In highly diverse Los Angeles or San Francisco, for example, roughly 30 percent of the inhabitants say that they trust their neighbours 'a lot', whereas in the ethnically homogeneous communities of North and South Dakota, 78-80 percent of the inhabitants say the same. In more diverse communities, people trust their neighbours less.
Professor Putnam summarised his research as follows:
Diversity does not produce ‘bad race relations’ or ethnically-defined group hostility, our findings suggest. Rather, inhabitants of diverse communities tend to withdraw from collective life, to distrust their neighbours, regardless of the colour of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more, but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television.
This effect was seen for both conservatives and liberals.
Now another major study, undertaken by two Michigan State University researchers (Zachary Neal and Jennifer Watling Neal), has come to similar conclusions:
Their simulations of more than 20 million virtual “neighborhoods” demonstrate a troubling paradox: that community and diversity may be fundamentally incompatible goals. As the authors explain, integration “provides opportunities for intergroup contact that are necessary to promote respect for diversity, but may prevent the formation of dense interpersonal networks that are necessary to promote sense of community.”
...After 20 million-plus simulations, the authors found that the same basic answer kept coming back: The more diverse or integrated a neighborhood is, the less socially cohesive it becomes, while the more homogenous or segregated it is, the more socially cohesive.
It seems that you can have ethnic diversity or you can have a close sense of community - you just can't have both together.
So why then are liberals so wedded to diversity as a moral aim? The reasons no doubt intersect. First, liberals believe that the goal of politics is to maximise individual autonomy, meaning a freedom to be self-constituted or self-defined or self-directed. Therefore, a predetermined quality like our ethnicity is thought of negatively as something that constrains us and therefore has to be made not to matter. Liberals therefore don't want to discriminate on the basis of ethny or race, even if it is for an important purpose such as maintaining community.
A related reason is that liberals think of the act of individual choice as being the key expression of morality, rather than what is actually chosen. There is no moral "outside" for liberals, only the act of choosing and allowing others to do likewise. Therefore, liberal morality is based more on qualities that demonstrate a willingness not to interfere with the choices of others (except for those who fall outside the liberal schema), such as non-discrimination, tolerance, openness and support for diversity.
It's also the case that liberals tend to want to manage society in a "technocratic" way, either through the markets or state regulation, and this is more readily achievable when people are stripped of "opaque" loyalties, such as those to family or ethny, that provide direction and authority outside of the technocratic systems. In a liberal society, people tend to become interchangeable units of the markets or bureaucracies, and obviously those with power in these systems feel comfortable with this outcome.
It's also true that diversity can be used as a weapon against whoever is the existing majority ethnic group. It can be used as such either by disloyal members of the majority group or else by members of minority groups.
So what can be done? One important achievement would be to undermine the dominance of liberalism as a political philosophy in the West, as this is a significant source of the idea that diversity is a moral aim. Another achievement would be to undermine the dominance of the corporate and bureaucratic elites. This can be done by making people aware of the bias of these elites (a process already partly completed) and by building up alternative sources of media, education and culture.
Finally, the research of Jonathan Haidt shows that liberals do care about the "harm" principle of morality. So it might also have some effect to show that individuals are harmed (by a loss of community) when diversity is forced upon communities.
"Therefore, liberal morality is based more on qualities that demonstrate a willingness not to interfere with the choices of others (except for those who fall outside the liberal schema), such as non-discrimination, tolerance, openness and support for diversity. "
ReplyDeleteThe above description is a simplistic pretext to con the gullible and the naive who are excited about the prospect of personal sovereignty, freedom from obligations towards others and unbridled hedonism. The covert agenda of liberalism is the destruction of Western civilisation from within and the people who enabled this are the traitorous elites who sided with outside interests against their own people.
There is no way that ordinary people can remove or undermine liberalism as the dominant ideology or remove the elites from power. The turncoat Trump took less than 100 days to surrender. The elites form cabals which like Mafias are virtually impossible to penetrate or break from outside. These cabals or mafias have control over the key functions of state and society.
The only way ordinary people have to resist this is to form parallel societies like the other minority groups do. Closed societies of people linked by blood and history who are dedicated to preserve their heritage and are prepared to make the commitment and sacrifices to do it. However the Western people of today are weak and hedonistic and perhaps too individualisitic to be able to do this effectively.
The only way ordinary people have to resist this is to form parallel societies like the other minority groups do.
DeleteMy own take on this is that you have to do both. Keep pushing the Overton window our way but also build up the kind of parallel community you describe.
You are also correct that the Western people of recent times have not been prepared to commit to this, but there has been a shift in the right direction in the past few years. We just have to keep pushing to try to reach a tipping point at which it becomes more possible to get things happening.
The only way ordinary people have to resist this is to form parallel societies like the other minority groups do. Closed societies of people linked by blood and history who are dedicated to preserve their heritage and are prepared to make the commitment and sacrifices to do it. However the Western people of today are weak and hedonistic and perhaps too individualisitic to be able to do this effectively.
