From Lawrence Auster's The View From the Right, a discussion on ethnicity and unity.
Posted on January 8, 2010
More interesting discussion on the topic at the post.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kidist writes:
I think I may have told you this already, but I left Ethiopia (with my younger brothers and parents) when I was nine years old. My father was stationed in Paris, in UNESCO, and we were sent about six months later to England to attend boarding school in southern Kent.
I left for University at 17 to the States, and later, my Dad was posted in New York’s UNESCO office. Once I completed that education, we all immigrated for good to Canada.
So, I have lived most of my life outside of Ethiopia. My Western experience is extensive and full—I was in my school choir throughout my time in England, and later in college; I studied piano until I was 21; I kept on playing and singing for much longer; I studied both ballet (until 13) and modern dance (into my 20s). I speak (pretty good) French. While in Paris, I must have been the only Ethiopian girl who was a fixture in the museums and galleries.
When I came to Canada, I decided to leave behind my science studies (biology/human nutrition) and pursue a “cultural” degree. I went to film/photography school for four years. Disillusioned with “art” I left that and started my training in textile design.
Since then, I have been as immersed in culture as I can be.
This is what makes me unique amongst immigrants:
- My isolated childhood from other Ethiopians while in France and England.
- My love for and immersion in the greatest of European culture when still a young girl—English choral music, and French art galleries and museums.
- By the time I had arrived in the States and Canada, I was too impressed with European culture to accept people’s denouncement of its inferiority, its oppressive nature, and other negatives.
- Without being presumptuous, it is my Amhara background, which has a history of leadership and civilization, that helped me to make analogies with what whites are going through in a multicultural society, which wishes to destroy whites in order to equalize everyone. This is what the communist regime in Ethiopia tried to do to Amharas.
- Also, my art education—music, dance, film and visual arts—also immersed me into the incredible beauty and complexity of Western culture, which have shaped my views.
- Living in a densely multicultural city like Toronto, largely of anti-Western non-whites, made me realized how strong and pernicious this anti-Western sentiment is, and I removed myself from it.
This might make my positions and opinions a little clearer. I know it throws many people off, seeing a Third World person like me so accepting and at ease with Western culture. But, maybe I’m just unusual with that. As I said before, 99.99 percent of all immigrants from the Third World do not wish to, nor are they able to, assimilate into Western culture.
Showing posts with label Nationality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nationality. Show all posts
Monday, August 6, 2018
Sunday, July 22, 2018
"And I will make of thee a great nation"
Genesis 12:2
And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing
Saturday, July 14, 2018
"Les Anglais"
The contemporary thinking about foreigners turns them into moral, cultural or social issues, but downplays the most important one: actual logistics.
Foreigners are people who travel to lands which are not their own, with cultures and social structures different from theirs, with languages they don't speak or speak without the fluency of their own languages.
In less progressive eras, when a foreigner came to a country other than his own, he had to understand the country he came to and subjugate himself to these different circumstances, and behave accordingly. He would always remain a foreigner, however many years he has lived there, and however many obstacle tests he has passed (and with distinction even).
There was an intriguing and endearing time in my life in Paris.
When we just arrived, our apartment was in a neighborhood which had its own boulangerie, patisserie, cafe, tabac and all the other accoutrements of French neighborhood life. It was like a mini-village within the large city, as all Parisian residential neighborhoods are (our next neighbourhood was slightly more cosmopolitan being near the Tour Eiffel and the shopkeepers were friendly but too busy to ask for details, although they always greeted us familiarly).
I went to a French bilingual school for the first six months and later we went to the first of two boarding schools in England, in Kent.
We had always been English speakers, having had our elementary education in Addis Ababa at what was then called The English School. I was fluent in English at a very early age.
As is always the case, neighborhood merchants, especially those one frequents regularly and with a Mom & Pop management style, make an effort to know their clientele, and even their names.
This particular French boulanger and his wife would greet us in a familiar way and I'm sure, when we (the kids) no longer came accompanied by their mother, asked: "Ou sont les enfant?"
By then my mother knew some French and no doubt told them as best she could that we were at school in England.
This was an instinctive association by country. If this Arab-looking family sent their children to a pensionat in England, then they must be of the English cultural persuasion and therefore they are English. Most Arabs in France have a French - colonial - association, and they would have kept their children within the French culture.
On a side note, this was the argument - the debate - used to say that North Africans (Moroccans and Algerians mostly) were French because of this colonial past, and that the huge numbers of immigrant North Africans can live in France as Frenchmen. Of course Arabs feel differently: they ARE NOT Frenchmen!!! They would always be Arab.
Back to my Parisian neighbourhood. We became known as "Les Anglais!" The patriotic neighbourhood baker and his wife (his wife mostly because she was the one who ran the storefront and communicated with the customers) associated us with their perennial and historical antagonists, the English, those most foreign of foreigners!
But she loved us! Who wouldn't! This cute threesome, with their coats and hoods in the winter rushing to school early in the morning, or coming in for their favorite "Kim-Cone" ice cream in the summer which they bought with long-saved pennies, now going across the seas to learn things! How brave they are!
"Quand viennent-ils, les enfant?" she would ask my mother those long months when we were away.
But we always remained "Les Anglais."
Monday, July 10, 2017
Who is Who
Indians Will Be Indians
David Yeagley, who calls himself a conservative American Indian, hosts Bad Eagle, a website with an open invitation to the world. It hosts a myriad of forum topics ranging from art to music to a subject simply entitled "Death," which is actually an interesting topic once one gets over the squeamish parts.
I found Yeagley's endless interests to be a great asset to the site, and few internet communities have such a wide range of discussions. But, it was actually an Indian site, with an Indian perspective.
Now, how can an Indian live an ethnocentric life while also living as a citizen of America (or Canada, for that matter)? Is there really an Indian who is at peace with America and willing to swallow the bitter pills of defeat? I thought so for a while at Bad Eagle, but I think I was asking for a superhuman feat [read more here].
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The Amhara Are Still Amhara
My cousin was here the other day with her children as well as her brother and his wife.
It is interesting. She stopped her memoir as she entered Canada. I was right about her reticence to write about her Canadian "experience." There is nothing interesting there as far as the "third world" anti-Canadian perspective of most immigrants. Her children, whom she brought with her, will grow up in the open-arms of Canada's multicultural society. They can keep their "identities" while enjoying the benefits of a First World country.
She told me she is writing a "fiction" now.
She brought up "identity" as part of her concern in her book. Finally, I realized this was what it was about.
I told her that "identity" in Canada was always going to be an issue for her (...and people like her - although I didn't say that).
"Ethiopia is going through some kind of renaissance. Why don't you and your family figure out a way to return? To go "back home." You came here through the most difficult way possible [remember they crossed deserts and countries before reaching Djibouti and finally coming to Canada as "refugees.")
Don't worry about culture and language. Both, especially for Ethiopians here who live the culture daily, are easy to regain. Your children [they don't speak Amharic but understand it] will easily pick it up.
A country is a big thing. Everyone needs one."
She (and her brother) were listening to me intently.
I am glad I attended the dinner. I was curious to see what she would do after her "memoir." I imparted an important message. No-one can say now that I didn't. The rest is up to them.
David Yeagley, who calls himself a conservative American Indian, hosts Bad Eagle, a website with an open invitation to the world. It hosts a myriad of forum topics ranging from art to music to a subject simply entitled "Death," which is actually an interesting topic once one gets over the squeamish parts.
I found Yeagley's endless interests to be a great asset to the site, and few internet communities have such a wide range of discussions. But, it was actually an Indian site, with an Indian perspective.
Now, how can an Indian live an ethnocentric life while also living as a citizen of America (or Canada, for that matter)? Is there really an Indian who is at peace with America and willing to swallow the bitter pills of defeat? I thought so for a while at Bad Eagle, but I think I was asking for a superhuman feat [read more here].
