Protecting Culture?

ADDITION AFTER FINISHING WRITING: Sorry for the very large post. Hope you'll read through it.

Recently in these forums I have been seeing this term brought up a lot, especially when it comes to people who want to hate on immigration or muslims or subscribe to the silly "creeping shariah" stuff. I've heard it otherwise as well, but nobody is quite properly able to define what they mean, just that they want to "Preserve their culture", or "Multi-culturalism is evil", or "I want (Country name) to be about (term used for people of that country)" (eg. "I want Britain to be about British" etc.

So with the recent events in Norway, where the suspected perpetrator made heavy use of the "Defending our Western/European Culture" argument for his ideologies (and in extension for his actions), I thought it might be useful to bring it up.

First off, although it isn't exactly the main point or purpose of this thread to define it, what exactly is culture? For a place like Spain, it is pretty easy for me to define (although spaniards may hate me for simplifying it into this, and I may very well be wrong, but this is what I'd say): it's about flamenco music and dancing, it's about bullfighting, it's about love of football, the spanish language, it's about enjoying jamon and your cerveza along with your tapas, etc. These things, in combination, as well as some on their own, have the definitive "spanishness" to them.

But if I try applying the same to the UK (or Britain), it's a lot more difficult...it'd be about....the English language? Fish and chips? Maybe Anglicanism? You can't really say "the Queen" or "the Royal Family", because quite a large number of people are very apathetic towards them (or are they...? The recent wedding may possibly show otherwise).

If "culture" can be reduced to the linguistic, literary, musical, artistic and culinary contributions of a people/country, then really, there is no need to ever "protect" the culture. It'll always be there, at least historically. If you want to define it as something much vaguer "Spanishness" or "Britishness", then you could justifiably use it for everything (and nothing).

This is what I mean with my topic, and what I am coming to. Does "culture" really need to be "protected"? To me, the culture of a country is what that country is, not what some people wish it was, or want it to be. Spain may have had a muslim history, and Islam/Arabic culture may be there in the background on some small things, but Spanish culture is not muslimmy.
Another example is India. It has such a huge variety of peoples, religions, tribes, philosophies; but it all meshes into "Indian culture". India is a very good example not only of how multiculturalism "succeeded", but also how, over hundreds and hundreds of years, it all morphed back into "one culture". Of course, there were loads of rough patches, but if you remove any one of these "groups" now, Indian culture would definitely be missing something that makes it Indian.

So if immigrants are going to come to your country, being in another country, they're going to change quite a bit, and yes, even the host country is going to change a bit with these new people in it...and thus, magically, the idea of "culture" in that country is subtely changed. What would England be without all those curry places? Or Europe without Doner kebabs? Just a small example: in fact, there are several curries you get now in the UK that didn't even exist in India.

So if Britain in 100 years changes drastically from Britain now, would that be worthy of the dread and hyperbole that people are attaching to it? I mean, Britain of 100 years ago was enormously, hugely different from the England of now. If by "culture" you mean what I said earlier ( the linguistic, literary, musical, artistic culinary, etc. contributions), then that still is there, even of England of 100 years ago. If you mean some vague idea of "Britishness", then no, that has never remained the same, and was hugely different 100 years ago to what it is now.

Personally, if you ask me, if you are worried about protecting culture, there's a much more insidious and unchecked force against it....globalisation, or a sort of "crass capitalism" -for lack of a better word, perhaps "McDonaldism"- that seeks to make every city in the world like every other city in the world, and has divided the entire idea of culture into 2 main categories or cultures: City/Urban culture (which has a much larger population, but is more generic and samey and boring), vs. Rural culture (which has a much smaller population, but is hugely different, depending on which country or place you are from, but has now been condensed into this one category).

Think of it this way....the following, very descriptions could be applicable to almost EVERY big city in the world: literally sardine-packed subways (especially in the morning for work and on the weekends), small dogs for pets, everyone walking around with earphones in their ears, eyes-forward-never-make-eye-contact attitude out on the street, etc. And if you ignored the writing on the street signs, you could be in any number of cities anywhere on earth.
What could be a more insidious attack on culture than that?

reply to post by babloyi

Sorry for the very large post. Hope you'll read through it.

Maybe later.
Wish you had put that effort in the title so I know what you have going on here. Culture? Really tells me very little and sadly I am not a very curious person, and always in a hurry. Like I said maybe later I will be bored enough to see what you might have going on here in this thread about... Culture?

Done.

Especially for you . Hope you read it soon.

You probably could have condensed that and added it to one of the hundreds of similar topic threads that have been popping up on here lately..

It's all bs to be honest, the world and cultures have been mixing for millennia now, albeit, not on the scale it is now with our current accesabilty to easy travel via plane's and boats.. (although we do have a better understanding via media and Internet of other cultures and religions) I'm sure they had the same issues and concerns a thousand years ago as we are having today.. And I'm sure this will be the same a thousand years into the future..

