[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NPC47qMJVg[/youtube]
Very interesting stuff
Yeah interesting, though i think the idea of a multicultural society is bonkers. One can only speak of a society if there are people who live togheter in some way (or are connected) and share certain cultural elements. If there are multiple cultures then there is no one so-ciety, but cultures living next to eachother. If cultures come togehter in one society, either one culture will dominate, or you get one new culture that is a mix of the cultures… but never a multicultural society. It’s a misnomer, created by leftist politicians to candy up what is really happening.
What you will get in a type 1 civilazation is, i suspect, some kind of monoculture that incorporates a lot of different cultural elements in a Western-American way. Pizza Hut isn’t Italian, Taco Bell isn’t Mexian and Thai express isn’t Thai…
In that sense the battle of multiculturalists vs the monoculturalists Mr. Kaku is talking about, is a really just another culture vs culture battle.
I agree. Multi-culturalism really isn’t working and won’t work until and unless ‘culture’ rids itself of its religious roots. In the meantime, interplanetary space travel is becoming harder and harder to achieve because the planets are getting farther and farther apart.
This is an interesting subject to examine, but I wouldn’t start with the OP’s film clip. For one thing, NAFTA preceded the EU by about five years, so it wasn’t in response to the EU.
Are we, however, starting to see more cooperation between former ‘enemies’ and less competition–have we seen a reduction in fear? Is this explained by the trade agreements or by other mutual needs, such as mutual scientific advancement?
I would say there is heightened fear. Alliances come with smaller states aligning themselves with larger states for protection. A large state losing power and influence (U.S.) invites the small state alliances to sustain it’s dominance. The political public rhetoric speaks to cooperation and the vague notion that “we’re all in this together” but even a cursory look at what cooperation means in world politics makes this a lie. The EU is a good example. For all their cooperation in the good times, look at them now. They can barely get agreement on the time of day. The big dogs can’t decide what to do with their poor southern cousins, and the political directives come from Zurich and The Isle of Mann…
But this just scratches the surface. As you noted, religion mucks up any chance of cooperation with it’s exclusionary practices. There are any number of hidden agendas that keep cooperation a public ideal while submarining the very idea.
Like the world you mean?
So there are no people who live on borders are intermarried or want a republic in a monarchist culture etc.
There is only multiculture, there have never been cultures which do not mix and share ideas trade etc. all cultures are mixes especially of ideas like e.g. agriculture originally from eastern turkey.
Your post suggests that there is something which is definitively culture, you have to make an effort to make culture happen or stop it from doing so, surely its better to just not do that and let stuff happen?
My daughter and her friends want to live in different areas of the world over a period of time, chances are some will end up living somewhere else or starting a business that will work between cultures in some manner. I think that’s a good thing ~ that we are all earth culture, children of the world and one in which we have an increasing amount of freedom to do just that.
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It depends on how your going to define culture ofcourse. I define it as the total package: government, laws, institutions, language, customs, arts…
My claim is that there are never multiple cultures in one society. You can only have either a democratic justice system, or sharia law… not both in the same society. There may be individuals who have a different cultural origin, and retain some of their practices, but that doesn’t constitute a culture.
If you move abroad for example, you cannot simply keep relying on your original culture, you will have to learn the language, customs, laws,… or you will have a serious disadvantage.
What like the EU or a particular state therein? Our laws and institutions are largely the same with European/American culture. In fact America is a multiculture.
Or like punk and hippy perhaps, or celts and Germanics, Spartans and Athenians.
It constitutes a ‘subculture’. The ancient Greeks had many cultures in one identity, Macedonians, Spartans, Athenians, Trojans [earlier] etc. we Brits have e.g. cockney which is a subculture, it derives from the influx of Irish a while back.
Indeed, we change as we move around and other subcultures are exactly that.
Really there is no such thing as culture, there are simply changes of many kinds which occur around the world then interact, then rinse and repeat throughout history.
