I'm new here, so I just thought I'd tell you guys a little about myself. I'm a simple man who loves his friends, family, community, and life itself. I'm also a graduate student (in sociology / social theory), an avid reader, and an outdoor enthusiast. The Midwest is my home; I grew up in Michigan but now reside in rural South Dakota.
Philosophically, I'd describe myself as a metaphysical naturalist, a communitarian, and a staunch anti-postmodernist. I tend to identify most with the philosophical and theoretical work of Camus, C.W. Mills, and de Beauvoir; I'm also interested in the work of more recent social theorists like Domhoff, Zizek (though I disagree with his poststructuralist leanings), Chomsky, and Hill-Collins (except for her postmodern account of knowledge; did I mention I really despise postmodernism?!?!), and philosophers like Quentin Smith, Michael Martin, and Peter Singer. Politically speaking, I tend to shy away from labels, but I could be best described as an anarcho-socialist.
Anyway, that's all I can think to say right now. I hope to take part in this community's interesting discussions!
If you've prolifically read books about all those people you know a lot more than me about 20th century philosophy ^^
I've seen a few movies about Zizek, and I know fragments about all the others, but not enough to determine what exactly is their opinions besides the more obvious brandings. To my eye Zizek doesn't seem to have much opinion besides constantly telling people he's a communist, he talks forever but switches roles all the time and doesn't seem to have a message to bring to the world other than that all perspectives have their merits.
I never personally use terms like postmodernity and structuralism (or poststructuralism). I've always had some problem understanding why people choose to brand themselves for or against instead of just picking what concepts they find useful.
The Voice of Time wrote:If you've prolifically read books about all those people you know a lot more than me about 20th century philosophy ^^
I've seen a few movies about Zizek, and I know fragments about all the others, but not enough to determine what exactly is their opinions besides the more obvious brandings. To my eye Zizek doesn't seem to have much opinion besides constantly telling people he's a communist, he talks forever but switches roles all the time and doesn't seem to have a message to bring to the world other than that all perspectives have their merits.
I never personally use terms like postmodernity and structuralism (or poststructuralism). I've always had some problem understanding why people choose to brand themselves for or against instead of just picking what concepts they find useful.
Voice,this morning I read the following article dealing with multiculturalism in Norway. I would be grateful for your comments on the article since you live there. Minnesota has the largest Somali immigrant population in the US. Recently, there was a huge fight between Somalis and American blacks in a Minneapolis high school Do you see any problem with the loss of your traditional Norwegian identity because of your current immigration policy? http://frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-bawe ... n-country/
Not really. Besides, multiculturalism is about multitudes of cultures, I like having kebab around the corner, I hate to see it go away just so people can feed me "traditional food".
People who normally ask such questions makes me suspicious they have the complete wrong picture... I mean. Why does the traditions of my country necessarily have to be of value to me? I personally don't celebrate Christmas despite long and unique traditions of it in my country (look up Christmas in Scandinavia), I never bought traditional clothing for my Confirmation (a tradition done at your 15th year where you celebrate ascending to adulthood, in modern times you usually get loads of cash, up to thousands or tens of thousands of equivalent in dollars, one girl in my clash got more than 20 000 dollars from her aunt and her aunt wasn't rich I think) and instead had a comfortable light-brown suite, I didn't celebrate Christians Confirmation either but chose the more modern (though still niche) style Humane-Ethical Confirmation (each Confirmation usually follows with a Confirmation-event, which locally where I come from in the Christian-traditional style you memorize some verses to say in church followed by a week on a lodge in nature with different activities and other youth, the Humane-Ethical is instead a weekend trip where you instead of... "enjoying"... yourself for a week you play a refugee for 24 hours where you are starved, exhausted, luxury-deprived, and follow continuously a sort-of hardcore roleplay to become an immigrant with everything from embassy admittance to UN refugee camp where you have to flee from soldiers etc. all tightly packed in sequential events over the 24 hours and you walk or sleep on hard ground during the entire time).
The reason I don't celebrate or attend traditions is purely my own choice, as people around me chose mostly to follow tradition and I came from a traditionalist family (which shouldn't be interpreted as the same as conservative in the US, it must be understood from my perspective which is too lengthy to narrate here). Both Christmas (in Norwegian called "juletiden", or "Yule-Times"), national holiday and other times of the year have solid traditions built around them, but increasingly people are simply not interested in making so much effort in doing them as before, and that is purely their choice.
In fact, in terms of cultural diminishing, American exports is the biggest threat to Norwegian traditions. Not immigrants. I read some of the article and there seems to be problems there that some people have. So what? If somebody did something criminal, unless you have a good official statistic, I don't see what difference it makes to me? There are black boys killed by white boys and there are white boys killed by black boys, and there are both types killing each other. The problem is not the colour of their skin or where they came from, but problems like those every society has; gang-formation, poor family functionality, etc. I must also mention that my knowledge of the capital, which is the only place in Norway where you get high densities of foreigners in places like Grønland, is not characteristic for the rest of the country. In comparison to other countries, Norway has generally a very spread out immigrant pattern, not to mention we don't have many big cities.
That article smells strongly of right-extremist bias, and doesn't mean anything to one with a sense of facts. I simply don't understand what it has to do with me or my country? Not to mention that if you have the wrong initial attitude, you'll see more problems than there actually are, and in the process you'll create problems, and especially with such topics like immigration, you get people who are initially hostile to otherness and strangers (xenophobia), and which spend lots of time developing their bias and aggressively creating a bad image of otherness and strangers for the gain of nobody just because they lack the ability to work with people different than themselves.
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