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The Amhara Are Still Amhara
My cousin was here the other day with her children as well as her brother and his wife.
It is interesting. She stopped her memoir as she entered Canada. I was right about her reticence to write about her Canadian "experience." There is nothing interesting there as far as the "third world" anti-Canadian perspective of most immigrants. Her children, whom she brought with her, will grow up in the open-arms of Canada's multicultural society. They can keep their "identities" while enjoying the benefits of a First World country.
She told me she is writing a "fiction" now.
She brought up "identity" as part of her concern in her book. Finally, I realized this was what it was about.
I told her that "identity" in Canada was always going to be an issue for her (...and people like her - although I didn't say that).
"Ethiopia is going through some kind of renaissance. Why don't you and your family figure out a way to return? To go "back home." You came here through the most difficult way possible [remember they crossed deserts and countries before reaching Djibouti and finally coming to Canada as "refugees.")
Don't worry about culture and language. Both, especially for Ethiopians here who live the culture daily, are easy to regain. Your children [they don't speak Amharic but understand it] will easily pick it up.
A country is a big thing. Everyone needs one."
She (and her brother) were listening to me intently.
I am glad I attended the dinner. I was curious to see what she would do after her "memoir." I imparted an important message. No-one can say now that I didn't. The rest is up to them.
Indians Will Be Indians
> Back to "Who is Who"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Indians Will Be Indians, cont.
Now, how can an Indian live an ethnocentric life while also living as a citizen of America (or Canada, for that matter)? Is there really an Indian who is at peace with America and willing to swallow the bitter pills of defeat?
I don't know how individuals acknowledge defeat, whether at work, play, love, and in the case of Indians, of their whole tribal ancestry. I think it requires a certain, perhaps saintly, humility, and a constant prayer for strength to accept what has happened.
Yeagley does this, to a certain extent. But, here starts the contradiction. Despite a professed love for America, I think Yeagley, naturally, loves Indians first – and best. So he has to find ways to incorporate the defeat of his people with their uncomfortable and humiliating lives in modern America. Hence, his strange, and constant, discussions of the subliminal effects of Indians on America, and even the world.
Now, I understand this. Yeagley wants non-Indians to see Indians as some supernatural – and perhaps in a more mundane world more of a subliminal psychological – presence, guiding people with the wisdom they have acquired through their suffering. He wants to give an honorable role to Indians who have survived this historic defeat. But, unfortunately, I think he goes to far.
For example, his position is that America, through treaties of many guises, is obligated to support Indians, like infants still feeding on their mothers' milk, for eternity. Where is the strength in that? How can the reality of the Indian reservations’dismal failures give Indians the licence to be the keepers of America? Where does a losing party suddenly become the winner?
I’m afraid that Yeagley, cleverly and sincerely, is using psychological tactics to give Indians the importance they don’t have. We have some magical properties, we can heal your ills, he says. Yet, he rarely talks about the dreadful ills his own people are going through; their weak and fallen positions. This is hard medicine to take, but it is better to face reality, then at least you can do something about it.
Unfortunately, Yeagley seems more interested in giving Indians a false sense of their position in the world based on feelings and emotions rather than provide recourse for actual achievements. He is acting like any other (leftist) Indian in this case, who professes magical, spiritual, qualities, which unfortunately have not been proven yet.
(Compiled from my various posts at Reclaiming Beauty and Camera Lucida).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Indians Will Be Indians, cont.
Now, how can an Indian live an ethnocentric life while also living as a citizen of America (or Canada, for that matter)? Is there really an Indian who is at peace with America and willing to swallow the bitter pills of defeat?
I don't know how individuals acknowledge defeat, whether at work, play, love, and in the case of Indians, of their whole tribal ancestry. I think it requires a certain, perhaps saintly, humility, and a constant prayer for strength to accept what has happened.
Yeagley does this, to a certain extent. But, here starts the contradiction. Despite a professed love for America, I think Yeagley, naturally, loves Indians first – and best. So he has to find ways to incorporate the defeat of his people with their uncomfortable and humiliating lives in modern America. Hence, his strange, and constant, discussions of the subliminal effects of Indians on America, and even the world.
Now, I understand this. Yeagley wants non-Indians to see Indians as some supernatural – and perhaps in a more mundane world more of a subliminal psychological – presence, guiding people with the wisdom they have acquired through their suffering. He wants to give an honorable role to Indians who have survived this historic defeat. But, unfortunately, I think he goes to far.
For example, his position is that America, through treaties of many guises, is obligated to support Indians, like infants still feeding on their mothers' milk, for eternity. Where is the strength in that? How can the reality of the Indian reservations’dismal failures give Indians the licence to be the keepers of America? Where does a losing party suddenly become the winner?
I’m afraid that Yeagley, cleverly and sincerely, is using psychological tactics to give Indians the importance they don’t have. We have some magical properties, we can heal your ills, he says. Yet, he rarely talks about the dreadful ills his own people are going through; their weak and fallen positions. This is hard medicine to take, but it is better to face reality, then at least you can do something about it.
Unfortunately, Yeagley seems more interested in giving Indians a false sense of their position in the world based on feelings and emotions rather than provide recourse for actual achievements. He is acting like any other (leftist) Indian in this case, who professes magical, spiritual, qualities, which unfortunately have not been proven yet.
(Compiled from my various posts at Reclaiming Beauty and Camera Lucida).
Wednesday, June 28, 2017
Identity
Blue Nile Falls
This is an email I sent to a correspondent:
My cousin...was here the other day with her children as well as her brother and his wife.Interestingly, the last part I said, "Ethiopia, and Ethiopians and specially the Amhara, is resilient," is almost a direct quote from what her father said to them as they started their journey across the desert, which she discusses in her interview with the CBC. I hadn't listened to this part of the interview until today.
It is interesting. She stopped her memoir as she entered Canada. I was right about her reticence to write about her Canadian "experience."
[...]
She told me she is [now] writing a "fiction.
[...]
She brought up "identity" as part of her concern in her book...
I told her that "identity" in Canada was always going to be an issue for her (and people like her, although didn't say that).
"Ethiopia is going through some kind of renaissance. Why don't you and your family figure out a way to return? To go 'back home?' You came here through the most difficult way possible (they crossed deserts and countries before reaching Djibouti and finally coming to Canada as "refugees.")
Don't worry about culture and language. Both, especially for Ethiopians who live the culture daily, are easy to regain. Your children (they don't speak Amharic but understand it) will easily pick it up.
A country is a big thing. Everyone needs one."
She (and her brother) were listening to me intently.
I am glad I attended the dinner. I was curious to see what she would do after her "memoir."
[...]
I also said that in general that people like my father, important people ("big people" in the Amharic literal translation) could set an example and make the exodus back home. My parents have bought two houses from the inheritance house (which they sold at a fantastic price to high-rise developers) in Addis Abeba. They go back now every few months. They have invited me again in November but I have declined the invitation.
They could set an example for all these destitute, culturally bereft Ethiopians by returning (to Ethiopia). A courageous exodus.
Ethiopia is undergoing a "renaissance," I told them at the dinner. "After famines, revolutions, communist governments, ethnic wars, it still stands. Ethiopia, and Ethiopians and specially the Amhara, is resilient. It has withstood incursions and invasions through the centuries. The Amhara are still Amhara. Ethiopia is still Ethiopia. You could be part of this renaissance."
My father was quiet but I could see that he was stunned. He didn't expect me to say these things openly, although he knows my views.
I didn't plan this either. It was as though I HAD to do this. And I'm glad I followed this direction.
My cousins left without rancor or ill-feelings. I have told the truth, and they know it.
