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Right, so the couple of posts I made here earlier ended up being the single worst mistakes I have ever made. Not only am I utterly shocked that I managed to make such shortsighted claims, but I also completely wrecked my mental health in the process. Absolutely everything I wrote was wrong on all fronts. I only wish I had had the foresight to think of my own best and drop out of the forum on time.
The intention of this post is to serve as self-reflection and to completely clear any and all points I made, because I truly need to move on from this. That is, this is NOT an invite to open debate - simply a tool for me to overcome the trauma I caused myself and empty my head of all the remaining thoughts I have about this. I would've rather avoided all of this, but there's no point crying over spilled milk, so I'll just try to repair as much damage as I can.
For starters, never once was I opposed to a multiethnic country of any form. I am an international student for Christ’s sake. The idea was quite simple - lacking the sort of history of ethnic strife present in many other countries like the US or India or so many other countries has been very beneficial in building an equal society relatively free of structural problems associated with ethnicity. I have absolutely zero problem with people of different races living in this country – to an extent. Eventually, segregation and other negative side effects become practically inevitable. To prevent this, a responsible immigration policy is a must. I find focusing on merit is useful to this end – on closer inspection, the US might not be a good example. Canada, however, has proven itself to be quite successful on this front. A compromise solution that benefits both the immigrant and the receiving country in equal measures is generally desirable.
Equality in general is obviously a good thing to approach, but one must not try to hamper their country on a mad drive to remove all inequalities. See: communism. The Nordic welfare state model, I find, is adequate towards that end, and works perfectly fine with capitalism. Again, ethnicity does play a role in this - the less factors for creating inequality that are present in any given country, the better.
Personally, I am a man who prefers pragmatism on all fronts. What works best should be chosen over ideologies such as ‘diversity’ – Dire proposed parts of cities being disproportionately inhabited by Asians as a positive – I find it to be nothing but a result of failed integration. Few people would write say, Chinatowns off as being something negative, but personally, I would rather avoid people living separately based on race.
Now, as for multiculturalism. There are examples of multicultural countries, namely perhaps Canada, but Europe by large never will or should become multicultural. One can find examples of country leaders such as Merkel and Sarkozy already writing multiculturalism off as dead. Now, for some people multiculturalism means different things, so there’s plenty of room for interpretation here, but if one follows the trend, it becomes quite evident that resistance towards multiculturalism in Europe will continue to increase as time goes on. I know the mindset I was operating from at the time was that I saw it as a threat that undermines the native culture. And yes, 'one culture' is a moronic thing to say. I believe what I had in mind at the time was that it's generally better for a country to have a sort of a 'red line' as far as culture goes. This does not mean minority cultures should be mistreated in any way. Positive cultural exchange and inernationalization are generally desirable things.
Next up, islam. Earlier I claimed that the only way Islamic and western cultures can coexist if they are kept separate. This is untrue, and there have been Muslim minorities in Europe for a long time. However, one does not need to have anything against Muslims to see that the direction we’re heading is quite dangerous. It is indeed likely that eventually, tensions will rise to the point where things in some countries start going really ugly. Great Handsome Oppressor said he would accept problems arising, but I am, again, pragmatic on all fronts and would rather avoid any and all unnecessary clashes.
Islam on its own might not be a problem, but fundamentalism and jihadism certainly are, in addition to oppressive governments establishing theocratic regimes that undermine their own people. Muslims, like all people, should be treated with respect and no hasty guesses about their beliefs be made - we are indeed talking about 1.6 billion people here. However, it is misuse of the word 'racism' to describe prejudice against muslims - last I checked, religious identity had little to do with skin color and you most certainly cannot convert to or from a race. I find accusations that I don’t judge other cultures by the same standards to be quite odd – I hold representatives of all cultures to the same standards. I won’t stand for things such as homophobia or misogyny regardless of cultural or religious background.
As for the refugee crisis, closing the borders is a ridiculously extreme solution. I have made donations dedicated to helping refugees as well, but it is quite clear that at the current rate, the flow cannot continue. Some people are again willing to reduce their own living standards and accept the problems that arise in order to help refugees, but where will we be in 5 years? 50? Europe can only host so much, and birth numbers in these countries ensure that the flow will never stop.
Now, as for xenophobia. I would personally argue that there are worse things in this world and there are successful countries that are quite notoriously xenophobic, such as Japan. I can't possibly fault them for wanting to stick to what works, even if that means they're less trusting of gaijins.
Racism is obviously to be condemned on all fronts. It is indeed true that in some countries, white people do have privilege, but I find my country lacks such structures. Some people seem to believe that racism only goes one way, which I find is a very unrealistic way of looking at things. Finns can be racist towards Somalians – Somalians can be racist towards Finns. If there are minorities that cause disproportionate amounts of problems, I would personally focus on a cooperative approach to raise them up, rather than an oppressive majority vs oppressed minority dichotomy, because interactions between groups are much more complicated than that.
As for people finding ways to hate each other, the idea was quite simply that I find there are more examples of failed coexistence than there are of successful ones. Again, I'm sure we'll be able to move beyond that.
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Last edited by Mete on Sat Oct 31, 2015 7:38 am, edited 39 times in total.
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