Tolerance, diversity and multiculturalism

We're just pawns in the game, albeit pawns with more knowledge than others.

Every now and then I get the desire to at least impede the workings of the political class and their handlers...
By doing what? Making sarcastic or sassy remarks about recent developments.
Hoping to insert some apple seeds into the soil. Oh well... :-/

But then again, any "heroic" effort to stop the tide would probably constitute an infringement on the free will of the others... Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I'm actually making some progress by not blathering or ruminating about a coming crash or civil war anymore.
Nobody wants to hear that anyway.

Concentrating my thoughts on negative outcomes might actually even attract those effects.

I think I've begun to reduce my expectations, just letting the Universe control the traffic lights. 🚦
 
Multiculturalism seems to be doing just fine in the East. The post below is about South Asia, indicating mututal respect for one another's values. I'm not sure if Arnaud Bertrand's reflections here can be taken objectively or not.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1757440120809226308

Growing up in France I was always surrounded with people of North African or Levant origins but it took me living in other countries during my adulthood - countries actually respectful of the diversity of cultures in their midst - to realize just how uniquely intolerant France was.

Our education system, our institutions, basically enforce one culture which we call "universalist" but which is fundamentally at odds in myriads of ways with the culture of those six million people. Six million people of whom we know absolutely nothing: we're not told their history (or only the parts that clashed with ours, told from our vantage), we don't know anything about their traditions, and their language not only isn't taught at schools but speaking it is frowned upon, seen as a lack of "integration".

School basically teaches these kids "our ancestors the Gauls", which would be laughable if it wasn't so depressing... The result is that you end up producing generations of kids who feel they don't really belong - they're like "wait a minute, our ancestors weren't actually the Gauls..." - but who also progressively lose their culture of origin, since they, alongside everyone else, aren't taught anything about it. And as is painfully obvious with Macron's geopolitics, politically speaking they're largely disenfranchised. In the eyes of the French state THE big victims of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are the Israelis. Macron has organized national pro-Israel tributes almost on a monthly basis since Oct 7 but not a single one for the Palestinians. What message does this send to these six million French citizens?

I could add a million other things, like our media ecosystem that routinely accuses these people of being the root of all of France's problems, or the yearly "laïcité" (secularism) national debate we have around this or that Muslim practice not being "compatible with the values of the French republic", which is a clear dog whistle.Having now seen how things are done so much better in other countries - particularly Asian countries like China, Malaysia or Singapore - I'm amazed at the lack of wisdom of the French way. It almost feels viciously backwards and ignorant. The Asian approach typically is that it's foolish to try to make people change their culture, it's better to respect them as they are, but in return ask for the same amount of respect back. In short "I won't try to teach you that your ancestors are the Gauls, I won't try to suppress your language and your traditions and make you adopt mine, live the way you want BUT don't ask me to change my ways either. Let's all live together in harmony, respectful of our differences.

"For instance here in Malaysia where I am writing these lines there's a large "native" Malay Muslim population, as well as a large Chinese Malaysian and Indian population. And all their most important festivals are national bank holidays: Eid, Chinese new year and Deepavali! We just celebrated Chinese new year and the whole country stopped for it, with fireworks everywhere in the streets.

Same thing in China: if you belong to one of the 56 recognized ethnic minorities of the country, you are bathed in your own culture, you learn your own dialect, wear your ethnic clothes and China is extremely careful to celebrate this diversity at any opportunity they get (just watch the latest CCTV Chinese New Year gala).Of course there are still some tensions between communities in these countries, some resentment on specific matters, but it's immensely more harmonious than in France, in fact it's not even remotely comparable.

Not sure where France goes from there. Insanely the trend seems to go in exactly the wrong direction: with even less respect for difference, more Le Pen-like hardline, more foolish "integration" which I'm afraid can only fail. The only wise way, I think, is mutual respect instead of suppression.
Click to expand...

So he thinks the hard-line push against the flood of immigration is a mistake. Maybe he doesn't know about mass migration being used to destabilize Western nations, PTB's plans for deindustrialization, depopulation, etc.

I've heard Russia is doing quite well, another example of Eastern multiculturalism, or harmony in diversity. I have only limited information, though. There could be racial tensions in Russia I am unaware of. In general, the hypothesis looks to be that multiculturalism works in the East, and not in the West. Looks to be true, but I wonder why? Is it a matter of the two hemispheres being at different stages of the ponerological process?
 
I just saw this article posted by an employee of a prestigious university who called it "anti-DEIB efforts" - that's "Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging." Very interesting if true that wealthy donors are threatening to cut off funding unless elite universities quit the diversity stuff enough to do real education of tomorrow's leaders. Not surprising that a leftist ideologue would twist this and present it as a negative about which to be alarmed.

Megadonors to universities flexing their muscle in an unprecedented way

MSN

www.msn.com
An excerpt:
Hedge fund billionaire Kenneth Griffin, who has given so much money to Harvard that his name graces its largest graduate school, derided elite universities last week for coddling “whiny snowflakes” and said he will no longer donate to Harvard unless it gets back to educating “leaders” and “problem-solvers.”

It was but the latest in a mutiny of university megadonors now commanding the attention of higher education leaders. Billionaire donors Marc Rowan and Bill Ackman helped topple the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard in recent months, following the leaders’ disastrous congressional testimony on antisemitism and, in Harvard president Claudine Gay’s case, plagiarism allegations.

The big donors haven’t let up since. Rowan emailed UPenn’s trustees to suggest they consider, among other things, whether the school’s diversity agenda extends to “viewpoints” as well as race. Ackman took to X to demand the end of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at Harvard and last week backed a furious campaign to elect an upstart slate of candidates for the Harvard Board of Overseers.

It is a new and stunning kind of public power-push by uber-rich donors, whose ranks are growing, and who suddenly appear hungry to use their money to shape higher education in America today, experts said.

“It is the most acute flexing of donor muscle in higher education that we’ve probably ever seen,” said David Callahan, the founder and editor of Inside Philanthropy and author of “The Givers: Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age.”

The megadonor rebellion, which erupted last fall amid anger over how university leaders responded to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel, is only intensifying. In recent weeks, deep-pocketed alumni have been lobbing broader criticisms about how universities are run and aiming particularly at campus programs meant to expand access and equity for underrepresented groups.
Click to expand...

Here's an article in a similar vein, regarding influence of big donors, from four months ago, and about university responses to the Israel/Palestine bloodshed:
Harvard and UPenn donor revolt raises concerns about big money on campuses
 
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