Comment on The Not-So-Great Replacement Theory
FabioTheNewOrder@lemmy.world 1 year agoPlease, provide examples of heritage and/or colture being used for the betterment of society.
Protip: you can’t.
Heritage and colture are frozen in time and will never be used to improve society because they need a strict set of boundaries to remain heritage and colture. Should a colture be poisoned by external factors it would immediately cease to be the same culture it was a minute ago and would become something different, thus being rejected by those who practice said colture in a religious way.
To make a simpler example you may be able to understand: I am Italian. The thing italians hate the most is ananas on pizza because “this goes against our culture!”
Should I dare to say that I enjoy ananas on my pizza tomorrow (I don’t, but that’s what a thought experiment is) most of my friends would be appalled by my statement and would fight me on that.
Culture or heritage intended as a set of characteristics stereotypical of a certain subset if humans are a cancer to society and should be eliminated.
Your examples paint you as awfully convinced that foreigners are completely incapable of integrating into a new society. That’s pretty bigoty. People can participate in multiple cultures. They can pick and choose and blend them.
Of course they could become European, should they decide to leave their culture behind and to homogenise in the society they live in. Unfortunately peer and societal pressure do not allow for such a change and therefore they are doomed to remain marginalized because they cannot accept their culture, heritage or race not being “the best”
magnusrufus@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Wow dude, you really are a bigot and don’t even realize it. Those poor weak willed soft minded foreigners just can’t think for themselves or change. They are doomed to live only in the context of their scary different culture.
If ananas on pizza is the extent of what you think culture is then you are profoundly ignorant. If you know that culture extends to things beyond that, like music and art as examples, then you are disingenuously misrepresenting culture. If you want to make the case that the entirety of art and music has done nothing good then I’ll listen… skeptically.
FabioTheNewOrder@lemmy.world 1 year ago
There is Culture with a capital C (music, arts, literature, etc.) which is a universal way of expression and then there is culture with a lowercase c (heritage, dialects, common beliefs, traditions, etc.) which are typical of a very distinct group of people being part of a well-defined territory.
The first can and has since always helped human beings create bridges between different groups, since it is a common way to express ones’ feelings and can overcome the language and culture barriers.
The second is used to keep these group apart with the subtle yet very present assumption that each people has “the best” culture when compared to others.
If you cannot understand this difference I think we have a very big communication problem.
Not every foreigner is unable to change, yet many remain stoic in their willingness to not assimilate by regrouping in ghettos when they move abroad. The issue is double-faced, on one side there are the immigrants who are not strong enough to pull out from their social group due to peer pressure and to the beliefs they were programmed to follow from a very young age; on the other side there are the receiving societies which tend to avoid the assimilation of new “cultures” (I’m using brackets to differentiate culture and Culture from now on) because they are afraid of new perspectives and ways of being and would avoid mixing with those to preserve their native “culture”.
Erase culture (intended as heritage) and humankind has only to gain from shedding these old ideas. If we would focus on what we have in common with the others instead of what are the differences between us we would all live much better, don’t you think?
Typical bigot point of view, I know…
magnusrufus@lemmy.world 1 year ago
So there’s two cultures one that embodies everything you don’t like and one that embodies everything you do like. Convenient. Maybe you should have led with that obtuse distinction.
So some portion of foreigners are stuck in their culture and some are not. We can guess what your estimations of the percentage is, but if you know that it’s not universal then what were you trying to say with the whole Chinese will never be European and Indians will never be German?
Are you aware of the history of state sponsored schools designed to erase cultural identity like you praise? It’s a pretty disgusting path you are skipping down.
FabioTheNewOrder@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Unfortunately it’s not that easy. I do not like all cultures and I don’t hate all “cultures”. Cardi B is music, but it’s really not my jam, superhero movies are a form of cinema, but I don’t really dig them. In the same way there are cultural aspects of different heritages I do enjoy (the Italian food culture or the chinese family unity for example).
What I was discussing it’s the underlying nature of these two concepts: culture creates bridges, “culture” create walls. You can enjoy a piece of art coming from a different society but it’s gonna be a real problem should you confront your beliefs with those coming from a different society than yours.
I was saying that, until humans won’t see their cultural differences as simple joke material, there won’t be a simple way to have a pacific coexistence between different groups of people living in the same region. If we all continue to live our “cultures” as something sacred and untouchable we won’t be able to tear down the walls dividing us all.
Not everything is up to the state, society can and must evolve on its own if we want to improve our lives on this tiny planet. I, for one, am doing what I can to demolish the idea that the "Italian heritage, is something that needs to survive at all costs precisely as it is today by challenging the most idiot aspects of this “culture”. No state intervention required