If you didn't believe in supremacy (even just feeling culturally superior) why would you have a problem with people coming in?
Because you value your kin and culture, and wish to preserve them. Or because you believe other people have in-group preference, which means your group will be worse off from increased competition. It's no different than a new pack of wolves moving into another pack's territory. From that point of view, the absence of self-superiority beliefs increases nationalism, since if the other group is equal or better, they are more competitively dangerous.
Great point, I completely disagree with this viewpoint but I can understand the POV. If you view the world as a zero sum game and that cultures meeting act like wolves fighting over territory, then you can hold a nationalist view without supremacy. Unfortunately this world view is the zeitgeist (manifesting across the political spectrum), and kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If you view the world as a zero sum game and that cultures meeting act like wolves fighting over territory, then you can hold a nationalist view without supremacy.
I don't think you need to see it as a zero sum game. Only that conflict, violent or otherwise, is likely, and often organized along ethnic lines.
We could look at history to try to assess how true that is, but that would be a boring debate. I'm more interested in your opinion of my first point, which you skipped: what if you value your kin and culture? When it comes to biodiversity, other species, or even obscure tribes in the Andes, valuing their preservation is prevalent and uncontroversial [0]. Why not apply this same attitude to ourselves?
Both will inevitably be diluted through immigration. Culture is of course not static, even absent immigration, so "preserving" it has limited effectiveness. But perhaps you wish to see how your culture will grow and evolve, without mixing it with a different culture? Especially since culture, just like genes, is largely continuous - to simplify, if there are two countries with distinct cultures, there is probably a third country half-way between them that already has a mix of their cultures. In this sense, by importing cultures, you're not creating a "new" culture, you're just reducing cultural differences.
The same argument holds for genes, including the part about continuity [1]. It's popular to reduce this to skin color, but human genetic diversity covers far more. For example, all of the Big Five personality traits are hereditary [2], and likely so are other personality attributes that are harder to measure or define. Given how almost no variable human traits are evenly distributed among all groups, that means immigration quite literally changes the character of a country. Again, no invocation of "supremacy" is needed, just a desire for preservation. When this desire for preservation is directed externally, for example at Kashmir [3], it has no associated taboo.
[0] At least in the present. We are all aware how different attitudes used to be, with explicit efforts to colonize and "civilize" others, or destroying old cultures and identities to replace them with the New Soviet Man and Year Zero.
This is a lot to respond to here, so I won't be able to respond to all of these.
I didn't respond to valuing kin and culture since it wasn't clear what you meant by that. To be honest, it's still not totally clear - when you speak of culture being diluted, it sounds like you're talking about the influence that culture has on society as a whole? Or how many people in the society have that culture?
On the individual level, it seems like someone who grows up in a particular culture has that for life. People don't suddenly become Spanish, even if they live there from 30-50 years old. So in the course of your lifetime, your kin are still going to be there for you. But maybe you meant - if your kids don't have the same culture as yours. I don't totally understand why this would be a problem, unless they wanted to join some cult or something.
So if you meant preserving culture across generations, as you also mentioned, culture isn't static. Just look at how the culture of England changes from Tudor to Stuart, or from Victorian to Edwardian to modern era. You might say "Recent history is hard to compare to since influence from other countries has touched it and technology has changed so rapidly", but further back than that is not well documented, older histories written exclusively by government bureaucrats who have a specific view of culture. And even in recent histories - in those eras of England I mentioned - religions other than whatever was officially sanctioned at the time were violently held down, so even if you can say there was "A Culture" in England at the time, it was through violent force and fear of violent force that it was kept that way.
What's great about America is the ability to hold so many cultures and through democracy be pretty stable, but I don't know if there's ever been "an American culture". Even the founding story of America - escaping religious persecution - speaks to the horrors of enforcing cultural homogeny. What if, at Plymouth Rock, they met some Native American Nationalists? (Yeah of course there were some tribes of american inidians who attacked the colonists, and some who didn't) It's easy to blame changing culture on immigrants and outsiders because the world is opening up and so many people are moving around, but shifts happen within a single "culture", culture is not static even without an external force.
You speak of conflict, of efforts to colonize, and it's true that world history is almost constant warfare. We are currently in the third longest period of peace (and probably most peaceful)[0][1] in known history. We are also in the most accepting times of other cultures. You say that conflict happens across ethnic lines, but how can you explain the long period of peace happening during the time of most cultural cross pollination? The longest time of peace was the Pax Romana, when the Roman Empire explicitly let conquered nations keep their local cultures, and travel within the Empire was commonplace.
Do I want to preserve my culture through my kids? Yes. I teach them the importance of knowing where they came from. I bought books about my ancestor who was on the Mayflower and they're proud he was there for the first Thanksgiving. Mostly, I want them to be good people, and know that the older they get the less influence they will get from me, so I try to show them how to be empathetic, kind, strong willed, and when to know which to be, so no matter what beliefs they end up with they are coming at them from a good place.
And as for genes mirror geography - yeah - people didn't move around much before the airplane. It's pretty great that common people can travel the world. And as for personality traits being hereditary - I actually didn't know that and it's very interesting. I don't know how it relates to your overall argument, but biodiversity tends to be good for the whole ecosystem.
