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There are no pure cultures – we have always been global
- JoeAltmaier 2y agoA meaningless assertion? We've all been human and shared some values and ideals, even crafts and rituals. That's culture, for sure. But we've always had clearly distinguishable systems, and seen as a whole then cultures have been separate and unique.
- dartos 2y agoIt just depends when you want to draw the line of “this is beginning of a new culture”
- jimkleiber 2y agoExactly. National culture, family culture, regional culture, gender culture, etc etc, so many ways to group behaviors of humans into categories and forget that within every category, there are so many differences, and across categories there can be so many similarities.
- SpicyLemonZest 2y agoI don't think you have any real choice but to draw it where the members of each culture think it belongs. You can, I suppose, bite the bullet and say that policing the lines between cultures is fundamentally illegitimate. But even people like the author who talk a good game about opposing "racialist worldviews" are usually not willing to go that far. Many cultures across the world - Frisians, Sami, Inuit, etc. - depend on that policing to survive and would quickly be assimilated and cease to exist if they decided it was wrong.
- jimkleiber 2y agoI think there's a powerful point there: fear of assimilation. Many groups seem to fight very hard to keep their culture pure, or at least to maintain the appearance of it. Afraid to lose valued cultural practices. But then is it a wonder why we have division in the world? There is a book that came out about castes (I saw the movie) and the first principle to maintaining a caste system was endogamy: only allowed to fall in love with people within one's group. So if we can't love people outside our group, then well, we have division. I'd argue it leads to self-hatred, as we naturally love and to fight against it causes us to fight against ourselves, but that's a much deeper conversation.
- graemep 2y agoAs a member of an ethnic group that has almost disappeared through assimilation, I regret the loss of culture (much as not even reached my generation) but had no wish to marry within the group. I just want to pass on a few good things (like the bits I am familiar with of our cuisine).
- jimkleiber 2y agoI appreciate you sharing your story. I wonder how much, in assimilation, artifacts from other cultures remain, or fuse, with artifacts of the "main" culture or whatever we want to call it. In other words, do the things from our culture disappear, or just appear to change shape but maintain many of the same structural elements? What comes to mind are Greek gods with Roman names, or possibly the Easter bunny coming from an ancient pagan festival called Eostre [0]. [0]: https://www.thefield.co.uk/country-house/easter-eostre-24035 https://www.thefield.co.uk/country-house/easter-eostre-24035
- mmooss 2y ago> we've always had clearly distinguishable systems What makes you say that? My impression is that people perceive it as they typically perceive categories and reality - they think it's simple. When you actually look at it, it's a mess. Culture is very complex, so it is even more of a mess. Culture also changes constantly, so what you define today is different tomorrow. > cultures have been separate and unique That does not at all match what I know or experience. I suppose theoretically, a small isolated village might be separate and unique.
- unixhero 2y agoThe culture in Norway certainly wasn't global 80 years ago.
- edent 2y agoI'm begging you to pick up a history book. 80 years ago https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trafalgar_Square_Christmas_tree https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trafalgar_Square_Christmas_t... A little longer https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zjcxwty#zgpbg7h https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zjcxwty#zgpbg7h
- unixhero 2y agoThe general culture, not what the 0.01% of government officials and aristocrats were involved in. Norway was dirt poor and had no cultural influences affecting it.
- LargeWu 2y agoNorway is famous for the Vikings, who were bringing global culture back home a thousand years ago.
- Muromec 2y agoTwo people named Volodymir are contesting their rights to viking heritage in almost but not really world war right now
- chmod775 2y agoI get what this article is trying to do, but it is likely to achieve the opposite. This is not going to succeed in pulling the wool over anyone's eyes, because it goes directly against most people's first-hand observed reality. To the people this is trying to convince, this will - rightfully - look like smartassery and dissembling. You want people to be fine with immigration? Tell them why it is desirable for them personally instead of giving them a political opinion thinly disguised as a paternalizing history lesson. This article directly reinforces about five different right-wing narratives.
- mionhe 2y ago>This article directly reinforces about five different right-wing narratives. I didn't see that. Which ones?
- chmod775 2y agoHere's a selection: - "The left" will try to deceive and deny reality even in the face of hard numbers. Obviously way more people migrate nowadays than historically. Most of the historic migration was also between geographically close, similar cultures. - "The left" is elitist, paternalizing, and kind of cringe. Academic sounding writing and quoting philosophers that have been dead for over 2000 years will not exactly endear you. - "The left" is out of touch and will talk about anything rather than address the problems people actually face. People struggle to afford rent, struggle to maintain their standard of living, and are worried about their income and crime. This article is comically far removed from addressing that.
- Mountain_Skies 2y agoThen you have both the left and right being in love with cheap labor. Elon Musk might have been making a fool out of himself over his desire to globalize the labor market even further to his own benefit but there's no shortage of people across the political spectrum that love having cheap lawncare, food service, and agricultural workers. It's an addiction that western society seems completely unable to even recognize as a problem, much less able to kick the addiction.
- 9999px 2y agoSubjective and wishy-washy framing. Sure, there's a "human culture" in that we all eat, sleep, etc. but it all depends on how you want to draw boundaries or frame the question of what culture _is_.