She says about her father (my father's now deceased brother):
He grew up hearing about Ethiopians defeating a common enemy and keeping Ethiopia independent for centuries. Ethiopians were very proud people then and I'm sure they still are. So he has that in him. This desert wasn't going to defeat him. He's done it. His ancestors have done it before. And that kept us very strong, because he was 100 per cent sure we would make it.I am simply telling her to make that journey in reverse, so much easier now that they have so much more than those clothes on their backs when they crossed that desert.
Then they can be Ethiopians once again.
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
Update: "You Stupid Man"
Prashant Ajmera:
Indian immigration Attorney
with specialisation in foreign investment
and related masters
Facebook page screenshot
I looked up the lawyer (or lawyer candidate in Canada via Canada's multicultural immigration policy) that I mentioned in my previous post (originally from a 2012 Camera Lucida post - my pre-Reclaimaing Beauty commentary blog) and here s what found (short story I was right).
Prashant Ajmera has since started his own law office in Dollard-des-Ormeaux, Qebec, but also runs an office in Gujarat, India (his home town).
Here is what he says about his firm's services:
Ajmera Law is an official web site of Indian law office of Prashant Ajmera & Associates which is a boutique law firm in India providing unique legal services to businessmen in India and outside India.Nothing in this man page about the firm's Canadan services.
Our law firm was established in 1984 and as an Indian law firm pioneered in providing services in the area of immigration and visa services since 1993 to professionals and businessmen from India and around world.
Over the years, firms have developed association with law firms around the world and has specialize in the services of assisting businessman from any country in the world to other country in the world in making investment for residency and citizenship. This are of practice of the firm brought new opportunity to the firm in the area of international trade and investment which firm is capable of providing thought their in house lawyers and professionals.
But in the middle of "professional" information about the firm and its employees (and founder), here is what we have:
An Indian lawyer (Gujarat Bar Association), Canadian citizen and a NRI since 1988, with more than 18 years of experience in international immigration and visa matters, including several years of experience in corporate migration law and international trade. Started law practice as an Assistant Advocate in the High Court of Gujarat, Ahmedabad, India, in the Office of the Additional Central Government Standing Council (Federal Government Attorney).So Canadian citizenship is not exclusive to one's "nationality." An "Indian Lawyer" can also be without any equivocation a Canadian citizen! There you have it!
And true to his Indian Nationality, Ajmera's major work at his law firm concerning Canadian issues is...drum roll...:
Indian Immigration, Work Visa, Residency and Sponsorship.
If your are interested in going to India to work (a great opportunity for all the Indian Diaspora), all the details are here.
If you are a wealthy ndan you can also get asssantce from Mrl .... to:
Invest...in foreign country [i.e. Canada for the purpose of obtaining residency and citizenshipThere you have it. Your one-stop-shop to make it out here.
His Facebook page is more direct. He identifies himself as an EB-5 Visa Consultant.
More on the EB-5 visa.
The EB-5 visa, employment-based fifth preference category or EB-5 Immigrant Investor Visa Program, created in 1990 by the Immigration Act of 1990, provides a method for eligible Immigrant Investors to become lawful permanent residents - informally known as "green card" holders - by investing at least $1,000,000 to finance a business in the United States that will employ at least 10 American workers." Most immigrant investors who use the EB-5 program invest in a targeted employment area (TEA): - a rural area or area with high unemployment - which lowers the investment threshold to $500,000. The EB-5 program is intended to encourage both "foreign investments and economic growth." The EB-5 Immigrant Investor Visa Program is one of five employment-based (EB) preference programs in the United States. [Source]
And just follow the global enterprise:
"You Stupid Man"
Post from 2012 at Camera Lucida, my blog before (and including) Reclaiming Beauty:
An Indian immigrant in Canada, with wife and child.
Eventually, this family will grow considerably.
And the "Canadian-born" children will pine after
a country - Indian - which they never knew, but
which they cannot separate themselves from.
Such is the multicultural invasion that is
occurring in Canada.
The story behind this photo is here.
The story behind this photo is here.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've written before about a changing Canada, a really transforming Canada, where almost everyone I walk by in the streets, in the malls, in the restaurants, is a non-white, Chinese or Indian (there are actually very few blacks in the major city centers, since most blacks stay in their neighborhoods either in the northern part of the city or in the Scarborough township of the Greater Toronto Area. Plus, there are much fewer blacks compared to other non-whites in Canada).
Yesterday, I was in my local Walmart. I like Walmart. It is a store established for cheaper goods, and even has a reasonably good grocery. Many of the products are Chinese made, but right now we have to survive, and boycotting Chinese goods will come with time (I can assure you).
I notice that these Chinese and Indian immigrants have no real etiquette. They talk really loudly, walk around in large groups taking up whole sidewalks, have no consideration for "side walk" etiquette of moving aside as someone comes towards them. And the men have no courtesy toward women.
Yesterday, I refused to cede my "path" to an approaching Indian man, as usual. He walked right into me. I just kept walking on.
The man ran after me with, "You stupid woman!" He had a distinct Indian accent. I turned around and said, automatically, "You stupid man!" He was red-hot furious, and lunged towards me as though to attack me. I was standing in line by then, and just turned around away from him.
In a flash, he realized what he was doing. Did he really want a scuffle in Walmart? I was clearly standing there ready for his confrontation. He skidded into a halt, stood for half a second watching me, then went about his way.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've said before that we are going to have to do a lot of fighting as we figure out what to do with this invasion of Indians and Chinese "immigrants" who have no intention of assimilating, and are working now decidedly to change the country and culture to their advantage.
One obvious strategy is of course to reduce all immigration into Canada, including the so-called "education" and "economic" immigration, where candidates are accepted by the amount of financial investment they bring with them, and the level of education they have acquired. This should be strictly kept with Asian immigrants (Indian and Chinese), who seem to be the highest applicants for this kind of immigration, and less so for European immigrants (British, and even Polish and Russian). Refugees from Africa and Latin America can be accommodated in nearby countries (Somali refugees in Kenya or Ethiopia for example), and eventually returned to their countries of origin when war and other crisis situations have subsided.
How about the ones already here? And not only the ones already here, but their offspring who now call themselves "Canadian"?
One proposal I've made is to find incentives to send these immigrants and especially their "Canadian" children back to their original countries, either through monetary gifts, or by inter-governmental arrangements through employment centers and universities. And to make their stay in those countries permanent. In other words, once they accept these incentives, they cannot return back to Canada without a formal re-application for immigration. The acceptance of re-applying immigrants can be fine-tuned to reduce the re-acceptance level to a minimum, and preferably to zero.
The other strategy is to phase out and eventually remove "multiculturalism" in Canada, both legally and culturally. The Canadian documents which profess Canada to be a multicultural country should be revised, and state the Western, British nature of the country. All multicultural programs, whether on television or in other media institutions, schools, employment centers, and even business areas like shopping centers and restaurants, should be phased out. If a business wants to go "multicultural" as in a French restaurant wanting to be "French," then it is up to the business to make that happen, and not some special government fund.
This true Canadianness will either be accepted or rejected by these immigrants, and their descendants. I would say that the majority of non-whites will reject it. This unwelcoming environment will eventually become difficult for them. And with the combination of strategies provided above, they will start to leave on their own. Already, Chinese and Indian immigrant off-spring are "re-acquainting" themselves with their ancestral countries by traveling there for vists, and some are staying and re-establishing their lives there.
The alternative is that there will be a confrontation between immigrants (this is now a generic word I will use for all non-white immigrants - first, second, third, etc. generation) and whites. Immigrants will refuse the white, European and Western nature of Canada, and will fight to have it resemble their own conditions. Whites are now beginning to realize what they've lost, or are losing, and will begin to start to reclaim their land and culture, since especially after their decades-long acceptance of these others, all they are getting is epithets of "racist" and "prejudiced" by these same immigrants.
This may take some time, but with incremental changes, and a combination of all the strategies and scenarios above, it may be sooner than we think.
An Indian immigrant in Canada, with wife and child.
Eventually, this family will grow considerably.
