By now everyone in the world knows about Pokémon Go. It’s the new smartphone game which is not only changing how we think of gaming by making us wander around the great outdoors getting hit by cars and finding dead bodies and looking out for as-yet unclassified life-forms (some field biologists figure that if we’re out there wandering around anyway we should be doing unpaid ecological research as well).
But it’s also the first major experience most of us have had with “augmented reality”. This goes beyond the Oculus Rift form of Virtual Reality in which all of the visual information is computer generated or computer mediated. In VR the computer controls everything we see and hear.
Augmented reality puts new sights and sounds into our “real” world so there is a blend of one set of experiences – those which are out in the world regardless of what the computer does – and those which are presented to us as if they were in the real, concrete world but are just digital projections.
In Star Trek terms it is similar to the Holodeck situations in which hologram bartenders can give real drinks to real people and – we suppose – digitally simulated drinks to the holograms we are mingling with.
Those of us who remember Next Generation, Voyager and Deep Space Nine will remember holodeck characters who became self-aware and wanted to get out of the confines of their prisons. Portable Holo Emitters allowed this for some like Voyager’s Doctor. Others, like Professor Moriarty – pace Descartes – had to be tricked into living in a Matrix-like world they assumed was real.
So what does this have to do with Multiculturalism?
To address this we really should accept the fact that the word is not “singular” but “plural”. It only becomes a “singular” when it is so abstract it is devoid of any coherent meaning.
There are numerous kinds of “multiculturalisms” and they correspond to different ideological and experiential traditions. People in the far north of Sweden may understand multiculturalism as finding commonality with both Norwegians and Finns. People in Malmö understand it as seeing regions of their city turned into Sharia-law no-go zones where the “indigenous” or “aboriginal” Swedes (the ones who mostly have blue eyes and blond hair) are at risk and where Swedish law “no longer applies”.
The people who defend “multiculturalism” are usually imagining it as the “can Norwegians, Swedes, and Finns learn to live together in harmony?” variant. Those who regard it as a form of “cultural suicide” conjure up visions of Malmö, or of Nice on Bastille Day, or of the Eagles of Death Metal Bataclan concert, or of 40,000 Turks marching in Germany to demonstrate in support of Turkish President Erdogan.
The idea of Germany having several million followers of Islam conjures up “Islam’s Rule of Numbers” which was proposed as a cultural factor by Raymond Ibrahim. In general, Ibrahim is claiming that the way a culturally distinct group acts in a host population depends to some degree on how large a percentage of the population they make up. When the percentage is miniscule the conduct of the group is exemplary and a credit to all. When the percentage grows over 10% then the group becomes more restive, more aggressive, less tolerant of difference, and more demanding of special accommodation.
To recall the words which have been attributed to many historical figures, not just Stalin and Napoleon, it may be the case that “quantity has a quality all its own”.
In other words, we can’t define “multiculturalism” at all until we answer the preliminary question “what is culture?”
Some people regard “culture” as being confined to such things as national costumes, culinary traditions, language, and possibly the kind of building people attend for important life-transition events such as marriages, funerals, and the reception of newborn children into the community.
At this level of abstraction it is fairly easy to say “all cultures are equal” just as it is easy to say “all plants are equal” after examining their need for sunlight, oxygen, and nutrients.
But this kind of “equality” does not make it reasonable to assume cacti can grow in Antarctica or orchids thrive in the Sahara Desert. Some human cultures have “adaptations to the physical environment” which makes them very difficult to transplant. Fishing societies won’t do well in deserts. Herding societies don’t belong in jungles. The long-standing problems “aboriginal peoples” (more accurately “non-European aboriginal peoples” since it would absurd to suggest the Swedes are not “aboriginal residents” of their land) have had in adapting to European colonists and settlers is well understood in North America , New Zealand, and Australia.
Other definitions of culture include the patterns of social life, the concepts of roles – which are common to all cultures – are differently expressed in distinct societies. Relations between parents and children in some societies include the requirement of “honour killings” — and sometimes they bring these “cultural forms” into their new host countries when they immigrate– while in others parents can face prison time for spanking their own children. The “Swedish” laws of Sweden do not tolerate the hitting of children. The tribal laws of many of the newly arrived groups in Europe differ on this.
At this level of abstraction the idea of multiculturalism may not be a universal goal but rather a research question: Can these groups live together or should they dwell apart from one another? This is a research question of considerable importance and has not yet been confirmed well enough to allow it be treated as a politically correct platitude.
A third kind of cultural definition deals with how members of other groups – other cultures – are to be treated. Are they often seen as being in some way superior with useful lessons to teach? Are they equals? Are they out there to be exploited and otherwise left alone? Or are they there to be colonised and turned into the suppliers of slaves and resources for the conquering society? Or are to be exterminated as unclean?
Some believe that the ultimate objective of Islam is World Domination. If this is so then what kind of multiculturalism can arise from such a cultural group?
Islam also permits the taking of sex slaves from the ranks of those who are outside their cultural group – the kafirs or kuffars who must either submit (convert) or live in a state of permanent cultural inferiority. We are told there is no compulsion in Islam but one must interpret that with an eye to how such people as the Yazidi sex-slaves interpreted their own freedom to choose when they saw others burned alive for refusing to submit. Recall that while 40,000 Turks demonstrated in Köln at the end of July to show their support for the Turkish government, there were not similar demonstrations to insist that those who take sex slaves or burn them alive are “misunderstanding” Islam. Is it the mission of Islam to rule the world whether the rest of the world wants to be ruled by them or not?
Other cultural groups are a bit more benign: “As long as you are good for us you can live your own lives as you see fit”. Such an attitude is condescending and exploitative but allows for the colonial cultures to survive as long as the correct forms of tribute are paid.