- Neonlicht 2y agoBack in the 17th century a bunch of hardline Protestants in the Netherlands got upset that Catholics and Jews were allowed to practice their religion. The rich people who ran Amsterdam explained that after death god would sort them all out so they didn't have to. I always admired their practicality.
- amenhotep 2y agoOf course, Arnaud Amalric said the same thing to rather different effect.
- _fat_santa 2y agoSemi related but one thing that I've always found fascinating was the peace lines[1] in Belfast and other parts of Northern Ireland. You often hear about religious conflicts in the history books but it's wild to see remnants of that in the modern world. I live in the US and for us the concept of two Christian factions being in conflict is just so foreign. You drive around just about anywhere in the US and you will come across Protestant churches right next to Catholic ones. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_lines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_lines
- jimkleiber 2y agoFascinating. I didn't know these existed and find the naming to intrigue me the most. I've been saying lately that the resolution of conflict is not peace, the resolution of conflict is love. It seems putting walls up is a way to avoid conflict, or try to avoid it, but I wonder if the conflict just festers, and the actual resolution would be unity. Except the challenge can be it just takes a few people in a group to say "if you love them, you don't love us" and thus we run away into our corners, pretending that we don't love everyone.
- BJones12 2y agoReligious conflicts, including big name ones, have always been political conflicts between groups that happen to have different religions. These days there is still political conflict, but there's less contrast between each side's religious makeup. Therefore the conflict won't appear to be a religious conflict.
- anovikov 2y agoWell, there was one true part to it: Communist world fell apart and a huge number of people who were once locked in behind the Iron Curtain, were set free. To them, the change was very real.
- shrubble 2y ago“Emacs,vi and VSCode are the same editor, basically“
- karaterobot 2y agoThere ought to be a fallacy named for the mistake of thinking that something which existed in an analogous way in the past is equivalent to a quantitatively and qualitatively different phenomenon today. "People used to read newspapers every day, now they feel a sense of panic if they can't find their smartphones; nothing new about that." "Paleolithic tribes traded beads and flint knapping techniques, now there's an unimaginably complicated logistics chain that knits the world together like a nervous system; nothing new about that." It would be a specific instance of a false analogy. Would it be too cute to call this a rhyming fallacy? History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes, etc.
- bunderbunder 2y agoDo we need a new fallacy for this? I think this is just a particular case of the fallacy of the beard.
- karaterobot 2y agoI don't think it's the same as the fallacy of the beard when there's no continuum between the two examples, which will always be the case if the analogy between them is false. If it is the case that globalization is really just an extension of trading between hunter-gatherer tribes, then I agree with you. To me, they're two different things. If I take my glasses off and squint, they sort of look alike in a poetic way, but they're not actually the same, differing only in scale.
- cudgy 2y agoTo me it seems like the author is stating a true observation, but they are ignoring the pace at which the phenomena is evolving given the technical advances mentioned in the article, especially of transportation and communication. The pace of cultural change matters greatly as large, quick shifts in culture are usually accompanied by massive resistance/wars, increased racism, genocides, autocracy, and a general desire to slow things down no matter what it takes.
- alganet 2y ago
- josefritzishere 2y agoEthnic and ideological purity drives have always seemed intolerant and bigoted. This seems to support that.
- buzzardbait 2y agoI can only surmise that the intended audience was like-minded academics. Most anti-globalists who believe in purity of culture aren't going to bother with the length and verbosity of this essay.
- ARandomerDude 2y agoIronic that they literally undermined their case before they even got to the article. Look at the hero image at the top of the page. I know what you're thinking: "cultures are so intermingled that I can't tell if this is the Netherlands, China, or Congo."
- hexator 2y agoI think people are reading too much into the title—it's meant to be taken literally. It should also be obvious if you know anything about history; it's basically saying that we have always been a globalized civilization and our subjective definition of it is imaginary. And this is important because people really do believe in the idea that their culture is pure and free of outside influence. It's also more about globalization than immigration, which would be obvious if you actually read it. Once again I am disappointed by the quality of the top comments on Hacker News.
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- inglor_cz 2y agoIf academic types produce such weak arguments, they really don't have anyone to blame for the loss of prestige and trust of academia but themselves. Almost anyone older than 50 is very aware of the fact that while there always has been some movement of ideas and people among the nations, the degree of those movements is much higher today, and the consequences much more massive. For example, presence of Islam in Western Europe used to be negligible until the early 1970s. Nowadays European cartoonists must tread lightly around possible blasphemy lest they want to be spectacularly murdered. Plenty of locally specific cultural traits have disappeared as well, or are at least endangered, the same way that bonobo or kakapo are. Food is starting to be startingly similar across the globe. If you look at a new glass-and-steel building at a photo, you can't tell if it is in Dubai or in Stockholm or in Nairobi. Go to Papua-New Guinea, switch on the radio and you will hear Ed Sheeran or Taylor Swift. Etc etc.
- pessimizer 2y agoNobody is talking about "pure cultures," this is a strawman used to trick people into reading a purely political essay. It's also as dishonest as an article about a corrupt politician called "There are no perfect politicians." If everybody was always globalized (and by this they always actually mean competing against poverty stricken people for work, and the freedom for foreign oligarchs to own large parts of your country), somebody needs to tell me why Europe didn't always have potatoes, tomatoes, corn, chocolate and syphilis, and why 80% of the American Indians died of European disease.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]