Multiculturalism is dead

[a completely inoffensive name]

I don't mean to revive a semi old thread for kicks, but I figured this article I read would be a nice revival of conversation about the subject and by posting here maintain a continuity that would be broken if I just made a new thread about it.

French interior minister says that not all civilizations are equal.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe...625127900.html

[Fragony]

You disagree with that then? Of course some civilisations are inferior to others.

[a completely inoffensive name]

You disagree with that then? Of course some civilisations are inferior to others.

No, I don't disagree at all. I think interactions between civilizations is important so that good ideas can be shared and bad ideas identified, but I don't particularly care for leniency towards bad ideas from other cultures to promote harmony.

[Papewaio]

You disagree with that then? Of course some civilisations are inferior to others.

Fragony is correct and it can be easily proved.

After all isn't the society of today in most countries better then it was a hundred years ago in that same country. Longer lifespan, higher education, more freedoms, greater range of foodstuffs, less infant mortalities.

So whilst it might be impolite to compare societies on a spatial level, it is ok to compare our own society over time.

[rory_20_uk]

There are no metrics that would be agreed by everyone from all times, and no weighting of metrics. It is better based on what you have described, but there might be those who would think it worse by other measurements.

[Husar]

There are no metrics that would be agreed by everyone from all times, and no weighting of metrics. It is better based on what you have described, but there might be those who would think it worse by other measurements.

That.

Ask a capitalist about it and then go and ask a greenpeace activist.

It depends on what equality you want to test for.

Most civilizations aren't equal in most aspects but if you can weigh up military prowess with environmental protection, some bushmen may be right up there with the US culture.
Could you even say the US has/have (is it one state or 50?) one culture or is it multicultural?

[Sasaki Kojiro]

That.

Ask a capitalist about it and then go and ask a greenpeace activist.

It depends on what equality you want to test for.

Lol. Ask evangelical christians whether gay marriage was good, and then ask gay people! They won't agree! How significant!

WHAT METRIC COULD WE POSSIBLE USE

[Husar]

Lol. Ask evangelical christians whether gay marriage was good, and then ask gay people! They won't agree! How significant!

WHAT METRIC COULD WE POSSIBLE USE

Amount of colonies?

[Fragony]

So whilst it might be impolite to compare societies on a spatial level, it is ok to compare our own society over time.

Imho you can absolutely do that. it's just an equation of benefits to conclude that western civilisation is superior to others.

[Husar]

Yes, of course, it's easy to take my own values and then judge everybody else by them, and then what's the point?
They can judge me by their values and then we bash eachother's heads in or discuss it until the end of times?

Sure not all cultures are equal, but he might have just as well said the sky is blue and everybody would agree.

[gaelic cowboy]

Not all cultures are equal the same as not all viewpoints are equal.

You certainly have the right to live in a certain culture or hold a certain view but thats the height of it.




go on Dara explain it for everyone (some cursing)

[Fragony]

Yes, of course, it's easy to take my own values and then judge everybody else by them, and then what's the point?

Does there have to be a point to a mere observation? Who is really making a point with cultural relativation, it simply isn't true that cultures are equal we are in various degrees of development. Had he said that that cultures CAN'T be equal it would have been something different entirely. The outrage over this is absurd although I don't intend to have a beer to the people he said it to

[Strike For The South]

I have a few absolute truths

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Yes, of course, it's easy to take my own values and then judge everybody else by them, and then what's the point?
They can judge me by their values and then we bash eachother's heads in or discuss it until the end of times?

If they are equal the banning the burkha was wrong. If they aren't, then that kind of legislation can be justifiable. So there's certainly a point to it.

[Husar]

If they are equal the banning the burkha was wrong. If they aren't, then that kind of legislation can be justifiable. So there's certainly a point to it.

I never said they're equal, I'm saying that cultures are more complex than such populistic statements suggest.

If I want to drink tea, I look to turkish culture, for baguettes I'd look to french culture, now which of the two is the superior one?

When we look at religious freedom, we used to say french culture is superior because it has religious freedom, then they banned the burka.
If we go and say their culture is inferior and that's why we're going to ban it bit by bit until they assimilate or leave, it reminds me of the borg.

There are two sides to that coin, there are people who don't want to accept our culture, yet live here, and there are people who want to but are met with rejection until they give up.
It shouldn't be illegal to wear a burka, it should be illegal to force someone to wear it.
It's also illegal to beat your wife, but it's not illegal to walk around with a wound.

What I mean is that in the latter case, justice relies on the wife reporting it and everybody accepts it, but in the case of "foreigners" they just ban the result of possible wrongdoing that may actually be wanted by the woman instead of the actual wrongdoing.

People simplify such issues because they don't care a lot about these "foreigners" who are oh so bad, but how is our culture better if it's just as ignorant and xenophobic as theirs?
Just because we have more money and stress and and luxuries that cause the producers to jump off of roofs due to their horrible treatment and bad pay?
a large part of our culture is even fine with ruining the whole planet, distributing poisonous or unhealthy food and poisoning nature and people in many other ways, even if you get to an overall rating for a culture I'm not so sure we'd come out ahead. Freedom is relative, we hold our slaves abroad and force people to take badly paid jobs because being unemployed makes them feel and be seen as worthless, it depends on the individual whether that can be defined as freedom or not.

Ignorant blanket statements won't convince me of our culture's superiority in any way.

[Papewaio]

Imho you can absolutely do that. it's just an equation of benefits to conclude that western civilisation is superior to others.

We are not the happiest. So whilst on average we have the longest lifespans and most freedoms western nations aren't the happiest.

I still think life span is a good rule of thumb. But if we could cherry pick from cultures around the world lifestyles as we do food stuffs I think we could have a much better set of societies.

multiculturalism is dead. long live multiculturalism 2.0

This is where we don't assume all aspects of any culture are equivalent. We also don't assume ours is the best. What we do is enable people to have informed choice and freedom to have the best of all and take responsibility for the consequences.

[Furunculus]

I don't mean to revive a semi old thread for kicks, but I figured this article I read would be a nice revival of conversation about the subject and by posting here maintain a continuity that would be broken if I just made a new thread about it.

French interior minister says that not all civilizations are equal.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe...625127900.html

he is right.

Question: What does it matter if people don't agree on a metric to measure by?

not much, the fact that it is difficult (for reasons mentioned above), does nothing to dissuade me from the principle of weighing merits of different cultures.