Struggling With The Obvious

It’s also worth noting how the hostile replies to Wanye’s post, from people who describe themselves as progressive or of the left, are for the most part either personally insulting but devoid of argument, or offering things like this:

I truly wouldn’t mind if every burger shop in town became a halal joint.

This transformation, and what it implies, is justified on grounds that,

I don’t really see myself as being in a meaningful political coalition with my fellow natives anyway. Many (most?) of them don’t share my [leftist] political interests. You certainly don’t. 

For some reason, the word spite popped into my head.

And on the same subject – and the same practised obliviousness:

There’s also a weird air of displacement, of vehemently resenting those who notice the problem. And so, we get claims like this one here, in which BBC broadcaster Dan Snow denounces as “stunningly racist” even the suggestion that incompatible tribes exist. Because Mr Snow feels they shouldn’t exist, that they somehow ought not to.

And so, magically, they don’t. And only Very Bad People would say they do…

Of course, reality is not always congenial, and what one might wish to be the case may be preferable to what actually is. I can see the appeal of a world in which everyone just rubbed along nicely with endless reciprocation and common ground. But pretending that’s the case, when it clearly, vividly, isn’t, isn’t a wise or moral way to behave.

Especially when the consequences of that pretence are imposed on others, who then, in addition, get badmouthed and vilified for daring to object. Say, people not entirely happy about the sudden ubiquity of Congolese and Somali borra gangs, whose modes of expression involve machetes, or people who discover their doorsteps literally being shat on.

Much more at the link, with suitably vivid illustrations of said phenomenon.

I mentally juxtapose the grinning stoner with the Chinese dad we ran into a few years ago while walking through the Peak District. He and his very young son were admiring the scenery and were keen to share their appreciation. It was all rather sweet. A brief but utterly agreeable exchange.

There are accepted practices — like politeness, “Golden Rule”, charitableness, care of children and seniors, equal justice for poor and rich — that people born into the culture take for granted even if they become atheists.

And the coexisting, as Ms Young puts it, of Christians and youngsters who’ve “drifted away from Christianity,” while retaining many of its moral and cultural assumptions, seems much less jarring than finding that your new neighbours express themselves with machetes. Or shit on strangers’ doorsteps. Or loiter around the gates of primary schools in order to film small children for sexual purposes.

Things of that kind.

people coexisting

This came to mind:

There is, then, a “sweet spot” for diversity: a percentage of exotic residents and influences that is sufficient to season and enliven an otherwise homogeneous society without becoming large enough to begin to usurp its ambient culture or disrupt general social cohesion. Beyond that “tipping point,” though, the effect on the host society is increasingly divisive and detrimental.

Just where the tipping point is depends, in large part, on the rate of immigration, and on how similar the new arrivals are to the culture they are joining. Denmark, for example, could far more easily absorb a large wave of Norwegian immigrants than an equal number of Somali Muslims.

I think we will all agree that if, say, you were to swap out three-quarters of the native population of Denmark with Somali Muslims, that the indigenous, traditional cultural life of that nation would be irrevocably changed, and effectively destroyed — and that the happiness of the remaining Danes would be greatly diminished. (It should be obvious that on this cultural level, the same is true for any people’s traditional homeland — Danes, Somalis, Tibetans, American Indians, indigenous Australians, or anyone else.)

It is nearly impossible to know in advance just where this tipping point is. By the very nature of this sort of gradual change, it only becomes apparent after it has already been crossed.

Once wrought, the demographic changes brought about by mass immigration are almost impossible to reverse, without recourse to great, often sanguinary, unpleasantness.

Given, then, the destructive effects of excess diversity; the difficulty of knowing when the demographic “tipping point” has been reached; and the irreversibility of demographic change wrought by immigration, it seems that wisdom, prudence, and a concern for general happiness all counsel that any ethnic homeland’s immigration policy should err strongly on the side of caution and moderation, particularly as regards immigration from profoundly (often irreconcilably) alien cultures.

And yet here we are. 

“Oh, but we did that via colonialism already,” protests your interlocutor.

The urge to conjure excuses for why you shouldn’t be allowed to object to the rapid and often dramatic transformation of your home is quite… telling. If some unrelated people colonised something or other centuries before you were born, you can’t object. If your grandfather was a migrant, you can’t object. If you like spicy food, you can’t object.

The made-up rules are almost surreal.