Clash of civilizations

My personal confrontation with the refugee/migrant crisis in Europe has placed me in an awkward position. I don’t mean my going out on a limb with a non-PC exploration. I mean having to confront the dissonance between my unciv convictions – in other words, my opposition to civilization as we know it – and my gut-level reaction to those who privilege the interests of strangers over those of their home cultures, who are unwilling to make value-laden comparisons between cultures (or civilizations), and who promote the ideology of multiculturalism without regard to their policies’ consequences.

The ‘clash of civilizations’ meme has been assiduously promoted by mainstream media. “Our” western civ against Islam and its barbarian hordes. I am glad to see that this form of propaganda for “our way of life” has been firmly rejected by crunchy greens. At the same time, I have found it profoundly troubling that these same people, my allies, are all too ready to throw their concern for women’s wellbeing, or that of any group of peaceful citizens readily abused, under the bus when discussing crime caused by Europe’s flood of migrants.

I have clashed with people, normally friends, on Resilience.com over this issue, and felt quite betrayed by those who in other context say they promote “localism” but when it comes to protecting local cultures of Europe, that localism seems to vanish, making room for a reflex reaction in defense of a politically correct line against boundaries and for the indiscriminate acceptance of all comers.

But why, I thought to myself, am I standing up for a civilization that has let me down in so many ways? Where before, the faults of this civ loomed large but somewhat theoretical, now, in the clash of Europeans with the forces unleashed by migration out of control, I stepped into a box with a label that said, “compared with a culture that forces its women into harems, into sacks with openings for eyes, and into tolerating brutal violence against them as normal, hey, I’ll take western civ any day!”

Seductive though the clash of civilizations narrative is, I keep reminding myself of the fact that I loathe the way this culture treats women as well. I detest the hypersexualization of girls, the parading of women’s naked or near naked bodies everywhere one looks, from booze and lingerie ads to celebrities who vie for attention through concocting ever more risqué gowns. I choke on the backlash against us as some men brazenly return to jeering outspoken women who skip make-up as ugly broads, and on reports of politically correct campuses that manipulate elder feminists through threats of “no platform” simply for the “thoughtcrime” of disagreeing with trans definitions. The list goes on and on.

What a choice the ‘clash of civilizations’ story places before me: black sacks with eyes, or decadence and demeaning bullshit! Two faces of one civilization gone awry.

No, I don’t buy that Islam is evil. Religions go through their abusive, violent periods when many abusive, violent people use them as justification for their abusive, violent behavior. Islam is going through that now. Christianity went through it some centuries back; after all, it was a Christian pope who invented the holy war at a time when Christendom was launching the crusades, yet to gear up for the full-out persecution, torture and mass murder of its own brothers and sisters in Christ. Religion and power mix poorly. That’s why people came up with the separation of religion and state. Folks with first-hand knowledge warn against Islam’s violence as enshrined in its holy writ. I am sympathetic to that point of view as my younger self argued against Christianity on the same grounds. But I no longer buy the argument. Once, Christians used the Old Testament’s “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” as an excuse to torment and murder women and heretics. Today, they don’t. Once they used the Bible to justify chattel slavery. Today, they don’t. I am more persuaded that all religions have skeletons in their closets, and that the behavior of followers has to do with their everyday values and character; they will use excuses and justifications for their behavior when those values and character are lacking.

Thuggery wrapping itself in religion.

There is a real clash of civilizations going on now, unreported. And that is the clash between those who are willing and able to behave in civilized ways in the best sense of the word, and those who are not – who would rather wreak mayhem upon the world. Western and other elites, all those who profit by wars and plunder without end, who pretend to be fighting terrorism while aiding and abetting it, all those turning our world into Orwellian nightmare, they are on the other side of this clash. So are everyday people – regardless of their ideological affiliation — who harm their fellow humans in innumerable small and sometimes large ways and find endless excuses for it; those who delight in demeaning domination games, taking advantage, pulling the wool over your eyes, making other people’s private worlds hell. They are with the Dark Side. Every other human division is just a diversion from this stark reality.

