Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
Let me paint a picture.
Imagine a a person from a developing country. This person knows their home country is terrible and will talk at length on the how and why it is a complete disaster. It’s a combination of the system and the people that are the problem. The society is deeply screwed up for many reasons, but one of them is absolutely massive numbers of low quality people with questionable public hygiene and health.
This person is fed up and leaves. They travel halfway around the world a more wealthy and organized country, but one that’s either on the decline or on the brink of decline. This person shows up in the new country, takes a well paying job that could easily be filled by a local.
Now this person is likely one of the better people from their home country, but they inevitably bring a lot of their socio-cultural baggage with them. They fit right in with the local political party that is more than happy partner with immigrants in exchange for more political power. The person is hostile to the local customs and religion in their new country. In fact, the person goes out of their way to make sure everyone knows what a dim view they take of the historic religion of country that has persisted for thousands of years and dozens of generations. This person associates with other subcultures that are also hostile to the historic culture of the country.
I know I’m not saying anything here that hasn’t been said or thought a mission times but it’s still worth articulating. This person shows up in a new place and every action they take, intentional or otherwise, is destroying the this country’s culture. Remember, this hypothetical country the person went to is already on the brink. Heavily divided and new people like this matter on the margins. And this is not a one-off. In fact there are many other people doing the exact same thing every day.
Anyway, how should this person feel?Should they feel shame? Should others shame them? Do they have any responsibility to assimilate in their new home? Or least leave as little impact as possible.
This is a modern problem. In the US, immigrant communities historically were quite good at assimilating as Americans. Even today, the pressure to do so is lessened, but still exists. In Europe and Uk it seems there’s no such pressure. Immigration there at the scale we currently see is a purely modern phenomenon. And the immigrant communities are insular and shameless in their actions to change the their new countries. My original bias was that this is mainly a function of wealth and class and education. The people who act like this are poor and don’t know any better. I don’t think that’s right though. It seems to me that even this hypothetical immigrant, who would self identify as of the “better ones” has no shame about showing up in a new place and telling the incumbent people everything they’re doing wrong and agitating an already risky political situation.
What is to be done? Short of remigration, can it be fixed? I think it will be challenging since there’s often a political wedge in western democracies where half the country is using immigrants to expand their power base. Half measures will be stopped and fail.
Im not posting this to have a debate on immigration. We’ve done that many times. I’m more curious about what people think of the people who participating in this whole business. What motivations do they have? How should we react to them? Personally I have a pretty dim view of someone who would do something like this. And I’d want to understand how they feel about it. Is it intentional? Can they not help themselves with this behavior? What is it? What do we do?
I guess step one might be to at least point it out.
I came upon this X thread right before reading your comment: https://x.com/Devon_Eriksen_/status/2086713323022659973
The thesis is that there are two reasons why a man will hate you:
He will hate you because you harmed him.
And he will hate you because he has harmed you.
A political refugee fleeing a communist state will love their new country. They are not hurting their new countrymen, they are contributors and they love their new freedom. Their new freedom does not detract from everyone else's freedom, they are adding to their host country's freedom by demonstrating the beauty of that freedom to those who maybe have become complacent in it.
An economic refugee fleeing a shit hole will have to accept lots of financial and other help. If that financial help is coming from a wealthy benefactor who is willingly giving the support, then maybe it can be tolerated because there is a personal relationship. If that financial help is coming from a tax base that is increasingly strained, that financial aid is coming from hurting the native populace, even if that pain is intentionally spread out to be tolerated. And so the economic immigrant has to find a reason why the native population deserves this pain, reasons why this harm is just. And if there are no obvious reasons, reasons will need to be invented.
I think this might get more responses in the Culture War thread. I worry I've crossed the line already in this post though we've kept it vague so far.
Thanks. I thought all of these responses brought interesting idea to the table.
And yes, I’m hesitant to bring to the main thread as well.
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