists are tragically doomed. They think that they are smart but in reality they are the most stupid people on the planet. That is even a fantastic match with the Dunning-Kruger definition for stupidity: Thinking that you are smart when in fact you are not.
I'm curious about your various arguments and pronouncements.
Quoting Tarskian
What made you think this?
Quoting Tarskian
How did you arrive at this?
Quoting Tarskian
Why?
Quoting Tarskian
You're saying that if we rely solely on pure reason to determine the meaning of life, we will conclude that life has no inherent meaning? I wonder if that's the case. I'm not big on pure reason and I came to the conclusion that life has no inherent meaning simply by how it feels and looks to me.
Quoting Tarskian
Seems to me you could make this same argument and simply replace 'national-socialists' with 'socialism' or 'identity politics' etc.
You mean we left some with their heads still on? A serious oversight, that.
Everyone should be a well-off foreign man in a non-democratic, patriarchal country with a corrupt government, and then the world would be a happy place.
Because the heartland of Europe has been staunchly socialist for over a century now.
Before WWI, the SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany) was the largest party in Germany. The PRS (Republican-Socialist Party) in France was also in power. Labour was already the second largest party in Britain.
They hadn't decided yet on whether they were going to be nationalist or internationalist. It is the outbreak of WWI that forced their hands and made them opt for nationalism. In Italy, Mussolini left the socialist party after their refusal to join the war and created the Nationalist Fascist party (PNF), which was socialist but which rejected internationalism and chose to be staunchly Italian nationalist.
Quoting Tom Storm
One difference, of course, is that socialists mostly opt for indirect control of the economy -- what the Germans called "Gleichschaltung" (coordination) -- over the generalized direct state control that the communists prefer, but the most important difference is that when push comes to shove, the socialists will rally behind nationalism, while the marxists will stay loyal to internationalism. This is why they hate each other. The Soviets hated the nationalism of socialists such as Mussolini. Because it was such an attractive and popular alternative in Europe, the Soviets saw it as the epitome of evil.
Quoting Tom Storm
Unless you explicitly allow for spirituality, this conclusion is simply inevitable. The march towards the absurd is relentless. There is no stopping it. It does not have to be the result of a conscious choice. The absurdist conclusion will be reached even entirely subconsciously: life has no inherent meaning.
Quoting Tom Storm
Agreed.
Socialism is either nationalist or internationalist.
When the shit hits the fan, every socialist will have to make a choice.
The extreme left knows this -- They are internationalist -- That is why they will not hesitate to violently attack and destroy the socialists who turn out to be nationalist. The extreme left in Europe is currently very nervous because they know that they failed last time to stop the socialists who swore by nationalism. That is why I expect Antifa to spectacularly grow in the nearby future.
The armed militia of Ernst Thälmann's KPD (Communist Party of Germany) were simply too late. They were also not decisive enough. In 1933, Germany was going to be either internationalist or nationalist. It were the nationalists who managed to successfully eradicate the internationalists, just in time, before the internationalists would otherwise have managed to do the reverse.
European nobility got largely wiped out during WWI, at the western and eastern fronts, and not so much during the French Revolution. The Russian Empire is a bit special in that regard. I don't know what percentage of Russian nobility got executed after the communist takeover.
85%. The rest went west and became paid companions to rich old men and women in Paris or taxi drivers in New York.
Modern liberal democracy sublated and incorporated into itself core elements of socialism and nationalism. All modern democracies have incorporated core elements of the socialist platform: the right to unionize, universal education, restrictions on child labor, pensions for old age, some form of socialized medicine, progressive taxation, etc.
Nationalism is also universally recognized as key to legitimacy. No one today would claim that Algerians should have been satisfied if the French simply gave them the right to vote and social benefits. Both liberals and conservatives talk in terms of "an Iraqi state for the Iraqi people," etc. The internationalist democracy of the French Revolution is long gone and internationalist socialism is pretty much dead too. National determination is sacrosanct, even as it continues to be problematic in a few cases (Kurdistan, East Turkestan, Palestine, etc.).
So what you have going on in developed countries is that globalization and large scale migration are undermining these two pillars of the modern liberal state. Acceptance of socialism is predicated on the idea that states make up a single organic wholea people or nation. People are willing to pay in because they see themselves as sort of an extended family of sorts.
