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Which Tyler

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38 minutes ago, Jo498 said:

They might be choices in theory.

I would put that even more strongly (as I did above): 

We have faith in choice.

The word faith is carefully chosen, just as in Popper’s adage that we have faith in reason. There is no argument for either, and very little evidence. But it’s useful (or, to use another word, optimistic) to frame these things as choice and reason. It makes you a better person, it helps you make decisions, it puts responsibility on you, and it is intrinsically linked to the value system of the open society.

Note that faith in choice is the very opposite of some of the strongest movements against the open society. Nihilism, marxism, etc. Entire political movements (not all of them evil or mistaken) are based on ideas that societies are helpless playthings for stronger forces that they can’t control. 

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5 minutes ago, Happy Ent said:

I would put that even more strongly (as I did above): 

We have faith in choice.

The word faith is carefully chosen, just as in Popper’s adage that we have faith in reason. There is no argument for either, and very little evidence. But it’s useful (or, to use another word, optimistic) to frame these things as choice and reason. It makes you a better person, it helps you make decisions, it puts responsibility on you, and it is intrinsically linked to the value system of the open society.

Note that faith in choice is the very opposite of some of the strongest movements against the open society. Nihilism, marxism, etc. Entire political movements (not all of them evil or mistaken) are based on ideas that societies are helpless playthings for stronger forces that they can’t control. 

Some are. 

Is Germany one of them?

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2 hours ago, Jo498 said:

There is also (maybe depressing) evidence that ethnically homogeneous societies are happier and do better according to many measures.

Would you please provide some links to this evidence you speak of?

Living in an ethnically homogenous society and having visited ethnically heterogenous societies on relatively numerous occasions, I did get the impression of one being happier and doing better than the other, but it's the other way around from what you say there's evidence of. Still, I'm willing to hear the other side of the story.

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I suspect that there's a larger variety in outcomes for ethnically heterogeneous societies compared to homogeneous societies. Namely, many ethnically heterogeneous nations were designed that way to pit various ethnicities against each other during colonialism. I wonder if just looking at heretogeneous societies that didn't have their borders set up by foreign powers in such a way would present a starkly different picture. Because the examples of multiethnic nations I can think of that fulfill that one criterion returns a list of some of the most prosperous countries on earth: Switzerland (trilingual), Singapore (a country built on the premise of multiculturalism!), the UK (through the Empire, but also internally with English, Scots, Irish and Welsh), the USA (the melting pot of the world), Canada, Australia...

 

 

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I cannot provide links. If Robert Putnam did such research, I probably read about it somewhere and forgot the exact source.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x/abstract

General communitarist arguments seem convincing to me, although homogeneous ethniticity is neither necessary nor sufficient for strong and "rooted" communities. I have only lived in a fairly homogeneous society (Germany), except for holidays and one longer period of study abroad (in the fairly homogeneously white US Northwest, the only "ethnic" people I interacted with there on a personal basis were also students from abroad and except for two Indians all were European). The problem is that one should be wary to take "bubbles" like international academic departments or higher lvl business interactions as something that can or should work for everyone everywhere. (These are also not pluralist but usually thoroughly westernized or even americanized. One should not take the overwhelming dominance of Western culture in such bubbles as evidence that multiculturalism works. Of course it works if the "multi-" is reduced to food and 95% are basically the culture Western highly educated and well-off people.)

The other point are ceteris paribus problems. Do Singapore or Switzerland do well because they are multicultural or because they are incredibly rich? I have the suspicion that such examples are to some extent also rather bubbles than generalizable examples. And Empires are again different. They either provide unity by sheer force (as was probably the case in the former Soviet union and Yugoslavia) or there are other deep ties overruling local ties (like ethnicity) like loyalty to the Empire, religion etc.

(I also have trouble accepting Britain as a shining example, remember that before the islamists took over, IRA were among paradigmatic terrorists (this was only 20-30 years ago!) and didn't we recently have a secession attempt of Scotland?)

The more concrete problem in Germany is that we are schizophrenic and have been in denial for decades. It took ages to admit that the foreign workers of the 1960s were here to stay. It could never be admitted until very recently that Germany was an immigration country. The ius sanguinis that ties citizenship not to the place of birth but to ethnic heritage is deeply rooted both in law and in general attitude etc. There is probably also the factor that Germany was behind in forming a national identity in the 19th century and that fragility led to extreme nationalism and two world wars, so it is now more fragile than ever. So on the one hand we have no real experience with multiculturalism, on the other we have to embrace it because of less than a century of fervent nationalism and bloody wars that ended more than 70 year ago, but makes "emphatic national identity" suspect. That's probably another reason why so many put their hopes into Europe as there was the possibility of acknowledging a heritage without appearing overly patriotic or despising foreigners.

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Good observations, o4.

