Multiculturalism is Nonsense

I suggest you (Fraggle Rocker) post your response regarding the FACTUAL links here in your particular thread:

http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=97666

Edit: Fraggle Rocker, I am sorry for being very rude in this thread. I have deleted my post which was rude, and edited this particular one as well.

 

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Many people and things have caused many deaths, yes.

That is your own superstition, and nothing to do with the history of civilisation. Are you telling me the point of the Spartan civilisation was species-wide cooperation?

You make some huge and wrong assumptions about those glorious lost civilisations. They were not peaceful and noble awesome dudes who were all about progress and weaving rainbows. They conducted wars, rapes, human sacrifices, and every other sort of nasty activity. All of them did. Any of them was as corrupt as our civilisation today. They were just less successful.

Bullshit. It's the triumph of greed, lust, and all those other things we call sins, which as I recall Christianity says are bad things. It's people, doing things people do, that have caused the problems. They were doing it before Christianity showed up. They'll be doing it long after Christianity is forgotten.

Why is it admirable?

The USA and other Western nations are more multicultural than most other countries on this planet. Whether good or bad, the drive toward mixing in all sorts of different people has been quite successful.

Pretty sure you'll find such greed in Rome prior to the spread of Christianity. Along with welfare and other problems.

The USSR was not communist. That was merely the slogan that was slapped on it for PR purposes.

They're as corrupt as anyone else.

Yep. Love that human sacrifice. It'd be awesome to see an updated version of that.

No it hasn't. Except in that we now have dictionaries for people to write definitions in.

There's no need to drag anything from the past that has always been with us, in all our actions and thoughts, every day of our evolution.

You type that in capitals like it means anything. All it means is an arbitrary point you would invent and use to make your own arguments. There is no such well known point in history called the Paradigm Shift.

I disagree. The successful culture is the only stratum. The other is allowed to exist, if at all, at the sufferance of the successful. Generally as a tourist attraction.

UK and Britain are not the same thing. The United Kingdom refers to the nations directly ruled by the English crown. Britain refers to the islands making up that archipelago, including Ireland.

Except despite all the well-meaning self-delusion about "multicultural = good, not that I have a reason for saying that", research shows that it is actually bad. It's a matter of degrees; the closer they are to us, the happier we are with them.

That's one of those things modern Western folks say but don't believe; they fool themselves into thinking they actually believe it. Just like "We're all equal" or "love everyone the same". Westerners are masters of self-deception.

We're still doing the same shit we were doing in Rome 2,000 years ago. People with money run things, everyone else works or tries to get by. We have shares in companies just as they did then. Wealthier people living in better conditions as they did then. Wealthy folks buying politicians just as they did then. People on welfare just as they did then. Armies seizing resources and land just as they did then. There's no paradigm shift. Just people being people, as always. Only the methods change.

That's not really how things were. Prior to agriculture, people had their homes and roofs over their heads. They tended to either have stable homes and relied on hunting, fishing, and gathering, or they moved from home to home and relied on hunting, fishing, and gathering.

Are you implying that is my position?

Again, not true. Archaeologists have found the remains of old folks who were unable to hunt of gather (often crippled) who had lived their later years around home caves and such. The assumption from the bones is they were fed and generally looked after by their tribe, ie. family.

You must live in an upper crust suburb if that's what you see around you.

I'm elite, sure. But the rest is a bad assumption.

I'm glad you enjoy your television shows. I'm sure that proves something.

Many errors. In medieval Europe, the taxes were 15% to 25%. If people wanted to use the local mill or whatever, which was owned by the local lord, they would pay for it and use it. Like how we have toll roads. Except they only had the toll, whereas we have the toll plus extra taxes. They were also big on hygiene, especially the Anglo-Saxons. And even with those very low taxes, they still managed to build some of the most amazing structures on this planet, many of which still exist today; whereas we with much higher taxation build disposable pre-fabricated crap that will not last. That world produced amazing scholars, warriors, artists, leaders, and more. Today we have higher taxes, Britney Speares, and George Bush. Woohoo.

As for Egypt, they had their centres of learning, which is why we have this crazy little thing called chemistry. No, they didn't let everyone in; but neither do we today.

Medieval murder rates: http://medievalnews.blogspot.com/2009/12/murder-in-medieval-london-was.html

We have vastly different perspectives. To you, television enriches your life, as does whatever it is you think you're getting from your government through taxes. To me, it's about something far less material.

