Yes, that’s my understanding as well.
That’s not at all what I meant to say. What I meant to say was that forced conformity does its own sort of damage, and that claiming that forced conformity is a great thing is a seriously flawed argument.
And I don’t see evidence that USA school shootings are caused by diversity. Some other USA mass shootings are related to diversity, but they’re nearly always by people trying to suppress it. I don’t think that’s the side we ought to encourage.
A group of any size is very likely to schism in some fashion, and may well start killing each other over differences that appear minute to outsiders. Groups. that appear homogeneous to others often appear quite distinctly different from within their parts. The desire to try to solve human violence by making everyone the same is pretty much doomed to failure.
It also exhausts the soils it depends on and attracts dangerous pests. Pretty good analogy.
Yeah. I don’t want to spend my life looking into a mirror. I want to look out a window, and see somebody else.
With credit to Emo Philips, the joke you already know:
He said, “Yes.” I said, “Are you a Christian or a Jew?” He said, “A Christian.” I said, “Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?” He said, “Protestant.” I said, “Me, too! What franchise?” He said, “Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?” He said, “Northern Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”
He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region.” I said, “Me, too!”
Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.” I said, “Die, heretic!” And I pushed him over.
What does homogenous even mean? If you zoom out enough, every society of humans is homogenous, and if you zoom in, every homogenous society is full of differences and rifts.
There’s a type of person who will always be looking to create division in order to separate something of value from the have-nots. They should simply be ignored. Unfortunately, in America, they’re in charge.
Heck I’ll fight with myself if I am alone!
Very seriously it returns to the basic bit that humans by nature are tribal. The “me against my brother …” bit. The old joke about a Jewish guy marooned for years on an island, rescued and showing off what he had built - “the temple, the infirmary, my dining structure, the temple” “wait, didn’t you already show me a temple?” “Oh yeah. This is the one I don’t go to.”
We can’t help but require an other who is not us and will find what the difference is. Butter up v butter down.
Note that the age bracket here is 15-34, we’re not exactly talking about teen suicide here. The claim “worst in the G7” is also not accompanied by data. This is not a scholarly article about suicide rates in Japan, it’s a publication of MEXT (Japanese education ministry, a flawed institution to put it mildly) stretching to conflate suicide rates with school refusals, which is the real thrust of the paper.
Not to discount the fact that Japan has unique cultural issues around suicide, but it’s not what’s claimed, and certainly not the gotcha that some seem to wish would deflect attention from the US’s own failings here (tripled suicide rate since 2007, but that’s only through 2020, it’s likely even worse now).
Please retire this brickbat, it doesn’t mean what you think it means, and it’s less compelling than you think.
World wide, the US ranks 61 in Homicide rate.
(nm - ninja’d!)
Not.
Or maybe cite please?
One subgroup got to the tripling: 10 to 14 year olds from 2007 to 2018 and flat since. 15 to 19 year olds increased some in the same 2007 to 2018 period but by much less, and also flat since.
Gun availability is a large factor in suicide deaths in America.
Not minimizing the problem, and there is ideation on top of that which is of course much more frequent. But your numbers are incorrect.
Japan middle school girl suicide rates have increased seven fold in the last decade, even as adult rates drop some. Other youth rates increased too but less dramatically.
None of which has anything to do with diversity.
I think instead of hetero/homogeneity it would be more useful to look at high societal obligation and pressure to conform. Then assess the costs along with the benefits of such a society.
One thing I think most people wish they had is a larger, more connected society, what they want the least is to have their behavior dictated by arbitrary societal norms. I think Japan’s high suicide rate and low happiness could be credited to the fact that they have high conformity pressure.
I agree. As already noted by @RitterSport, Canada is the most diverse western country in the world, and yet has managed to avoid most of the social problems the US is experiencing. There is no negative causal relationship with diversity here.
There does tend to be a trend to homogeneity on a micro level, where people of particular ethnicities tend to congregate in the same neighbourhoods, but that has absolutely nothing to do with overall societal cohesiveness. It has nothing to do with a society that values peace, justice, and a strong social democracy.