The first civilizations were built by people among whom anti-social behavior was firmly limited by boundaries created by the demands of community and survival. They were peaceful, more or less egalitarian (meaning a social arrangement that evens out native differences between human beings in the interest of crafting a low-conflict polity), and the surpluses and prosperity were broadly shared. By the time this civilization came along, those ancient peoples were but a faint memory. We can use that faint memory made more vivid with the help of recent archeology as inspiration to build a real civilization again. We can choose to raise a culture that is grounded in the values of being truly civilized, values that have been showcased in their best form by a number of tribal societies: generosity, trustworthiness, empathy and kindness, open-mindedness, fairness, civility, common sense, mutual respect, recognition of fundamental worth of all humans and other living beings, courage and resilience, loyalty, deep connection, love of beauty, gratitude, humility, willingness to accept limits and responsibilities as the other side of freedom, and a commitment to a lifelong effort to cultivate these virtues in oneself and in the local society one inhabits. This is the road ahead: walking the Path of Beauty into whatever the future holds.

 

Meditation/rant on diversity

Men, said the Devil, are good to their brothers:
they don’t want to mend their own ways, but each other’s.
— Piet Hein

Remember Darwin’s finches? From the ancestral finch population, Galapagos forged seven distinct species that provided for Darwin the impetus for his evolutionary theories. Out of one, seven. Greater diversity, as each group adapted to a different geographical and ecological niche. Greater richness and resilience for the living world, and a delight for human observers. [Actually, the web says there are 10 or more of these finch species out on those islands. And they are related to tanagers.]

Galapagos finches

Now, maybe these new finch groups are not altogether species, maybe they are more like wild landraces. After all, they can and do interbreed when thrown together. But who would argue against the notion that the finch world of the Galapagos grew more diverse and interesting than formerly? Who would argue that importing finches from, say, North America would be a good thing for the finches of the Galapagos, or for the diversity of the global finch family? Wouldn’t the “diversity of the melting pot” cause them to lose their distinct adaptations?

Similarly, we tend to believe that tribal societies, say the Mbuti or the Cree, ought to have protection from the western civilization at large, so they can maintain their culture and way of life, self-determined, rather than other-determined by the logic of modernity or conquest.

Yet when it comes to the societies of Europe or the local communities of the western world, another logic seems to apply. Apparently, if you have a “white European”-derived culture not protected by the aura of exotic ethnicity somewhere far away, your culture actually needs to import diversity from parts half way across the globe! Your culture is accused of being too uniform, too homogeneous, too close-minded, and paying no heed to the need for “diversity.” But what kind of diversity is this, that argues for giving up your own culture – a culture which contributes to a more diverse human world – for some abstract ideal of mixing people from a variety of cultures and ethnicities into a mishmash where nobody feels at home?

I have been following, aghast, the invasion of Europe by people whom the PC crowd insist on calling refugees, and others call migrants. Aghast, not because Syrian refugees don’t deserve the support of their neighbors. They do. (They are a minority among the incomers.) But because the crisis has been insanely politicized to a point where anyone who disagrees with the official “welcome refugees” line is pilloried as a racist and a xenophobe, and a discussion of the issues has become near impossible.

Baffled, I turned to exploring the one society in Europe – widely known for its very inclusive and generous social safety net and rather egalitarian and progressive society – which decided in the mid-70s to implement a multiracial experiment. Feel free to pitch in, as I’ve never lived in Scandinavia and my understanding is imperfect. The Swedes, wishing to further improve their already outstanding society, and having been told in no uncertain way that to do so they must open their border and begin to take in people from a variety of far-flung countries in Africa and Asia because anything less would be churlish and mean, not to mention racist and discriminatory. As far as I can tell, they have brought on a disaster that is perhaps unique in the history of Europe.

