CosmicScientist wrote:Oh, another thang. Drynwyn, one scary media based cultural synthesis was an advert by I believe a minor Swedish political party (hey, Fwoosh brought the country up so it's relevant!) was I think titled "the New Swede" and at the end of it, they did a reveal of a Middle Eastern woman in a headscarf and I believe said those words. I can try to find it if needs be.
I'd hope that doesn't show up in any manner over here or in Sweden's major parties but that is when minority representation gets a tad over the line. But maybe I can take two pinches of salt and blind the devil in both eyes since there are minor parties here with over represented nonsense.
Addressing all of your remarks at once-
The reason gender issues are different from race issues is biological. There is a deeply ingrained biological component to interacting with people of the opposite sex, that far,
far predates efforts to solve it- because every single human who could claim to be a genetic ancestor of a single living human, by necessity, interacted with someone of the opposite sex. This produces a complex suite of neurological factors that affect gender and sex issues.
Racial tensions, meanwhile, do not have a deeply ingrained biological component. Racial distinctions developed more recently, and for 99.9% of evolutionary time, 99% of humans had minimal contact with other races. So there is no evolved suite of responses- only the baseline "It's unfamiliar, what do?" response, and the corollary response of "I have learned about it and now it is fine."
Trying to compare the two is like comparing how people learn pass a football, and how people automatically protect their face when something moves towards it quickly. One is a set of learned responses and actions, the other has elements of biological hardwiring (literal hardwiring- the reflex arc for 'protect the face' doesn't even interact with your forebrain until well after it's done it's thing). They have a few common elements, but trying to think of them in the same way is still disastrously mistaken.
Moving on, then, to the topic of cultural synthesis: This is one of those questions that gets philosophical by necessity, because we have to ask: "
Why are we worried about changes to our own culture?" Otherwise, when you say things like "That's a tad over the line", it will be interpreted as bigoted- because it would be if there wasn't a reason other than "they're brown." However, such reasons do exist.
As I see it, there are a lot of bad answers to this question out there (muh white genocide, muh western culture is the best), and two answers that I find fairly compelling:
1- Because the cultures with which we are engaging in synthesis have elements we find objectionable, such as sexist, violent, or otherwise repressive elements.
First of all, it's important not to confuse class issues with cultural issues here. Malk comments that he has observed ethnic minorities participating in, and covering for, crimes, and that is very likely true. But that confuses correlation with causation- across history, we reliably find that low income communities of
any cultural background participate in and cover for crimes. But that doesn't mean that cultures can't have problematic elements.
There are two things to keep in mind here- one, that synthesizing some elements of a culture into another does not mean incorporating all of them, and that just because a cultural element is associated with problematic elements doesn't mean they're mutually inclusive- cultures almost always contain elements that are in tension with each other.
But it is legitimate to say that fusing with other cultures un-critically is unwise. This argument mainly struggles because, unfortunately, it is used as a dog-whistle for hate groups. They can generally be distinguished, because dogwhistling with this will involve claims that incorporating some elements of another culture necessarily pushes towards incorporating the worst elements, alongisde a failure to recognize the problematic elements found in western culture.
Thankfully, the second argument is both much more compelling and much less frequently used as a dogwhistle.
2- In the context of essentially authoritarian governments and global structures existing, and holding massive power over our daily lives that we have extremely limited ability to contest should it be abused, cultural clashes can lead to one or both sides suffering as a result of the application of that authority.
Essentially, in cases where two values do directly or indirectly conflict (which are
not nearly as many as assorted racists claim, but do exist), there is
no good solution when the decision is being made by a monolithic structure with many interests that run counter to the general population (including but not limited to corporate and monetary interests, personal agendas, and the maintenance of their own power).
Now, in my opinion, the only good answer to this problem is to do away with monolithic and authoritarian structures both private and public- the creation of racial and cultural tensions demonstrates their flaws, I'm sure you can recognize how the same logic applies to other situations of conflicting interests. Authoritarian structures are basically crap at everything other than maintaining their own power.
In game, I play the A.I Firmware, the French cyborg C.U.R.I.E, Aubrie Allen, and the lizard scum Skulks-Through-Maintenance.