Yeah well, i simply do not call that cultures, it’s a matter of definition like i said. Goths for example are not a culture to me, they are a subculture in music and youthscene… but not a propper culture.
Middle eastern, Western and eastern culture, are cultures. They have the whole lot, affecting all aspects of live, and a propper tradition going back centuries.
Taco Bell, pizza hut, and the like are not an example of multiple cultures in one society, they are foreign elements incorporated into a distinctive western culture.
Correct me if i’m wrong, but you seem to be employing the word culture as a synomym for the arts as a whole, as it is often used.
I’m using it closer to it’s etymological root. That is culture, as in agriculture… growing, cultivating. Education is in that sense propably what defines a culture most.
It’s not that random like you make it out to be here. Eductation systems are implemented by goverments. Traditions are being criticised by writer, journalists, intellectuals, scientists… there’s a lot of deliberate debate about this kind of stuff.
Well Spartans and Athenians were cultures, no? …and Goths [were an ancient danish tribe btw lol] if they moved to an island would be every bit a culture as any other ~ but they don’t really need an island to achieve that.
Spartans and Anthenians probably where distinct cultures yes, though i don’t know enough about it to be honest.
But read my last post, maybe it will be clearer then where we differ.
And good catch with the Goths 
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i hate to say it, but i don’t see a type 1 civilization occurring before the relatively simultaneous death of billions
i also think a multicultural society is bonkers… it seems opposed to the ideas of assimilation/acculturation, which i think are real
as we progress we are focusing on the things that unite us. differences between us are preserved when they are shown to be more useful or more powerful
people are stubborn - they will fight for what they know, or what they think they know… at least before they are compelled to accept another’s view… it’s me every day… you’ve gotta have a very strong argument to convince me of the ‘correct’ way to do things…
Well yes I am seeing it as the set of things by which we consider our cultures, but yes I see the point that aside from those things there is something there anyway [growing cultivating]. I have noticed how second generation children of immigrants are far more part of that latter kind of culture, even if they don’t share the list of things we consider ourselves to be about.
However all that means to me is that you can move to any culture and blend in, while at the same time keeping aspects of your former culture. For example a Hindu from India could move here and become British whilst celebrating their own festivals, religion and philosophies even if they rejected our queen e.g.
that’s exactly what multiculture is! It doesn’t attempt to supplant cultures nor does it deny them, its simply letting it all happen.
Mrs Merkel said a while back that multiculture had failed in Germany and later David Cameron said something similar too [and has recently endorsed Christianity as Britain’s religion]. All that meant to me is that Germans wont mix ~ notably with Turks, which is not a failure of multiculture but a failure of people to give each other the freedoms they want for themselves.
The only area I can see it all going wrong is when a native culture is supplanted by another or by a multitude of others, and I suppose 1/5th of Germans being Turks is getting somewhere near to that, although that figure is a tad contrived as it includes all the mixed marriages, and both short and long term residence etc.
To me its simply this, western Europe and america are rich, people will go where the wealth is.
Yes, and in time the original culture of the immigrants vanishes, or what’s left over is only a relict. If it’s not lived, it’s not really culture IMO. You are free to use a different definition and disagree ofcourse.
Yes that’s the ideal, but it doesn’t work in practice. I live in Belgium, a neighbour to Germany, and we have the exact same problem. The thing is, it can’t work.
First of all moslims are forced to give up at least some of their culture simply because they want to live here. Things like sharia law, rule of God over state, Immans having a prominent position of in society, moslim schools, a lot of their institutions basicly… this may not seem much to you, but it does change the whole dynamics of their culture. God is only really important if his word can also be enforced.
Then second, they are only free in theory to keep a lot of the other aspects of their culture. If they do no learn the customs, the language,… they will become marginalised socially and economically really fast. This is precisly what has happen with a lot of the first generation of immigrants here that did not addapt as much. Ultimately food and money are more important then anything else… so the native language and customs become the more important in time.