In the American case, we can think about World War II and how it serves as sort of the origin mythos for the modern American state. Consider movies about that conflict made from 1945-1990. They almost invariably feature a motley crew of soldiers or mixed ethnicities: Italians, Irish, German-Lutheran, WASPs, etc. And very often a subplot in the story will be about how the group overcomes these divisions and recognizes that they are part of a greater unity.*
Migration on scales where a number of major European states will likely be minority European by the end of this century challenges the "nationalism" pillar of the modern state, which in turn undermines support for the "socialism" part. You might say: "well, even in the US the foreign born population is only about 1 in 7," but this misses a few things. It misses how immigrants are loaded towards the younger rungs of the population pyramid and that they make up a much larger share there, as well as their geographic concentration, particularly in major cities. It misses how second generation immigrants are not always fully assimilated, and there numbers are much higher (e.g. in the US 1 in 4 people are foreign born or have at least one foreign born parent). And it misses how the effects of migration are cumulative (e.g. Pew, hardly an alarmist organization on this issue, has the US at around 25% foreign born and 50+% foreign born or with a foreign born parent by mid-way through the century at current levels).
The age difference is particularly salient. Spending on education and programs for the young is taken as spending "for outsiders." Whereas pensions and benefits for the old are taken as legitimate. This, combined with rich nation's demographics leads to a situation where the next several decades will see investment squeezed out to boost the consumption or the elderly, even as the elderly and the working aged demographic begin to drift apart dramatically in demographic make-up.
The attitudes of new comers is probably less important here than the problems with the current system. People of all sorts assimilated to the American system. The peoples who made up the early Israeli population had little exposure to democracy in Eastern Europe of the Middle East, where most came from. The same is true of South Korea. I'd say the problem comes when there is a lack of assimilation, leading to isolated enclaves that are cut off from the wider culture. The driving issue here is a global inequality in a world that has suddenly become very small. It's not unlike the intracountry wealth disparities that motivated socialism in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Anyhow, this is just one of the problems with modern liberalism. It is also extremely poorly equipped to deal with other "global" problems like climate change, ocean acidification, or the power of transnational corporations. The Post-Westphalian model of the state is insufficient to deal with globalization and the current apparatuses of global governance, e.g. the UN, are incredibly weak. It's hard to see how they will be strengthened without some sort of crisis.
All things considered, it's better to have money than not, but do you think being rich will make you happy? Or is a necessary condition for happiness?
It is if you're entirely devoid of sensibility and scruples. You can 'believe in' honour simply by throwing a few pennies at a minstrel to sing about it. You can have all the peasant girls you want, because they don't have honour and you're immune from the law.
Quoting Vera Mont
Well, since @Vera Mont desperately wants to "prove" things about me, it is undoubtedly preferable that I do not answer the question. By the way, I am not a member of the local Estates-General. So, I don't see why I would be immune from the law.
I have no need or desire to prove anything, nor do I give a flying fig about 'you' - who or whatever that is. Your own words speak clearly enough.
I am technically not a Chad. My looks are average (or even below). Not that it matters, because I am not a fan of casual sex.
Quoting RogueAI
The place is already sufficiently infested with personal attacks without even mentioning anything really personal. Why not talk about ideas and criticize those, instead of talking about oneself and invite a flurry of ad hominems?
The reason is probably because you have not read European history and don't keep up with modern European politics.
OK, what is your idea about what is good in life? How does money, power, and status factor in?
Wrong. Everybody who lives in Europe knows why the far-right is rising. Funnily enough, it has nothing to do with the lack of religion, it has to do with the presence of (a certain) religion.
Keep European politics for people who have skin in the game. If someone is backpacking in Siberia or being a sexpat in Thailand they typically wouldn't have a lot of investment in what is going on across the globe.
I avoid responding to you because your comments are replete with ad hominems.
As I have already asked you in a previous remark, why don't you talk with someone else instead? Why don't you discuss with someone who actually wants to speak with you? I don't. I really don't see the need to converse with someone like you.
You made some good points, like that one about a new "global" culture.
However, as a person who in the US has discovered his love for European Cinema (when I lived in Europe as a teenager I detested French movies, but after living in the US for many years I came to love French movies and to detest contemporary American movies... with the exception of some comedies, where beforehand I tell myself I'll have some fun with American bullshit).
This experience of detesting contemporary American movies makes me ask the same question all the time: why in the hell people in other countries spend so much money and energies in order to see, advertise and idolize (contemporary) American cinema?
The only logical answer I come up with is "mass control". For some reasons, US culture industry has a big leverage on the rest of the world. Remove that leverage and you might see "global culture" trashed for good or becoming very limited in scope. This 'control factor' explains also why music and cinema in Europe nowadays are much more pluralistic/diverse than in the US. Here you see actors of various skin colors, but you "know" beforehand who are the great guys. In Europe you get surprised every day with actors and musicians of all kinds of genres, from all kinds of languages.
