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I don't believe there is strong evidence that a metaculture (really, multiculturalism) will survive and not devolve into squabbling ethnoses, particularly on th

I don't believe there is strong evidence that a metaculture (really, multiculturalism) will survive and not devolve into squabbling ethnoses, particularly on the scale of the north american continent. It seems like smaller, more homogonous political units is the best way to avoid conflict, and I don't see why that has to be malicious. My main problem with most of the ethno-nationalists that I read is that they are really racialists or pan-europeanists, which strikes me as almost (almost) as useless for generating inter-class solidarity as appealing to universal humanism.

Robotbeat 9y ago
Nothing is certain to work on its own. So we have to work at it to make it function. I don't think we should let the pendulum swing too far and say "squabbling ethnoses are the inevitable end-point." That is not certain, either. People actually had to work at (spend lots of time and money) making our recent national unity start to turn into squabbling ethnoses. I fail to see why I should make their job easier by granting the inevitability of that outcome.
geofft 9y ago
> I don't believe there is strong evidence that a metaculture (really, multiculturalism) will survive and not devolve into squabbling ethnoses, particularly on the scale of the north american continent. Doesn't the empirical reality of large cosmopolitan cities provide evidence that multiculturalism will work just fine? New York City, for instance, has 8.5 million people of every race, color, creed, citizenship, language, etc. crammed pretty tightly together. That's more than the population of about 3/4 of US states. It has cultural enclaves - there are places in the city where you'll look and feel out of place if you're not, say, an Orthodox Jew, or black, or of Chinese ancestry, or whatever. (Being none of these, I've been to these places and consciously felt, well, not that I wasn't welcome to visit, but that it was someone else's home and not mine.) But it doesn't have squabbling. There's definitely been ethnic violence in the city's history, but the city generally lives together and works together just fine; it's not more violent or more dangerous than you'd expect any city of its size to be. And places which have had violence (e.g., Crown Heights after the 1991 riot) have worked pretty successfully to find ways of living together that involve neither one cultural group leaving and ceding the area to another, nor any cultural group losing its particular identity.
- quantumofmalice 9y ago
  I expect there to continue to be multi-ethnic cities and neighborhoods within cities, which is a fairly common occurrence throughout history, particular in capital cities of empires, which is what I would describe New York as. There is no doubt that some people (particularly smart people) highly value the diversity and cosmopolitanism that cities of this form provide. On the other hand, people who value high social trust and stronger social identity would probably prefer to living in more homogenous (and less urban) environments. It seems to me like the american continent, anyway, is large enough to give everyone what they would like, without either interfering with one another politically.
  - geofft 9y ago
    I am getting the sense that you're saying that New York City is primarily a city of smart people who value cosmopolitanism and not of people who value high social trust and strong social identity. That might be the stereotype of certain parts of Manhattan (especially of people who - and I admit I'm one of them - have voluntarily moved to the city for work), but that's not the majority of New York City at all. Come and visit Harlem or Crown Heights or Flushing. Come and walk through the parts of Brooklyn with storefront signage in Hebrew and not English. Come and take a taxi and talk to the driver about social trust or social identity. Come and talk to people who have had family living here for generations. The evidence, as far as I can tell, is that multiculturalism is a perfectly stable approach, and people who say that we need cultural isolation are only saying that because of belief and not evidence. Of course the continent is big enough to support giving people what they want, whether or not they're rational to want it. But to the original topic of how to prevent the strong from taking advantage of the weak, I don't think there's any reason to believe that dividing people by race to force an alliance of each race's strong and weak is going to be successful, or that avoiding multiculturalism is going to be necessary.
    - quantumofmalice 9y ago
      Well, the neighborhoods you are discussing, which do have higher social trust, do have a strong ethnic identity, so I think that this may reinforce my point rather than hurt it. I must admit that I have a more pastoral and conflict-adverse personality, so the idea of New York as an ideal is difficult for me to comprehend. I'm OK with that: there are obviously many people to whom this idea is obvious as well. My long term conclusion is we should allow these types of folks to separate and establish different political units that satisfy these needs: some of these could be relatively ethnically homogeneous, some less so. I would expect, but am willing to admit this is speculation, that you would find higher trust and cross-class identity in the more homogeneous political units. I appreciate you taking the time to thoughtfully reply to my comments.

