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The Age of Migration: The EU and the US in Crisis

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Yes, I disagree completely and would argue that Western culture is far superior to all others.

I think this statement stands out, and I want to address it head on before continuing.

What is Western Culture? Can you define it for me so that I'm sure we're talking about the same thing? Specifically, do you mean cultures emanating from Europe? Or more concisely, Western Europe? Or are we really talking about the narrow collection of Renaissance-era colonial powers?

I'm curious as to whether or not you believe the culture of Belgium is greater than the culture of China?

The term "culture" generally refers to that complex set of knowledge, beliefs, laws, morals, customs, art, literature, music and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.

Okay.

While the greatness of some aspects of culture (such as music, art, and literature) can be more a matter of opinion than of fact, most other aspects of culture can be analyzed and rated based on their overall impact on the human condition.

In a quantitative way? I'd be curious to see how that might be the case.

Rather than being "meaningless" as you claim, the concept of "cultural superiority" is at the very heart of this discussion.

I obviously disagree because I disagree with the notion that one can either quantitatively or qualitatively compare, from an objective neutral perspective, two different cultures and derive which one is "better" than the other solely based on present-day conditions.

As you put it, it's a matter of "human condition;" however, I don't think that really makes sense.

Your argument, I think, is muddied by the fact that you seem to be conflating state policy, militaristic capability, internal and external socioeconomics, along with numerous other factors with what is being stated as a society's "culture."

For example, I don't think American "culture" is hegemonistic, or even internally self-consistent with the practices of American foreign policy, foreign trade, and history of foreign interventionism since the mid-20th century. I think American culture is contrary to these practices; nonetheless, those practices are state policy and have had massive effects on the human condition both within the United States and aboard, in other nations you seem to be measuring in a vacuum.

By contrast, "American culture" for argument's sake, for 400 years has been generally racist and sexist and in other ways discriminatory and oppressive towards anything other than White men, and even within that group there were oppressive tendencies.

For a great deal of time, state policy has been more progressive than cultural attitudes towards large portions of the nations inhabitants. The point being is that state policy has often been the driving force of cultural change rather than reverse.

For example, the Civil War was an instance of a state policy of the North imposed upon both the citizens of the Union and inflicted upon the citizens of the Confederacy in contrast to cultural norms which would neither, by virtue of majority opinion, choose to wage war over the issues related to the institution of slavery.

Internally, it was socioeconomics and military might that drove progressive values South. But to say these two areas of the nation shared a culture would be historically inaccurate, surely. It might still be inaccurate in some regions of the country. Thus, it was the military and economic dominance of one nation's policy over another through acts of aggression that brought about what one might consider (using such measurements) as a greater society, rather than by virtue of cultural dominance, acceptance, or assimilation.

Both the South and North surely must be within this umbrella of "Western" cultures that you claim is vastly superior to all other cultures. So does the culture of the Confederacy and the South for hundreds of years meet your criteria, or no?

Moving on to more recent examples worth mentioning within the United States, school desegregation and policies of integration should be noted.

Again, the several points being are:

1) The culture of a society, and it's state policy are not the same thing. One can drive the other, but we can find numerous instances wherein state policy drives societal and cultural change.

2) State policies are more of a function of many different aspects to conditions both internally and externally of the state and it's people at any given time. I cannot see a rational way to suggest that state's govern, wage wars, enact policy, establish trade agreements, based on cultural factors.

3) Socioeconomics, military strength, and aggressive colonial policies (made possible by the latter factors) are generally the primary driving forces to cultural adoption and assimilation. Suffice to say, one culture doesn't generally compete against another to dominate it in an anthropological sense; instead, I think it's more accurate to say cultures blend and merge over time rather than phasing another out entirely.

4) The concept of Western culture makes no sense in itself. There are numerous examples of nations within the West that do not share similar cultures. Germany and the United States have little in common in a present-day sense, culturally, just as Japan and Korea have little in common, again, in a present-day sense.

I'm not aware of too many places where Western culture has been adopted where the citizens are actively fleeing.

Cratylus, we've talked numerous times about highly complex topics so in saying that I hope you know that I respect your opinion.

So with that, I'll assume the bolded was simply said in haste and without consideration?

If it weren't then let me remind you that we're talking about Western culture, a culture that spans several millennia. So surely you don't mean to suggest that since the West is enjoying a state of relative peace as of this moment, this blink of an eye moment in a historical context, that nations that could be considered of being within Western culture have neither suffered nor caused mass death and displacement?

Because from a historical context, Western nations have been, by far, the most violent in the history of mankind. Even within the last century, Europeans killed tens of millions of their own population and the populations of others in due course of what are largely European wars. Excluding deaths from the Asian theater in World War II paints a grisly picture of what you seem to suggest is a group of people devoid of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and mass death.

The near extermination of entire races of people, the enslavement of others; genocide, states of perpetual war, military and economic conflict, I'm not sure how one could come to the conclusion that Europe or Western nations were generally safe throughout history. By contrast, these were some of the most dangerous nations both internally and externally, throughout their history.

