Melting Pot Or Melting Down?

A new law taking effect in Belgium in October, and later in Flanders, highlights one of the fundamental problems with the concept of cultural melting pots and integration.  The fact of the matter is that most people want to be around others like themselves.  It is a primary instinct of the human condition and no amount of force will make oil and water bind to each other.

The law bans Kosher and Halal animal slaughter, which involves slitting the throats and bleeding out the animals.  The Belgium and Flanders laws require that the animals be electrocuted before killing, in a manner considered more humane.  This, however, violates the strict food codes of Judaism and Islam.

Throughout history, when two opposing philosophical systems (religions) come into direct contact, conflict always follows.  Primarily Catholic/Christian Europe has profound conflicts with both Judaism and Islam, regardless of how much happy talk one slathers over the situation.  The contact point between the two philosophies ultimately boils over into pogroms, with the indigenous group usually winning.  It is a fact that can not be erased by wishful thinking.  History is clear on the subject.

When it comes to examples of cultural blending, many commentators point to the US as an example of the "melting pot".  This ignores one of the most poorly hidden secrets of America, though.  As waves of immigrants came to North America, they settled into ghettos, towns and even entire regions of cultural identity.  In Texas alone, there are German (Groene, New Braunsfelds), Czech (Moulton, Moravia, Praha), Spanish (San Antonio, Laredo, El Paso), Scotch-Irish (New Dublin, Shannon), British (New London, Derry) areas that can be clearly defined by culture, architecture, and even climate (just like home).

Around the country, there are the Pennsylvania Dutch, the Irish cops of Boston and New York, the Welsh miners in West Virginia and Montana, the Minnesota and Dakota Swedes, the Louisiana Cajuns, and so on.  People tend to congregate in groups and in regions where they feel most comfortable, and where the ethnic, cultural and physical environment match their fundamental values.

There is a basic and profound reason why Chinatowns spring up, Jewish ghettos exist, New York City Burroughs were delineated, and so forth.  There is a gut-level reason why even those groups that successfully integrate with existing cultures tend to congregate around ethnic restaurants, bars, places of worship, and community centers.

Even in my hometown of Houston, a thoroughly modern American city, there are entire sections of town with signs in Vietnamese and Mandarin.  There are entire neighborhoods where nearly every house has a mezuzah nailed to the doorpost.

Historically, all efforts to force people to integrate will fail, and often violently.  Only when clear lines of demarcation are mutually established does peace and harmony reign once again.  Whether the forced integration is an invasion, or the result of political policy, eventually the two opposing groups will repel each other with a force commensurate with the amount of force pushing them together.

Prejudice, bias and racism are at the core of the human condition.  Over time, groups organically integrate out of necessity or relaxing standards.  This can be clearly seen in the US, where immigrants ultimately show their willingness to pitch in and build a better community.  The Irish invasion of the late 1800s brought strife and violence with it.  Over time, the Irish became accepted and integral parts of the community and now St. Patrick's Day is one of the most celebrated holidays in the country.

There are many voices who promote racial, ethnic and religious integration, and preach loudly of the ideal humanity living in well-mixed bliss.  This is a lofty goal and no one can deny making it a reality is a long-term target for the human race.  To be sure, modern cities are "melting pots" where ethnic, racial and philosophical groups slowly blend over time through intermarriage and cultural blending.  It is a slow and tedious process, and any attempt to force it is met with equal and opposite force, frequently breaking out in bloody conflict.

The Belgian and Flemmish laws, along with others that will likely follow, represent the bow shock of backlash.  Conflicitng religious, philosophical and ethnic needs between the predominantly Catholic/Christian Europe and the Islamic invasion over the past few years will inevitably lead to conflict.  The needs and sensibilities of the two groups are fundamentally at odds.  The resistance to Halal slaughter techniques must overflow into the long-established Kosher industry, since the two are basically the same thing. 

Though Jews have been established for centuries in Europe, the revulsion against Halal slaughter must perforce include Kosher, as these types of backlash inevitably try to return to a perceived starting or neutral position and the integration process resets.