In conclusion, I tend to believe that materialism and policing may have a greater saying in our modern western world than "the global culture" which I see it as being imposed on us (and easily replaceable). We could happily live in a western world where Rammstein are more famous than Swift and Beyonce, in a world where Italian curses are more widespread than the English ones, or in a world without Microsoft Office Suite and Chat GPT. But I fail to see how the western world would look if well-being shrinks and if the policing/surveillance agencies fail to do their work.
I can't imagine a scenario with economies and surveillance performing very poorly and with people in USA or France being in "peace" due to their "democratic/egalitarian/cosmopolitan" values and "compassion". Till, I can imagine that scenario as plausible for some smaller nations which have been lucky enough to not look like France or USA today (though I guess there must be only a handful of such nations in the western world).
Of course you don't, because I expose you all the time. I am not trying to "converse", and I will keep doing it every time you spill idiotic bullshit.
The same person who wrote a comment containing nothing but this:
Quoting Tarskian
is complaining about "ad hominem". Sprinkling a bit of hypocrisy in the sophistry, aren't we?
By the way, "ad hominem" and personal attacks are not the same thing.
That was just my weird sense of humor. In fact, I was trying to be helpful. Now you are even complaining about that!
Well, another reason is that making movies is actually very expensive. If you make a movie in Finnish, basically there's only +5 million people who understand Finnish. If it's a very good movie, some foreigners will see it, but not many. Think about it like Minnesotan's making movies for only Minnesotans to watch, with Minnesotans speaking a totally different language from other Americans. This is the reason why English dominates and why even the Hollywood studios themselves have centered on making "Blockbusters" and only make few "Art Films" that require a bit more to follow than just eat your popcorn.
Quoting Eros1982
Let's start from some facts: There are so goddam many of Americans compared to any other Western people. And not only that, but your are very wealthy consumers. Thus you are the biggest domestic market there is. And this means that many talented foreign directors and actors are very welcome to work in Hollywood, just as many scientists and successful entrepreneurs (like Elon Musk etc) come to the US, because the US has the resources.
Then you speak English, which was spoken thanks to the British Empire in a lot of other places. (Now if people in the US would talk not English, but French or Spanish, then either of those two be easily the lingua universalis of the World.)
Quoting Eros1982
The US surely polices competition when it comes to it's strategic interests. And my father in his time joked about the American legal battle against NIH-products (NIH meaning "Not Invented Here"). Yet all of this is actually quite limited, when tariff barriers don't exist. Especially in Latin America there is this idea of this nearly omnipotent US guarding everything in it's interests, but it isn't so. Not all largest companies in the World are American in every sector. Just take for example forestry and paper companies. You would assume just by thinking where the large forests are and think about the sizes of the countries, it would be that American, Canadian and Russian companies would be the largest. Close, but that isn't the picture, in 2022 by revenue the list was as follows.
1. Oji Paper Company (Japanese)
2. Stora Enso (Finnish)
3. West Fraser Timber Co (Canada)
4. Weyerhauser Company (United States)
5. Universal Forest Products (United States)
6. Masco (United States)
The largest US company is only on 4th place and for many it would be surprising that the largest are a Japanese and a Finnish company, which are very small in size compared to Canada and the US. But this is how globalization works. You'll find that in many sectors there are large companies that aren't American.
Quoting Eros1982
Not quite sure what you mean here. Well, many countries don't look like the US. But what is surprising is just how similar to the US the whole of Latin America is. You have these interesting subtle differences between American countries and European countries.
Of course you were, rambling about the economic status of someone you know nothing about. Disingenuous and malicious, pretending his sour character attacks were his "haha humour".
At least, I pretend that I am trying to be helpful. You don't.
I meant that I have come to believe that apart from the oppressed nations (i.e. dictatorships and theocracies where everything can be fabricated, and you may know a couple of identities/ethnicities/religions in these countries, but you never can be sure about the degree of social disintegration in dictatorships till the day that a war happens and you may find out that your spouse or your neighbor is not the person you previously thought to be), there are two kind of countries: 1) those countries which grand personal freedoms, but are multicultural or cosmopolitan (like the USA, France, UK, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, etc.), and 2) countries that are free also, but due to their size, geography, history, etc., have not reached the diversity or multiculturalism of the first group (of USA, UK, Australia, etc.).
It is my belief, also, that although both groups are called democracies, group 2 may behave much better in cases of hardship (like natural disaster, poverty, war or some other crisis). Culture, identity and compassion may really play a role in these small democratic nations when they will face hardships.
With regard now group 1, I think if the countries of this group face some kind of hardship, their people will show all kinds of negative behavior just because they were taught that civilization means living well and calling the police every time you have issues with your neighbor. From the moment you don't live well in group 1 and you cannot rely on the police, you either run away or you should watch your neighbor 24 hours a day.