And the "Canadian-born" children will pine after
a country - Indian - which they never knew, but
which they cannot separate themselves from.
Such is the multicultural invasion that is
occurring in Canada.
The story behind this photo is here.
The story behind this photo is here.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've written before about a changing Canada, a really transforming Canada, where almost everyone I walk by in the streets, in the malls, in the restaurants, is a non-white, Chinese or Indian (there are actually very few blacks in the major city centers, since most blacks stay in their neighborhoods either in the northern part of the city or in the Scarborough township of the Greater Toronto Area. Plus, there are much fewer blacks compared to other non-whites in Canada).
Yesterday, I was in my local Walmart. I like Walmart. It is a store established for cheaper goods, and even has a reasonably good grocery. Many of the products are Chinese made, but right now we have to survive, and boycotting Chinese goods will come with time (I can assure you).
I notice that these Chinese and Indian immigrants have no real etiquette. They talk really loudly, walk around in large groups taking up whole sidewalks, have no consideration for "side walk" etiquette of moving aside as someone comes towards them. And the men have no courtesy toward women.
Yesterday, I refused to cede my "path" to an approaching Indian man, as usual. He walked right into me. I just kept walking on.
The man ran after me with, "You stupid woman!" He had a distinct Indian accent. I turned around and said, automatically, "You stupid man!" He was red-hot furious, and lunged towards me as though to attack me. I was standing in line by then, and just turned around away from him.
In a flash, he realized what he was doing. Did he really want a scuffle in Walmart? I was clearly standing there ready for his confrontation. He skidded into a halt, stood for half a second watching me, then went about his way.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've said before that we are going to have to do a lot of fighting as we figure out what to do with this invasion of Indians and Chinese "immigrants" who have no intention of assimilating, and are working now decidedly to change the country and culture to their advantage.
One obvious strategy is of course to reduce all immigration into Canada, including the so-called "education" and "economic" immigration, where candidates are accepted by the amount of financial investment they bring with them, and the level of education they have acquired. This should be strictly kept with Asian immigrants (Indian and Chinese), who seem to be the highest applicants for this kind of immigration, and less so for European immigrants (British, and even Polish and Russian). Refugees from Africa and Latin America can be accommodated in nearby countries (Somali refugees in Kenya or Ethiopia for example), and eventually returned to their countries of origin when war and other crisis situations have subsided.
How about the ones already here? And not only the ones already here, but their offspring who now call themselves "Canadian"?
One proposal I've made is to find incentives to send these immigrants and especially their "Canadian" children back to their original countries, either through monetary gifts, or by inter-governmental arrangements through employment centers and universities. And to make their stay in those countries permanent. In other words, once they accept these incentives, they cannot return back to Canada without a formal re-application for immigration. The acceptance of re-applying immigrants can be fine-tuned to reduce the re-acceptance level to a minimum, and preferably to zero.
The other strategy is to phase out and eventually remove "multiculturalism" in Canada, both legally and culturally. The Canadian documents which profess Canada to be a multicultural country should be revised, and state the Western, British nature of the country. All multicultural programs, whether on television or in other media institutions, schools, employment centers, and even business areas like shopping centers and restaurants, should be phased out. If a business wants to go "multicultural" as in a French restaurant wanting to be "French," then it is up to the business to make that happen, and not some special government fund.
This true Canadianness will either be accepted or rejected by these immigrants, and their descendants. I would say that the majority of non-whites will reject it. This unwelcoming environment will eventually become difficult for them. And with the combination of strategies provided above, they will start to leave on their own. Already, Chinese and Indian immigrant off-spring are "re-acquainting" themselves with their ancestral countries by traveling there for vists, and some are staying and re-establishing their lives there.
The alternative is that there will be a confrontation between immigrants (this is now a generic word I will use for all non-white immigrants - first, second, third, etc. generation) and whites. Immigrants will refuse the white, European and Western nature of Canada, and will fight to have it resemble their own conditions. Whites are now beginning to realize what they've lost, or are losing, and will begin to start to reclaim their land and culture, since especially after their decades-long acceptance of these others, all they are getting is epithets of "racist" and "prejudiced" by these same immigrants.
This may take some time, but with incremental changes, and a combination of all the strategies and scenarios above, it may be sooner than we think.
Saturday, June 3, 2017
Thirteen Provinces and Multiculturalism?
These were the alternate designs submitted to a focus group.
But why wasn't the simple 13 maple leaves design, representing the thirteen provinces, within two thin blue circles, chosen?
But then, where would they put all that multiculturalism?
How Multiculturalism Infantilizes design
2017 1967
The winning design for Canada's Sesquicentennial anniversary is a rip off from the winning design for the Centennial Anniversary.
Both represent the Maple Leaf, although the 150th designer does so somewhat reluctantly.
And both are stuck on "multiculturalism."
I've said many times that "multiculturalism" makes for bad design.
Here is an article I posted at Camera Lucida in 2008:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
July 19, 2008
How Multiculturalism Infantilizes design
I haven't yet read Diana West's book The Death of the Grown-up, but here is an interesting insight she makes while answering questions on an interview on National Review Online:
Kathryn Jean Lopez: How are “dhimmi life under Islam” and “PC life in a multicultural world” similar?I remember looking at logos of institutions who stressed diversity either in their title, or in their mission statements, and found this very same infantilizing going on at the design level.
Diana West: For me, this pairing was something of a “eureka” moment in the writing of the book.
I would describe PC life in a multiculti world as being marked in part by self-censorship based in fear — fear of professional failure, opprobrium or social ostracism. I would also describe this same self-censorship as a form of childishness. During one lecture on The Death of the Grown-Up, I took a question from a man who wondered, in a rather agitated way, if I were actually saying that multiculturalism is juvenile. I hadn’t phrased things that way, but, on quick reflection, I told him that, yes, that was indeed what I was saying. The fact is, buying into multiculturalism — the outlook that sees all cultures as being of equal value (except the West, which is essentially vile) — requires us to repress our faculties of logic, and this in itself is an infantilizing act. I mean, it’s patently illogical to accept and teach our children the notion that a culture that has brought liberty and penicillin to the masses is of no greater value than others that haven’t. In accepting the multicultural worldview, we deceive ourselves into inhabiting a world of pretend where certain truths are out of bounds and remain unspoken — even verboten.
Since there are no standards, that everyone and everything is equal, logo designs stress the equality of all these elements to the detriment of their design.
I've already talked about the COSTI Immigrant Services logo, which went from a lovely clear red line, as though traveling into to the horizon, to me signifying the release of the new immigrant into the bigger and greater society, into a disheveled, hardly stable umbrella which is trying hard to shade all those diverse elements under its inadequate roof. By forfeiting their strong message of "you can make it," they turned it into a half-hearted, insincere, "we'll protect you."
The same with the Ontario logo design which had a solid, identifiable trillium and withstood all the elements for several decades, until diversity entered the vocabulary. The logo devolved into three stick-figure like objects, hardly resembling the strong structure of the original.
Stick figures abound in diversity logos, as well as bright crayola colors. How childish can they be?
So, yes, as Diana West says, multiculturalism does infantalize. And a logo doesn't lie.
I wonder how long before either we change these logos (I hope COSTI comes to its senses), or we abolish these institutions altogether.
Here are a selection of logos I found just by googling: Canada diversity.
 |  |
Right: Canada's Best Diversity Employers
 |  |
Right: Harmony Movement
 |  |
Right: Ontario's new logo resembling stick figures
 |  |
Right: Hamilton's Centre for Civic Inclusion
Even those that seem to show some form of artistic design - for example, some idea of composition etc. - actually show their weaknesses through obvious signs of childishness.
These two from Culturescope.ca look interesting (although there is actually nothing to see, hence another indication of a lack of good design) but also have scribbles of lines going through them.
 |
And there are many more.