Society after society, culture after culture, from Sumeria to the present day have seen this type of rejection.  When integration is gradual, cultures blend and create new ones.  When integration is overwhelming and rapid, the invading culture makes too many sudden demands, and the extant culture slams the door.

In my own experience, I emigrated to a country (Indonesia) that was wildly different from my own.  I was careful not to inject my sensibilities onto my adopted home.  Rather, I learned the lingua franca, as well as parts of three other dialects.  I observed and adopted cultural mores and habits.  One thing you will almost never heard from my lips is, "The way we do it back home..."  I am not home and I didn't come here as an invader.  I cam to learn.

For those reasons, I have been accepted into the extant culture, despite the fact that I look nothing like the inhabitants.  I am pale, with red hair and blue eyes, and stand head and shoulders above most of the locals.  I couldn't blend in if I tried.  But, I speak the language and even in my house we speak English, Indonesian and Javanese.  I am the only white person in my neighborhood.  I eat the food, observe the manners and rituals, and even sing the national anthem on demand.  I am accepted and people are not threatened or intimidated by me.  It took years of hard work to achieve.

Already, voices are howling in protest at the new laws in Belgium and Flanders.  They want everyone to make immediate concessions to an invading culture that refuses to integrate.  This is a recipe for disaster, and no amount of political correctness will ameliorate the situation.  The backlash is spilling over into a cultural reset that will include other groups that have long been established.  It is no different from the suspicion and distrust that followed German and Japanese Americans during World War 2.

Though great progress has been made, especially in the US, over the past 50 years towards racial, ethnic and philosophical harmony among disparate groups, there is still an innate reset trigger in each of us that is activated when we feel our sensibilities are offended.  Humans can no more change it than cats can stop hunting mice.  It is an integral part of our species.  We can chose to defuse it, but it is a slow and difficult process to submerge our instincts.

If our social and political leaders would stop forcing mass displacements of people for ideological purposes, the world would be a much quieter and harmonious place, where folks could chose the culture and environment in which they prefer to live.

Humanity always makes the biggest messes when it attempts to subvert Nature.

Of Pity And Tantrums

Here's what is wrong with modern Western society:

Instead of "Safe Spaces," what is really needed are time-out corners.

When you really think about it, the current SJW movement is nothing more than a bunch of over-grown toddlers acting out.  There are two classic behaviors at work here: "pity party" and "tantrum".

In the "pity party" instance, the SJWs are doing everything they can to make themselves victims.  They will mutilate their bodies, act anti-socially, bully, demean, and violently act out, and then run yelping to Mommy when someone slaps back.  This is the classic nobody-loves-me/everybody-hates-me ruse.  In order to gain sympathy and attention, a toddler will provoke one party to get sympathy from another.  These personalities are unable to validate themselves, so they require outside input to feel validated.

In the "tantrum" behavior, which is really an escalation of the "pity party" scenario, the toddler falls down on the ground kicking and screaming because they are not receiving the desired attention any other way.  Unable to express frustration or argue reasonably in favor of a desired outcome, the toddler ramps up the violent outbursts until someone pays attention.

In a classic example, the SJW will cover his or her body with tattoos and body piercings to get attention.  When that fails (usually because everyone else is doing it too) they turn to fashion, cosmetics and (in extreme cases) surgery to get attention.  When that fails, they turn to throwing rocks, breaking windows and burning cars until the adults acknowledge their self-pity.  In most cases, when the adults finally react, it is with equal but opposite force, further reinforcing their self-pity.  This, in turn, leads to further escalation by all parties involved.

The rash of self-induced victimhood is a prime example of this "game" being played out.  Women filing false rape accusations; racial and religious minorities painting slurs on their houses and cars, and so forth.  All this is nothing more than an escalated case of me-too syndrome seeking external attention and validation.

All of this started in the 1960s.  The Baby Boom generation, realizing their political and economic power in numbers, rejected "authority" and classical institutions in favor of...well, absolutely no control at all.