Yeah, it’s not that simple as i tried to explain above. If only people would give eachother the freedom… but they never seem to do in practice. Maybe it’s not the people who are at fault then, but the politician who thought they could make multiculture work.
No I think some of those cultures ways become part of the native culture, that’s why its constantly changing [see history of any culture for evidence]. Much of what we eat, smoke, and drink derives from foreign cultures as do some of the things we think about e.g. karma becomes ‘what goes around comes around’. we learned the wheelbarrow from china, printing from Germany [ I think] and have exported many inventions from Britain to the rest of the world.
Aren’t Belgians a blend of French and Dutch? Oh wait I remember there was actually a celtic tribe called the Belgae; [interesting culture and word origins there]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgae
It seems that both modern and ancient Belgians were a blend of cultures and ‘races’ most notably Celtic and Germanic.
It is important to me and that’s why there should be a courtesy toward the native culture; because we all have things that matter to us!
A failure to adapt shows a lacking in the said common courtesy, I agree. However, if the native culture wont bring them into the fold then that’s a failure on their part. From what I can tell Germans for example don’t like mixing, perhaps because their geography has given them constantly changing borders and influences. …Turks are probably the same.
Give it time and people will intermarry and outsiders will eventually learn the native tongue and culture, …their children will want to be successful and will be more like the native culture in the cultivated sense we spoke of earlier.
Yes but it will work, business and culture is already very internatonal, not to mention that communication is a fundamental aspect of culture. I watched the german rock band rammstien sing a song saying; ‘we are all living in america’, I remember we used to say that when I was a teenager.
Just think of the medium you are using right now! Culture itself is becoming international.
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The dutch and french speaking parts did not blend. They are very much seperate till this day. We have our own territories, language, media, political parties… you could compare it to Canada with the English speaking Canadians and the Quebecois who also have their own governemental structures. Belgium is only a federal superstructure for some of the governemental affairs. Flanders and Wallonie have their own subgovernements.
These two seperate ‘cultures’ in one state allways cause a lot of political problems. After the last federal elections, it took one and a half years to form a Belgian federal goverment. A world record! If it wasn’t for Bilingual Brussels in the middle, which is also the European Capital and the most important city of the country, Flanders and Wallonie would have split a long time ago.
They will probaly adapt to the native culture given enough time. However a lot of damage is done in the meanwhile, they won’t recover the economic gap that has grown that easily. The danger is that they will form an underclass in ghettos, and come to resent the richer natives… with more alienation and crime as a result.
From what i’ve gathered the Turks are indeed a proud people who love their country and culture, and not that prone to give it up or intermix. But generally the Turks are not that much of a problem, because they also have a secular tradition and Turkey is relatively well develloped. There are more problems with Moroccans, and people coming from other nations where Islam is still more in charge. The cultural gap with these people is bigger than with the Turks.
I don’t disagree… but i wouldn’t coin it a multiculture exactly, but more of a new encompassing international monoculture. Cosmopolitan is the word!
And about the Belgae… there’s not real cultural connection anyore with the people living Belgium currently as far as i can tell. My guess is they used that tribes name to give the new state that was formed in 1830 a name, because the Belgae used to inhabit about the same territory.
Well I visited Ostend once and from what I can remember down Langestraat they all speak the same language 
[is a red light district]. Yea I found Brussels to be something of a mix.
It’s a country built on cultural borders [Gaul, Germania] so I suppose its bound to be trying to split apart all the time. This is what I call ‘tribalism’, it’s the same as germans and turks or when you get racial groups in a given town etc. this is the failure of people to blend change and mix, or some other form of hostility either from or towards the native culture. Humans aren’t perfect so the blending of them wont be either! If none of us clung onto our cultural values there wouldn’t be a problem would there! Its largely arrogance of one form or another, although I think the more intolerant nations are worse than the more intolerant, and so I wouldn’t want that intolerance in my country ~ which probably seems like a contradiction.