Rather what we see is the exact opposite: immigrants and refugees who are fleeing various regions are trying to get into countries and regions where Western ideals flourish.

Again, for the nth time - this notion is false.

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These refugees are not trying to get into Europe, they are running into the surrounding areas. There are some that are trying to get into Europe now, because other nations have stated they can no longer accept any more due to deteriorating conditions within their refugee camps as a result of overpopulation.

I mean, How many Brits are trying to flee the UK? How many Aussies are trying to escape persecution by boarding boats bound for Indonesia or North Korea? How many German immigrants are struggling to cross the border into Pakistan? Or better yet, how many Syrians are trying to get into Cuba?

A better question would be how many Jews tried to flee Germany, Poland, Austria, etc?

Hmm..
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Are you not aware that the Balkan refugee count totaled well over 3 million people which is quite comparable to what we're seeing today?


At some point we have to ask ourselves, if nobody's culture is inferior or superior to anyone else's culture, then why is it that peoples and countries who have adopted Western culture don't have the same problems of the human condition that those who haven't adopted Western culture have?

Good question.. I think if you ask yourself a few critical questions, critical in the sense that you challenge your own position for self-consistency, you'll find that the question you're asking is based on several flawed assumptions.

1) Why are you assuming that Western nations have not suffered and inflicted suffering of the kind to which you are using as a measuring stick to superiority? By your own measurement, which I reject but still, it would seem Western nations would be culturally inferior to nations that they've dominated. For example, who was culturally superior throughout the series of wars between India and Britain? Does this question even make sense?

2) Why are you choosing to find causative association between the amorphous state of culture within a region and it's socioeconomic situation with respect to the human condition? Where is the empirical evidence that culture causes the phenomena in question to occur?

3) Is Nazi Germany Western culture? Would you consider the Confederate States of America Western culture? What about fascist Italy, or Spain? I'm not sure what qualifies and what doesn't?

I will post this again because of its pertinence to this issue:

But it isn't really, as much of it is flawed and it's not really something we can argue about as the author isn't present. I will quickly point out several flaws in the piece and we can move on...

1) Equality is a Western virtue. This is a facile argument at best, not only for the aformentioned reasons, but because racial equality and multicultural society was, throughout Western civilization, was completely shunned and outlawed in many Western nations. It's absurd on it's face.

2) The notion that rationalism and self-criticism originate in the West is also a flawed argument. The Hittites, Assyrians, and Babylonian civilizations enjoyed rich cultures and adopted philosophies rooted in empiricism and rationality. These are just a few of the cultures that are separate and distinct, in this instance predating, Greek advancements along these lines.

3) "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;" is not a universal belief or quality of Western society, nor is the more commonly used life, liberty and property, or fraternity, etc. These values have been argued for thousands of years by various cultures.

Mosaic Law, predating any semblance of modern Western Civilization, not only defines it's own root of human rights, but laws principled around that basis. People under said law have right to property, life, and due process, etc. This isn't unique to Western Civilization.

4) Human rights... Give me a break. I really should not need to touch on this.

5) I leave the argument when it states "the West that has liberated women," liberated from whom? "...(Liberated) racial minorities" yet, the quality of being a racial minority did not bring about servitude. If he means "Blacks," then those Blacks were enslaved largely by the policies of the West. They would not have been slaves, solely by the virtue of their race, in any other environment. Thus, it's circular reasoning.

..I've enslaved you.. A few years later after you build my house, I let you go. Now, I'm your liberator..

I don't want to leave off with a critique of Western civilization because, in fact, that's not really my intent. My intent is to demonstrate ignorance on the part of the author, and those having this conversation - myself included - with respect to measuring in a scientific, anthropological way, various cultures comparatively against themselves.

I can say from a scientific standpoint that doing so would be fraught with logical issues, and likely not produce a logically reasonable conclusion.

I'm writing this out so that you can understand, from my perspective, how I cannot rationally determine through propositional analysis or any form of inference how one can attribute causative association between a particular populations culture and their present-day socioeconomic / military conditions.
 
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Migrant Crisis: The Footage the Media Refuses to Broadcast

https://youtu.be/ZV315xqbRK8

Don't know why this won't embed.

Pretty chilly video, especially the last clip of the (I'd guess) Greek woman.

Would be happy to see people here disprove this video or something like that, because it sure makes me worry.
 
Migrant Crisis: The Footage the Media Refuses to Broadcast

https://youtu.be/ZV315xqbRK8

Don't know why this won't embed.

Pretty chilly video, especially the last clip of the (I'd guess) Greek woman.

Would be happy to see people here disprove this video or something like that, because it sure makes me worry.

Watched the whole thing..

I'll offer just a few points:

1) Migrants dumped food out because they deliberately served pork to Muslims. You might as well hand them a plate of dog shit. And before some dumbass says "you're a refugee, eat it," let me see you eat dog shit first.