There came a wave of parents who wanted to be "friends" with their kids, rather than guides to proper social interaction.  Those kids devised the "self-esteem" movement, where no child could be allowed to fail or feel inadequate.  This, in turn, led to an entire generation of (physical) adults who are little more than over-grown toddlers, unable to interact with polite society on an adult level.

Suppose I didn't bathe, shave or change clothes for a month.  I slopped myself with mud and filth, didn't brush my teeth and behaved like a heathen.  Then I went to a black-tie event and demanded everyone accept me as is, throwing a huge fit and starting a food fight when I was shunned.  That is more or less what has happened in Western society.

Furthermore, with each succeeding generation, the behavior gets worse and worse, while the preceding generation is increasingly unable to deal with it on an adult and reasonable level.  Thus, the West now has an entire generation of unrestrained, uneducated and unfulfilled over-grown toddlers who are moving back home at 30 years old because they can't survive in the real world, while evolving into electronic troglodytes ranting against an unfair world.

In the final analysis, the world is far from fair.  It is chock-a-block full of people competing for resources motivated by self-interests.  Over millennia, humanity has developed manners and ethics to keep social interaction as civil as possible while going about our in-born and instinctive goals.  It is a delicate dance of recognizing our basest needs with the overall goal of creating a civilization.

As the overlaid veneer of civil society fades, there is nothing left but the base motivations...me, Me, ME!  Undisciplined adults raising undisciplined children has left an entire civilization with unreasoning and immature individuals, who must either find it within themselves to repair the damage, or face the collapse of the civilization.

Japan and China have addressed this situation by creating authoritarian States that foster robotic populations incapable of creativity, inspiration or innovation.  Instead, they take the inventions of others and, through rigorous trial and error, manufacture iterations of the same basic ideas.  There is no creative leap involved.  It is a terrible sacrifice for those societies, but it has been rewarded with financial success and orderly cultures - at least on the surface.

The West is known for its intuitive leaps in innovation.  The West invented "outside the box" thinking because of a cultural desire for Truth embedded in the Christian substrate of the culture.  Unable to reconcile its religious roots with its inherent anti-authoritarianism, it is eating itself alive by rejecting the philosophical scaffolding on which it stands, but unable to replace it with the only viable alternative, in terms of social order.

Without the self-organizing concept of the Divine within one's self and others, the West has no foundation on which to grow and expand.  It has been reduced to temper tantrums, which on the global stage manifest as military adventurism.  Without the recognition of the Divine spark, there is no support for diplomacy, and so the only recourse is bombing and shows of force.

As of this time, the West only recognizes two options - eternal childhood or post-modernist authoritarianism.  Unable to culturally accept either course, it is at an impasse

When one comes to a fork in the road and one is loathe to choose either path, the only alternatives are to forge a new path, or sit down and wait to die.  At the moment, the West seems content to choose the latter.

Making Pretzels

I know I keep harping on American politics, when I try to maintain a global focus, seeing as how I live on the diametrically opposed side of the plant from the US.  But current events there necessitate a continued watch, since it appears as if the country is imploding and its cancerous tentacles in every aspect of global events means profound changes are ahead for everyone.

The left and right wings of the artificial dichotomy of US politics have solidified, with unprecedented vitriol spewing from both camps.  I perforce will focus on the left wing (Democrats), since they have been on the offensive recently.  However, the right wing (Republicans) are being forced to show their authoritarian leanings out of sheer desperation.

The left wing is currently the most fascinating.  In the past 100 years, it has marched continually towards moral relativism and most recently into something called "identity politics".  Having made a century-long argument that there is no objective right and wrong, it now finds itself in the position of having to accept any behavior from its members as valid, no matter how reprehensible or illegal.  In order to maintain logical consistency, such as it is, they must bed down with even the most puke-making ideologies in order to prove their arguments.

Take the feminists as a prime example.  Since the suffrage of the 1920s, they have continuously pushed the boundaries of propriety to the point that they have weaponized the basic human qualities of empathy and tolerance.  In so doing, they have now made common cause with Islamic shari'a to show how tolerant they are.

