Race versus culture

[thedoc]

Your cultural imperialism is your belief that foreigners in your country ought to and will integrate. There's no reason why they should have to, and they aren't going to.

As far as cultural imperialism when one country has it really good they naturally want to share it with others less fortunate, the problem is when others don't understand how bad they have it and reject what is offered.

If someone wants to come to America and be an American, I say we should give them all the help we can. But is someone wants to come here and bring the problems of their home country with them, send them back where they came from.

[Seleucus]

No, I'm saying that the values expressed in Romance of the three kingdoms or Journey to the West and the cognitive structures and spiritual system of 14th Century China and the China or today are largely unchanged.

Yes, and we modern English people still have the values of the Knights of the Round Table. Despite your claims to have traveled all over, you have plainly never met a Chinese businessman.

I work with them on a daily basis.

I never said race determines culture. You're straw manning or projecting or something? You're fixated on this idea you're speaking with a Nazi racist White Supremacist which is actually far from the case.

OK, then what do you think does determine culture so it cannot change?

How many times should I tell you the same thing. Read Kuran's article on civilizational trajectories. ctrl + f for the word traffic, it's on p.24 to get the basic argument. Keep reading down through the paragraph starting with with "boundaries among civilizations are naturally fuzzy" and containing "East is East".

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/do ... 1&type=pdf

Me: You just don't make sense. On one hand you insist that Muslims, Koreans etc. are different from each other. But on the other you insist that such differences cannot arise because change is very difficult.
It requires an incredible amount of time and and pain. That's how training works. It's very slow, which is why after no less than 100 thousand years essentially every peoples in the world is still practicing marriage, still eating three meals a day, still rejecting incest, still using proper names, still calling their mother with just about the same sounds. Biological evolution is possibly actually faster than rates of cultural and linguistic change.

So there you seem to be saying there are no 'cultures'. That all humans are much the same.

Not sure how you got that out of what I wrote about the discovery of reward and punishment in the Neolithic?

The process of change is very slow. The discovery that allowed it to be sped up somewhat was the discovery of animal training, oxen about 6000 BC and most importantly horse training around 4000 BC. Once the principle of reward and punish was understood, we could begin to train ourselves. (It was this discovery that lead to civilization.)

So is there a class of animal trainers, that has trained the other humans? Where did it come from? Or (unlike horses) do we 'train ourselves'?

Yeah. They're called prison guards, executioners, parents, teachers, police men, bosses, judges and so on. This is the whole basis of Foucault's work on punishment and then later bio-politics.

In either case, you still had change and if you had it once then you can have it again. I note the importance you attach to horse training, but technology has moved on a bit since then. Round here, we hardly ever see a horse but we see a lot of computers and mobile phones. Is there some reason why we can't change our culture in response to those? Assuming you are still saying we have cultures...it is hard to work out what you think any more.

Gregory Bateson nailed this about fifty years ago. The ox finds itself in a double-bind: if you don't plow you get whipped, but if you choose to avoid getting whipped, then you have to drag a plow around all day. Welcome to civilization. Nothing has changed since the Neolithic.

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/ent ... ouble_bind

Before you reply" 'but that article is about schizophrenia' sit yourself down and read D&G's Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia to get the the big picture on horses and cell phones.

http://lavachequilit.typepad.com/files/ ... edipus.pdf

[Seleucus]

How is my pointing out that modern China is quite different from old China a 'cultural imperialist dream'?

It isn't. Your cultural imperialism is your belief that foreigners in your country ought to and will integrate. There's no reason why they should have to, and they aren't going to.

In fact, though, throughout history, all sorts of people have integrated and blended languages, cuisines, genes, art, literature, values, etc. etc. Even humans and neanderthals, different species (unlike humans today) interbred!

Who does this integration? People with brains!

Then there's ... well, I'm sure you know.

Do you know why 3rd world countries are 3rd world countries? It's not because of a lack of bridges and other infrastructure. It's because they have 3rd world brains, that is to say cognitive structures and emotional-behavioral routines. If you took a million Britons and put them in a vacated Indonesian city, in few years you would have a 1st World country. And conversely, take a million Indonesians and put them in a vacated British city, and pretty much overnight you'll have a 3rd world space. Why this matters is because if mass (im)migration continues, places like Briton will be overwhelmed and decend into 3rd worlddom. And, if you have been following the discussion, no, these (im)migrants will not integrate and become Britons, not even in one-thousand years.

