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Nair is explicitly conceptualizing DEI as a means of inserting a political police force whose task is to scrutinize nuclear facility personnel to ensure that only regime loyalists who think regime-approved happy thoughts are allowed near to the facilities. The idea that the primary threats to American nuclear infrastructure come from foreign adversaries is antiquated and racist; the real threat is now internal, posed by ‘domestic violent extremists’. ...
Just because someone looks foreign and speaks with an accent doesn’t mean that you should scrutinize them more carefully before letting them close to a nuclear reactor. It would be racist to operate on the assumption that Muhammed Al-Muhammed might be working for ISIS, or that Wang Wei could be an operative for the CCP. Conversely, just because James Jackson’s family has been in North Carolina since the 18th century and has fought in every war since the French and Indian is no reason to think he’s a loyal American.
In a sense, she isn’t wrong about this – this is an inherent complication introduced by mass immigration. A racially diverse population loses all external signifiers of belonging: neither appearance, nor language, nor faith can serve as a reliable in-group indicator. As the state peels away from the ethnic loyalties that once bound it together, it can no longer count on the default loyalty of its core population. The result is that everyone is under suspicion.
1. What is a “high trust society”?
There are two things working together. One operates beneath the surface, a kind of “spiritual” connection in which everyone understands the rules of society. Second, everyone can be trusted to follow them.
“Diversity” destroys this.
2. Why is this?
In theory, the idea of diversity seems grand. We will mix all kinds of people together with different idea and it will create a fantastic laboratory of innovation that will drive our society to new heights.
But it does not work this way.
3. Every culture has a language, a set of customs, the way things are done here. Many of them are unspoken and picked up intuitively. No one should have to tell you to return your shopping cart. This is a thing everyone knows. Or should know.
4. Languages, even cultural languages can be learned. But it takes time and often many of the subtleties are lost. Why does it seem perfectly natural — why did it seem natural — in Danish society to leave a sleeping baby outside, in their pram, while you go into a shop?
5. Maybe even the Danes themselves don’t know or never really thought about it. High trust societies work this way. It allows them to do what they do without a lot of energy being expended to explain every action, why we do things one way and not another.
6. Diversity, stresses this situation immediately. A small number can be dealt with graciously. But when large numbers of people come from outside the culture, now a tremendous amount of energy must be spent on cross cultural communication.
7. This is energy that isn’t being applied elsewhere. And when the numbers of increase to the point where you no longer have a dominant culture or one that is nominally dominant and you have a multi-factional society, the energy spent in cross cultural relations …
8. … starts to consume a significant amount of social energy.
In many cases, we are discovering, the cultural differences are significant. They are not just like us but with darker skin or a funny accent. There are real incommensurabilities. Bridges that can’t be crossed.
9. These can create real frictions. Because part of integrating into a new society means letting go of your old habits to embrace the ways of the new place, a kind of narrative and cultural suicide.
But what if this doesn’t happen?
Then tensions begin to mount.
10. And all those supposed innovations, all that energy that is supposed to come from diversity?
That is in many ways a myth. If people have already shed their home culture to embrace that of the “just do what works” technocrat, there is no cross cultural learning …
11. … because the people have already abandoned their own culture to become fungible cogs, technocrats in the machine. Or they are expending great amounts of energy putting on the mask of a good technocrat to play that role in society.
12. I am sure examples can be given of cross cultural innovations. It does happen. But on the whole, those innovations come at the expense of a whole range of downstream costs that society has to bear because it must grapple with all manners of people who don’t know the rules.
13. This is why you can never build a high trust society that is diverse and cosmopolitan, unless the diversity is a mere cosmetic thing, people look different but are culturally the same.
It is possible that great ideas can emerge in the cauldron of a cosmopolitan environment.
14. But it is just as likely, if not more likely, that in this same society you will live with constant tensions, frictions, and conflicts. It may be “dynamic,” but so is a pot that is about to boil over.
15. More likely in this situation is that there are a few who can operate well in this environment and do well for themselves, but for many of the average people, they much prefer to live in a well functioning high trust society.
16. “Diversity is our strength” is an idea that seems good in the abstract, but cannot be really instantiated because it runs against the fundamental nature of cultures and languages and what makes these work — an embedded, organic and unspoken connection between people.
17. It is this connection which is stressed, undermined or even lost in a multicultural context.
13. This is why you can never build a high trust society that is diverse and cosmopolitan, unless the diversity is a mere cosmetic thing, people look different but are culturally the same.
Danish society to leave a sleeping baby outside, in their pram, while you go into a shop?
Patrick says
Danish society to leave a sleeping baby outside, in their pram, while you go into a shop?
This is exactly what a German friend of my wife did. The husband was over here as a junior executive for Liebherr and when my wife was out with her, the German lady would let her two young kids sleep in car seats in the van with windows rolled down while the adults went inside. Also, when the German lady came to visit, she would let the kids sleep in prams out front porch while the ladies were inside.
Despite the U.S. Supreme Court setting laws barring racial covenants,
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#diversity