DeleteThe only problem with that is that we would not be permitted to do it. Do you really think a modern liberal government would allow self-contaimned Christian communities like that to survive? And modern governments have an enormous armoury with which to harass any group that tries to go its own way. Modern tolerant societies are terrifyingly intolerant of anyone who dissents and an organised group of dissenters would be crushed mercilessly.
We either win or we get destroyed.
The Greeks and Italians have such communities in the UK. They have their own churches, schools, businesses and social systems which allow them to operate as a closed system, often evading tax and allowing them to accumulate large assets in the UK. Some of the biggest investors in the UK property market, commercial and residential are Greeks. There is no chance for non Greeks to gain a place at a Greek Orthodox school and few opportunities for non Italians to work in Italian businesses. An Indian acquaintance working at Telefonica (Spanish owned company) in London was the only non Spanish employee and noted that diversity and equality policies of the UK government were routinely ignored and any vacant posts filled directly from Spain with the relatives of the present employees.
DeleteNow some of these groups have considerable leverage. The Greeks dominate international shipping, the Italians have the mafia and the Spanish own some large companies. However the Poles and Eastern Europeans have similar structures without having leverage and so it is possible for determined, committed people to build independent systems. Liberals are weak people who go after easy targets and rely on fear to control people. The isolated individual in an atomised society is easy prey. Large groups of people who are ready for a fight are not. It's time people created their own networks, stopped hiring aliens, stopped using alien businesses (that includes Indian, Chinese restaurants), stopped using large corporations and became independent of the system.
dfordoom, that's why the strategy has to work in tandem. You build up political influence whilst gradually building up institutions. You start with informal institutions that are more difficult to target but which improve your level of organisation, which then allows you to take another step in terms of your ability to participate in politics and so on.
DeleteInformal institutions cannot save a society. You need to have formal institutions with defined purpose and goals and the first and most important of these is the family, the storage of genetic heritage, wisdom, religion, culture, tradition and wealth. People need to relearn the strategies and tactics required to preserve and enhance their bloodlines and assets and keep infiltrators and opportunists out. They need to form networks of families or tribes to control land, assets and commerce. From this power, political power comes. It cannot be done in reverse.
DeleteAnon, the point is that there will initially be hostility to any attempt by white people to preserve themselves. So you need to build up leverage step by step, so that you have institutional support for what you are doing.
DeleteThat doesn't make any sense. You cannot have leverage without wealth and strong networks and you cannot have these without strong families. The only instition of support is the family and as a second the church. Any other institution will be infiltrated and subverted.
DeleteThe only instition of support is the family and as a second the church. Any other institution will be infiltrated and subverted.
DeleteAnd most churches have been well and truly infiltrated and subverted. Even worse, it seems to be incredibly difficult to stop SJWs from doing this - churches are particularly vulnerable to being taken over in this way.
That is a gross exaggeration. Some churches have been infiltrated but not all. There are plenty of traditional churches.
DeleteIt seems that you can have ethnic diversity or you can have a close sense of community - you just can't have both together.
ReplyDeleteSo why then are liberals so wedded to diversity as a moral aim?
Because liberals want to destroy the sense of community. They want us to be atomised individuals.
True. I guess that point is to make this as clear as possible as part of the effort to get people to make a break with liberalism. There are lots of us (me included) who began on the left but who recognised what liberalism was destroying and who made a clean break. The more radical that liberalism becomes, the greater the chance we have of shifting people.
DeleteThe difficulty with this is that most people are liberals and are unfazed by radical policies and positions. There is no real opposition to gay marriages in Anglo societies or the recent push for trans gender acceptance and normalisation. The older generation is outraged initially followed by submission to the will of the young who find it all quite acceptable. The intergenerationsl split in Anglo societies is so great that the old do not pass their values to the young and the latter have great arrogance but no wisdom and are easily manipulated by the elites.
DeleteThe difficulty with this is that most people are liberals and are unfazed by radical policies and positions.
DeleteIt's not that most people are liberals. Most people just don't care about anything that doesn't affect them personally right now. Most people go along with liberalism because it's the line of least resistance. Just as most people went along with Stalinism, and Maoism, and every other evil because going along is the line of least resistance.
They don't care about radical policies and positions until those policies and positions affect them personally, by which time it's too late.
In a democratic system of government there's practically no limit to what people will accept as long as they're not the ones to be affected personally and as long as the supply of government bribes to the voters isn't interrupted.
The supply of government bribes to voters is substantially interrupted at present. Welfare cuts and austerity has left many homeless, unemployed and living in poverty. There is a crisis in retail with company insolvencies resulting in job losses and boarded up shopfronts. Despite positive economic data, the Western world is in a depression. The Government is squeezing hard the population but there is no pushback.
DeleteThe Soviets and Chinese fought communism which is why it was imposed with violence and gulags were full. In the West, Governments don't need more than water cannons. They face no resistance.
What do you mean by "there is no moral outside for Liberals"?
ReplyDeleteI took the term from an atheist liberal priest called Don Cupitt who believes that humans are "outsideless" in the sense that there are only socially constructed truths that individuals can make and remake as they will. He believes, in other words, that there is nothing outside our own subjective will and preferences which could be thought of as a moral truth.