The point is that people are worried that Sharia law and Islamic attitudes are becoming more and more widespread. The religion does not play well with others, you cannot argue against that. They do not embrace the culture of any country they move into, look at Birmingham or Bradford as an example of that. They want all of the benefits of living in the UK but the majority of Muslims do not bother to learn English, they want to impose their beliefs upon everyone and ultimately swamp an area to the point where by locals leave due to feeling unsafe and threatened for being white. We are starting to see the likes of KFC using only Halal meat, calls for Sharia law in parts of the UK, does this seem like a religion of peace and something you would like to see spread to all corners of the globe ?
Anyone one these forums that speaks out against the Islamification of the west is either called an idiot or a racist however is anything we are saying untrue? Is it really just a few bad apples spoiling it for the rest of the Muslims, if so where is the quiet majority, where are they to denounce these behaviours, how many muslims do you personally know that interact without issue with other races and religions ?

I am open about my unease with Muslim culture, I am not a racist in the view that I am ignorant and led by the MSN, this is through years of experience of working with the Asian community. I believe there will come a breaking point about the way they expect special treatment, it is no coincidence that there is a rising support for right wing politics in Europe, people can only be pushed so far by a minority and their governments and then they snap.

To answer your question on culture, we want to protect a culture of embracing other people and their cultures without losing our own identities and freedoms. We want to remain a country that has free media, freedom to choose what to eat and drink , freedom to live, Islam does not fit with this culture

I agree with what you're saying. Cultures don't just sprout out of the ground, they gradually evolve and change over decades, centuries and even millennia.

I think a lot of people who are resistant to cultural change, tend to look at things through rose-tinted spectacles. People look at a time and place that never was.

I can understand why people are worried about a change in their ''way of life'' ( another popular phrase on these kind of subjects ). Humans' greatest fear is generally the fear of the unknown, so people like safety and security in their lives, no more so than in the environment and society which they are living in. Also, humans being as tribal as they are, tend to be proud of their country, culture, religion or heritage, so people don't want to these eroded. Again, that's perfectly understandable.

However, people who are generally the most adverse to their culture changing, have a paranoid and overblown view of a sudden ''swamping'' by others, which leads to the feelings of distrust, fear and prejudice from anybody outside of their narrowly-defined culture.

In the end, cultural evolution is unstoppable, and as you say, Britain today is hugely different to what it was 50 or 100 years ago, and in 100 years time, some people will be clinging on to 22nd-century British culture, which will be rather different to what it is now.

I think people are worrying too much about a sudden culture change ( which isn't always desirable or beneficial ), rather than the actuality of a gradual, imperceptible shift.

As for things which typify English culture, I'd say: cricket on the village green; pubs; English football culture ( not the hooligans ); simple, no-nonsense cuisine ; and the English cultural mentality of a sense of fair-play and justice, politeness, a stiff-upper-lip and stoicism in the face of adversity, innovation, and a justified sense of superiority over others. No, that last one was a joke.

reply to post by On the level

But On the level (btw, what technical trickery did you employ to get spaces in your nickname?), your culture is defined by you, and the people like you and what you do and how you act. It is PHYSICALLY impossible for someone (let alone a non-physical concept like "Islam") to do anything against that. I can assure you with 100% certainty, for example, that Muslims will never be able to outlaw or ban black pudding (an example I bring up to counter Sherlocks assertion of no-nonsense English cuisine ) in the UK.

reply to post by babloyi


I cant remember regarding the spacing, was a while ago ;-) Well to counter your argument in the UK KFC has decided to make all of its stores Halal. This when Muslims make up around 3.5% of the population of this country. They have seen plummeting sales and as a result tried to change this policy however the damage has been done. I will never eat at KFC again out of principal that they thought we would tolerate this type of blanket PC policy. So if this is happening when they are still the minority then what will happen when say in 50 years they are making up 30%, will we still have the freedoms and culture we have now, I really doubt that.

If you look at small pockets in Scotland where Mosques are, the Muslims buy up the property around it and generally make Scottish people who try to stay there lives a misery. They park in the entrances to flats, block roads and generally push people out. This is happening all over the UK and then it spreads to whole towns like Bradford and Birmingham. If this continued we will have segregated parts of the UK becoming mini Pakistans and this is not what I want for any country. The irony is that the vast majority of the Muslims hate our way of life, our drinking and liberal options to sex before marriage etc. I hate to say it but then why do they not return to either the African nations or Pakistan etc where they originated from, the answer is they want to benefit from our infrastructure, economy and the NHS. They want all of the benefits however want to put zero effort into building relationships with other cultures and colours.

This is not racist, this is fact and I hate to say it but a lot of the younger generation of Muslims are a direct cause of the rise in right wing politics due to the disdain and hatred they show white people in general. I can see in the next 10 years a massive change in public opinion and some major clashes coming in these areas. Is sad as I had also seen the racism being wrongly targeted at my Indian friends who for the record feel exactly the same as I do on this matter.