AT LAST... EUREKA.. I'VE FOUND IT.... "THE TRUTH"

I was stunned by the encapsulation of such intense truth supplied by one of our other contributors, from Francis Fukuyama, that I feel special attention to this is well deserved.

What are the hot topics which always rate 100s of comments ?

Yep..
1/ MultiCulturalism.
2/ Religion.

I want to focus on just one, 'MC' and this is the quote from Fukayama

[' Modern Liberal societies have weak collective identities. Postmodern elites, especially in Europe, feel that they have evolved beyond identities defined by religion and nation. But if our societies cannot assert positive liberal values, they may be challenged by migrants who are more sure of who they are']

This has said, in a couple of sentences, ALL that I've been trying to say in bits and pieces with each of my anti MC posts.

1/ WEAK COLLECTIVE IDENTITY.. exactly !
2/ POST MODERN ELITES........ exactly !
3/ MIGRANTS more sure of who they are culturally and religiously. Hooray ! spot on.

It should not even have to be argued, that a weak collective identity is vulnerable to those with a stronger sense of identity making devastating inroads into that weakened socio/cultural condition.

This is the fundamental flaw in MC in Western societies. Already weakened by post modern relativisim, now they are further eroded and even in the process of being usurped by confident alien cultures.

This is also the root of my own cry for 'pro-active' enculturation in Australia, to recapture that sense of collective identity. Without it, we are doomed. A footy team without a sense of collective team identity will play like browns cows ...and lose.. disasterously.

I itched...fukayama scratched, now I feel better.

BOAZ.

..... never mind that religion is a figment of the collective imagination, so long as the crowd all believes in the same thing! (ref. Gulliver's Travels; BigEndians & LittleEndians).

Some people just haven't got it in them to believe that they simply can't BE without some "divine" force.

Oh well..... we'll all see the truth (whatever that is) when we die.

BD, your capacity for absorbing big ideas and bringing them to bear is wonderful. The way you choose to use those ideas is another thing altogether.

Take a squizz at Fukuyama's latest offering and you'll find that he's squirming out of his earlier convictions.

He still believes, like you do, that the West is falling apart because it has no coherent, strong cultural beliefs, but he blames the current crop of neo-cons for misrepresenting neo-conservatism.

He blames a bunch of French postmodernist thinkers for relativism, without considering the strong American tradition of possessive individualism which, at the same time, he praises for creating so much wealth.

He also reckons that the failure of American foreign policy (read Iraq) stems from a failure to consider the cultural peculiarities of the popultions involved (failure to consider cultural relativism).

He attempts to get himself out of this pickle by suggesting that neo-conservatism should start calling itself by another name.

Think about your posts on Christian socialism and collectivism, then think about the individualism you see all around you in Australian society and you needn't go anywhere near postmodern moral relativism if you're looking for someone to blame.

Our own individual greed is probably the strongest defence we have against your perceived enemy, and that's something we share with the cultural enclaves in our society. Not even your worst Muslim fundamentalist wants to be poor.

Good points chainy
I'm not so much looking for someone to blame, we are all to blame for this state of affairs don't you think ?

Our individualism still needs to be brought into the 'teamwork' framework, difficult though it is to feel part of a 'national' team regarding our countries destiny, because with the wrong people at the helm, we could go so far off course it aint funny.

Irrespective of anything Fukuyama says now.. regarding NeoCons.. I think his primary statement is actually GOLD... it is one of those incredibly 'true' statements that I can only compare it to a chunk of 2x4 over the back of the head.. it is hard hitting.

Neo Cons have little to do with our need for collective identity.
If anything, they are probably partly a barrier, as they represent only a segment of society.
From what I gather they are more interested in the 'PNAC' and American Empire. I'm thinking more of the simple need to foster and nourish a good sense of identity without including any territorial ambitions.

Collective Identity should be nation specific not as sweeping a thing as 'The West'.

