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The Diversity Myth, a 1995 book [Thiel] co-wrote with David O. Sacks, railed against multiculturalism, which, they wrote, “exists to destroy Western culture.”
by GuiA 10y ago
The Diversity Myth, a 1995 book [Thiel] co-wrote with David O. Sacks, railed against multiculturalism, which, they wrote, “exists to destroy Western culture.”
What is up with all these people lately thinking that Western culture is some form of homogeneous block that's been unadultered for millennia and has recently come under "multiculturalist" attack? Especially coming from the US, a country that didn't exist when my old high school was founded.
- mturmon 10y agoOr that "Western culture" is so fragile that it needs work to "defend" it -- against something so bland as multiculturalism? My culture is already an amalgam of many components, as you point out. Surely, whatever it is, it can expand or adapt to reckon with other cultures.
- defen 10y agoThere are different levels of culture. The "happy nice version" of multiculturalism involves surface-displays of culture - different groups of people have different kinds of food, different styles of dress, different accents/languages, different skin tones, but are otherwise nice friendly liberal people who believe in the core values of Western culture, such as the rule of law, equality before the law, relatively high trust in civic institutions, etc. Except, there are literally billions of people who don't believe in those things. There is not "magic dirt" in the USA or "The West" that gives us those things - it's a function of the people who live there. If you were to import millions upon millions of people who don't share the values, while simultaneously teaching the youngest generation that white people are responsible for all the evils of the world, and encouraging minorities to nurse racial grievances, you're going to end up with problems. But it's impossible to talk about because you have unhinged racists on one side, and people who are prepared to see unhinged racists everywhere on the other.
- mturmon 10y ago"teaching the youngest generation that white people are responsible for all the evils of the world" That's a strawman. We had been talking about basic multiculturalism. What you're talking about is the most unhinged versions of ethnocentric bigotry; say, the kind of thing Eldridge Cleaver had been associated with. These views were not widely proclaimed at the time and they are not widely followed now. Even revisionist history (say, Howard Zinn's US history) that places significant blame at the foot of the U.S. and U.S. leadership for historical tragedies does not come close to what you're talking about above.
- dimino 10y agoConsidering some of the more recent research that's come out pointing at diversity as a successful business tactic, I'd be concerned about working for any company with Thiel attached to it in an advisory capacity, if only for fear of being outflanked competitively.
- jeremyt 10y agoCould you cite one or two of those?
- wolfram74 10y agoEtsy comes up pretty often. http://phd.meghan-smith.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Cox-T.-Jr.-Blake-S.-D..pdf http://phd.meghan-smith.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Cox-T...
- omonra 10y agoSorry - that's an overview of how ONE company find value in diversity. We are asking for research that shows that companies like Etsy outperform (on any metric) companies that don't really care about diversity (judged by their actual hiring practices, not paying lip service to it). Because the availability heuristic points to the other 99% of Silicon Valley that's doing quite well without caring about diversity.
- dimino 10y agoThat research does not exist, because it's astoundingly narrow and this topic is immensely difficult to research, in general, let alone compound some kind of review or whatever it is you're looking for. Have you tried Googling? Here are some interesting results (keep in mind science is almost never a home run; that is, you're not going to ever find a study that's like, "We definitively solve this problem for all time and for all mankind"): https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Stephen_Tallman/publication/228123261_Effects_of_International_Diversity_and_Product_Diversity_on_the_Performance_of_Multinational_Firms/links/00b7d5267dc1adc6d2000000.pdf http://asq.sagepub.com/content/44/1/1.short https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/diversity-work-group-performance http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/why-diversity-matters http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-makes-us-smarter/ http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/why-does-lack-of-gender-diversity-hurt-performance http://enewsline.aacsb.edu/diversity-in-groups-can-improve-innovation-and-performance.asp http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053482209000795 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212567114001786
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- nommm-nommm 10y agoWestern culture isn't even close to homogeneous. Really bizarre.
- bordercases 10y agoIn terms of type, maybe. In terms of percentage, maybe not.
- kafkaesq 10y agoSame idea, basically, as with Putin's view that the values of modern Western societies are intrinsically hostile towards "Russian" and Eastern Orthodox values; the stance taken by generations of nationalist and autocratic leaders in Turkey that the state must protect itself against "insults to Turkishness" (and most diligently); or the belief among American conservatives that they must be ever-vigilant in their defense of "Judeo-Christian values" (whatever that means), etc. And let's of course not forget the hard-core Islamists obsessed with the idea that Western music, Western culture, Western everything are intrinsic threats to the sacrosanct purity of "Islamic values". Funny how it all comes full circle.
- stcredzero 10y agoSame idea, basically, as with Putin's view that the values of modern Western societies are intrinsically hostile towards "Russian" and Eastern Orthodox values I'm with Stratfor's analysis of this animosity: It's largely geographic. And let's of course not forget the hard-core Islamists obsessed with the idea that Western music, Western culture, Western everything are intrinsic threats to the sacrosanct purity of "Islamic values". Most often, they are intrinsic threats to their particular version of "Islamic values." They're also intrinsic threats to certain versions of "Christian values." Basically, any theocratic dogma is threatened. You can flip this on it's head, and it becomes obvious. Any theocratic dogma that's against the realignment of their religion with modern humanist values is obviously intrinsically threatened.
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- Houshalter 10y agoI'd be interested in seeing what the arguments in the actual book are. I recall reading something about this before, that pointed to evidence that more diverse groups are less happy and have more conflict. And that people in general like being part of a group of similar people and having a group identity, humans being tribal creatures. Anyway I'm not sure he's claiming western culture is homogenous. But it does seem like there is a cluster in culture space that is "western" and we don't have a better label for it.
- xorcist 10y agoI'm interested in what that would be. From a northern European perspective, we have strong cultural ties to the US (given that we were part of the whole colonization thing). Yet there are politicians there that question women's rights to abortions quite seriously, argue from the basis of religious rather than scientific conviction, oppose music and art and vaccinations and climate science on the same grounds that I find to be culturally much closer to hard line Islamic clerics than the culture in my immediate vicinity. So I'm not really sure if you can define that cultural cluster in a way that a majority the people in it would accept it.
- Houshalter 10y agoThose are political values not cultural ones. And surely conservatives exist in Europe to? Perhaps there are fewer of them and they don't have the political power they do here, but conservatives exist in every country.
- xorcist 10y agoOf course, but that's neither here nor there. Those are not classical conservative views. The point is that you would be hard pressed to find a definition of Western culture that excludes hard line Islamism unless you also include important parts of the contemporary western political discourse.
- patrickburke 10y agoIn a conversation about the death of the west, you express shock that there remains some vestige of Christian morality, and without a hint of irony.