Addendum: Culturescope.ca no longer exists. As this website indicates:
As a result of a Strategic Review of Government of Canada, Culturescope.ca has been discontinued since April 1st, 2008 as the original program objectives have been fulfilled. The digital space has evolved tremendously since the Canadian Cultural Observatory was created in 2003 and the website still contains rich resources and documents on diverse thematic areas.The evolution of culturescope.ca fulfilled these objectives:
The Canadian Cultural Observatory (Observatory) and Culturescope.ca: The Department of Canadian Heritage launched the Observatory in November 2003 to provide statistics and information on cultural and heritage policies, programmes, legislation and regulations. Its objectives are to advance cultural development in Canada by fostering responsive research, encouraging informed decision-making in policy and planning, and stimulating community debate and improved knowledge exchange. Culturescope.ca is the Observatory's collaborative, interactive website developed in partnership with the not-for-profit, private and public sectors...[Source]But we still keep coming back to those multi-culti stick designs.
Tuesday, March 7, 2017
Let us be Ourselves: Part 2
Here is part one of my post.
--------------------------------
Amhara has a right to self defense
By Dr. Abel Joseph
.
Despite so many people, including some mindless Amharas denying the existence of Amhara people, we Amharas are the proud and dignified people, which have contributed so much to build Ethiopia as a nation.
Unfortunately, we had individuals like Waleligne mekonen who had betrayed their own people and characterized us as oppressive to appease their Eritrean mentors.
We have the drunkard Endrias Eshete, who humiliated the Amhara people by taking responsibility in which the Amhara people had nothing to do with it.
We have so many Amharas who are ashamed of to be called Amharas, and seeking other excuse to justify their house negro manner.
Sadly, those self hate Amharas do not have any notion about the mortal danger hovering over our head. Surprisingly, they prefer to ignore the danger and pretend as if everything is smooth and fine.
Even some of us are foolishly expecting others to defend Amhara, and instead of standing with our own people, we have chosen to adhere with others and embrace them as savors.
Of course, the Amhara haters love to see the self hate as well as the sycophant Amharas who are willing to betray their own people and serve them.
We have seen, some perfidious Amharas have been glorified by the Amharophobic for their betrayal act.
We have seen those mindless Amharas have been embraced as a love child by those who are wishing bad to Amhara people.
However, in spite of such betrayal act and bad wish, the people of Amhara remain as proud as before with unshakable integrity and valor.
There is no question that our people are in great danger, and those who are trying to eliminate us are working tirelessly with the help of self hate Amharas.
If we accept it or not, our current condition is as the same as the second world European Jews, and anti-Amhara tendency seems rampant in Ethiopia.
Even every loser tend to blame Amhara for his or his groups incompetency. We have been used as a scapegoat to every power-monger as well as unscrupulous individuals.
Nonetheless, we Amharas should understand the magnitude of danger we are in, and prepare to defend ourselves by any means necessary.
We need to humiliate those who have humiliated us.
We need to break the neck of those who have shed our blood.
Everyone of us should respond to the call, and ready to fight against those who are determine to eliminate us.
It is our own responsibility to fight back and preparing a stepping stone to the next generation.
We should not allowed our children to inherit poverty, humiliation, and defeat, instead we should leave behind something to have them proud of.
Being fooled by those who are naively expecting others to hand our freedom should end now, and we should start taking responsibility for our own freedom and survival.
we should stand together and firm in order to twist the arms of the Tigrian thugs who have been killing and robbing us.
Monday, March 6, 2017
The Left vs. Human Nature: "Let us all be ourselves"
I wrote the previous post "Let us all be ourselves" after I read the title and a couple of lines of this one below, written by Jim Kalb.
I alreadyknew what he was gong to say, and I was right.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Left vs. Human Nature
Jim Kalb
The Imaginative Conservative
Mar 3, 2015
The Left does not like the idea of human nature. It tells them they are not free to do what they want. From a factual perspective, it tells them people do not change much, so the way things were in the past is mostly how they will be in the future. From a moral perspective, it suggests a standard for what is good other than satisfying desire, since it tells people to act in a way that fulfills their nature, or at least is suited to it.
The Left does not like any of that and they have been very successful turning their dislike into accepted dogma. The result is that if you talk about human nature today you are not going to get anywhere. People will say you are stereotyping, you are denying Hope and Change, and you are presenting existing power relations as natural and unchangeable. You will have to prove every detail of every claim and the standard of proof will be infinitely high. Also, none of your arguments will stick—next time the matter comes up, you will have to go through every issue all over again at the same level of detail.
All of which seems odd. On the face of it every living thing has a nature of some kind. It has characteristic ways of acting, conditions it tries to bring about, and conditions that help it thrive. Why would that not be true of human beings? Is accepting human nature not basic to good sense in dealing with people? If the point looks obvious, why is it not generally accepted, or at least generally acceptable as something to consider?
As it is, people dismiss it without discussion. The result is that claims like “gender is a social construction” get taken seriously and, in fact, are basically treated as true. There are Midwestern public schools that tell teachers they should not use expressions like “boy” and “girl” because they are gendered. That is the new normal.
General acceptance of insane views can cause problems, so it is worth asking how we have ended up in this situation. The cause, I believe, is a tendency in modern ways of thinking to try to do too much with too little. The result is that people end up becoming irrational in the name of reason.
The Left is said to be progressive. That means that they apply modern thought to social affairs more single-mindedly than other people. That gives them a big rhetorical advantage. If you oppose them you are opposing the general movement of thought and once the modern world is thoroughly established, and everyone who matters has been subjected to mass higher education, you are opposing what everyone’s been trained to view as reason.
The modern thought I am talking about, which I think is the main tendency if you cut through a lot of fluff that ends up canceling itself out, tries to make knowledge rigorous and useful by concentrating on exact observation and immediate causal mechanism. It tries to use that knowledge to remake the world in accordance with whatever it is we want. That is what technology is about and it is what the functional part of the Left is about.
That general approach has been extremely effective in some settings. Obvious examples include modern natural science, modern industry, modern medicine, and modern warfare. So, everyone agrees that it works and makes sense.
There is not the same agreement as to other types of thought; for example philosophical thought of various kinds, religious thought, poetic thought, or thought based on tradition or informal good sense. The result is that reason has become identified with scientific thought, or at least what passes as such. Reason has to be common to all and the only kind of thought all accept is the kind associated with modern science, so that is what reason is understood to be.
That is a problem because people need answers to ultimate questions. That is a rational as well as emotional need. Part of what it is to be a rational actor is to act in accordance with a rational understanding of the situation you are in, and what makes most sense to do in that situation. If reason is modern scientific thought, and we want to be rational actors, then modern scientific thought has to give us that kind of understanding. It has to give us usable answers to questions about what actions, and therefore what goals, ultimately make sense. In other words, it has to tell us what the good is as well as how to bring it about.
The problem, of course, is that it cannot. Modern scientific thought is powerful because it limits itself. It does not claim to know everything and it will not give us an answer just because we need one. We do need to know what the good is, what the most reasonable goal of action is. “I feel like doing this” is enough for some people in some situations but it is not enough for everyone always. In particular, it is not enough in politics. Government has to be able to tell people that its demands are reasonable in a sense that is strong enough to justify compulsion and sacrifice, which is a very strong sense. With that in mind, it is not enough for government to say, “we are doing this because the guys running things feel like doing it.” In the end there has to be a believable argument why they should feel that way and why everyone else should too.
Modern progressive people need answers and they do not have a good way to get them, so they extract them any way they can from something that looks as much as possible like scientific thought.
For example, they make preferences, which are observable, substitute for the good. Instead of talking about what is good, they talk about satisfying preferences. That is what liberation means: People get what they choose. They make equality substitute for justice: All preferences are equally preferences, so they all have an equal claim to satisfaction. Put the two together and you get the progressive definition of the good society: It is the society that brings about maximum equal preference satisfaction.