If we look at most European countries, say Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania etc.. most of these have something like 90%+ of one ethnicity, a carry over from the tribes they originated from.

Please don't read too much of my anti Islam rants into this particular topic, as I said.. Islamic influence is just one of a large number of forces at work, its not by any means the major one.

Regarding 'blame' I would tend to blame the Post modern intellectual elites for OPPOSING such a direction of collective identity but not for causing it.
Our current experience is the result of the flow of history in every sphere, the arts, education, science, even faith (or its lack) etc etc..

Boaz, did you actually read the Fukuyama piece, or just latch onto one sentence that appealed to you?

Given your selectivity in other areas, this would not surprise me.

Your man quotes extensively - and approvingly - from Olivier Roy's "Globalised Islam" - here is one that I think you might like:

"According to Roy, the root of radical Islamism is not cultural — that is, it is not a by-product of something inherent in Islam or the culture that this religion has produced. Rather, he argues, radical Islamism has emerged because Islam has become 'deterritorialised'"

Tell me, do you agree with this summary? If you do, perhaps you could agree to stop your constant "Islam is an evil religion" rant, as it clearly has no relevance to their radicals' behaviour.

If you don't, perhaps you can explain to us why you selected just the one idea from Fukuyama's piece to get behind?

Fukuyama himself points out:

"First-generation immigrants have usually not made a psychological break with the culture of their land of birth and carry traditional practices with them to their new homes. Their children, by contrast, are often contemptuous of their parents' religiosity, and yet have not become integrated into the culture of the new society. Stuck between two cultures with which they cannot identify, they find a strong appeal in the universalist ideology of contemporary jihadism."

He must also watch your antics on this forum – here's what he has to say:

“Since 11th September, a small industry has sprung up trying to show how violence and even suicide bombing have deep Koranic or historical roots. It is important to remember, however, that at many periods in history Muslim societies have been more tolerant than their Christian counterparts.”

Boaz, if you are going to get all triumphalist and carried away with the notion that aha, here is someone who agrees with me, it is probably wise to do a little more than just pick on one single line that appears to support your ideas.

But I guess selective quotes are pretty much your trade mark, aren't they?

Pericles is right about the quote-the context is important. Also the deterritorialisation bit. BD you know enough about history to give that some sympathetic thought.

Neocons have everything to do with our need for collective identity, since that's the model Oz works to now. In that model we have only a glorious past of morally fabulous achievements which binds us all. Rainier could probably tell you what's wrong with that picture.

How do you plan to be/stay nation-specific when you yourself spend so much time in globalised cyberspace? You are a global citizen. Have a squizz at cosmopolitanism from Kant on that. Cultural isolation is impossible for Western nations-think The Simpsons for somewhere to start.

"Postmodern intellectual elites" (don't get me started) don't oppose collective identity, they just reckon there isn't one, which is pretty much your complaint too. If I'm any judge you'd probably find Roland Barthes appealing.

I have to agree that the West, or Australian society at least, is falling apart. Our society teems with thieves, vandals and belligerent people, who do as they please without reference to anybody else. How often do you see graffiti and vandalised public property? How often do you encounter impatient and pushy motorists? How often do you see houses with steel barred windows, apartment blocks having multiple levels of security, cars fitted with alarms and immobilisers, goods in shops needing anti theft devices, bags that must be inspecting when entering or leaving a department stores? How often do you see people at supermarkets who leave shopping trolleys lying around, being too lazy to return them? What kind of society is this? A very sick one, and it’s getting worse. Last Sunday I boarded on a train, only to be astounded at the ill manner of other people, who yap away loudly on mobile phones as though other people on the train don’t exist. People here are ill mannered, uncouth, filthy and have no sense of decorum. OK, there are many decent people here too, but the percentage of people who are not good is big enough to make life here pretty unpleasant. Cultural background doesn’t seem to make a lot of difference – I’ve seen bad examples set by all peoples.

