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Come on, culture is more than celebrating the defeat of others.

I consider the right of parents to pass their culture to their children one of the most important issue I can think off. Democracy, free speach, or the right to receive a solidaric treatment by the society e.g. are things I consider less important. You say, somebody might want to chose to be interested in Spanish culture, while born into an Irish family? When following your approach, there won't be a Spanish culture somebody can chose to be interested in.

Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den Menschen
Volker Pispers

by Martin (weiser.mensch(at)googlemail.com) on Sat Sep 20th, 2008 at 02:54:35 PM EST
So you think that if a person is born to a primitive tribe in the middle of some tropical forest he should be condemned to live that life just to preserve his parent's values?

Perhaps he wants to move to the city of some foreign land and become a captain of industry.

I said that children will learn the dominant culture they are born into, there is no alternative, but that doesn't mean they have to be propagandized to think that theirs is "best".

Policies not Politics
---- Daily Landscape

by rdf (robert.feinman@gmail.com) on Sat Sep 20th, 2008 at 03:12:10 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I said that children will learn the dominant culture they are born into, there is no alternative, but that doesn't mean they have to be propagandized to think that theirs is "best".
Yes and No, your diary portrays children learning the culture of their parents as bad, not completely avoidable, but something to be minimised as much as possible. You speak of schools and 'universal characteristics', whatever that shall be.
Nowhere in the diary you distinguish between chauvinistic elements of a culture and the cultural norms in general. You bemoan, that children look on multi-culturalism from the framework of their own background. So you want to deny them a home, a root. They should be just a tabula rasa without anything, until they themselves by random fate decide what they want. In contrast to what you write, it is this spiritual homelessness, which allows Pied Pipers to get people into a shelter, filled with hate, anger, and the will to neglect any respect to those living elsewhere.

Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den Menschen
Volker Pispers
by Martin (weiser.mensch(at)googlemail.com) on Sat Sep 20th, 2008 at 03:31:49 PM EST
[ Parent ]
all cultures are connected, some more, some less.

for interesting fusion to occur, and a satisfying tension/release to a narrative, there must be a relationship either between older and newer in one culture, on one axis, or between adjacent cultures, on t'other.

since modernity 'happened', everywhere is adjacent, and fashions change faster, memes collide ever more fractally.

the one became the many, and is returning to the one.

what was potential becomes actual, and thus more potent still...

everything multiplies, complexifies, then simplifies and dies.

our consciousness is like glitter on the surface, evanescent, improbable and revelatory.

(all quotes from www.computationalwisdom.com)

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Sat Sep 20th, 2008 at 07:01:28 PM EST
[ Parent ]
UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity as a human right states that:
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001271/127160m.pdf

"The cultural wealth of the world is diversity in dialog"

Excerpts:
"The Universal Declaration makes it clear that each individual must acknowledge not only otherness in all its forms but also the plurality of his or her own identity, within societies that call themselves plural. Only in this way can identity be preserved as an adaptive process and as a capacity for expression, creation, and innovation."

"This Declaration, which sets against inward-looking fundamentalism the prospect of a more open, creative, and democratic world, is now one of the founding texts of the new ethics promoted by UNESCO in the early twentieth century. My hope is that one day it may acquire the same force at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights." -- Koichiro Matsuura

by John Culpepper on Mon Sep 22nd, 2008 at 01:08:48 AM EST
[ Parent ]

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