Emma wrote on Dec 9^th, 2013 at 7:39pm:



SO you can't tell an American from an Australian? A Brit? Kiwi?

Or a Pakistani from an Italian?

Really?

The various national literatures do not give voice to various national characteristics?

|dev|null wrote on Dec 9^th, 2013 at 3:04pm:


And those values made modern Australia. Not the Aboriginal values that prevailed here for tens of thousands of years.

SO obviously there are drastically different values - one set can create a modern society from scratch, the other cannot tell the difference between 1000 and 10,000 years ago.

Similarly, Thais, for example, have never been colonised and they have created a society quite different from Australia.

If you look at societies derived from Western European on the one hand,  and those derived from Arab Muslim culture on the other, you can see that even neighbouring cultures give rise to starkly different societies.

It is so obvious. There would be no tourism industry if all cultures were roughly the same.

We are talking precisely about cultural values. Culture - local, national, passed on from generation to generation - is what identifies a place created by people (ie a country).
Culture is what each generation preserves in its inheritance and in turn cultivates in the next generation.
A cultivated person is called cultured. Of course there are universal human values but these are more of the body than of the mind.

Perhaps the importance of culture to a country is better perceived when you look at another country.
Take France. Everyone has a pretty good idea about what makes for Frenchness.

French Philosopher Finkielkraut: 'There Is a Clash of Civilizations'
French society is under threat, argues philosopher Alain Finkielkraut in a controversial new book. The conservative spoke to SPIEGEL about what he sees as the failure of multiculturalism and the need for better integration of Muslim immigrants.

Alain Finkielkraut is one of France's most controversial essayists. His new book, "L'Identité Malheureuse" ("The Unhappy Identity," Éditions Stock ), has been the subject of heated debate. It comes at a time when France finds itself in the midst of an identity crisis. But rather than framing things from a social or political perspective, Finkielkraut explores what he sees as a hostile confrontation between indigenous French people and immigrants. He was interviewed in his Parisian apartment on the Left Bank.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Finkielkraut, are you unhappy with today's France?

Finkielkraut: I am pained to see that the French mode of European civilization is threatened. France is in the process of transforming into a post-national and multicultural society. It seems to me that this enormous transformation does not bring anything good.
SPIEGEL: Why is that? Post-national and multicultural sounds rather promising.

Finkielkraut: It is presented to us as the model for the future. But multiculturalism does not mean that cultures blend. Mistrust prevails, communitarianism is rampant -- parallel societies are forming that continuously distance themselves from each other.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-french-philosopher-finkielkr...

"But multiculturalism does not mean that cultures blend. Mistrust prevails, communitarianism is rampant -- parallel societies are forming that continuously distance themselves from each other."  a quote from Soren.

Ahhhhhh .
Have you ever considered that this may be due the ignorance of the parties concerned.. Not ONE group,, ALL groups.. seem suspended in a place where no values seem to apply... 
We make that place ...   

Survival..!!  the ONLY EXCEPTION..

sorry I'm a bit dense tonight..   

that's s'posed to mean something..??

Soren wrote on Dec 9^th, 2013 at 8:49pm:

Their author is a white supremacist.   Don't you know anything about "White Rabbit"?   

Grendel wrote on Dec 9^th, 2013 at 10:59pm:



Multiculturalism is also a social policy.  Your effort to redefine it is typical of your tactics.   

|dev|null wrote on Dec 10^th, 2013 at 12:57pm:



No.

Just this once I am a Foucauldian - what matters is what is said, not who says it.