As to extolling American possessive individualism: it may well have created enormous wealth, but how few hands that wealth is in, and what a shambles of a society. It’s just like Australia.

Boazy: "AT LAST... EUREKA.. I'VE FOUND IT.... "THE TRUTH""

Better chuck out the old bible then!

Thanks to Pericles and chainsmoker for pointing out the old tubthumper's misinterpretation of Fukuyama's latest pronouncements.

Wasn't it Francis who famously wrote about "the end of history" or some other such bunkum?

Chainy.. yes.. I might be a cosmopolitan in some ways, and plugged into cyber space..and participate in a global village, but I still call Australia home.
Let's be very clear about something. I have no illusions as to our 'glorious past' in thinking it is without blemish. I happen to believe that a glorious present can be achieved by in fact recognizing those blemishes, and facing them square on. Doing that will give us an honourable foundation to face the future.

PERICLES I chose that sentence from Fukuyama because it said what I've been feeling for so long and expressed it in a very succinct way.

I've not read the rest of the work. I hate to labor a point, but my passion in this thread, for this topic has little to do with Islam. I said.. it is but one of a NUMBER of cultural threats we need be aware of.

If you wish to bash my Islam bashing, please restrict it to the threads where I am actually doing that.

NEOCONS ..Chainy, if that is our model for Australia, we need to yell WOAAH to the geegee and wheel him around. I'm not even sure what a neocon is in our context. Do you mean that we are in bed with Bush ?
I support the alliance, but would be ripping into Bush about many issues.

COLLECTIVE IDENTITY. The most important question is 'what' is our most beneficial collective identity ? I think it should have a Judao Christian element, but I realize it would be bordering on fantasy to think Australia is suddenly going to become a Christian land flowing with evangelical milk and honey.

Pericles; "That at many periods in history Muslim societies have been more tolerant than their Christian counterparts"

The key word here is periods. Many societies have remained tolerant while opposing religions or ethnic groups have remained small in numbers, but if you look more into the future of those societies you'll find that fighting broke out further down the track as the numbers became bigger and more threatening.

C J Morgan,

"Modern Societies have weak collective identities.
Post Modern Elites especially in Europe, feel they have evolved beyond identities defined by religion and Nation. If our societies cannot assert positive liberal values, they may be challenged by migrants who are more sure of who they are."

I fail to see how you can misinterpret the above statement.

I'll translate it for you. It means-; that Western countries have lost their sense of identity especially some of the elite groups like the left wing academics and teachers who think they have evolved into some kind of higher species and continually pour scorn on their own Western culture and nations. Immigrants to Western countries are very sure of their brotherhood through religion and not having been brainwashed into being scornful of their own culture by elitest utopian groups. United we stand(the immigrants) divided we fall the Western nations. Plain as the nose on your face.

The problem with this global citizenship piffle is that all traffic appears to be one way - to the West. Multiculturalism and the inability or unwillingness of Western nations to uphold their borders from massive immigration is viewed by non-Western cultures as an invitation to essentially gate crash the party and usurp the host culture. Such non-Western migrant groups are more interested in re-colonisation than integration. And who could blame them? Our weak collective identity, caused by the erosion of traditional Western culture, has effectively given them the rope to hang us with. Australia is sadly leading the Western world in terms of self-destructive immigration and multiculturalism.

Sharkfin - I actually tend to agree with that part of Fukuyama's analysis. We certainly need to assert "positive liberal values", such as tolerance, inclusiveness, freedom of speech and religion, nonviolence, participatory democracy, sustainability etc.

It was Boaz who radically misinterpreted Fukuyama by seizing upon a single sentence out of context, when Fukuyama was arguing that contemporary jihadism among disaffected Muslims in Western societies is a product of identity politics, rather than emanating from their adherence to Islam.

Our resident tubthumper (and his fundy fellow travellers) persistently and repetitively assert in this forum that problems arising from Muslim immigration stem from the fundamental tenets of Islam, and thus allow no possibility of resolution of differences (or, indeed, of integration). This is diametrically opposed to what Fukuyama is actually saying - at least these days.

