Multiculturalism
Conservatives get agitated about multiculturalism, but it is not the problem. Multiculturalism is a fact of life. Every nation has multiple cultures. Multiple cultures are normal everywhere, except in a local community.
The problem is democratic nationalism, which puts the majority culture in charge of every other culture. That is asking for trouble. Especially when the majority culture changes.
People who complain about multiculturalism are usually from a minority culture. They are complaining about their culture being squeezed by the majority.
When the majority culture complains about multiculturalism, they are usually upset, because the minority will not submit to their dominance.
Christians are big complainers about multiculturalism, because they used to be a majority culture, but are not just a minority one, and they are finding the adjustment painful. They are discovering the disadvantage of being a minority culture under democratic nationalism.
The problem is not multiculturalism, it is a fact of life. The problem is nationalism, which forces everyone to come into line with the rest of the nation. The solution is to get rid of nationalism and the nation state.
4 comments:
Technically, you can't. You can get rid of the modern state, but a nation is people. Romulus and Remus allegedly built a city, and people went there. In the beginning they were just people from the surrounding area, but eventually, after generations, they became identifiable as Romans.
If your ideas about church ever actually come true, each local church will eventually become a nation- i.e. people from one area will become identifiable as from that area, regardless of how multicultural you are when you start.
Each church will have about 50 people so it will not become a nation. Loyalty will be to Jesus. Loyalty to political leaders made Rome a nation.
You are calling a nation that which it is not, much like Americans do, since they don't understand all the ethnic conflicts found in Europe. Breeding led to people being called Roman. The Roman nose, for instance, did not come into existence because of loyalty to a leader- it came into existence because the people in Rome had children with each other through the generations until it got to the point where people could identify a set of characteristics as Roman.
Politicians like to use nationality as an excuse for horrible things, but they do not cause nations. There were Germans, for instance, long before the modern German state, and certainly way before the most awful things done for German nationality was done.
Culture, ethnicity and nationality are different concepts.
Post a Comment