It is a paradox, in my view, to include group 1 and group 2, in the same club, the "democracy club".
I agree. In group 2 social cohesion and solidarity is far more easier to prevail. And usually group 2 countries are far more smaller, which makes democracy easier. Small size makes even other systems quite OK for the citizens under them, in fact monarchies like Monaco and Brunei can prevail quite well because it's totally possible for any citizen simply to meet the monarch and confide his or her problems to this. And when the tiny nation is prosperous and the monach isn't a madman, why not sustain that monarchy? Just think about how nice it would be if you have problem and you could simply get a time with the US President and he would look at what he could do to help you.
Quoting Eros1982
It surely is a thing of simple size matters. Yet there are real differences with cultures and how they approach the idea of the collective and what's the role of the individual towards the nation. The US is highly individualistic and basically doesn't trust it's own government as much as in some other countries. In the US people have guns to protect themselves from criminals (basically other Americans) and value this gun ownership as an example of their freedoms. In Switzerland and in Finland they have a lot of guns too, but in both countries the guns aren't for protecting your home, but for hunting and protecting the state. It's just one example, but the difference is notable because it comes to other things than just the size of the country:
And it's telling that the above documentary gets a lot of flak in the US. But this was just one example how states differ from each other.
Nailed it, finally!
Eventually, I did end up telling him that I don't like conversing with him. I don't particularly like conversing with you either. You are just like him. You seek to personally attack other people. I don't.
My own hobby is to explore particular ideas, especially on how the foundational crisis in mathematics translates into surprisingly interesting answers to core questions in metaphysics.
For example, the existence of free will turns out to be a model-theoretical problem.
It is actually quite difficult to find someone interested in discussing the metaphysical implications of the foundational crisis in mathematics.
So, my own hobby is not to personally attack other people. I find that a silly waste of time. Of course, as your colleague bitterly complained, if I were interested in attacking other people, I would indeed be better than him at it.
How odd!
Not at all.
If you were interested in the foundational crisis of mathematics and its metaphysics, you would be talking about that instead of talking about other people.
Well, it would be boring to talk about myself all the time. Other people are interesting, too.
Unless the participants want those things. Overall, in countries with a reasonable constitution (no mass exclusions; equitable laws), where democratic process has been relatively uncorrupted (not bought or coerced by a single interest bloc) for a few generations, the trend is toward equality and personal liberty. Because people all need and want pretty much the same things, when we vote for what's good for ourselves, we're also voting for the good of others.
If the majority think what's good for everyone is incompatible with what some minority wants, and they believe they are voting for the good of everyone by outlawing what that minority wants, and "It's for their own good, even if they don't know it, and they'll thank us for it later," or they think the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, then we do not have freedom and equality.
If. But why would the majority think that way? Each person is not voting for "what's good for everyone"; each person is voting for what she or he wants for themselves. If that coincides with what others also want for themselves - and it's quite likely to - than it ends up being good for everyone.
Specific instances: old age pensions, public education, unemployment insurance, public transit.
The needs of the many do outweigh the wants of the few, because the needs of all are the same. But there are always a few who want more and are willing to take it away from the many. That's how democracy is corrupted and freedom is lost.
Oppressive measures tend to be advocated by minorities who want special privileges, rather than the majority who just want security. Of course, I did stipulate a Quoting Vera Mont
If there is a state religion, military occupation, caste system or ethnic discrimination at the nation's core, democracy cannot work.
About half of the USA is going to be enraged in the next few months by the decision the other half made. Because the two sides have drastically different ideas of what is good for everyone, and many are not as concerned with what's good for everyone as with what's good for them.
Ah, I see. No, individual people don't vote for "society" or "values"; they vote according to their personal concerns. Special interest blocs, such as business and churches launch propaganda campaigns to convince people that their own interests are endangered by someone else's. For example, drugs were not an issue for voters until after Anslinger declared a crusade against marijuana n the 1930's - because Prohibition was ending, and a new scapegoat had to replace alcohol, for a great big government agency to enforce. Much mileage was got from it by the Nixon administration and again by Reagan. The same kind of things happened with abortion and equal marriage: nobody much cares, until a political faction (to curry favour with a religious bloc) inflates it into a great big bogeyman.
Quoting Patterner
Not many people have original ideas about what's good for others. But a very few, who don't give a rat's ass what's good for anyone but themselves control the mass media and sway the populace with vague threats and hollow promises.
Hence my caveat of a robust, well-constituted democracy. What you're describing is neither: it's the result of a fatally flawed foundation, long slow efforts to correct the original mistakes and then massive corruption of the entire structure.
The polling on same sex marriage is that it's very popular.