In other words, the feminists are arguing that submission to men, to the point of daily beatings and being forced to wear restrictive clothing and having their clitorises cut off is a feminist ideal.  Yes, even the hijab/jilbab have been fashionized in support of their Muslim sisters.

What?!

The feminists have successfully argued themselves into a full rhetorical and logical circle, managed to paint themselves into a corner in a round room, and then erected brick and steel walls to ensure they can't escape.  They have, in effect, stated that a woman must be subject to the most humiliating and degrading conditions in the name of tolerance!

In another example, a male US politician made degrading and sexist remarks about one of Trump's female aides at a public event.  Later, Nancy Pelosi, the "leader" of the Democrats in the US House of Representatives, was heard in an interview brushing the remarks aside while in the same breath lashing Trump for sexist remarks made in private ten years ago!  How in the hell does one untie such a relativistic knot of rhetoric?

There has been ample global coverage of the left wing violence during and since the election last year.  Here, the left wing finds it necessary to cause injury to life and limb, and destroy private and public property in the name of tolerance and respect.  Again, they have tied themselves into a morass of pretzel logic to make a point that their actions immediately and simultaneously undermines.

For a sufficiently high enough level, one could argue that these things are being purposely orchestrated in order to draw out the authoritarian tendencies of the right wing.  I can, and likely will, make a later argument that the left is trying to get the right to punch back, so that it can run crying to mommy that the mean, nasty right wingers are so violent.  It will probably work without Herculean restraint on the part of the right.

In any event, we are witnessing the dissolution of American culture and politics.  It is fascinating to watch, though I empathize with my family and friends in the midst of it - especially those caught up in the currents of illogic and extremism that is sweeping that society.

It is difficult to see how this mess can resolve without some great amount of pain.  Rhetorical and moral knots have a way of restricting blood flow to the body politic.

Are we seeing the collapse of empire?  Most likely.  It is similar in many ways to past events of similar scope and nature.

How long will it take?  Hard to say.  The Soviet empire collapsed almost overnight, though it is still being unwound.  The US empire is far more insinuated into the global structure and its collapse will take far longer and be far more painful to everyone on the planet.

Stand by...this is going to get a lot more interesting in the very near future.

Report From The Eye Of The Storm

Return with us now to the thrilling theme of "traveler versus tourist," a metaphor we here at the Far Side Global Headquarters - deep in the jungles of Borneo - have adopted for our worldview.

The reader may think of this column as a follow-on to our last screed called, "Who Is More The Fool?"  In today's edition, we will explore "traveler versus tourist" as it applies to "diversity."

As we have developed our metaphor, we have shown that a traveler enters new realms of culture and experience as an observer and reporter.  The traveler attempts to meld as much as possible into the surroundings and taste the sweet and bitter of the foreign world.  The traveler does not judge nor discriminate.  The traveler understands that the surrounding culture has developed over spans of time and he seeks to understand why.

The tourist, on the other hand, brings his culture with him.  He seeks to impose his own norms and standards on the surrounding land.  He is the evangelist, the one who thinks his way is better, or at least more comfortable, and so forces conformity in order to feel less threatened.

In terms of mainstream labels, we may think of travelers as conservatives (seeking to conserve), while tourists are liberals (seeking to liberate).  The conservative wishes to conserve what is found in any given place, while the liberal wishes to change everything to suit some "greater good."

A traveler is conscious of his tracks and tries to minimize his impact on the surroundings.  Instead, he absorbs the local flora and fauna, making deep mental records and spending great amounts of time pondering and examining the context in which he finds himself.

This is not to say the traveler accepts everything at face value or is naive.  If he finds himself in a land where ritual cannibalism and human sacrifice are the norm, he does not wait around to examine the roots of these beliefs, he simply steps quietly but quickly to the exit.

On the other hand, we have the tourist.  The tourist is deathly afraid of having any experience that is outside his zone of comfort.  He is convinced that local cuisine is filthy and infested, and so brings his comfortable McFoods with him.  He is convinced that local accommodations are rat-eaten and sub-standard, and so brings his Holiday-Innian experience with him.  He believes the locals are heathens that must be converted to whatever system of belief he holds dear.  He criticizes the local customs and beliefs as ridiculous and beneath his consideration.  To a tourist, everything is wrong but his own standards.