DeleteFor liberals in general the point is not for the individual to discipline themselves to a given moral reality (which they do not think exists - they are not philosophical realists). Instead, human dignity and meaning derive from our freedom to make autonomous choices. Therefore, what matters isn't what we happen to choose, but the fact that we are unconstrained in following our will, even to the point that we are able to autonomously self-define so that we become wholly self-constituted.
The problem for liberals (for moderns really) is the issue of whose preferences get to matter most (because if I am unconstrained in my will, then why should my will not override that of someone else - but if that happens, then in the liberal view I am denying that other person the core of their dignity as a human).
There have been different answers, but in the Anglo tradition at least the main idea has been that we can only choose things that do not limit the ability of others to choose things. This limits the field of legitimate choice to relatively trivial matters. It also means that liberal morality focuses on people "not limiting" others in their choices - which means not discriminating against those who are different or who choose differently, being tolerant, open, non-judgemental, accepting of diversity and so on.
Because liberals are focused on the problem of how me being unconstrained in my will does not impact on others being unconstrained in their will, liberals are sensitive to the idea of some people getting an illegitimate advantage (privilege and inequality) and they often assume that those who reject the liberal solution to the problem of unconstrained will are going to adopt the other modernist alternatives (e.g. some concept of the general will or of the stronger will being justified in its dominance).
Ah, to use a phrase Al Gore used in a different context, Liberals believe there is "no legal controlling authority", except it isn't a matter of law.
DeleteYes, no legal controlling authority.
DeleteIt never occurs to liberals to recognize that many people's free choice involves ethnic and racial interests and homogeneous communities. It is an active free choice. They know this, and hate it, and want to destroy it. To admit that would be to confess not just their error but their evil intention.
ReplyDeleteThis is what goes on while you're not watching.
Does the MSM ever tell you this??? Never.
The tip of an iceberg. These people must be brought to justice.
http://www.eurocanadian.ca/2017/04/the-metropolis-project-and-george-soros.html
It never occurs to liberals to recognize that many people's free choice involves ethnic and racial interests and homogeneous communities. It is an active free choice. They know this, and hate it, and want to destroy it.
DeleteYes, that's one of those massive contradictions within liberalism. You see it when a woman says "Feminism is about choice and I choose to stay at home and be supported by my husband while I look after my baby."
On the one hand, the woman is expressing her individual autonomy in choosing for herself but on the other hand she is undermining it by being interdependent within a family.
What liberals do in practice is to take away the non-liberal choice. They make it increasingly difficult for women to choose it.
And you're right that liberals want to make the choice of living as part of a community of their own unavailable for white people. The liberal elite is clearly intent on this - you only have to look at what Merkel is doing in Germany.
Isn't it more a case of the elite not wanting a majority of any one race in any state so that pograms such as the holocaust won't happen again? Right now we see them flooding traditionally white states with other races, but down the road I imagine they also want to see majority sub-saharan African, Asian, and non-white Caucasian states similarly "rebalanced". It's one reason they made it difficult for whites to get out of South Africa after the end of apartheid.
DeleteRobert Brandywine, I don't think so for two reasons. First, the elites aren't seeking a balance of races in the formerly white countries. It's not as if they have a plan to maintain a certain number of whites in these countries - they are happy for whites to be gone entirely, as has already happened in some areas. Second, there is no sign yet of overseas elites wanting to do the same thing to their own populations. The Chinese haven't yet lost a sense of themselves as a people, nor have the Japanese.
DeleteMark, I assume you mean Zimbabwe but that happened 40 years ago when the elites thought differently. As for China and Japan, the answer there is that these countries aren't under control of the WESTERN elites. If western elites were in charge of these countries I have little doubt that they would try to bring in as many Africans and Muslims as possible and wouldn't be adverse to whites moving to those countries either.
DeleteAs for China and Japan, the answer there is that these countries aren't under control of the WESTERN elites. If western elites were in charge of these countries I have little doubt that they would try to bring in as many Africans and Muslims as possible and wouldn't be adverse to whites moving to those countries either.
DeleteThere's no question that they'd try to destroy China and Japan in exactly the same ways they've destroyed the West - mass immigration, feminism, the promotion of sexual deviancy, celebrity worship culture, etc.
The objective is the destruction of every organic structure in every society on the planet, because that's in the interests of efficient bureaucratic rule and one single undifferentiated global market is in the interests of global capitalism.
The problem they have is that the Japanese and the Chinese can see very clearly what the results have been in the West. They won't be anxious to follow the West in committing cultural suicide. As long as China can avoid becoming infected with the disease of democracy they have a chance of survival.
As to whether they'd like to see whites moving to those countries, they probably would be in favour of small numbers of elite globalist whites moving there.
Recently, Tyler Cowen wrote an article lamenting that Americabs are much less likely to move to a new city than previous generations. His only argument in favor of moving was to find a better paying job. The concept of roots, history, community and extended family ties are totally alien to the cosmopolitan elite.
ReplyDeleteYep. I've seen this many times. They think that their own rootlessness in pursuit of economic gain is the obvious norm for everyone to follow.
Delete