This is, of course, the problem with citing authors out of context without having a clue about their overall thesis. Unfortunately, it is a tactic that is all too often deployed in forums such as this, usually by people with limited education or world experience, who stridently espouse dogmatic, divisive and hateful ideas.

Pot, meet kettle. Please admire its ebony pigmentation, Boaz.

>>If you wish to bash my Islam bashing, please restrict it to the threads where I am actually doing that<<

(That would in itself be an interesting sentence to deconstruct, along the lines of "so, you admit that..." But that would be a cheap shot.)

The irony is that of all the posters on this forum, the one person you can rely upon to take a perfectly simple discussion on education, health, hooliganism or whatever, and turn it into a lecture on the virtues of a Christian life, is Boaz_David.

But no matter.

>>I chose that sentence from Fukuyama because it said what I've been feeling for so long and expressed it in a very succinct way. I've not read the rest of the work."

If you have not read the rest of Fukuyama's work, or even just the one piece from which you selected the quote, how can you possibly pick one sentence and believe that it means what you want it to mean?

Let's go back to it for a moment.

"Modern Liberal societies have weak collective identities. Postmodern elites, especially in Europe, feel that they have evolved beyond identities defined by religion and nation."

My question is "weak, compared with whom?"

I would then ask "ok, given that comparison, which society would you prefer to be part of?"

I'd be fascinated to hear your contribution to that, by the way. Both parts, not just the first.

"But if our societies cannot assert positive liberal values, they may be challenged by migrants who are more sure of who they are"

Is Fukuyama saying that the migrants will supply the necessary "positive liberal values"? Or is he suggesting that "positive liberal values" are a sufficient defence against being "challenged by migrants". If you didn't read the article, you are unlikely to be able to supply the answer.

Words are really fun things to play with, Boaz. But at some point you have to ask "what is the meaning of this?", rather than "hey, that sounds really neat".

BD Fukuyama is a neocon. That's his context. It's also why he's so amusing - he can't see the connection between neo-conservatism in practice and the loss of social cohesion.

Fukuyama and neo-conservatism should both be on wiki if you're interested.

Tossing around concepts like left-wing postmodern European intellectual elites as if it's an insult is just part of the latest (but getting stale fast) political correctness. According to this fad anybody who can read above Cat in the Hat level is a trouble-making, intellectual, latte-sipping, Australia-loathing snob. Tommyrot.

These are the same elites who keep trying to point out how important stuff like the Australian film and music industries are for our national identity, and keep getting shouted down because they're apparently elites. Remember Picnic at Hanging Rock anybody? The stunning footage of the Australian landscape in Crocodile Dundee? Anybody want to get stuck into the latte-sipping, left-wing, postmodern, intellectual snob film industry for making that kind of stuff?

We carry on about how many Academy awards we got this year, how fab our sporting achievements are, how clever we were to come up with gene shears and winged keels as if every last one of us personally contributed. Fact is, our elites got us those prizes while the rest of us sat around complaining about taxpayer money being wasted on elites. One of the most famous philosophers in the world is an Australian. Do we care?

We also have the biggest rock in the world. We all need to go stand around it and take a good look at it and ourselves. It's one of those things that makes you realise just how stupid all this bickering about us and them really is. To borrow from Crocodile Dundee, it's like a bunch of fleas standing around arguing about who owns the dog.

Pericles, CJ.. please note carefully.. I chose the quote which I saw in another post submitted by someone in the Is Multiculturalism really mushy' thread.

Its not really a difficult sound bite to digest. It's amazingly clear, and I'm not being like the mad hatter making it mean what I want it to mean apart from it's obvious intended meaning.

1/ West Lacks strong Collective identity. (this is where we are at)

Ok.. Pericles asks 'compared to what'... I'd say any society which clearly has a strong idea about itself and direction in life. You can see it by simply observing.
Ask a Greek "what does it mean to be Greek"? and I'm pretty sure you will get a very confident and elaborate answer. Ask an Aussie, and we might get "meat pies and aussie rules".