In the past three years, I have found myself in a very curious position, straddling the traveler-tourist paradigm.

I have been deeply involved in building a "western" style arts center in Jakarta, where the owner has wanted to bring "western" style shows to the city.  On the other hand, I have been dealing with "western" companies wanting to break into the Indonesian market with their wares.  On both sides of the equation, I have run head-long into the tourist mentality.  The locals want international shows, but are not willing to learn and accommodate international standards.  The foreign companies want to enter the local market without accommodating local styles of doing business.  The locals think that "international standard" is the way something looks, and the outsiders think that "international standard" means the way we do it back home.

It is the perfect storm with your humble traveler standing at precisely the geodetic center of the storm.

On the one hand, I want to help the locals bring these massive foreign shows, and want to teach them the styles and methods of doing it.  On the other hand, I know the mentality of the foreign shows, who expect a certain modus operandi on the receiving end.

It is a delicate situation in which your humble traveler finds himself.  I believe both sides are right.  I know how these mass-market shows operate - god knows I've helped create enough of them.  On the other hand, I know the the locals have developed their style of doing business over centuries of physical isolation from the rest of the world, being a chain of islands fairly remote from any mainland.

For your humble reporter, it is both gleefully fun and infinitely frustrating.  On the one hand, I want to help the locals fit into the international market they so desperately want to join, and on the other hand, I want to help the foreigners fit into the market they do desperately want to join.

The immovable object meets the irresistible force.  It is not an enviable position, since I have had my share of both sides railing against me.  Both sides expect me to be able to change the other, yet my personal mentality is that both sides are completely right.

Such is the life of a traveler.

It would be so easy to be a tourist.  I could force whichever side I chose onto the other.  What I have chosen, however, is to find some way to blend the two, in the hopes of making both better for the experience.

In point of fact, I am in the position of believing that the "western" way of doing shows is the right way - in its context.  And I believe that the Indonesian way of doing business is right - in its context.  When the two contexts meet, one can begin to appreciate the fun I have had for the past three years.

I must become a travelist or a tourer, but in either case I am become Death, Destroyer of Worlds.

Centuries ago, Marco Polo was the first Westerner to record his travels in Indonesia - specifically in the area of central Sumatera around the modern city of Medan - where he met the Batak people.  In his wake, Lutheran missionaries followed and were slaughtered and occasionally eaten by the Batak.  That is, until a fellow by the name of Ludwig Ingwer Nommensen showed up and converted a large number of Batak to Lutheranism.  To this day, the Batak have a unique church (HKBP) that separates them from all other Indonesians.  In simplistic terms, the church is western Lutheranism blended with the Batak language and sensibilities.  A new culture created from the blending of two otherwise clashing ones.

It is possible to make a hybrid culture without surrendering the more profound elements of the progenitors.  However, it is not an enviable position to be at the crux of the effort.  It is akin to hanging on to the blades of a blender, trying to maintain one's identity while at the same time trying to make the rest of the mix into a homogeneous mass.  All sides want what the other has without surrendering any part of what they bring, or accepting any part of what they want.

Your humble traveler stands at the center of the plains of Geddon, amidst the final conflagration, and tries to maintain enough individuality to report on the destruction of both sides.  Perhaps I will be slaughtered and eaten, perhaps I will find that happy medium and become a patron saint.  Either way, I will destroy something and build something else.

History is yet to be written.

But one thing I am assured of...I am a traveler.

Post Scriptum - when I first arrived in Indonesia, I had a Batak girlfriend.  One Christmas, I followed her family to the HKBP church.  When it came time for Communion, I went to the front with her.  The first priest looked at me, then asked her (in Batak language), "Does he understand (this)?"  I responded (in the Batak language), "Yes, I do."  He shot a glance at me and his jaw went slack.  Then he passed me down the line without being slaughtered.

That is what travelers do.