First we need to define our terms, as you seem to be using “multiculturalism” falsely to mean “no border control and countries flooded with muslims omg omg.”
I’m going to define multiculturalism in its broadest sense as « the allowed existence of differing cultures within a same country/state or legislative system. A “culture” includes (but is not limited to any single element) language, religion, food habits, dress habits, art, traditions, beliefs, ethnicity etc.”
That's exactly the definition I've had in mind all along, which is why I wrote "Geographically emplacing a foreign culture into another one". I've used muslim migration as an example because that's the most prominent case were I live currently. If the migration was a bunch of old-school christians who would put me before the Inquisition for saying that that the earth revolves around the sun, I would use them instead.
I’m saying it’s at odds with common sense to be against this, because it’s always happened and it always will. It’s not even a question of being for or against it, because it’s just a fact of societies. You can’t isolate people from each other unless you have a very authoritarian oppressive government in place.
People isolate themselves all the time – in fact that's usually the norm when they are free to do so – even when they live within the same city (e.g. chinatown in NY). And I would say it's quite natural. It's pleasant to know that people around you are like you and share your values and customs. We can obviously tolerate other cultures within reasonable bounds, but there's nothing nonsensical about cultural isolation. But more importantly, when you think about it, multiculturalism is highly nonsensical: if you share values with people around you, then pretty much by definition you are of the same culture. If my neighbor, on the other hand, believes for example that homosexuality is a sin, or that women should be subservient to men, then I have an enemy living next door.
Are you seriously arguing that a numeral system named the “hindu-arabic" numeral system is NOT a product of a heavy and prolonged exchange between different cultures ?” You’re ignoring the so called "Islamic golden age" which is the product of many invasions followed by an obsession with assimilating and compiling all the thoughts of other cultures and living alongside them in more stable periods. Intellectuals and workers of all nationalities flocked to the large prosperous cities.
you have to differentiate between two things: 1) the flow of knowledge, science, art, goods etc between countries, and 2) physical movement of large number of people. With regards to the numeral system, I'm talking about something specific: how it was introduced essentially unilaterally by one scholar to Europe. That's clearly an example of the first case. You're talking about something completely different here – how it was originated in the islamic world to begin with.
The same goes for the Hellenistic thing. You're talking about the flow of knowledge between cultures, which I'm fully in favor of like I mentioned earlier. If you argue for this as multiculturalism, you would have to tell me to what degree people were not segregated physically within that empire. I'm not claiming they were segregated, because I don't know the history of that, but the example here doesn't go into that at all.
And the same again goes for the Greek philosophy part. I know that muslims were originally the ones to preserve the works of the greeks. Once again that's an example of what I'm talking about above. They preserved it because they found value in it. They didn't merge the two cultures together just for the fuck of it and then later figured: hey, we can actually learn something from these people. Think about how different that is to the concept of "multiculturalism" as we think of nowadays: mixing people together is the end in itself, without any preconditions. We don't say, for example here in Sweden, "islamic immigration is great, because they bring us a lot of knowledge, technology and wisdom on social issues". We just say "it's great".
Depends, what is “mass”. Because I mean if “mass” is a loaded term that denotes “too much for the infrastructures in place entailing the collapse of the cities into chaos” then your question doesn’t have much point. What is this “mass” ? What percentage of population is it ? Anyway, if they learn the language the Greeks might be able to make some interesting linguistic discoveries about Scandinavian languages, or have their culture enriched by learning about their mythology, or boat making (I’m assuming they needed pretty good boats to get there) or I guess maybe they might be good at music or whatever. Materials, weaving etc.
So you're saying that it would make sense only if the greek culture could have benefited from such immigration? In that case we agree.
I’m very happy to be able to eat Thai food, go to an English pub, watch French, American and Armenian films, go to an African market, hear arabic music, talk to a Spanish, Nigerian, Sengalese, Russian person, walk on Roman roads, read Greek books etc, you get my point. I'm happy to live in a large multicultural city.
Why do you need to live in a multicultural city to do all those things?
That’s the point yo, no society EVER went from being “homogeneous”. YOU give me examples of totally homogeneous societies for chrissake. What’s this weird “pure” society you have in mind I don’t get it. Ohgosh. let us godwin this as well seeing as you’ve handed me this point on a platter. Serac, give me some concrete examples of multicultural societies (so basically nearly all of them) that became (or tried to become) homogeneous societies plz. How does this pan out generally?
the old you're-a-nazi-because-you-oppose-multiculturalism trick, eh? I've never favored cultural cleansing (hell, one of my best friends is a muslim guy). I'm opposed to synthetic multiculturalism enforced top-down by bureaucrats. If two societies sees a mutual benefit in merging somehow, that's great. But it's not great unconditionally. Whether multiculturalism is good, depends on the cultures. You seem to agree with this – based on your answer to the scandinavia example – because in your answer, the greeks could benefit from such immigration.
TLDR; Serac, you took the word “multiculturalism” and twisted its meaning to promote some kind of hysterical viewpoint over muslim immigration. Please try and clear up your terms before affirming radical political viewpoints, and please avoid simplifying everything just to regurgitate such basic ideology. I’m showing you that the word actually points to a pragmatic necessity in terms of peaceful political decisions. I would never claim that societal infrastructures should be flooded by people it cannot afford to take in, or people who do not share the basic values of tolerance and rules such as not murdering, torturing, subjugating etc; if you want this conversation to be interesting, don’t bother trying to imply that.
I guess only you are allowed to make assumptions about other people's opinions and project all kinds of extreme views on them. We agree that multiculturalism is good if cultures merge as a part of an organic and mutually beneficial process. We also agree that the exchange of knowledge, science, goods and technology between societies is beneficial. But if you claim that this is what "multiculturalism" means nowadays, I don't think you're being intellectually honest. Nowadays it is being enforced top-down by politicians as an axiom, in the form of physical emplacement of people, and to be accepted as good
unconditionally.
? Also can the brainwashee among us still be saved or is it too late ? Should we simply go our seperate ways :'( ?