[Seleucus]

Your cultural imperialism is your belief that foreigners in your country ought to and will integrate. There's no reason why they should have to, and they aren't going to.

As far as cultural imperialism when one country has it really good they naturally want to share it with others less fortunate, the problem is when others don't understand how bad they have it and reject what is offered.

If someone wants to come to America and be an American, I say we should give them all the help we can. But is someone wants to come here and bring the problems of their home country with them, send them back where they came from.

Looks based on what you say that the more serious problem is people not realizing how good they have it, and being willing to lose it all to alleviate their guilty minds. You'll be sorry and I'll be saying "I told you so" when your country is overrun by 3rd world (im)migrants and the quality of public transport, health care, sanitation, schooling and so on implodes... You'll have ruined the precious gem of human civilization, but at least everyone will know you're not a nasty Islamophobic racist, and instead will see how amazingly virtuous you are.

[Londoner]

How many times should I tell you the same thing. Read Kuran's article on civilizational trajectories. ctrl + f for the word traffic, it's on p.24 to get the basic argument. Keep reading down through the paragraph starting with with "boundaries among civilizations are naturally fuzzy" and containing "East is East".

How many times should I tell you the same thing? I wish you would tell me the same thing more than once, rather than continually shifting your ground!

For example, we now seem to be on a 'civilisation' theme, instead of genetics or appearance. But there is no point in my trying to pin down what you might mean by 'civilisation', as when you get into the inevitable problems you will just shift your ground again.

Me: So there you seem to be saying there are no 'cultures'. That all humans are much the same.
Not sure how you got that out of what I wrote about the discovery of reward and punishment in the Neolithic?

You never mentioned the Neolithic or reward or punishment. You wrote 'essentially every peoples in the world is still practicing marriage, still eating three meals a day, still rejecting incest, still using proper names, still calling their mother with just about the same sounds.'

So is there a class of animal trainers, that has trained the other humans? Where did it come from? Or (unlike horses) do we 'train ourselves'?
Yeah. They're called prison guards, executioners, parents, teachers, police men, bosses, judges and so on. This is the whole basis of Foucault's work on punishment and then later bio-politics.

But you haven't explained who trained these trainers. Remember, you are saying that cultures are fixed. But if there exists a class of people who can change people into being a particular culture, then (a) the trainers must have changed so that they are a different culture to the people they are training and (b) the people they are training must also be capable of change.

If you are working round to some Nazi nonsense about 'Aryan torch bearers' then get on with it, although I can see why you would be reluctant because it is self-contradictory, doesn't fit with your 'trainer' idea and also conflicts with your earlier claims about genetics...not that you usually see such self-contradictions as a problem.

(You have not read Foucault.)

Gregory Bateson nailed this about fifty years ago. The ox finds itself in a double-bind: if you don't plow you get whipped, but if you choose to avoid getting whipped, then you have to drag a plow around all day. Welcome to civilization. Nothing has changed since the Neolithic.

But the ox is a different species to the person doing the whipping!

Your parallel would be if some oxen decided to force the other oxen to plow. But you do not think that is possible because you think the nature of oxen and humans is fixed.

As I say, unless you are working round to theories about a 'master race', a super-species of human that controls the ordinary humans, like a man controls an ox. Or who knows, perhaps the super-species is the 'Reptilian Elite'? That's the problem with trying to defend an idea that does not make sense at a fundamental level, you are driven to wilder and wilder claims as you attempt to square the circle.

[Belinda]

Seleucus wrote:

The process of change is very slow. The discovery that allowed it to be sped up somewhat was the discovery of animal training, oxen about 6000 BC and most importantly horse training around 4000 BC. Once the principle of reward and punish was understood, we could begin to train ourselves. (It was this discovery that lead to civilization.)

But ruling elites were not a " discovery" they are a fact about societies. It's a far-fetched causal link between domestication of animals and human social order. Avoidance of pain and memory of how to avoid pain is common to all social animals including those which have never exploited or domesticated other animal species.