As a completely anecdotal side note, over the years I’ve had to do a number of home renovations. Most of the workers I’ve used have turned out to be fairly recent immigrants from places like Iran and Ukraine and even Colombia. They were honest and competent and I was grateful for their services. To be fair, I’m sure they had to pass fairly rigorous immigration screening, but – forgive me if I’m misreading this – I object to what I sense as a hint of xenophobia in the OP.
For what it’s worth, remember the Original Post by @Jasmine wasn’t written as an OP, so it may not reflect the care or detail intended for such a debate. It’s a common side effect of these splits, which is why I do them rarely.
The people who are causing that problem are the ones who are trying to bring about a homogenous society. I have no problem pointing to immigrants and refugees from a dozen different countries, and descendants of immigrants from two dozen more, and saying that they all, collectively, represent America.
If only we had no banks, we could end bank robbery forever.
I am going to say no. Homogenous, to me, would be far too culturally and intellectually stagnant. What is important is a large base of shared foundational values.
To me a core foundational value of the United States is a broad tolerance of and freedom to have different foundational values, within broad limits. Accepting a few things, as founding papers claim, to be self evident, and making one out of many. The drive of some on the Right to define freedom as their freedom to impose their beliefs on others, to push for an American monoculture, seems unAmerican to me, more akin to the Islamists (not the same as Islamic individuals) who have little tolerance for diversity and want laws based on religious texts.
But that’s my take. In other threads you have alluded to diversity that you do not believe share what you think are the American core foundational values. Can you expand here what you think those values are?
Back to the OP (which I understand was never intended as a standalone thread, so should be given considerable leeway), I don’t think we have ever had an identity that the overwhelming majority of Americans could agree on. From the very beginning there were many differing and conflicting identities. At various times in our history parties have put forth an image that purported to represent our national identity, but surprisingly it only mapped to their own personal one.
I was answering the general question about homogenous vs heterogenous societies. At some level there are fundamental differences that lead to fractures or gross inefficiencies in a heterogenous society. I already gave my critique on a standard and random homogenous society.
With regards to the USA in particular? I think the Age of Enlightenment concepts of intrinsic individual rights, legitimate governments govern with consent of the governed, etc. are a good starting point. But it’s not really a rabbit hole I want to delve too deeply into at the moment.
There are some things that people say they agree on, but I think some folks gravely misunderstand them. Like, the melting pot: I’ve often seen folks complaining about immigrants not becoming just like them, and “whatever happened to the melting pot?”.
The whole point of the melting pot is that everyone is changed by it. When you add tin to a crucible of copper, the tin doesn’t turn into copper. It all turns into bronze, which is stronger than either alone.
Fundamentally it comes down to a couple of things.
One is that Americans are heavily divided on nationalism, with one side believing in civic nationalism, and the other side supporting ethnic nationalism.
I
I know you mentioned not wanting to point fingers, but thats a big part of it. A big part of America believes in civic nationalism and feels that anyone of any race/religion/gender/belief can be an American as long as they share western values (like the universal declaration of human rights for example).
Meanwhile another group thinks being an American means being a certain race, religion, belief (mainly patriarchal, native born, white christians) and that America’s identity is being diluted and overrun by outsiders.
People’s values are deeply divided about civic vs ethnic nationalism in the US. However in areas where people subscribe to civic nationalism and there is a large amount of diversity (like California, or NYC) society functions fine.
Also in the last few decades, there has been a massive political realignment among people who score high on authoritarianism. It used to be that people who scored high on authoritarianism were spread across parties or not political. But in the last few decades the vast majority of people who score high on authoritarianism became republicans and the vast majority who score low became democrats.
Fundamentally, in the US at least, I see it as those 2 dividers. One side supports civic nationalism and is low in authoritarianism, while the other side supports ethnic nationalism and scores high in authoritarianism. But because their core values, vulnerabilities and goals are different, what helps one group harms the other. There is no unifying morality.
But you can also have massive divisions if multiple groups both believe in different forms of ethnic nationalism. Like sunni vs shia muslims living together in Lebanon for example.