They get very moralistic on the point. If you do not like their definition of the good society you are malicious, bigoted, greedy, and oppressive. They need the moralism because they do not have a reason why people should give up personal advantage for the sake of something else. They have a reason why the system in general should favor equality, but not why any of us should make the goals of the system our own. So they have to substitute abuse for reason.
The progressive definition of the good society has some important implications. It means you have to stop accepting general patterns, such as human nature, as a way of dealing with life. If satisfying preferences is the goal, going with the patterns that happen to exist is not the way to get there. If anything, those patterns get in the way of your freedom to get whatever it is you happen to want, so the progressive view is that you should suppress them or make them irrelevant.
That attitude is very much in line with modern technology. A traditional art or craft accepts the nature of its materials with all their special quirks and works with them. Modern technology would rather break down situations into their simplest components and apply a set routine that works equally well everywhere and gets you whatever goal you have specified. Traditional farming, medicine, and cooking, for example, took various aspects of living forms and their tendencies as a given and worked with them. Agribusiness, Big Pharma, and the food industry take a very different approach. The difference has a lot in common with the difference between politics as traditionally practiced and modern progressive politics. The latter is technocratic, so that its goals are defined abstractly by preference rigorously, rather than intuitively and with the aid of tradition and good sense.
Some of the odd features of political and social life today show how these general principles play out. People have traditionally believed in human nature. They have believed, for example, that men and women exist by nature, and mutual attraction and complementary qualities naturally lead them to come together, to have offspring, and form families. Both points, of course, are now denied. They have also thought that people are naturally social, and families are incomplete by themselves, so families come together to form larger communities.
When people began thinking about things somewhat philosophically, they noticed that man is rational, which means that he uses reason and general concepts to understand the world. An important part of that is understanding himself and what he does. For that reason, he has to have a conception of what he is—he is a man, a father, a husband, a citizen—that is somehow rooted in the nature of things, and his actions have to align with that conception. Otherwise he will not be satisfied with his life—it will not seem well founded and it will not seem to make sense as part of the general scheme of things. That is the source of the idea that human nature is a guide for life, so that our natural goal is to live in a way that realizes our good as beings of a certain kind.
If you accept that way of thinking, a lot of modern perplexities disappear. You can still debate the exact role of government, the details of masculinity and femininity, and the extent of family and paternal authority, but it does not make sense to claim that there is something radically problematic about all those things, that we should look at them as chains we have to break for the sake of the unconditioned freedom that constitutes human dignity.
The kind of modern thought I am talking about, which tends toward the technological, of course tells us something different. It tells us that man is a mechanical system that responds to stimuli. He forms preferences revealed in his actions, but those preferences are whatever they happen to be and do not have any relation to a nonexistent human essence or nature that tells us what to do because we are somehow supposed to fit into it.
Progressive politics is the application of this latter outlook to the organization of society. It proposes a system that maximizes equal fulfillment of preferences, consistent with coherence, efficiency, and stability. That means, to pick a current example, that physical sex differences and the biology of human reproduction, imply nothing about what anyone should do except in the narrowest practical sense; for example whether someone might need a pregnancy test. Apart from that kind of situation, natural functions and differences are just raw material to be dealt with and reconfigured in accordance with whatever individual preferences happen to be.
So people should be free to set up their sex lives however they want, and if they want to include something sex-related in their self-understanding, they should be free to do so as they wish. It is free to be you and me and if two men say they are married, they are married, and if Bradley Manning says he is a woman, he is a woman, and he has the same right anyone has to have his self-understanding accepted as valid. There is nothing natural or unnatural about it, it is all just something constructed.
All of this is becoming harder and harder to argue against in mainstream public life and the ratchet only turns one-way. Rejecting the trend is even considered a kind of violence, since it leads to a social environment at odds with Chelsea Manning’s new identity, and therefore constitutes an existential threat to her ability to exist as herself. In effect, it is a willful attempt to destroy what she is. In the interests of justice, tolerance, safety, and the conflict-free efficiency of the system as a whole, those who commit such acts, even if they claim their aggressions are “just words,” need to be muted and re-educated.
Nonetheless, it is obvious that the current situation is insane. Human nature exists, as we noted at the beginning, and we cannot deal with life in a sensible way without accepting that. So the question we face is how to overcome an outlook that categorically rejects the very concept and is deeply rooted in the way the people who dominate our political life understand the world.
These are very deep waters and there is not time to discuss the entire problem, but it seems to me there are two general approaches we might take to the situation. One sticks as closely as possible to the modern scientific outlook as the best overall guide to human life, so it treats human nature as fact but not principle; that is, it recognizes that human beings have natural tendencies that shape and limit what is possible for them, but does not let that fact tell us what we should do about those tendencies.
It seems to me that approach is insufficient because it does not change the Leftist goal. We still have the line of thought that tells you that the good society is a social machine that maximizes equal preference satisfaction in a stable and reliable way. What changes is that you have discovered that more radical measures will be needed to achieve that society. So you get a sort of Leftist version of human bio-diversity, whose natural outcome is left-wing transhumanism, in effect the creation of New Soviet Man through bio-engineering and total environmental control as the highest social goal. In other words, you get inhuman ideological tyranny taken to a whole new level.
The other way is to accept human nature as a principle, so that fulfilling our nature is understood as a fundamental guide to life. But that means accepting that nature is good and we can trust its guidance. You can find that view in Christianity and also in various classical views such as stoicism; you can also find it in the non-Western world, for example in Confucius and Mencius. You are not going to get it out of the modern scientific understanding of the world if you take that understanding as the ultimate explanation of what is real, rather than a partial explanation that results from accepting certain limits on the type of inquiry you will pursue.
To summarize, it seems that the problem people have with human nature today has to do with the current view of nature as pure blind fact. That view makes it morally impossible to treat nature as a substantive guide for how to live. The result, unless we ignore the facts and say human beings do not have a nature, is a choice between a technological approach leading to Left-wing transhumanism and a humanist approach based on a religious or philosophical outlook that sees moral principle as implicit in nature. The practical question, if you take the latter approach, is what outlook of that kind best fits the world we live in and how such an outlook can be embodied in a stable tradition sufficient to motivate the life of a society.
But those are big issues we are not going to resolve today.
I alreadyknew what he was gong to say, and I was right.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Left vs. Human Nature
Jim Kalb
The Imaginative Conservative
Mar 3, 2015
The Left does not like the idea of human nature. It tells them they are not free to do what they want. From a factual perspective, it tells them people do not change much, so the way things were in the past is mostly how they will be in the future. From a moral perspective, it suggests a standard for what is good other than satisfying desire, since it tells people to act in a way that fulfills their nature, or at least is suited to it.
The Left does not like any of that and they have been very successful turning their dislike into accepted dogma. The result is that if you talk about human nature today you are not going to get anywhere. People will say you are stereotyping, you are denying Hope and Change, and you are presenting existing power relations as natural and unchangeable. You will have to prove every detail of every claim and the standard of proof will be infinitely high. Also, none of your arguments will stick—next time the matter comes up, you will have to go through every issue all over again at the same level of detail.
All of which seems odd. On the face of it every living thing has a nature of some kind. It has characteristic ways of acting, conditions it tries to bring about, and conditions that help it thrive. Why would that not be true of human beings? Is accepting human nature not basic to good sense in dealing with people? If the point looks obvious, why is it not generally accepted, or at least generally acceptable as something to consider?
As it is, people dismiss it without discussion. The result is that claims like “gender is a social construction” get taken seriously and, in fact, are basically treated as true. There are Midwestern public schools that tell teachers they should not use expressions like “boy” and “girl” because they are gendered. That is the new normal.
General acceptance of insane views can cause problems, so it is worth asking how we have ended up in this situation. The cause, I believe, is a tendency in modern ways of thinking to try to do too much with too little. The result is that people end up becoming irrational in the name of reason.
