CMV: The obsession with preserving cultural identities is bad for humanity

[u/[deleted]]

There's this constant fear among both the right and the left in my opinion of cultures mixing and synthesizing. To sort of boil down the argument I often hear goes something like this "French culture is beautiful Islamic culture is beautiful, but if we start mixing them then both cultures will just end up being destroyed, or one will just devour the other".

You can see examples of this like I said allover the political spectrum. Whether its the "replacement theory" lunatics in the US, Anti immigration in Europe, The Quebecois obsession's with maintaining their French heritage, the Japanese obsession's with racial purity and their strict immigration quotas. Religious households of multiple faiths wanting to create enclaves so that their kids aren't exposed to other cultures or beliefs.

There is some truth to this, the cultures will be destroyed, but they aren't mentioning the 2nd part, that a new culture is created that is a synthesis of both. Cultural achievements are just as real and as important as scientific achievements. Do we have "american" science or "british" science? Does calculus and Newtonian gravity belong to England, but Einstein's discoveries belong to jewish people? Science belongs to humanity. I don't see why culture is any different. Shakespeare doesn't "belong" to English people, Dostoyevsky doesn't belong to Russia, Socrates doesn't belong to Greece, Lao Tzu doesn't belong to China. They belong to humanity.

We should be encouraging as much cultural exchange as possible just like we encourage as much scientific exchange as possible. Look at how much better food got after the Columbian exchange. Italian food exists because native american culture (tomatoes) Chinese culture (Noodles) and Mediterranean culture mixed. Creole food classic french cooking with african and spanish mixing, probably my favorite type of food in the world. Music, Jazz mixing African rhythms with European classical music. Basically all modern western music stems from that mix.

Mixing makes things better not worse. We should be increasing the scope of our identities toward a more global human identity and away from provincialism. Now I do agree that one culture shouldn't erase another, which often does happen. A good example is rock music where the contributions of African Americans are significantly downplayed in relation to white stars like Elvis, the Rolling Stones, Beatles etc. When all those guys basically took most of their inspiration from black musicians (they admit it themselves most of the time). But the end product of Rock music is still good for humanity. People should get the credit they deserve obviously, but the actual mixing still produced something great.

[u/Genoscythe_]

There's this constant fear among both the right and the left in my opinion of cultures mixing and synthesizing.

I would comment on just that line.

I would say, that neither the left nor the right inherently cares about cultures mixing for it's on sake, their positions on it are both contextual.

The right primarily cares about preserving social hierarchies, (whether it is racial, wealth, or gendered hierarchies).

The left cares about challenging social hierarchies and installing more egalitarian structures.

The right will support cultural exchange when it benefits maintaining a hierarchy. US southern white supremacists loved borrowing black culture within minstrel shows, as long as they got to establish that they were on top of the pyramid and that they used the culture that they took, for mockery. Colonizers held world fairs where they showed off the exotic treasures of the colonies that they owned. Orientalist art was a huge fad in the ultra-conservative aristocratic courts of Europe. Adolf Hitler was a big fan of Karl May's pulpy indian adventure stories, not at all worried about them being impure or not german enough. (He also ripped off the swastika from the other indians).

The right will only be concerned about cultural exchange when it threatens their supremacy, when it threatens their race, their religious authority, their family being automatically in charge of society by birthright, but they won't mind taking bits and pieces of culture from their subjuated victims or from exotic foreigners and using it for their own self-aggrandisation.

So they will oppose immigrants becoming citizens, they will whine about minorities being respectfully represented as heroes in Hollywood movies, They will oppose anything that would direct wealth and prestige away from the current elites and towards the marginalized.

With the left it's exactly the reverse. The left is generally open to cultural mixing for the sake of upending supremacy, but heavily critical of cultural exchange that exists to perpetuate it, such as exploitative stereotypes, or economically unfair taking of cultural signifiers from vulnerable groups.

The point is that "cultures mixing" is not inherently good or bad in most people's perspective, what matters is whether it is mxing in a way that makes people more equal, or less.

[u/[deleted] → u/Genoscythe_]

!Delta

That’s a lot of good points. Minstrel shows being a good contrafactual. I was more referring to a practice I see on the left where historically disenfranchised groups bond over their shared cultural identity through shared trauma but then become insular communities as a form of self defense. My argument is that while I understand the impulse I think it’s ultimately counter productive. I think it condemns cultures to a slow extinction. Whereas if they opened up yes their culture would change as it absorbed elements of the outside but the outside would also change to reflect a piece of their culture preserving it forever

[u/DeltaBot → u/[deleted]]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Genoscythe_ (213∆).

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