2) Why does the video act as though saying Allahu Akbar is akin to saying "I'm about to kill you?" It literally has no negative connotation whatsoever.

3) The immigrants refused the water because they were told they'd be transported from one place to another but instead were put on a train and taken to the border. They refused the water because they were lied to and then subsequently surrounded by police.

4) Alex Jones' media outlet is in the video more than once. Have you ever seen an Alex Jones video? :chuckle:

5) The video of the police throwing bread was edited. In the larger context of the story, the police were throwing bread into the crowd, watching the migrants fight to catch it, and laugh about it.

The video is right-wing propaganda. It's pretty obvious...

And before someone says the migrants haven't been disorderly, that's not my point. I'm simply referring to this single video. That is all.
 
Watched the whole thing..

I'll offer just a few points:

1) Migrants dumped food out because they deliberately served pork to Muslims. You might as well hand them a plate of dog shit. And before some dumbass says "you're a refugee, eat it," let me see you eat dog shit first.

2) Why does the video act as though saying Allahu Akbar is akin to saying "I'm about to kill you?" It literally has no negative connotation whatsoever.

3) The immigrants refused the water because they were told they'd be transported from one place to another but instead were put on a train and taken to the border. They refused the water because they were lied to and then subsequently surrounded by police.

4) Alex Jones' media outlet is in the video more than once. Have you ever seen an Alex Jones video? :chuckle:

5) The video of the police throwing bread was edited. In the larger context of the story, the police were throwing bread into the crowd, watching the migrants fight to catch it, and laugh about it.

The video is right-wing propaganda. It's pretty obvious...

And before someone says the migrants haven't been disorderly, that's not my point. I'm simply referring to this single video. That is all.

Thanks a lot for the clarification!

Sorry for my ignorance if this is indeed a right-wing propaganda video. YouTube can easily suck you in I guess. Though I do believe that a lot of the (mainstream) news presented to us is propaganda as well in one way or another. But that's a different discussion.

Not familiar with Alex Jones up to this point, but I can see now that he might not be the most reliable of sources.
 
One thing important to remember about the numbers currently flooding into Europe is the right to bring over their families.

Considering that these people are not primarily family groupings, but rather individual males, every individual immigrant may in fact represent 3-4 additional people that will also have a right to immigrate. In some European countries, immigrants can being over their families in a matter of months.

So when we're discussing the number of people being admitted, the reality may be that the actual number of people to whom you are granting that right may be two to three times larger.
 
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I'll leave this here
if%2Bshe%2Bdrowns%2Bshe%2Bis%2Ba%2Brefugee%252C%2Bif%2Bshe%2Bfloats%2Bshe%2527s%2Ban%2Beconomic%2Bmigrant.jpg
 
What if she weighs the same as a duck?

This new learning amazes me, 'Tip. Explain again how sheep's bladders may be employed to prevent Ontarions from descending on America like a plague of locusts?
 
Sweden's Foreign Minister is warning that Sweden cannot continue taking in refugees without facing collapse. If Sweden is already reaching its limits, the EU won't be far behind.

'In the long run our system will collapse'

I think most people feel that we cannot maintain a system where perhaps 190,000 people will arrive every year – in the long run, our system will collapse. And that welcome is not going to receive popular support,” said Wallström, echoing her Social Democrat colleague's comments.

Löfven is expected to push the same argument when he meets his UK counterpart David Cameron, leader of one of the countries reluctant to take in more asylum seekers, on Monday next week.

The meeting comes after representatives from six parties – the ruling Social Democrat-Green coalition and the opposition of the Moderates, the Liberals, the Centre Party and the Christian Democrats – agreed to request that the EU include Sweden in its refugee relocation scheme, alongside front-line states Italy and Greece, to ease the burden on the Nordic country.
"

http://www.thelocal.se/20151030/in-the-long-run-our-system-will-collapse-in-sweden
 
Native Americans had it right.

I was thinking about this recently. Everyone understands perfectly well why the Native Americans would resent how their culture was swallowed by immigrants from Europe. And if a Native American said "we never should have let them come", their comment would be met with sympathetic, understanding nods.

But when Europeans start worrying about the long term, and about their culture getting swallowed by much faster reproducing immigrants, they're just racists trying to deny people a fresh start.
 
I was thinking about this recently. Everyone understands perfectly well why the Native Americans would resent how their culture was swallowed by immigrants from Europe. And if a Native American said "we never should have let them come", their comment would be met with sympathetic, understanding nods.

But when Europeans start worrying about the long term, and about their culture getting swallowed by much faster reproducing immigrants, they're just racists trying to deny people a fresh start.

Native Americans were the underdogs.
 
Native Americans were the underdogs.

Not at first. You just had a few poor, hungry Euros in a continent will millions of native Americans.
 
Not at first. You just had a few poor, hungry Euros in a continent will millions of native Americans.

They quickly became underdogs once the scouts called in the dogs and said, "hey these pussies pray to the wind and birds and eat their whole buffalo."

Then they smallpoxed their asses and shot them with guns.
 

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