What would you prefer; A world where you cannot travel/move to all or some parts of it?
Sure but that doesn’t occur in the more tolerant nations like Britain [and we are not all that tolerant], so your argument is backing up those of multiculture - if I may.
Splitting hairs really, ‘international monoculture’ seems a tad self-contradictory or universalist.
Cosmopolitan;
▸ noun: a sophisticated person who has travelled in many countries
▸ adjective: of worldwide scope or applicability (“An issue of cosmopolitan import”)
▸ adjective: composed of people from or at home in many parts of the world; especially not provincial in attitudes or interests
onelook.com/?w=Cosmopolitan&ls=a
It may well be worth looking up genetic research on your ancestors, you may be quite surprised. We in britian didn’t know we were between 60% and 80% Iberian celt [like Portuguese], where the ancient Britons were the same. 
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But yeah, Ostend is mono Dutch speaking… or maybe some german during holidays . The dutch and french languages have their own strict terretories, except from brussel and a few other towns. We have a language border here, no kidding.
Yeah but what you are describing seems to be going in the direction of an absence of values. I think it’s normal for people to want to defend their values. Tolerence is maybe a value too, but taken to far and you erode all other values.
Difficult question. If all parts have to become more alike to be able to travel or move to them, then it seems travelling or moving becomes obsolete.
But all of this has not been a matter of what i want, i would like to think anyway… but a matter of description.
Britain is multicultural? Not in my sense of culture i’d think.
Anyway, i don’t think Belgians are that intolerant. They don’t have that strong of a sense of cultural identity to begin with. It’s more ‘European’ than most. Our history is one of being conquered by a host of different nations. Romans, France, Bourgundy, Spanjards, Austrians, the Dutch, Germany… all have been here at one time.
It’s more a matter of different cultures not being able to live together as easily as is sometimes assumed by the left. Take the simple matter of education systems, which has farreaching consequences for the further existence of a culture. Mostly governement implement only one general educationplan. What are we to do? Teach intelligent design in one, evolutiontheory in another and the Quran in yet another? Teach all of it and say it’s all good?
Continuing splitting hairs, such a monoculture is possible, i think, if we are linked via the internet. This is what the original video was about, a type 1 civilization.
And to stress it again, it’s not necessary what i want… it’s the direction i think it seems to go.
I really don’t think multiculturalism, as is usually interpreted, is realistic except, perhaps–sometimes–over generations. Even then, it doesn’t always work. Look at the Basque Country in France and Spain, the Latinos in the US, the Muslims in France–along with the other peoples mentioned in this thread. Some assimilate and some don’t. With assimilation comes blending, but with blending comes loss of some culture on both sides. (The US has taken on many of the cultural celebrations of its immigrants, btw.) The first to go seems to be language, the second is costume. For example, we live in an area that’s home to many immigrants. The Muslim women who work as clerks in department stores have to speak American–but they still wear the hijab, with tennis shoes. The Chinese wear American clothing (probably made in China and speak American. The Latinos, on the other hand, don’t speak English although barrios have been around for decades.
The acceptance of a sub-society within the larger society depends on both societies. If the Muslims in France, for example, want to maintain ghettos and be allowed to practice Sharia within those ghettos, they’re not willing to be assimilated, even partially, into the country to which they’ve immigrated. Is that particularly ‘right?’ If the host country has a rule of law that isn’t Sharia, which should predominate?
Multiculturalism has to work both ways. If you’re a Muslim living in the US, and you behead your wife because Sharia says you can, you’d better expect to be tried for murder. Spousal ‘rights,’ as defined by the Qu’ran, have no place in US rule of law. If you’re Latino, you have a choice in the US between living in a ghetto or living in a mixed neighborhood–all you have to do is speak American.
No matter what, citizenship in the US involves an oath in which loyalty to the birth country is denied and replaced by loyalty to the US.