I know they did. That's why I mentioned such things before. What's different today is that those agendas have straddled across all borders and bloodlines.

Well, unlike some, I have an education. I know the good and bad points. And as I have made quite clear, some of the good points appeal to me greatly, such as lower taxes and leader who lead from the front instead of just ordering hundreds of thousands to march off and die for them.

Really no. The American Indians had their towns and villages, which were not too shabby. They had their nations and alliances and wars. Farms and herds. They were all destroyed.

They just weren't as populous or as advanced in terms of technology. But they were using the land just the same. That's a mistake many people make, believing stone age cultures were somehow more noble and peaceful and in tune with rainbows and such. They weren't. They were just the same, but had not progressed as far along yet. In other words, they were doing the same thing but had not been as successful at it. Except in a few cases, where one tribe had totally wiped out another.

[quote[
Well I agree. I have postulated elsewhere that it is the nature of Homo sapiens to transcend nature, both his own and that of the external universe.

It's always just people doing the same things. The only differences are that over time the groups merged with other groups to get bigger and more easily do the same thing to others, and we have over time increased the distance between the human cause and the human effect at the other end (as in now a button will do the trick).

It's the lack of morality and the way they allow their own people and culture to give way to destructive external influences.

Obviously, because if you have a group of people living on the island Darwinia, they're all going to share a language, and obviously they're going to be related. However, language and genetics are not the same thing. Europe has its people, its genetics, which obviously mix the further afield you go. The language exchanges happen across border regions, along trade routes, around centres of trade and commerce, et cetera. Which is why the Finno-Ugric group will be genetically close to the Europeans around them, but are classified as a different linguistic group; although nearby and related, they weren't as strongly influenced by the Persian and Indian linguistic and cultural influences from further south-east.

Yeah, that's one theory. I couldn't hazard a guess. By the way, if anyone wants to know how fast languages change over a broad region, just check out anything in Middle English, and where and when it was spoken, and compare it to the form and presence of English today.

This is wrong. The language influence is what moved and migrated. One tribe did not take most of Europe, the Middle East, and India in that short period. See my above point regarding the movements of English.

This is an entirely wrong view of history. Most of the European tribes we have today were already there at that stage, and earlier. That's why we have German cultures dating back prior to the supposed spread of the proto-Indo-European language group across Europe, and an unbroken chain of those cultures until the present. It's why there are archaeological digs examining the lives of the Scots from 5,000 BC, including examples in the Orkneys of the world's first indoor plumbing.

The Slavs are a specific group by ancestry. They reason they have their Slavic language group is simple: They were a people of common ancestry in a given area. They had their languages. They migrated, and brought their languages with them although with influences from the old and new areas. That's why the language group matches the genetic group.

 

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http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTINDONESIA/Resources/Environment/ClimateChange_Full_EN.pdf

Like the 4th largest emitter, Brazil, Indonesia's high rate of GHG emissions is driven by deforestation, and not industrial infrastructure as in other major emitters (USA, China, etc.).

 

It's time to strip this down to it's essentials. If you wish to discuss specifics of the studies (yours or mine) we can open another thread.

As far as I'm concerned you just demonstrated my point and there's little left to discuss.

If Racial categories have vague and broadly overlapping boundaries and differentiation can be made at any resolution from Kingdom all the way down to siblings then you'll need to show me a very powerful argument why I should accept the common classifications of Race to have any merit above any of the millions of other distinguishable groupings that are possible.

It would be much simpler and far more accurate merely to mark distinction by specific geographical regions of ancestry when useful (e.g. Eastern European Descent, Indochinese Ancestry, Mediterranean Origin). To classify populations by an arbitrary and variable selection of a very small number of traits that group people of more distant heritage together and divide populations that are closely related makes no logical sense.

You can show me as many examples as you like of how various populations are different (I've never disagreed) but until you can show me any that distinguish racial categories as collectively less diverse and more closely related than the groupings that cross racial lines I will remain entirely unconvinced.

To preserve this societal concept one must force the data. Inventing numerous exceptions and inclusions to the point where it is impossible to formulate a concise and accurate definition of any race. Genetic ancestry does not map true to classic racial definitions... and that's really all there is to it.

When I am more closely related to someone considered to be a different race than me than I am to another member of my race, I call arbitrary, meaningless bullshit.