You seem to imply that human societies depend for law and order upon simple stimulus and response to pain and pleasure, as administered by power elites. This is a part truth. Power elites also use morality in its adult forms of loyalty and ethical principles to exert pressures.What else do you think religions are?

[vegetariantaxidermy]

(It was this discovery that lead to civilization.)

So 'Aryans' are illiterate then.

[Seleucus]

you...
you ...
you haven't...
you are working round to some Nazi nonsense
not that you
Your parallel would be
(You have not read Foucault.)
you are working round to theories about a 'master race'
you are driven to wilder and wilder claims
you attempt to square the circle.

I surmise you haven't any positive agenda besides just being contrarian and reacting to me. Could you go ahead and lay out your basic positions on race and culture in a few short paragraphs? (Without using the word "you").

But you haven't explained who trained these trainers.

I agree there is a an infinite regression problem in theory. Same debate goes around and around with: is a guru necessary for enlightenment or not? And if yes, then how could there be a first guru?

(You have not read Foucault.)

My experience with Foucault goes like this... I tossed and turned with his The Order of Things and never really got anywhere. Went through the volumes of History of sexuality when I was younger and came back to volume I for a careful read about a year or so ago. Drilled right through Discipline and punish in literally one long day. Pursued here and there through Birth of bio-politics, Society must be defended and an assortment of his lectures and interviews mostly on sexuality. I think I read A very short introduction too. And of course he comes up in just about every left leaning social sciences article. How about you?

[Seleucus]

Seleucus wrote:

The process of change is very slow. The discovery that allowed it to be sped up somewhat was the discovery of animal training, oxen about 6000 BC and most importantly horse training around 4000 BC. Once the principle of reward and punish was understood, we could begin to train ourselves. (It was this discovery that lead to civilization.)

But ruling elites were not a " discovery" they are a fact about societies.

So that means you're not in the Gimbutas camp in believing there was an egalitarian matriarchal pre-Indo-European utopia? Eventually we get back to fruit eating arboreal primates, that must have been a much less gang-land style of society than the one we find about us today. My suspicion is that gangsterism probably started with the decent from the trees, that it was a necessary social adaptation to be able to survive on the Savanna with its hyenas and baboons and what not.

It's a far-fetched causal link between domestication of animals and human social order.

But did whips and extrinsic reward based economies exist before the domestication of the ox and horse? I notice the idea all over the place, from Walter Wink and Marshall Rosenberg to the Unabomber manifesto...

Avoidance of pain and memory of how to avoid pain is common to all social animals including those which have never exploited or domesticated other animal species.

Yes, and... You no doubt agree that instinct and training are different. The difference between our instincts and animal training or civilization is that one is intrinsic and the other extrinsic, or the one primary and the other secondary.

You seem to imply that human societies depend for law and order upon simple stimulus and response to pain and pleasure, as administered by power elites. This is a part truth. Power elites also use morality in its adult forms of loyalty and ethical principles to exert pressures.What else do you think religions are?

Do you want to add something to Nietzsche's Genealogy (AKA Social Dominance Orientation), or is that pretty much the last word would you say?

[Londoner]

I surmise you haven't any positive agenda besides just being contrarian and reacting to me. Could you go ahead and lay out your basic positions on race and culture in a few short paragraphs? (Without using the word "you").

Yes, very short:

Race is a meaningless concept.

I agree there is a an infinite regression problem in theory. Same debate goes around and around with: is a guru necessary for enlightenment or not? And if yes, then how could there be a first guru?

In your theory. Yes, it is one of many problems.

My experience with Foucault goes like this... I tossed and turned with his The Order of Things and never really got anywhere. Went through the volumes of History of sexuality when I was younger and came back to volume I for a careful read about a year or so ago. Drilled right through Discipline and punish in literally one long day. Pursued here and there through Birth of bio-politics, Society must be defended and an assortment of his lectures and interviews mostly on sexuality. I think I read A very short introduction too. And of course he comes up in just about every left leaning social sciences article. How about you?

If you really read them, how could you think they support your 'cultural trainers' theory?

So have you given up trying to resolve the paradox that we cannot change our cultures, yet there is a diversity of cultures?

I was hoping we would get onto Islam, which you have named as a 'culture' and perhaps a 'race'. But if we cannot change our cultures, then people who became Muslims must have already been (in some sense) Muslims already. But in that case we should not describe their culture as 'Muslim', because their current religion would only be a superficial feature of that pre-Muslim culture.

