Hi Yuyutsu.

Churches may have the moral authority to make moral rules among their own congregations, the trouble begins when they claim that their version of morality is so undeniably right, that they seek to enforce their own morality on people who are not even part of their religion.

Traditionally, all societies base their concepts of what is right and what is wrong upon their traditional religious culture. But secular societies have greatly modified these concepts to be in line with rational humanitarian ideals. Every society seeks a general agreement of what is right or wrong, and this is usually easy to do in societies not divided by religion or separate cultural identities.

The direction history has always taken, is that states with organised societies with successful common values will always seek to grow in size and influence. You can criticise that, but it is as immutable as the Law of Gravity, and criticising it is about as effective as criticising the rising of tomorrows sun.

But divided societies do implode and create smaller states, thereby verifying the concept that monoculturalism is more stable than strife filled multicultural states.

Multicultural states tend to be unstable, because groups may exist within the state with opposing values. Stability and tolerance can be obtained provided that the minority tacitly accept the values of the majority, even though it may not agree with them. But where birth rate differentials and immigration erode the position of the majority, the result has always been serious social strife, riots, high crime rates, social separation into ethnic enclaves, terrorism and finally, civil war.

Why be a minority in one society, when your people can be a majority in your own state?

Then history repeats itself. The people from the unsuccessful culture who's economic progress is stunted by their failed cultural values, (including opposition to birth control) will seek to go and live within the successful communities who's cultural values ensured economic success. This is resented by the people of the successful state, who may regard the new arrivals as little more than parasites causing instability and social strife

LEGO

I don't know that its necessarily the case that multiculturalism itself necessarily implies instability although it depends on how 'multiculturalism' is defined. The White Australia policy certainly involved multiple cultures as such, although their idealogies didn't differ all that markedly from the anglo-saxon ones that formed most of the initial white-man Australia. I have regular interaction with many if not most of the races labelled as 'new australians' during the late 1950s to late 1960s & few if any of the first or subsequent generations have any interest in living elsewhere. Sure a fair number visit their ancestral homeland occasionally, but Australia is where they call home.

On the other hand, the present open doors approach has landed us with the one idealogy on the planet that cannot possibly integrate. If this is what you mean by your use of the word 'multicultural' then I agree totally with your post. Notably, the White Australia era brought us people who either espoused similar religious values as us or at least accepted the basic principles whereas the open doors approach has brought people who without exception vehemently oppose such values and principles. This can only lead to division and instability. I guess the same criticism could be levelled at asian races who follow buddhism or whatever, since there isn't any appreciable common ground with the various renditions of christianity that were part & parcel of both the anglo-saxon & White Australia eras, that said, asian religions tend to be more like templates for a peaceful / successful life than religions in the western sense. Whatever, many asians now following some 'conventional' franchise & we haven't experienced a lot of issues with asians maintaining their own peculiar religions.

Good post, Practice.

It is a cultural universal, that people prefer to live amongst their own kith and kin. People that they feel safe with, and who generally agree to their own values as to what is right and wrong. Even within monocultural societies, class layering occurs where different economic demographic groups, with differing values and intelligences (talents) occupy particular geographic areas. Birds of a feather, just keep sticking together, regardless of what the Egalitarians want.

Multiculturalism is exactly like Socialism, how many times does it need to fail before the educated, and supposedly intelligent, university educated elites figure out that it is a bad idea?

Multiculturalism is the diametric opposite of Assimilation, which presupposes that somehow everybody will influence each other and assimilate into (more or less) one culture where everybody agrees on what constitutes correct behaviour. But the wholesale importation of people from very diverse cultures is going to see exactly the same result that we have seen in Lebanon, Fiji, Cyprus, Georgia, Afghanistan, Biafra, Rhodesia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Liberia, Kashmir, Punjab, Sudan, Nigeria, Bougainville, East Timor, Yugoslavia, Kurdistan, New Zealand, Bhutan, Angola, Burma, Chechnya, Guadalcanal, Aden, Malaya, Oman, Congo, Northern Ireland, Palestine/Israel, Czechoslovakia, Mexico, and recently, Thailand. Add to this sundry race riots and acts of terrorism in Britain, the US, Europe and just about every other country on Earth.