2/ Post modern Elites. (this is how we arrived there)

His reference to this, fits in perfectly with the first assertion 'weak collective identity' because post modernism is all about 'individual truth'.. "it works for me" kind of thing.. or.. an individual perception of a particular event. So.. this kind of thinking contributes very much to a weak sense of 'collective' idenity, as it's every man for himself.

3/ Migrants with a strong self of identity.

(This is what can cause problems given the above 2 points.)

I'm incredulous that you Pericles are in such a rut about Islam/Christianity that you cannot see this thread for what it is. Exploring the Statement of Fukuyama, as its clear meaning applies to Western society in a g e n e r a l sense.

It matters not a scrap what other things he has said, as HE is not my reference point here.. his chosen statement IS. He has captured our current condition in a nutshell.

Chainy.. its much more than fleas discussing dogs. Its our cultural future.

C J Morgan

Full credit to the cultural elites who make wonderful Australian Movies and win academy awards I have no quarrel with their artistic abilities and some of the wonderful contributions they make to our society but there are some who as Fukyama(sorry if name is wrong cant check it from this screen) points out,” who think they have evolved to a higher level beyond identities defined by nation.” That means at its end interpretation that they think that mankind has evolved to the stage where they are capable of being multitribal or multiracial as a nation and not monotribal or monoracial as a nation.

It’s the old utopian idea of all the tribes around the world holding hands while they sing about love and peace. It doesn’t occur to them that man is not evolved to this stage and is not capable at the biological survival level of doing this.

If these multitribal societies fail to be tolerant, inclusive and non violent (assert strong liberal values) then we will be doomed to ethnic(tribal violence) and demands for separate states. It only needs one big tribe to start something like this to plunge the country into violence like we saw with the IRA and in Chechyna.

“It is important to remember, however, that at many periods in history Muslim societies have been more tolerant than their Christian counterparts.”

Yes but -Only when all non-Muslims have been obedient little dhimmis

A dhimmi status is similar to a turkeys status in the farm yard:
He holds to his subordinate position & knows that at any time, at the masters whim, he may get the chop.

Lack of supporting evidence is against you, Boaz, yet again. In fact, it looks as though you are arguing against yourself a little, too.

>>West Lacks strong Collective identity... Pericles asks 'compared to what'... I'd say any society which clearly has a strong idea about itself and direction in life... Ask a Greek "what does it mean to be Greek"? and I'm pretty sure you will get a very confident and elaborate answer.<<

Pretty sure, Boaz? No evidence, just a "pretty sure" speculation?

>>Ask an Aussie, and we might get "meat pies and aussie rules"<<

Or, as you keep telling us, a list that starts with mateship, goes on to shaking hands and ends with the concept of best and fairest. How do we know that the Greek version is not equally vague, anodyne and irrelevant?

Just saying something out loud doesn't make it true.

>>post modernism is all about 'individual truth'.. "it works for me" kind of thing.. or.. an individual perception of a particular event. So.. this kind of thinking contributes very much to a weak sense of 'collective' idenity<<

I think it is very brave of you to attempt to define the term. Most scholars fail - Wikipedia observes:

"It is an idea that has been extremely controversial and difficult to define among scholars, intellectuals, and historians, largely because the term implies to many of these commentators that the modern historical period has passed."

So it is really a matter of "make it up as you go along", isn't it? Not much of a basis for critique, Boaz, especially from you.

"Migrants with a strong self [sic] of identity"

Just so that we know, is this a good or a bad thing? Would you prefer them to have a weak sense of identity? After all, you have already decided to categorise us in this fashion, and labelled it as a problem.

Let's be honest for a moment here.

You selected a quote that is in itself extremely shaky, as well as having been taken out of all context.

Just let it rest, and move on.