That's even before we get into your infinite regression, when we have to explain how any pre-Muslim culture could have arisen, since the pre-pre- Muslims could not have changed their culture to become pre-Muslims.

But when I say 'we have to explain' I mean you have to explain, because I think the whole idea is nonsense.

[GreatandWiseTrixie]

Race is meaningless.
There is only culture.
You can bring up baby into any culture seamlessly. The fact that s/he might look a little different might affect the outcome negatively - but only if people in the culture believe that race is a valid category. And so we see competent, intelligent and successful black people in the USA whose only problem is racist bigots trying to undermine them, when such bigots are their inferiors in many respects.

In the TV show Eureka there is only 1 black genius in the entire town.

But in America there are four black geniuses.
The man who invented peanut butter. The woman who invented the hair dryer. A woman who was an engineer at NASA. And another woman astronaut.

Apparently female blacks are more masculine than male blacks.

But let's pretend all races are the same and that Genes and Genetics are evil/taboo/don't exist.

Lets compare this with white geniuses.
Bill Gates, inventor of the Windows. John Carmack, pioneer of efficient BSP technology to make 3D FPS games. The Frenchman who invented the automobile. The white man who invented the computer. The white woman who discovered DNA. Marie Curie, a white woman, who pioneered biology. The white man who invented the rocket engine. Wilbur and Orville Wright who invented the airplane. Leonardo Davinci. Michealangelo. Genesis, an all white band. Mozart. Tchaikovsky. Nikola Tesla.
I can keep going.

I close my eyes to reality. I ignore reality, say that all statistics are fake/irrelevant and that it doesn't matter. I sing the song of equality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5hQb_71qLk

[Belinda]

Seleucus wrote:

So that means you're not in the Gimbutas camp in believing there was an egalitarian matriarchal pre-Indo-European utopia? Eventually we get back to fruit eating arboreal primates, that must have been a much less gang-land style of society than the one we find about us today. My suspicion is that gangsterism probably started with the decent from the trees, that it was a necessary social adaptation to be able to survive on the Savanna with its hyenas and baboons and what not.

I doubt if any egalitarian matriarchal regime existed. Matriarchs can be as merciless as patriarchs. You should distinguish between gender and biological sex.

It is a useful hypothesis of yours ("gangsterism")that hierarchical control increases with environmental danger. That hypothesis extends into the consciousness of the plebs, who are manipulated by elites entrenching the hierarchical status quo, to believe that there is increased danger. Racism is one of the modes of control which is used by interested elites.

[GreatandWiseTrixie]

It is a useful hypothesis of yours ("gangsterism")that hierarchical control increases with environmental danger. That hypothesis extends into the consciousness of the plebs, who are manipulated by elites entrenching the hierarchical status quo, to believe that there is increased danger. Racism is one of the modes of control which is used by interested elites.

I actually think it's the other way around.

Equality is a tool and propoganda made up by manipulative elites as a tool to enslave the population. Same with the whole "unity" crap.

Racism. What is racism? Abe lincoln said Blacks were inferior to whites. Was Abe lincoln a racist?

here's a song for you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5hQb_71qLk

Since you're probably too lazy to research the episode, I will give you a background. There is a shitty city, and the elite ruler of the city forces equality on everyone in order to steal all of their powers, while lying to them in order to secure her power.

An example of this lie is like saying blacks and whites have the same personalities.

What is racism? Racism is a stupid terminology. There is either unfairness and unreasonableness, or fairness and logic and reason.
I am a reasonable woman. If a black has a 160 IQ I will hire him for a job. That is called being reasonable. What is not reasonable, is spreading a lie that all races are equal to each other, genetics do not exist, and that all races have the same personalities.

People who use words like "racist" tend not to be reasonable, but hysterical and unreasonable.

[Arising_uk]

How does a race have a personality?

Oh! And whilst we're here what do you mean by race?

[artisticsolution]

What is not reasonable, is spreading a lie that all races are equal to each other, genetics do not exist, and that all races have the same personalities.

No one is saying anyone is "equal" to anyone else. Do you have the same strengths and weaknesses as other members in your own family? No, we are all individuals.

What we are all equal in, however, is our humanity.