Here’s an accessible introduction to Putnam’s results. Boston Globe (2007) To read more, start with the relevant Wikipedia articles. It’s all good stuff, and quite illuminating. (Also because he Changed. His. Mind. I have a lot of respect for people who do that.)

One more detail: affluence of a society is not an indicator that everything is fine. That’s exactly the globalist dogma that I hoped we had rid ourselves of now. For instance, the US is very affluent, but it’s still very unclear to what extend the original population has benefitted from this. Was it in their interest? Putting instead the focus on the state (as the “recipient” of the blessings of global capitalism) is exactly Platonic thinking: as if the State was the interesting entity that we need to support. It’s not. The people are. (At least that’s what I think, and this is exactly where people can fruitfully disagree. The regressive Left, for instance, puts the state first. As do laissez-faire capitalists or EU-style globalist utopians. I disagree with all of them, but their opinion is of course valid.) 

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13 hours ago, baxus said:

Would you please provide some links to this evidence you speak of?

Living in an ethnically homogenous society and having visited ethnically heterogenous societies on relatively numerous occasions, I did get the impression of one being happier and doing better than the other, but it's the other way around from what you say there's evidence of. Still, I'm willing to hear the other side of the story.

I guess that heterogenous societies lean more towards conflict  of one idea vs the other.  

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5 hours ago, John Doe said:

I guess that heterogenous societies lean more towards conflict  of one idea vs the other.  

And I guess that homogenous societies lean more to sticking with one idea and staying in a rut.

 

17 hours ago, Jo498 said:

<snip>

I have only lived in a fairly homogeneous society (Germany), except for holidays and one longer period of study abroad (in the fairly homogeneously white US Northwest, the only "ethnic" people I interacted with there on a personal basis were also students from abroad and except for two Indians all were European). The problem is that one should be wary to take "bubbles" like international academic departments or higher lvl business interactions as something that can or should work for everyone everywhere. (These are also not pluralist but usually thoroughly westernized or even americanized. One should not take the overwhelming dominance of Western culture in such bubbles as evidence that multiculturalism works. Of course it works if the "multi-" is reduced to food and 95% are basically the culture Western highly educated and well-off people.)

<snip>

And Empires are again different. They either provide unity by sheer force (as was probably the case in the former Soviet union and Yugoslavia) or there are other deep ties overruling local ties (like ethnicity) like loyalty to the Empire, religion etc.

I would consider Germany as ethnically very diverse with all the immigration that went on for decades now. Most of the immigrants are Caucasian and/or Christian, but ethnic diversity is still there.

Yugoslavia didn't provide unity by force, but rather by keeping the country in that sweet spot right between Soviets and the Western countries which provided some economic benefits. Oh, and it built on the post-WWII euphoria of "when we stand together, there's nothing we can't do". It was a rather nice idea, bringing together people who shared the language and culture, but unfortunately it wasn't done properly or it wasn't done with the right people or who knows what the reason was it went down in flames.

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I guess this should go in this thread, rather than opening a new one for it.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/isis-knifemen-forced-french-priest-8497681

Two Islamist terrorists stormed into a French Catholic church, forced the 84 year old priest to kneel, and filmed themselves slitting his throat.

This happened in France. Not in Raqqa or Mosul.

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16 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

I guess this should go in this thread, rather than opening a new one for it.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/isis-knifemen-forced-french-priest-8497681

Two Islamist terrorists stormed into a French Catholic church, forced the 84 year old priest to kneel, and filmed themselves slitting his throat.

This happened in France. Not in Raqqa or Mosul.

This thread seems to be for Germans working out their grandpa issues so maybe the thread for terrorism in Europe would do? 

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12 hours ago, ElizabethB. said:

This thread seems to be for Germans working out their grandpa issues so maybe the thread for terrorism in Europe would do? 

2 hours ago, Errant Bard said:

Would you please explain what you mean by that exactly?

Sit back, kids. This is about to get very interesting....

 

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16 hours ago, ElizabethB. said:

This thread seems to be for Germans working out their grandpa issues so maybe the thread for terrorism in Europe would do? 

It's not often a post will get me to actually say 'what the fuck' out loud. Well done.

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On 26.7.2016 at 8:03 PM, White Walker Texas Ranger said:

You give humanity more credit than I do. I've always just explained it as everybody is a little racist, or at least tribal.

I'm not sure, racism is an issue for sure, but I think the main problem for some is the different background.

On 26.7.2016 at 8:33 PM, ElizabethB. said:

This thread seems to be for Germans working out their grandpa issues so maybe the thread for terrorism in Europe would do? 

That's stupid. 

On 26.7.2016 at 9:35 AM, baxus said:

And I guess that homogenous societies lean more to sticking with one idea and staying in a rut.

I'm not sure where you're going here. I didn't say homogenous societies were better, just different. 

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