4 ms·

What do you mean by “integrating culturally with others”? What would be examples of that?

graderjs 4y ago
Good point. There's always divisions (with any culture we can say 'integrates well' with other cultures)...let me think about it for a day, it's pretty late here-- and I'll probably get back to you--hopefully with something more clear. There's something there, I just don't know how to put it into more words right now.
- graderjs 4y ago
  My first draft response is: basically like I feel like folks from Western Nations are essentially pretty good migrants to anywhere in the world in the sense that we don't have too much of a strong culture ourselves where we will migrate to a place and then form little Anglo communities where we only mix among ourselves (so we do that to some extent, Discovery Bay in HK and compounds in Saudi Arabia, eg--but that's not our only option) but we will also kind of migrate to a place you know independently as individuals or small groups and then sort of set up shop and basically like adopt the local culture and try to integrate ourselves and you know transact and trade and stuff. It's essentially kind of similar to how the southern Chinese ("world best migrants"are) are very migratory and they kind of migrate anywhere in the world with the difference being that the Chinese will often set up a sort of like a local monoculture so that Chinatown kind of place and still kind of maintain a strong culture where as in the west we have sort of a looser idea or own culture and I think we're more flexible. But I don't see the Japanese having a correlate in either of these activities: they don't really seem so migratory and when they do migrate they don't really seem to do the same sort of integration or mercantile sort of transaction that the westerners or the Chinese do. Also we can take a look at their country--JP--and while Western Nations commonly include (not all) but commonly include folks from all over the world (and there's certainly still plenty of racism from the dominant anglo cultures but there's still inclusion of folks from all over the world) and immigration policies that are more open. whereas in Japan I think there's obviously stricter and more xenophobic immigration policies but also there's less of this sense of groups from all over the world to the same extent coming in and forming sort of a community there. It's much more of an exotic thing I think for non Japanese people to move to Japan (while it certainly existent and occurs to some extent), the degree is much less I think than the type of air quotes multiculturalism you'll see in you know a western nation. And other nations as well it's not exclusively Western but I think Japan stands out for having a sort of xenophobic monoculture that's quite insular and so that's sort of what I'm talking to. But this is just a first draft kind of elaboration I could probably say a lot more so I'll see you know where that sticks with you and lands on anything and where you take that.

Good point. There's always divisions (with any culture we can say 'integrates well' with other cultures)...let me think about it for a day, it's pretty late here-- and I'll probably get back to you--hopefully with something more clear. There's something there, I just don't know how to put it into more words right now.

graderjs 4y ago
My first draft response is: basically like I feel like folks from Western Nations are essentially pretty good migrants to anywhere in the world in the sense that we don't have too much of a strong culture ourselves where we will migrate to a place and then form little Anglo communities where we only mix among ourselves (so we do that to some extent, Discovery Bay in HK and compounds in Saudi Arabia, eg--but that's not our only option) but we will also kind of migrate to a place you know independently as individuals or small groups and then sort of set up shop and basically like adopt the local culture and try to integrate ourselves and you know transact and trade and stuff. It's essentially kind of similar to how the southern Chinese ("world best migrants"are) are very migratory and they kind of migrate anywhere in the world with the difference being that the Chinese will often set up a sort of like a local monoculture so that Chinatown kind of place and still kind of maintain a strong culture where as in the west we have sort of a looser idea or own culture and I think we're more flexible. But I don't see the Japanese having a correlate in either of these activities: they don't really seem so migratory and when they do migrate they don't really seem to do the same sort of integration or mercantile sort of transaction that the westerners or the Chinese do. Also we can take a look at their country--JP--and while Western Nations commonly include (not all) but commonly include folks from all over the world (and there's certainly still plenty of racism from the dominant anglo cultures but there's still inclusion of folks from all over the world) and immigration policies that are more open. whereas in Japan I think there's obviously stricter and more xenophobic immigration policies but also there's less of this sense of groups from all over the world to the same extent coming in and forming sort of a community there. It's much more of an exotic thing I think for non Japanese people to move to Japan (while it certainly existent and occurs to some extent), the degree is much less I think than the type of air quotes multiculturalism you'll see in you know a western nation. And other nations as well it's not exclusively Western but I think Japan stands out for having a sort of xenophobic monoculture that's quite insular and so that's sort of what I'm talking to. But this is just a first draft kind of elaboration I could probably say a lot more so I'll see you know where that sticks with you and lands on anything and where you take that.