Interestingly, whites and Asians can get along with each other very well, as both have similar cultures and intelligence levels. Even though the Asians are far more racist than white people. The Asians only oppose racism when they want to live with the whites. And they are laughing their heads off at the white people's new idea of social self suicide. Asians have no intention of mutikulting their own countries to death.

About the only white people who would be allowed to immigrate to Japan would be white, blue eyed females. The Japanese consider them to be exotic sex partners.

A bit too much reductio ad absurdum, LEGO.

The proposition is not that society should be free of rules, but that the primary role of government should be administration rather than reformation and that the purpose of a society is to enable individuals to determine and achieve their own ends rather than to compel compliance with laws that constrain such freedom based on no more than the fashionable moral cause du jour of a class that has colonised the political/media/bureaucratic/academic structures.

That class has arisen out of a great social idea that was entirely congruent with enabling individual opportunity: that a broad tertiary education should be cheaply available to any who wish to take up the opportunity. What that has meant in practise is a vast influx to liberal arts faculties, since technical fields have prerequisite knowledge requirements which limit participation. That in turn has meant a vast increase in teaching staff at the bottom of the academic hierarchy whose role is to produce graduates with a minimum of fuss.

Such an education encourages intellectual conformism and rationalism rather than empiricism and rationality. It equips graduates with a common set of values and largely unexamined assumptions derived from guided analysis of canonical texts. Implicit in that is that they have a special understanding of what constitutes the best way to interact individually and collectively which can be codified as legislation and that this will lead to a better (more conformist) society through compelling compliance.

Conformism leads to oppression if it is not optional.

Dear LEGO,

Well I made it quite clear that I do not approve of churches enforcing their morality on non-members. Fortunately this is nearly extinct nowadays and those few places and cultures where this is still practised are not the topic I refer to. Please excuse me if I'm not particularly interested in that side of the discussion.

However, as this article points out, secular and 'humanitarian ideals' (which aren't at all rational as you claim) have taken the place of such churches.

<<You can criticise that, but it is as immutable as the Law of Gravity, and criticising it is about as effective as criticising the rising of tomorrows sun.>>

Current times are indeed hard, population levels being many orders of magnitude higher to allow true individual freedoms, but history is not a straight line, only in the short term. In the longer term it is circular. Everything assembled and organised will eventually fall apart, usually by catastrophe - unless we become wise enough to unwind the knots gradually and gracefully.

<<But divided societies do implode and create smaller states>>

I pray so, but so far my prayers are not answered, so far I see the opposite occurring. This continent in particular is hogged by a single centralised and non-voluntary entity, becoming more centralised by the day.

<<Why be a minority in one society, when your people can be a majority in your own state?>>

Indeed! but am I given a choice?

Say my tribe of 100 or 1000 people owns a piece of land in the country and wants to live and be left alone there, having nothing to do with Australian society at large.

The answer is currently 'no'. The government is too greedy for power and control. It wants to force everyone to be indoctrinated in its school-system in order to become part of its economic 'work-force'. It cares not for the values of others.

LEGO - Multiculturalism is exactly like Socialism, how many times does it need to fail before the educated, and supposedly intelligent, university educated elites figure out that it is a bad idea?

Ahh, the educated idiot factor, I know it well :) :) :) I

Antiseptic - What that has meant in practise is a vast influx to liberal arts faculties, since technical fields have prerequisite knowledge requirements which limit participation

Having achieved academic qualifications in both technical and humanitarian areas, I can certainly recognize the difference between the mentalities churned out by each of the two. One only has to consider some of the utterly ludicrous degrees its possible to get these days to see why we are over-run with educated idiots.