The Left is said to be progressive. That means that they apply modern thought to social affairs more single-mindedly than other people. That gives them a big rhetorical advantage. If you oppose them you are opposing the general movement of thought and once the modern world is thoroughly established, and everyone who matters has been subjected to mass higher education, you are opposing what everyone’s been trained to view as reason.
The modern thought I am talking about, which I think is the main tendency if you cut through a lot of fluff that ends up canceling itself out, tries to make knowledge rigorous and useful by concentrating on exact observation and immediate causal mechanism. It tries to use that knowledge to remake the world in accordance with whatever it is we want. That is what technology is about and it is what the functional part of the Left is about.
That general approach has been extremely effective in some settings. Obvious examples include modern natural science, modern industry, modern medicine, and modern warfare. So, everyone agrees that it works and makes sense.
There is not the same agreement as to other types of thought; for example philosophical thought of various kinds, religious thought, poetic thought, or thought based on tradition or informal good sense. The result is that reason has become identified with scientific thought, or at least what passes as such. Reason has to be common to all and the only kind of thought all accept is the kind associated with modern science, so that is what reason is understood to be.
That is a problem because people need answers to ultimate questions. That is a rational as well as emotional need. Part of what it is to be a rational actor is to act in accordance with a rational understanding of the situation you are in, and what makes most sense to do in that situation. If reason is modern scientific thought, and we want to be rational actors, then modern scientific thought has to give us that kind of understanding. It has to give us usable answers to questions about what actions, and therefore what goals, ultimately make sense. In other words, it has to tell us what the good is as well as how to bring it about.
The problem, of course, is that it cannot. Modern scientific thought is powerful because it limits itself. It does not claim to know everything and it will not give us an answer just because we need one. We do need to know what the good is, what the most reasonable goal of action is. “I feel like doing this” is enough for some people in some situations but it is not enough for everyone always. In particular, it is not enough in politics. Government has to be able to tell people that its demands are reasonable in a sense that is strong enough to justify compulsion and sacrifice, which is a very strong sense. With that in mind, it is not enough for government to say, “we are doing this because the guys running things feel like doing it.” In the end there has to be a believable argument why they should feel that way and why everyone else should too.
Modern progressive people need answers and they do not have a good way to get them, so they extract them any way they can from something that looks as much as possible like scientific thought.
For example, they make preferences, which are observable, substitute for the good. Instead of talking about what is good, they talk about satisfying preferences. That is what liberation means: People get what they choose. They make equality substitute for justice: All preferences are equally preferences, so they all have an equal claim to satisfaction. Put the two together and you get the progressive definition of the good society: It is the society that brings about maximum equal preference satisfaction.
They get very moralistic on the point. If you do not like their definition of the good society you are malicious, bigoted, greedy, and oppressive. They need the moralism because they do not have a reason why people should give up personal advantage for the sake of something else. They have a reason why the system in general should favor equality, but not why any of us should make the goals of the system our own. So they have to substitute abuse for reason.
The progressive definition of the good society has some important implications. It means you have to stop accepting general patterns, such as human nature, as a way of dealing with life. If satisfying preferences is the goal, going with the patterns that happen to exist is not the way to get there. If anything, those patterns get in the way of your freedom to get whatever it is you happen to want, so the progressive view is that you should suppress them or make them irrelevant.
That attitude is very much in line with modern technology. A traditional art or craft accepts the nature of its materials with all their special quirks and works with them. Modern technology would rather break down situations into their simplest components and apply a set routine that works equally well everywhere and gets you whatever goal you have specified. Traditional farming, medicine, and cooking, for example, took various aspects of living forms and their tendencies as a given and worked with them. Agribusiness, Big Pharma, and the food industry take a very different approach. The difference has a lot in common with the difference between politics as traditionally practiced and modern progressive politics. The latter is technocratic, so that its goals are defined abstractly by preference rigorously, rather than intuitively and with the aid of tradition and good sense.
Some of the odd features of political and social life today show how these general principles play out. People have traditionally believed in human nature. They have believed, for example, that men and women exist by nature, and mutual attraction and complementary qualities naturally lead them to come together, to have offspring, and form families. Both points, of course, are now denied. They have also thought that people are naturally social, and families are incomplete by themselves, so families come together to form larger communities.
When people began thinking about things somewhat philosophically, they noticed that man is rational, which means that he uses reason and general concepts to understand the world. An important part of that is understanding himself and what he does. For that reason, he has to have a conception of what he is—he is a man, a father, a husband, a citizen—that is somehow rooted in the nature of things, and his actions have to align with that conception. Otherwise he will not be satisfied with his life—it will not seem well founded and it will not seem to make sense as part of the general scheme of things. That is the source of the idea that human nature is a guide for life, so that our natural goal is to live in a way that realizes our good as beings of a certain kind.
If you accept that way of thinking, a lot of modern perplexities disappear. You can still debate the exact role of government, the details of masculinity and femininity, and the extent of family and paternal authority, but it does not make sense to claim that there is something radically problematic about all those things, that we should look at them as chains we have to break for the sake of the unconditioned freedom that constitutes human dignity.
The kind of modern thought I am talking about, which tends toward the technological, of course tells us something different. It tells us that man is a mechanical system that responds to stimuli. He forms preferences revealed in his actions, but those preferences are whatever they happen to be and do not have any relation to a nonexistent human essence or nature that tells us what to do because we are somehow supposed to fit into it.
Progressive politics is the application of this latter outlook to the organization of society. It proposes a system that maximizes equal fulfillment of preferences, consistent with coherence, efficiency, and stability. That means, to pick a current example, that physical sex differences and the biology of human reproduction, imply nothing about what anyone should do except in the narrowest practical sense; for example whether someone might need a pregnancy test. Apart from that kind of situation, natural functions and differences are just raw material to be dealt with and reconfigured in accordance with whatever individual preferences happen to be.
So people should be free to set up their sex lives however they want, and if they want to include something sex-related in their self-understanding, they should be free to do so as they wish. It is free to be you and me and if two men say they are married, they are married, and if Bradley Manning says he is a woman, he is a woman, and he has the same right anyone has to have his self-understanding accepted as valid. There is nothing natural or unnatural about it, it is all just something constructed.
All of this is becoming harder and harder to argue against in mainstream public life and the ratchet only turns one-way. Rejecting the trend is even considered a kind of violence, since it leads to a social environment at odds with Chelsea Manning’s new identity, and therefore constitutes an existential threat to her ability to exist as herself. In effect, it is a willful attempt to destroy what she is. In the interests of justice, tolerance, safety, and the conflict-free efficiency of the system as a whole, those who commit such acts, even if they claim their aggressions are “just words,” need to be muted and re-educated.
Nonetheless, it is obvious that the current situation is insane. Human nature exists, as we noted at the beginning, and we cannot deal with life in a sensible way without accepting that. So the question we face is how to overcome an outlook that categorically rejects the very concept and is deeply rooted in the way the people who dominate our political life understand the world.
These are very deep waters and there is not time to discuss the entire problem, but it seems to me there are two general approaches we might take to the situation. One sticks as closely as possible to the modern scientific outlook as the best overall guide to human life, so it treats human nature as fact but not principle; that is, it recognizes that human beings have natural tendencies that shape and limit what is possible for them, but does not let that fact tell us what we should do about those tendencies.
It seems to me that approach is insufficient because it does not change the Leftist goal. We still have the line of thought that tells you that the good society is a social machine that maximizes equal preference satisfaction in a stable and reliable way. What changes is that you have discovered that more radical measures will be needed to achieve that society. So you get a sort of Leftist version of human bio-diversity, whose natural outcome is left-wing transhumanism, in effect the creation of New Soviet Man through bio-engineering and total environmental control as the highest social goal. In other words, you get inhuman ideological tyranny taken to a whole new level.
