How is it “xenophobic” to point out that foreign countries (Japan, Denmark) have better results in some respects?
Human beings are social animals. Organizing a society is easier when people have shared identities, know the same rules, have the same values, and believe in the same things. Not because of “prejudice” but because of the efficiency and value of being on the same page about stuff. And everyone on this site knows that—there’s a reason Silicon Valley companies spend so much effort cultivating a particular culture. It matters for working together to achieve shared goals. Countries are no different.
To offer an anecdotal example: my extended family is a mix of monocultures: I’m Bangladeshi, my wife’s Oregonian, and my sister in law is Taiwanese. And, even in the complete absence of prejudice, the social cohesion between these cultures is low. We spend a lot of time working through differences in expectations and values, and it’s easiest to just keep everyone at arm’s length a bit. It’s utterly different from the tightly integrated and cohesive extended family networks in my Bangladeshi side of the family. If you put us all together in a “Survivor” situation where we all had to work together and cooperate, it would not go well.
That’s basically a microcosm of America. We’ve developed this individualist, arm’s-length culture as a result of our immense cultural diversity. And one of the outcomes of that is we drive around in these big steel boxes and don’t care when we run each other over.
You’re basically saying that people should value cultural diversity as an end in itself, and pursue it makes it difficult or impossible to do things that require large-scale social organization. But why should we value what you value?
Human beings are social animals. Organizing a society is easier when people have shared identities, know the same rules, have the same values, and believe in the same things. Not because of “prejudice” but because of the efficiency and value of being on the same page about stuff. And everyone on this site knows that—there’s a reason Silicon Valley companies spend so much effort cultivating a particular culture. It matters for working together to achieve shared goals. Countries are no different.
To offer an anecdotal example: my extended family is a mix of monocultures: I’m Bangladeshi, my wife’s Oregonian, and my sister in law is Taiwanese. And, even in the complete absence of prejudice, the social cohesion between these cultures is low. We spend a lot of time working through differences in expectations and values, and it’s easiest to just keep everyone at arm’s length a bit. It’s utterly different from the tightly integrated and cohesive extended family networks in my Bangladeshi side of the family. If you put us all together in a “Survivor” situation where we all had to work together and cooperate, it would not go well.
That’s basically a microcosm of America. We’ve developed this individualist, arm’s-length culture as a result of our immense cultural diversity. And one of the outcomes of that is we drive around in these big steel boxes and don’t care when we run each other over.
You’re basically saying that people should value cultural diversity as an end in itself, and pursue it makes it difficult or impossible to do things that require large-scale social organization. But why should we value what you value?