Comments
Because you value your kin and culture, and wish to preserve them. Or because you believe other people have in-group preference, which means your group will be worse off from increased competition. It's no different than a new pack of wolves moving into another pack's territory. From that point of view, the absence of self-superiority beliefs increases nationalism, since if the other group is equal or better, they are more competitively dangerous.
Great point, I completely disagree with this viewpoint but I can understand the POV. If you view the world as a zero sum game and that cultures meeting act like wolves fighting over territory, then you can hold a nationalist view without supremacy. Unfortunately this world view is the zeitgeist (manifesting across the political spectrum), and kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I don't think you need to see it as a zero sum game. Only that conflict, violent or otherwise, is likely, and often organized along ethnic lines.
We could look at history to try to assess how true that is, but that would be a boring debate. I'm more interested in your opinion of my first point, which you skipped: what if you value your kin and culture? When it comes to biodiversity, other species, or even obscure tribes in the Andes, valuing their preservation is prevalent and uncontroversial [0]. Why not apply this same attitude to ourselves?
Both will inevitably be diluted through immigration. Culture is of course not static, even absent immigration, so "preserving" it has limited effectiveness. But perhaps you wish to see how your culture will grow and evolve, without mixing it with a different culture? Especially since culture, just like genes, is largely continuous - to simplify, if there are two countries with distinct cultures, there is probably a third country half-way between them that already has a mix of their cultures. In this sense, by importing cultures, you're not creating a "new" culture, you're just reducing cultural differences.
The same argument holds for genes, including the part about continuity [1]. It's popular to reduce this to skin color, but human genetic diversity covers far more. For example, all of the Big Five personality traits are hereditary [2], and likely so are other personality attributes that are harder to measure or define. Given how almost no variable human traits are evenly distributed among all groups, that means immigration quite literally changes the character of a country. Again, no invocation of "supremacy" is needed, just a desire for preservation. When this desire for preservation is directed externally, for example at Kashmir [3], it has no associated taboo.
[0] At least in the present. We are all aware how different attitudes used to be, with explicit efforts to colonize and "civilize" others, or destroying old cultures and identities to replace them with the New Soviet Man and Year Zero.
[1] Genes mirror geography within Europe - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2735096/
[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/tp201596
[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/08/08/kashmirs-new...
This is a lot to respond to here, so I won't be able to respond to all of these.
I didn't respond to valuing kin and culture since it wasn't clear what you meant by that. To be honest, it's still not totally clear - when you speak of culture being diluted, it sounds like you're talking about the influence that culture has on society as a whole? Or how many people in the society have that culture?
On the individual level, it seems like someone who grows up in a particular culture has that for life. People don't suddenly become Spanish, even if they live there from 30-50 years old. So in the course of your lifetime, your kin are still going to be there for you. But maybe you meant - if your kids don't have the same culture as yours. I don't totally understand why this would be a problem, unless they wanted to join some cult or something.
So if you meant preserving culture across generations, as you also mentioned, culture isn't static. Just look at how the culture of England changes from Tudor to Stuart, or from Victorian to Edwardian to modern era. You might say "Recent history is hard to compare to since influence from other countries has touched it and technology has changed so rapidly", but further back than that is not well documented, older histories written exclusively by government bureaucrats who have a specific view of culture. And even in recent histories - in those eras of England I mentioned - religions other than whatever was officially sanctioned at the time were violently held down, so even if you can say there was "A Culture" in England at the time, it was through violent force and fear of violent force that it was kept that way.
What's great about America is the ability to hold so many cultures and through democracy be pretty stable, but I don't know if there's ever been "an American culture". Even the founding story of America - escaping religious persecution - speaks to the horrors of enforcing cultural homogeny. What if, at Plymouth Rock, they met some Native American Nationalists? (Yeah of course there were some tribes of american inidians who attacked the colonists, and some who didn't) It's easy to blame changing culture on immigrants and outsiders because the world is opening up and so many people are moving around, but shifts happen within a single "culture", culture is not static even without an external force.
You speak of conflict, of efforts to colonize, and it's true that world history is almost constant warfare. We are currently in the third longest period of peace (and probably most peaceful)[0][1] in known history. We are also in the most accepting times of other cultures. You say that conflict happens across ethnic lines, but how can you explain the long period of peace happening during the time of most cultural cross pollination? The longest time of peace was the Pax Romana, when the Roman Empire explicitly let conquered nations keep their local cultures, and travel within the Empire was commonplace.
Do I want to preserve my culture through my kids? Yes. I teach them the importance of knowing where they came from. I bought books about my ancestor who was on the Mayflower and they're proud he was there for the first Thanksgiving. Mostly, I want them to be good people, and know that the older they get the less influence they will get from me, so I try to show them how to be empathetic, kind, strong willed, and when to know which to be, so no matter what beliefs they end up with they are coming at them from a good place.
And as for genes mirror geography - yeah - people didn't move around much before the airplane. It's pretty great that common people can travel the world. And as for personality traits being hereditary - I actually didn't know that and it's very interesting. I don't know how it relates to your overall argument, but biodiversity tends to be good for the whole ecosystem.
[0] https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-b26b8004884501d83fc8c... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Peace