~Raithere

 

First of all I would like to thank Fraggle Rocker for responding quickly to this thread and taking time to make elaborate reply. For this moment I can only post shortly because here in Germany is morning and I have to go to office, so I will read your response in more detail later in the evening. Thank you also that you have been very humble in your response (fro m the quick reading). Maybe I was all wrong abou t you lately.

For a quick reference, I wouldl like to give you this link (UN report) for annual data of all countries emission since 1990 until 2006 (it is html, not pdf):

http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/SeriesDetail.aspx?srid=749&crid=

The last official IPCC report (4th assessment) on it was published in 2007, the next one (5th assessment) will be published on 2014. So, official, latest data inventory that has been published is until 2006. That UN annual data is updated on July 2009. As you can see there, Indonesia isn't even the top 10 emitter (by a quick look, it is #19), but pls feel free to check. The table is very long becaus including all countries for data of 15 years. If needed, in evening I'll make a screenshot and graph of it.

Mabye I type with some mistakes as I am typing in hurry (have to go to office/uni), I am sorry about this!

p.s.: yes,I am aware of the issue of the deforestation, which is a bad thing about us, but I just thought that I woudl put it out that we aren't biggest 3. Thanks again

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From what I can tell, that data excludes land-use changes, which comprise 85% of Indonesia's emissions (likewise Brazil).

You've been provided with the World Bank report you requested, which covers this issue in great detail. I suggest you stop calling people liars, and instead call your government and ask them to do something about deforestation and peat fires.

 

Fraggle Rocker and Quadraphonics, I will respond to your posts within the next couple of hours. I have to read the pdf document posted by Quadraphonics first (I just downloaded it, it is 90 pages), so I can post my response after I check all the facts. Thanks again, I appreciate all of these responses.

p.s.: I will post my response to your post not in this thread, but in your other thread here:

http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=97666

so that this one don't get hijacked. If in my reply there is relevant thing with the topic of current thread, I will split my reply. I hope that's ok! So, please give me 1-2 hours. See you =)

 

It's a biological concept, not a societal concept. The differences are very real. What is societal are the meanings we associate with those biological facts. Each and every difference as I mentioned earlier is an absolutely real thing, a fact. It's reality. You and others may attach emotional baggage to those facts, but I don't. For example, if I say "Me and Bob Africa are of different racial groups", to me it's just a fact of biology. Whether you attach any further meanings to it is up to you, and has nothing to do with those facts. Some folks look at such facts and think it means one group is smarter than another, or better behaved than another, and so on. I don't. Unless there is evidence showing it to be the case.

 

Actually it began as a societal concept and then became an anthropological one long before the sciences of genetics and evolutionary biology even existed. To ignore the "emotional baggage" (to borrow your kind euphemism) is to ignore history. The fact is that even as a vaguely scientific system of taxonomic classification it was almost entirely cultural and prejudicial.

"Von Linne, the Swedish taxonomist and botanist, was the first to place humans in a taxonomy of animals, in his Systema Naturae in 1758. He divided humans into four main groups on the basis of physical and psychological impressions: Europeans, who were “fair … gentle, acute, inventive … governed by laws”; Americans, who were “copper-coloured … obstinate, content free … regulated by customs”; Asiatics, who were “sooty … severe, haughty, covetous … governed by opinions”; and Africans, who were “black … crafty, indolent, negligent … governed by caprice”

Blumenbach, the German anthropologist and anatomist, first used the word “race” in 1775 to classify humans into five divisions: Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malay. Blumenbach also coined the term “Caucasian” because he believed that the Caucasus region of Asia Minor produced “the most beautiful race of men”. Both von Linne and Blumenbach stated that humans are one species, and the latter remarked on the arbitrary nature of his proposed categories. "

http://www.annals.org/content/125/8/675.full
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O119-RaceConceptof.html

This is irrelevant to the main point however. Races as commonly defined do not match any actual identifiable populations. The differences you cling so desperately to are not related to any race but to populations of a specific ancestry. They are not exemplary of any race in toto and do nothing to support your argument.

~Raithere

 

You aren't creating division; you are creating unity. You have to think of the context within the nation-state. If you have different nations within one state, like we have in the US, then you have division; if you divide them into separate states, then you have unity among themselves (as that is what we are aiming at, since the old state will be abandoned). Thus all are happy.