What’s the alternative? Force people to not engage in practices they enjoy, on ethnic grounds?
It seems repugnant to me to say “Hip hop music originated elsewhere. There’s something wrong with you voluntarily taking it up. You should stick to this music instead, even if you don’t really like it as much. That way, we’ll keep the cultural bloodline strong, even if it is at the cost of your own individual freedom.” I don’t give a damn about cultural bloodlines. I just care about individual people’s freedom.
I know you aren’t proposing such a plan. I’m just saying, that such plans are the only way to prevent “cultural supersession” from occurring (preferring less availability of birth control would be a similar preference for a restriction of individual freedom for the sake of some nebulous advantage of propagating bloodlines). I’m trying to illustrate why I don’t see anything harmful enough in “cultural supersession” to cause wringing of hands and/or plans for action.
See that’s exactly why I talked about doctrinaire silliness. I’ve had to field a number of questions assuming that because I can sympathize with his position I somehow want to remove people’s basic civil rights. That’s how antagonistic to traditional culture the liberal dogma is. If you feel any remorse for the loss of a culture, somehow you want to get the Jackboots out. Which incidentally would destroy the culture just as thoroughly, ask anyone who lived in Germany in 1935.
I know he isn’t discussing plans of action either. But he is wringing his hands and regretting that his work led to a world where people had more individual freedom; he would appear to prefer that they had less of it for reasons I find spurious.
I don’t appreciate your tone. If you want to say that I’m “incapable of parsing posts”, I suggest you open a thread in the pit
Djerassi said “Most Austrians enjoy sexual intercourse without thereby wanting or begetting a child.”
I think he reveals himself with his choice of words here: “enjoy” He may indeed be concerned with demographics. He is also clearly concerned with people enjoying themselves. Otherwise he would have said “Most Austrians have sexual intercourse without thereby wanting or begetting a child.”
Frankly, he sounds like an old, out of touch coot to me. Next he’ll be ranting about kids on his lawn.
If you want to say that I’m stupid for making this argument, that’s your call. Whatever.
I don’t know if you are stupid but you are making a stupid argument. It’s an ad hominem. You’re drawing too much of a conclusion based on the word enjoy, and being concered about these things might be things that an old coot cares about, but that doesn’t make him wrong.
Some people are concerned about the fact that people are fucking like crazy but not breeding. A voluntary lack of fecundity, so extreme that it results in massive population reductions in a single generation is a serious issue whether you care abuot it or not.
No, it is not an ad hominem argument to point out that he seems to be inordinately concerned with people enjoying sex without procreating. I think that many people seem to be overly concerned about people fucking like crazy. Full stop. I don’t think that many sane people are worried about OMG! MASSIVE POPULATION REDUCTION! As has been pointed out upthread, the world population is still on the increase.
They are worried about people fucking like crazy AND not breeding…NOW you can have your full stop. Again, no one is worried about the world population, they are worried about the AUSTRIAN population, the EUROPEAN population, the FIRST WORLD population, the EDUCATED population.
They are concerned first with the demise of their own culture and second with possible economic collapse.
You seem to be comparing the total number of immigrants in the USA with the net immigration in the EU, if I’m not mistaken, which wouldn’t be a valid comparison.
Plus, there are problems with comparing the number of immigrants between countries. For instance, a country with strict naturalization laws will have more immigrants as a result, possibly including 2nd or even 3rd generation immigrants (say Germany until recently), while a country where people are naturalized relatively easily (say Canada) and who automatically grants citizenship to people born on its soil will have much less.
Taking the official statistics from different countries might be tricky. I remember a debate (not on this board) about immigration in different EU countries where official statistics from various international and national bodies where seriously contradicting each other, and people had to try to dig up the minute details of how “immigrants” were defined in various places and try to come up with a common definition, and wasn’t very conclusive as a result.
If you’re worried about the EDUCATED population, the problem isn’t too much birth control; the problem is not enough education.
If you’re worried about the (genetically) EUROPEAN population, why? What’s bad about Europeans voluntarily having less children?
Every generation’s culture dies… which is to say, it persists only via its influence on the radically altered culture of later times. But cultural transmission isn’t genetic; nor is change in culture distressing in the way invoked by analogy with the deaths of people (at least, it shouldn’t be).
Fair enough. I see the error now that you point it out. I thought it sounded odd at first. I guess I wasn’t paying close enough attention.
Net immigration for the middle series remains constant at 880,000 per year. A wide range between the high (1,370,000) and low (350,000) net immigration figures reflects uncertainty concerning the future flow of immigrants.
Other than potential economic collapse? Nothing. To me anyway. What do I care if Austria collapses? I’ve never been there. Mali is more than making up for it, they just need better education. I wonder why no one has tried to educate them in Mali?
Eh, that’s a little too fuzzy, you are dismissing tradition as being an actual and real thing.
Tradition is an actual and real thing (at least, I don’t know what it would mean to say the opposite). But it’s not worth getting upset over it if people prefer to stray from tradition in some ways.
It’s like shedding tears over the fact that no one speaks Latin anymore. It’s not like anyone died; they just inevitably started doing things differently. Hardly grounds to be upset over…
Well for one thing, pedagogy is a tradition. Manning and staffing universities is a tradition. So if education is the problem then wouldn’t the academic tradition be a relevant aspect of the problem?
No it’s not so much like lamenting the loss of latin as it is lamenting the fall of Rome.
I… don’t quite follow. You’re saying the reason the world’s educated population isn’t as high as you’d like is something to do with a straying from academic tradition? I thought the reference to tradition was in regards to distress that currently indigenous European cultural practices might give way to the influence of immigrants (locally) and foreigners (globally).
You keep using words like “fall”, “demise” and “collapse” of cultures. There is no such thing. Cultures change. My kids will have a different culture than I do and the same for their children. There is no need for a negative noun to describe this. Why do you keep calling it the “fall of one’s culture” instead of “the improvement of one’s culture”?
If tomorrow, everyone woke up liking the same food, celebrating the same holidays, and watching the same movies, I wouldn’t be upset. You, for some reason, would.
Well there are two different arguments. A native Austrian might care about the latter, I am more concerned about the education and economic factors. Though as I said, I have no stake in this, I just understand why it’s not irrelevant and something only old coots and bigots care about.
Yeah Chessic Sense, your argument has no basis in what I’ve actually said.