Robotbeat 9y ago

Nothing is certain to work on its own. So we have to work at it to make it function. I don't think we should let the pendulum swing too far and say "squabbling ethnoses are the inevitable end-point." That is not certain, either. People actually had to work at (spend lots of time and money) making our recent national unity start to turn into squabbling ethnoses. I fail to see why I should make their job easier by granting the inevitability of that outcome.

geofft 9y ago

> I don't believe there is strong evidence that a metaculture (really, multiculturalism) will survive and not devolve into squabbling ethnoses, particularly on the scale of the north american continent. Doesn't the empirical reality of large cosmopolitan cities provide evidence that multiculturalism will work just fine? New York City, for instance, has 8.5 million people of every race, color, creed, citizenship, language, etc. crammed pretty tightly together. That's more than the population of about 3/4 of US states. It has cultural enclaves - there are places in the city where you'll look and feel out of place if you're not, say, an Orthodox Jew, or black, or of Chinese ancestry, or whatever. (Being none of these, I've been to these places and consciously felt, well, not that I wasn't welcome to visit, but that it was someone else's home and not mine.) But it doesn't have squabbling. There's definitely been ethnic violence in the city's history, but the city generally lives together and works together just fine; it's not more violent or more dangerous than you'd expect any city of its size to be. And places which have had violence (e.g., Crown Heights after the 1991 riot) have worked pretty successfully to find ways of living together that involve neither one cultural group leaving and ceding the area to another, nor any cultural group losing its particular identity.

quantumofmalice 9y ago
I expect there to continue to be multi-ethnic cities and neighborhoods within cities, which is a fairly common occurrence throughout history, particular in capital cities of empires, which is what I would describe New York as. There is no doubt that some people (particularly smart people) highly value the diversity and cosmopolitanism that cities of this form provide. On the other hand, people who value high social trust and stronger social identity would probably prefer to living in more homogenous (and less urban) environments. It seems to me like the american continent, anyway, is large enough to give everyone what they would like, without either interfering with one another politically.
- geofft 9y ago
  I am getting the sense that you're saying that New York City is primarily a city of smart people who value cosmopolitanism and not of people who value high social trust and strong social identity. That might be the stereotype of certain parts of Manhattan (especially of people who - and I admit I'm one of them - have voluntarily moved to the city for work), but that's not the majority of New York City at all. Come and visit Harlem or Crown Heights or Flushing. Come and walk through the parts of Brooklyn with storefront signage in Hebrew and not English. Come and take a taxi and talk to the driver about social trust or social identity. Come and talk to people who have had family living here for generations. The evidence, as far as I can tell, is that multiculturalism is a perfectly stable approach, and people who say that we need cultural isolation are only saying that because of belief and not evidence. Of course the continent is big enough to support giving people what they want, whether or not they're rational to want it. But to the original topic of how to prevent the strong from taking advantage of the weak, I don't think there's any reason to believe that dividing people by race to force an alliance of each race's strong and weak is going to be successful, or that avoiding multiculturalism is going to be necessary.
  - quantumofmalice 9y ago
    Well, the neighborhoods you are discussing, which do have higher social trust, do have a strong ethnic identity, so I think that this may reinforce my point rather than hurt it. I must admit that I have a more pastoral and conflict-adverse personality, so the idea of New York as an ideal is difficult for me to comprehend. I'm OK with that: there are obviously many people to whom this idea is obvious as well. My long term conclusion is we should allow these types of folks to separate and establish different political units that satisfy these needs: some of these could be relatively ethnically homogeneous, some less so. I would expect, but am willing to admit this is speculation, that you would find higher trust and cross-class identity in the more homogeneous political units. I appreciate you taking the time to thoughtfully reply to my comments.