Japan needs babies.

[clearspira]

Mostly that such a world has never existed, and the delusion it has is typically a fantasy used to sell war, imperialism, and fascistic nationalism.

Of course it's existed - unless you take that position to a ludicrous extreme in order to justify your equally extreme reaction. All I'm seeing here is an attempt at saying things have to be one extreme or or the other, black and white, and because you find your extreme less obnoxious (which it probably is) then anything that so much as hints as the other direction is automatically wrong.

In short it's just as prejudiced, short-sighted, ignorant and bigoted as what you complain about. It's a case of massive oversimplification - something's perceived as bad therefore anything that seems to be the opposite to that is OK, anything that you can twist to being related is not. In short just the type of thinking substitute that has caused so many problems throughout history. Dogma instead of looking at subtleties, complexities, and shying away from having to consider anything that doesn't line up with some established notion of what's right and wrong and not deviating from that an inch.

He said it mostly has not existed, not that it has not existed period. I just gave you a 2000 year old example of how immigration has forged societies whether they liked it or not.

[CmdrKing]

Who's this "he".

What I mean is human cultures cannot exist in the manner ethnonationalists describe, except by being in complete isolation. The drive to explore and interact with the environment and peoples you find there are innate to the human condition, and that fact inevitably leads to commerce, immigration, and communication. So long as people interact with one another, their beliefs, trends, and tastes will shift and morph over time

The only way to create a crystalized "pure" culture is a) to prevent any and all communication with the outside world (this is more or less how China operated for decades) or b) to *wipe out* all the other ones (see also: Nazis). Espousing this xenophobic outlook (and yes, thinking every culture should exist in "its own space" is xenophobia) will, in the fullness of time, lead to one of those outcomes.

You'll forgive me if I think humans *not* trying to murder one another is in fact innately better than the alternative.

[clearspira]

Who's this "he".

What I mean is human cultures cannot exist in the manner ethnonationalists describe, except by being in complete isolation. The drive to explore and interact with the environment and peoples you find there are innate to the human condition, and that fact inevitably leads to commerce, immigration, and communication. So long as people interact with one another, their beliefs, trends, and tastes will shift and morph over time

The only way to create a crystalized "pure" culture is a) to prevent any and all communication with the outside world (this is more or less how China operated for decades) or b) to *wipe out* all the other ones (see also: Nazis). Espousing this xenophobic outlook (and yes, thinking every culture should exist in "its own space" is xenophobia) will, in the fullness of time, lead to one of those outcomes.

You'll forgive me if I think humans *not* trying to murder one another is in fact innately better than the alternative.

Would you rather I called you he, she, xe, xer or it?

I'm sorry I wasted the time to defend you. I'll assume rudeness from your part next time I see someone representing you unfairly and not bother.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Who's this "he".

What I mean is human cultures cannot exist in the manner ethnonationalists describe, except by being in complete isolation. The drive to explore and interact with the environment and peoples you find there are innate to the human condition, and that fact inevitably leads to commerce, immigration, and communication. So long as people interact with one another, their beliefs, trends, and tastes will shift and morph over time

The only way to create a crystalized "pure" culture is a) to prevent any and all communication with the outside world (this is more or less how China operated for decades) or b) to *wipe out* all the other ones (see also: Nazis). Espousing this xenophobic outlook (and yes, thinking every culture should exist in "its own space" is xenophobia) will, in the fullness of time, lead to one of those outcomes.

You'll forgive me if I think humans *not* trying to murder one another is in fact innately better than the alternative.

Would you rather I called you he, she, xe, xer or it?

I'm sorry I wasted the time to defend you. I'll assume rudeness from your part next time I see someone representing you unfairly and not bother.

There's also they/them.

[Riedquat]

He said it mostly has not existed, not that it has not existed period. I just gave you a 2000 year old example of how immigration has forged societies whether they liked it or not.

Sure, it has. And has already been pointed out via means that we'd all rightfully condemn these days. That it's happened in the past and that things have changed in the past doesn't legitimise change now, you need to justify it on its own merits. There's also the point that with the world so much more connected and accesible than it was 2000 years ago the impact is much more widely spread, the world is already a much more homogenous place in many ways than it's ever been - you can see the same clothes all over, buildings that could be anywhere, the same shops...

[Riedquat]

Who's this "he".

What I mean is human cultures cannot exist in the manner ethnonationalists describe, except by being in complete isolation. The drive to explore and interact with the environment and peoples you find there are innate to the human condition, and that fact inevitably leads to commerce, immigration, and communication. So long as people interact with one another, their beliefs, trends, and tastes will shift and morph over time

The only way to create a crystalized "pure" culture is a) to prevent any and all communication with the outside world (this is more or less how China operated for decades) or b) to *wipe out* all the other ones (see also: Nazis). Espousing this xenophobic outlook (and yes, thinking every culture should exist in "its own space" is xenophobia) will, in the fullness of time, lead to one of those outcomes.

You'll forgive me if I think humans *not* trying to murder one another is in fact innately better than the alternative.

