Amerika

Malcolm Pollack notes how diversity creates a reduced form of culture, the “grey race” spoken of around these parts on a regular basis:

…multiculturalism causes what I will call a kind of historical “stenosis”. As more cultures are added to the mix, all of which must be given equal weight, the area of “overlap” — the foundation of possible commonality in the new metaculture — becomes smaller and smaller. Because culture is heritage, the effect is that history is “tied off”, like a newborn’s umbilicus.

I have written about this topic for some years, but usually as a corollary to some other idea, but it is this: when multiple cultures coexist in the same space, the rules and social mores that govern that space must expand to include all acts permitted by each of those cultures. This results in an attitude of extreme permissiveness. That leaves as the only attributes shared a belief in a common ideology, economic system and basic self-interest.

As a result, culture in the meaningful sense is lost, and replaced with government rules and pamphlets, entertainment and other mass appeal madness. This means the paradoxical formulation is that diversity, instead of resulting in more culture, results in less of it. Values systems are a zero-sum game after all.

Tags: Culture, diversity, internationalism, multiculturalism, stenosis