The other way is to accept human nature as a principle, so that fulfilling our nature is understood as a fundamental guide to life. But that means accepting that nature is good and we can trust its guidance. You can find that view in Christianity and also in various classical views such as stoicism; you can also find it in the non-Western world, for example in Confucius and Mencius. You are not going to get it out of the modern scientific understanding of the world if you take that understanding as the ultimate explanation of what is real, rather than a partial explanation that results from accepting certain limits on the type of inquiry you will pursue.
To summarize, it seems that the problem people have with human nature today has to do with the current view of nature as pure blind fact. That view makes it morally impossible to treat nature as a substantive guide for how to live. The result, unless we ignore the facts and say human beings do not have a nature, is a choice between a technological approach leading to Left-wing transhumanism and a humanist approach based on a religious or philosophical outlook that sees moral principle as implicit in nature. The practical question, if you take the latter approach, is what outlook of that kind best fits the world we live in and how such an outlook can be embodied in a stable tradition sufficient to motivate the life of a society.
But those are big issues we are not going to resolve today.
Let us all be ourselves
Tamra Maryam (Small Miracles of the Blessed Virgin Mary)
Ethiopian, mid-18th century
64 leaves, 165 x 253 mm
Private Collection
(Righy: Saint George, Patron Saint of Ethiopia)
Here is an email from a correspondent:
Interesting article in the mainstream media critical of ETH [Ethiopian] government--I believe for the first time.My replay:
Who needs Trump when the Chinese are already there.
Link
The article answers its own question:
"Why despite ever-increasing amounts of foreign support can't this nation of 100 million clever, enterprising people feed itself?"
with:
"Ethiopia is aflame with rebellions..."
It is the same old story. Rival ethnic, regional and international groups instigate unrest and rebellion. The government is focused on dampening down these rebels and unrest, and other national efforts and responsibilities like economic and agricultural development suffer as a consequence.
I've always said that Ethiopia should be divided into regional countries.
Let the Amhara, the Tigre, the Oromo etc. have their own regions. Let them do what they want with their new countries.
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
"Je pense que mon métissage est une force"
Miss France 2014 being crowned
We think that through our multicultural mind-set, other cultures will follow our (pious) example.
Well, people don't want to change.
The new Miss France is a metisse: the offspring of a black mother and a white father.
I've tried to find a current definition (and translation) of "metissage" but have decided to keep the word in its French. Tiberge from Gallia Watch has come to the same conclusion, and explains her decision here. She writes:
Here is my rendition of his words. It is far from perfect, because his grammar seems a bit off at times. Except for two places, I have retained the French word "métissage" (crossbreeding), and it's various verbal and adjectival forms, since "crossbreeding", "racial mixing" and other similar terms don't always convey the right meaning. "Crossbreeding" sounds too scientific, as when farmers crossbreed crops. "Miscegenation" is too technical and refers to marriage. "Mongrelization" and "bastardization" are too graphic. It looks as if "métissage" will join "laïcité" and "communautarisme" as French words that are so troublesome, it's better to just leave them.This Metisse Miss France says:
"I think that my metissage is a strength."
Which is a variation on "Diversity Our Strength."
She says about her "metissage":
Je pense que mon métissage est une force. Ca montre que la France d’aujourd’hui est une France mélangée où il y a toutes les cultures. Et je pense que beaucoup de personnes peuvent se retrouver en moi, que ce soit les Français de souche ou les Français d’origines diverses.--------------------------------------
I think my miscegenation is a strength. It shows that today's France is a mixed France, which has all cultures. And I think that many people can identify themselves in me, whether they are "les Français de souche" or those french from diverse origins .Some notes on the translation:
- "find themselves in me" implies a deep, even ancestral identification rather than through skin color or looks.
- "Les Français de souche" is a difficult phrase to translate, and Tiberge has given a brief definition here, where she writes: "[I]n French the word "souche" means "root", a "Français de souche" being, therefore, an ethnic Frenchman."
- Rather than say "French of diverse cultures" Miss France goes one step back and says French of diverse origins, as though these are not French people - i.e. les Français de souche - but other peoples of the world. But more specifically, she means French of diverse origins who come from non-European countries.
Miss France is pretty. I thought she was Arab when I first saw her photo, and that her "metissage" was white and Arab. But, here are her parents:
Miss France's parents
Her father is from Orleans, the heartland of France, in the beautiful Loire Valley, in whose town center stands a statue of Joan of Arc.
Her mother is from the west African country Benin.
Statue of Joan of Arc in the city square of Orleans
Statue of King Toffa in Porto Novo, Benin
She looks nothing like either of them. How does she identify with her parents? Children often resemble at least one of their parents, and if they have siblings, the resemblances would be distributed amongst the two parents. They can say "I come from that family," which of course leads to the bigger identification of "I come from that culture," and eventually "I come from that country."
Although Miss France's mother speaks fluent French, she has a slight accent. French is the official language of Benin, which also has a plethora of indigenous languages. Most African countries which were colonized by the British or the French use these European languages as their official ones, but also speak one or more other native language.
I wonder how Flora reacted to her mother's accent growing up? Young children are very discerning of differences. This must have accentuated her mother's "otherness" to her even more. Her father, like her, speaks French like a Frenchman.
Miss France has to invent an identity for her amorphous and difficult-to-identify mixed-parentage of such different racial and national backgrounds. Even countries where metissage is common in the core identity of the country, like Brazil, for example, the strong and confident groups are not the metisse, but those who claim a particular racial group, like blacks or whites. In Canada, there is a racial group called Metisse, but they have never forged alliances either with the "Natives Canadians," i.e. those with Indian ancestry, or with whites. Their cultural and political, and even personal, strength is minimal.
I don't know how strong metissage will prove in France. I don't think it is a strength, as Flora says above. Whites may be having a hard time identifying their whiteness with strength, but there is a group which is not at all shy of doing so, and it is growing in strength and in numbers: Muslims. And this group doesn't tolerate any kind of metissage, either in racial or religious terms. It jealously guards its religious, and cultural, identity. And it eventually seeks to put everyone within its own religious identity, possibly with hierarchical categorizations of Arab Muslims at the top and with white and black Muslims at the bottom of the ladder. The religious superiority of Islam is mandated through their religious book, the Koran. Muslims show this repeatedly throughout history in whatever country they have amassed numbers any strength. Why should France be any different? Where would the black and white metisse like Flora fall under this categorization?
Here is Flora's more specific association with her African roots:
"Je suis franco-béninoise. Je mets en avant mes deux origines. Mes parents ont une association au Bénin, qui vient en aide aux enfants et s'occupe du forage. Au cours de mon année, je souhaite soutenir l'insertion des femmes dans le travail et l'alphabétisation", a-t-elle expliqué après son sacre.Below is my translation:
I am Franco-Beninese. I give equal importance to both my backgrounds. My parents have an association in Benin, which helps children and drills wells. During my reign, I hope to provide work and literacy for women [in the Benin project, I presume].In the Wikipedia definition of Beninese (the English translation for Béninois) such a person is:
From Benin, or of Beninese descent.Flora thus identifies with the culture (or racio-culture) as well as the nationality of Benin.
Her metissage does not place her white and black backgrounds on an equal level: she is more black than white. Her diversity does not put all cultures on an equal footing: she is more Béninoise than Française.
Whenever a mixed-race child with one parent who is white and the other Asian, African or Hispanic, is asked to chose his identity, he will always identify with the non-white parent. This seems to be the rule of racial identity.
This of course also leads to identification with the non-white parent's cultural and national background, even as this mixed-race child lives, and benefits from, the culture, civilization and accomplishments of whites.
I will try to refine this and coin a definition (or definitions) in the manner of: First Law of non-whites' racial and cultural identification.
Flora in Benin as a small girl, visiting her cousins, as Mr. Coquerel informs us in this video.
Her parents kept her in direct contact with her mother's country from an early age.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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