Showing posts with label cultural diversity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cultural diversity. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

America: A One Party State?

China is a one party communist state. America is a one party capitalist state. China has become so much more capitalist. If Bernie has his way America might make major strides towards socialism.

In China the Chinese Communist Party sits above the state, it sits atop the Chinese court system, for example. What is the Chinese Communist Party? It used to be about communism. That has changed. But what has not changed is its total commitment to Chinese nationalism. A billion people belong to the same ethnicity and speak the same language. The Chinese built a Chinese melting pot Chinese identity over thousands of years like Americans have been building a white melting pot identity over the past few hundred years. It is the exact same concept. And the two, despite the false military tension, unabashedly like each other. Look at the trade volume. White is not a language, white is not a culture, white is not a religion, white is not a country, white is no identity, white is just lack of pigments, which makes it very animal and pro gun rights. If you ask me a billion people belonging to one ethnic identity is unnatural.

It is not any commitment to classlessness but a total commitment to Chinese nationalism that sits atop the Chinese state. There it is official. In America it is unspoken. But there is something similar. There is that melting pot white identity that sits atop the American state. There is this magnetic field. If you can speak the language, that can open some doors, but not quite.

If a people speaking just one language is what is best for everybody, then why not just hope for English as the only language on the planet? Why not clear up the Amazon forest and plant paddy along that entire stretch? English is the leading language of commerce, science and technology on the planet. And that's great. But we are at the cusp of turning the top 10 most spoken languages covering over 90% of the planet all becoming equally good languages of commerce, science and technology, thanks to Artificial Intelligence.

The mirror image of the melting pot white identity is that it reduces the black identity to skin color. A cultural identity can not be about skin color. A healthy cultural identity has to be about positive and rich things like art, language, culture, festivals, rituals, mythology, music, religion. America has to become more accepting of diversity. The Amazon forest is indispensable to our very existence. It is not just something to look at. Cultural diversity is as natural and desirable as biodiversity. Say no to the Donald Trump hate speech.

People come to America with much hope. It is not just about being able to earn a living. It is also about wanting to feel cultural diversity is as natural as fingerprints. That's what makes us interesting. Hostility to diversity is downright stupid. They say the cure for cancer might be in the Amazon. In a robust knowledge economy the onus is on out of the box thinking, on thinking different. Guess what diversity is!

Sunday, February 21, 2016

The Intolerance Index

The global warming icon for the ubx.
The global warming icon for the ubx. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I don't know if it is overpopulation, or global warming, or maybe we were all this ugly all along, and now we have media saturation to show it all, or maybe the global recession is not fully over and there is too much anxiety, but this intolerance index is up in many countries. Does globalization make people culturally dizzy? Situations keep escalating. In democracies it is rhetoric, in many countries there are outright civil wars. Protracted civil wars.

Diversity issues are out of the Pandora's box. And we need to rise up and appreciate the wealth that diversity is. The old white male dominion is over. We have to move towards a meritocracy. Cultural and gender diversity.