There are many more such asymmetries which will arise. Each one of them presents its own challenges to the definition and implementation of “multiculturalism”.
This brings up the most fundamental kinds of cultural differences – those based on the culturally held beliefs regarding the meaning and purpose of life and of creation and of existence itself. They reside at the level of religion or metaphysics or whatever you want to call it but it is the infrastructure of all cultures and the final source of all cultural conflicts and possibilities for reconciliation. Disagreements at this level may not appear in daily life where the routines of mundane survival occupy so much time and effort but it is at this level the most basic Sources of Self Identity are formed. It is here that the Confucian, the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Christian, the Moslem, the Jew, and the myriad others such as the Baha’i, the Mormon, the Shinto, the Taoist, the Lulik, the followers of The Gods of Olympus, the Soldiers of Odin, and so on find their ultimate origins. The list of “Creation Stories” are echoes of these cultural differences. As time passes these stories migrate from “explanations” which give us our “identity” into “myths” which amused our less sophisticated ancestors.
Those who are not yet willing to regard their own ancestry as just another form of superstitious and ignorant folly clung to by lesser beings will have objections. Those who see human history as a march towards the “right side of history” are generally understood to be “cultural marxists”. For those who consider themselves to be Cultural Marxists – and those who use the admonition “get on the right side of history” are certainly candidates for this appellation – who find the slanders against the term too much to bear, the virtuousness of your identity is protected by the Wikipedia Entry which regards those who oppose cultural marxism in highly unfavourable terms and treat those who use the term “cultural marxism” at all as “conspiracy theorists”.
The deepest part of our identity is the part that gives us our sense of worthiness, of virtue, and of moral rectitude.
And here then is the final challenge of multiculturalism. Our culture either gives us or embodies externally for us our most fundamental understanding of virtue, morality, duty, obligation, rights, and so on. And it is even relevant to know whether we got these understandings from out cultural ancestors or if our ancestors got them from “somewhere else” and part of their obligation was the transmission of these truths to us.
Are we here to “seize the day” – carpe diem – and just have as much physical pleasure as possible? Are we here to participate in an ongoing tribal identity which demands the subservience of the individual to ancestral traditions and which assures us that only as long as our names are spoken and we are remembered will we continue? Are we here to gather knowledge and to explore, to “go where no-one has gone before” and hopefully find friends out there in the galaxy but otherwise have no transcendent or permanent meaning at all? Are we here to submit to the will of the creator of the universe and to pay endless homage to that creator because of our inferiority and powerlessness while enjoying Earthly Delights forever? Are we here to attain some kind of enlightenment in which all of the illusions of this existence fall away and only wisdom remains? Are we going to retain, somehow, our individual uniqueness in an eternal afterlife which will be one of joy and growth in an incorporeal form?
Does the universe exist because “it just does” and we are all just cosmic accidents with self-awareness and no purpose whatever? Are we the creations of a detached deity who really doesn’t care one way or the other about us as individuals? Are we all computer simulations running in the laptop of some hyperintelligent alien being as an experiment? Is the creator one who demands absolute and unquestioning obedience and will forever be unknowable? Is the creator one who cares about us as “individuals” and has arranged things so that we may be “free” to follow our own pathways? Is there an ultimate meaning to the ideas of “good” and “evil” and are these meanings beyond the reach even of the Creator? “Is it good because the gods like it or do the gods like it because it is good?”
Are these only “academic questions”? Has anyone in the “multicultural advocacy community” actually asked if cultures which are organised around one or another of these options are fundamentally different in the way they treat each other, view progress, embrace diversity, and so on? Has anyone in public life today actually asked if cultural worldviews which differ at these levels should actually not be cohabiting in the same state?
Dostoevsky asked in the Brothers Karamazov if we could be good without God. This debate has evolved into several strands which include reframing as “what would goodness mean without a divine standard” and the more pointed: do different gods have different standards of virtue? The first one gives us something which ranges from the National Socialist as well as Marxist “survival of the fittest” up to the only marginally less offensive “the altruistic are more likely to survive” while the second one depends entirely on the nature of God. Neither of these is amendable to “scientific resolution” – regardless of anything Richard Dawkins may say – because the answers will eventually be determined by our untestable assumptions regarding the nature of ultimate reality. And those assumptions are, for all of us, embedded in the deepest parts of our culturally-informed identities.
To do so would be a crime against political correctness, an invitation to being charged with “hate speech”, and a career killer in academia or politics.
And again.
What has this got to do with Pokémon Go which is, incidentally, considered Haram (unclean) by the clerics of Saudi Arabia?
Pokémon Go allows us to see again the role of “socially constructed metaphors” in our all-too-concrete world. They are distractions which can get us killed if we fail to see the difference between the fantasy/fiction world the characters represent and the reality of the world of minefields, cars, cliffs, and wild animals which cannot be escaped just by turning off our phones.
Our pundits, media gurus, politicians, teachers, and spiritual leaders all populate our “real” world with their own cast of “characters”. The characters all fill in voids of action, interpretation, meaning, and causation which we must accept as true if we wish to belong to the group that follows them but otherwise may not have any independent existence at all. And if we aren’t careful we may encounter a real lion next to the digitally projected one which cannot really eat us.
Our “reality” is constantly augmented all the time by concepts which are never fully defined, relations which are never clearly explicated, and creatures which possess attributes and intentions which are never fully revealed to us.
Is Jihad the fiction and Multiculturalism the coherent reality? Or is it the other way around?
And isn’t it time we had this conversation honestly and without name-calling?
Unjustified Margins 