The Swedes were told, and may have believed, that their culture was way too stale, pale, prejudiced, and in need of a drastic overhaul. At the urging of people who grew more shrill as the years passed, the multicultural vision began to be officially implemented from 1975 on. People of mixed racial parentage were celebrated, white Swedes were denigrated; those who wanted to craft a whole new society in Sweden and be done forever with the “old Sweden” prevailed. The influx of immigrants looking to partake of what Sweden had to offer grew until today it’s a flood. The result? In the city of Malmő, indigenous Swedes are now a minority. There are no-go zones all over the country, controlled by immigrant gangs. Police cars are the targets of grenades. There has been a housing shortage for quite some time, and Swedes are being told to house newly come asylum seekers in their garages. There are no jobs for most of these newcomers. Sweden is now contemplating borrowing large sums from abroad so that it can feed and house the influx, and its politicians are being slowly forced to admit that the ideology of compulsory anti-racism and anti-discrimination has turned the country into something that horrifies many of the immigrants themselves, not to even mention the feelings of the original inhabitants. Corruption is rampant; politicians live in wealthy neighborhoods with other ethnic Swedes while pontificating on racism to their less fortunate countrymen and women.

To add insult to injury, the country is under some sort of a McCarthyite spell so that the actual situation cannot be discussed openly; anyone who questions the status quo is accused of racism and bloggers, youtubers and facebook users are the only ones who dare to speak out against the monomaniacal, politically correct “party line”. And Sweden has long since stopped collecting and publishing the ethnic background of people committing the wave of crimes sweeping over the land.

Racist!

Why is it that indigenous Europeans are denied their own culture going back thousands of years? Why is it that these various distinct regional cultures for which Europe has become famous, and which have fueled its tourism, have been under attack? The Hopi or !Kung deserve to be their own, but the Finns or the Slovaks do not? Why? It seems clear to me that turning Europe into a melting pot serves those who are enemies of diversity, in the global sense, and not the other way around.

And to bring the discussion to America, why is it when whites verbally attack blacks they are racist, but when blacks likewise attack whites, that’s ok? Why is it that American communities were long ago shorn of their local self-determination? Must the only vision be a forced integration pioneered by the school-busing fanatics of years gone by? What is wrong with communities that would rather be white, or black, or Latino, or green, hanging with their own kind? If these communities did not drain resources from others, what’s wrong with it in principle? In America, the only communities where people are allowed to hang with their own kind are the rich, in their gated neighborhoods, and the artsy-craftsy tourist traps like New Hope, PA or Sugarloaf, NY, where the locals determine together to sell or rent only to fellow craftspeople. Nobody else is allowed to choose their neighbors.

I come from a nation (a group unified by history, language, culture and its own unique relationship to the land) that nearly disappeared in the conquering wave of germanization. It took a hundred and fifty years of massive effort on the part of the dreamers who wished to record and encourage the vanishing Czech culture. Even the dreamers did not believe it could be done. And yet, the dream swept the land with a reawakening that gives me shivers to this day. (Knowing that was possible, I know that a crunchy green awakening is possible too.) And now, all that – in its many European permutations — is being swept away by millions of displaced people from as far as Bangladesh, as far as western and central Africa. The Europe I knew is vanishing before my eyes, not only because of the intentional chaos caused by global elites permanently at war, but also because a fifth column of aggressive ideologues have turned their backs on the cultures of their birth in their quest for some crazy rainbow utopia. And we all know how much success radical utopians have had forging viable new sociopolitical systems.

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This is a contentious topic, and last thing I want is for bullies to pile in here, abusing other commenters. Keep in mind the fundamental rule of engagement on Leaving Babylon: argue with passion by all means, but attack the argument, not the person. Thank you, and thank you for listening to my bewilderment and grief. Let’s help one another think through these difficult issues. Oh, and check out the animation (10 minutes) below. When exactly does “multiculturalism” morph into “genocide”?