That all only holds if you take the view that anything not 100% one extreme is essentially equivalent. That is a fallacy. As is assuming that anyone who doesn't take your position is therefore arguing for that extreme.

You are wrong to automatically label it as xenophobia, and to claim that it leads to conflict. The "we're better" or "we should be in charge" or "You've got stuff we want" are what causes conflict. Basically a lack of respect for other peoples and cultures. I'm arguing the opposite.

[Riedquat]

I hear all of this and start thinking about those white genocide crazies who think ANY direct interaction between ethnicities, especially romantic relations and births, will lead to Caucasians spontaneously not existing. You know those guys would love to just say 'contaminate the Aryan Race', but know that that'll get them written off right away.

Am I overexaggerating by making these comparisons? Probably. But these are what come to mind. Saying that people should be separated for the betterment of the whole (outside of convicts or abusive families, of course) just raises red flags with me. It's a kneejerk reaction, but it's mine.

You're approaching it from the wrong direction, and also like the other poster from equating it all with an extreme. There's a massive area between enforced separation (and even that doesn't necessarily imply the negative view of other groups that you're trying to link it to) and the entire world being homogenous. I wouldn't trust anyone who regards either extreme as desirable.

If we're going to overexaggerate I'd say those I'm arguing against seem to hate difference and others just as much as those they're condemning, they've just got a different picture of what a desirable outcome would be and less incentive to achieve it by outright abominable means.

Do you not see that I'm saying what I'm saying because I like the richness and variety and difference in the world? It's really wrong to treat that as equivalent to people with the utter opposite view.

[CmdrKing]

You are wrong to automatically label it as xenophobia, and to claim that it leads to conflict. The "we're better" or "we should be in charge" or "You've got stuff we want" are what causes conflict. Basically a lack of respect for other peoples and cultures. I'm arguing the opposite.

"Respect" for a culture requires learning about it and understanding it. This leads to exchange in the form of commerce, travel, immigration, and ultimately blending of the cultures.

As discussed with the case of the Romans, even those forms of "xenophobia", the drive to occupy or exploit, STILL leads to exchange of culture albeit in an undesirable, inequitable way.

Maintaining a cultural bubble, "this culture is here and that culture is there and that's okay", requires absolute xenophobia: a complete lack of interaction between them... or the removal of other cultures entirely once contacted.

I'm not equating it with an extreme, I'm showing you how extreme the position you're advocating actually is.

[AlucardNoir]

And where it hasn't, or where the drive to conquer has been diminished or removed... you get a country like Japan, whose government is spending more energy creating the illusion or stability and ethnic unity than in celebrating and advancing the culture.

Celebrating and advancing the culture the same way Europe is doing it now? by having the English culture of London being replaced???

Or is that celebrating and advancing the culture by taking in hundreds of thousands of economic migrants that don't speak the language and as such couldn't get or hold a job like is the case in Grece, Italy and Spain?

At one point you, or someone else, said that these migrants are just like us, that they want the same thing we want, safety, a place to call home, a means to feed themselves and their families. And you are corect. The problem is that they can't asimilate with the local culture. Yes, the Romans were influenced by the peoples they conquered and enslaved, they also forced their culture on them via the process of romanization. They took whatever they found atractive in the cultures of those they had conquered and replaced everything else with their culture. The same way the Europeans that colonized the New World did their best to replace the cultures of their African slaves.

You don't advance your culture by having it replaced by other peoples culture, you just have it replaced. You do that by culturally appropriating the best - or worst - things other cultures have to offer. The "white man" didn't steal tabacco from the Native Americans because they wanted to add it to their religious repertoire, they took it because it was addictive. The same way the Japanese stole the design of early american cartoons and made it their own, the same way the whole world stole Europeans musical instruments and made them their own by writing their own music.

You take the best parts, the worst parts or just the parts you fancy the most from another culture and you add them to your own. That's how peaceful cultural blending works. You copy something, and in doing so you create something else, something new. Here's an example of a european shortcake that has been taken and adapted by the Japanese: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castella But hey, that's "cultural appropriation" and that's bad.

The alternative to that is what we've had thus far: war and forced cultural and religious changes or what we have now in Europe, mainly southern Europe, and western Europe as well as the south of the US. People that have no interest of assimilating with the dominat cultures flooding a place with their own culture and replacing what's the culture of the people already there. London is no longer english, and if the population would have been replaced by Germans, or Poles, or Russians, or Romanians that statement would still be true, even if the skin color of the cities new inhabitants would have stayed the same as the old one.

Japan is stagnating, it's population is growing old and the birth rate is bellow replacement levels. That is a tragedy for the Japanese and for their culture. Replacing their population with people that don't share their culture, their cultural values and their language won't help them either celebrate or advance their culture. It will only help their culture disappear sooner.

[CmdrKing]

That’s more to unpack than I can address on a lunch break, so for the moment I’m going to ask about a core assumption you have there that’s doing a lot of heavy lifting:

Why can’t immigrants assimilate.