Why are statues of abolitionists being torn down as well?

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Avoiding those who are openly hostile is more of a self-preservation skill, no? It also makes it easier to avoid considering why exactly the hostility exists.

Self-preservation is the lynchpin of all identity, yes.

I see your point here. But how would you personally feel about living in a truly cosmopolitan neighborhood? For example, to give an approximate rough estimate of the ethnic breakdown of my own immediate neighborhood:

35% Hispanic / Latin American
10% Middle Eastern, various nationalities
10% Pakistani or Afghani (Muslim)
10% Indian Hindu
5% Indian Sikh
5% white native-born citizens (including myself)
5% Afro-Caribbean (Haitian, Jamaican, etc.)
3% African (immigrant)
3% white Eastern European immigrant Christian
2% white Eastern European immigrant Muslim
2% African-American (native-born citizens)
10% miscellaneous other

As autistic white people, my boyfriend and I both feel more at home here than we would in an all-white or mostly-white neighborhood. My boyfriend also has a speech impairment, for which he was hassled all his life before he moved here, whereas, here, his speech impairment is just another accent.


How long ago did those Scottish settlers come to Ireland? Seems to me that, without the religious difference, they could have long since blended in by now? They're both Celtic, after all?

I avoid it myself, I can't help but see parallels with history. I know how temporary such cosmopolitan territories are and what happens when the game of empire concludes, or rather, begins again.



I do understand that there are people who really enjoy being cosmopolitan and living in very diverse places for all kinds of reasons.

On a personal level I can only say: enjoy it while it lasts and I wish you all the best. You may get lucky and not live to see it end. These human forces act over multiple human life spans before they produce any fruit, though there are signs (hello last 5 years) that we are nearing the end and things are accelerating.



It's been about 400 years now.

Can you give some examples of what you believe to be historical parallels?


Here in the U.S.A. there certainly has been escalating political polarization and, in some places, escalating crime and violence -- but there has been no escalation of crime or violence here in my neighborhood.

As far as I can tell, the places where crime has gone way up are not especially cosmopolitan. For example, elsewhere here on Wrong Planet (I can't find it at the moment), someone told us about a huge recent violent crime wave in Minneapolis, whose largest racial/ethnic groups are (as of the 2010 census, according to Wikipedia):

- White: 63.8%
- Black or African American: 18.6%
- Hispanic or Latino (of any race): 10.5%

There are also small numbers of people of various immigrant groups, but the vast majority of people are either white or black Americans.


Do you agree that, without the religious difference, they would likely have blended in by now?

If not, that's rather astounding.

Rome is the obvious one and it's been done to death. I find the Abbasid Caliphate to be more shocking because life in their cosmopolitan centres can be hauntingly familiar to a Westerner today. Diverse cities, state welfare programs, proto-feminism, the decline of marriage, something resembling pop culture and celebrity, you find it all in a (post-)Arabic/Islamic setting and you'll find some or all towards the end of every civilisation or empire. Just before lights out.

Both empires broke up into smaller mostly homogenous pieces and, as is not uncommon, their cosmopolitan cities were sacked and conquered by external forces, the inhabitants mostly massacred. I think you would agree that cosmopolitan areas have one thing in common, they can only exist where a strong external power keeps order - they are not human formations that naturally appear out of lawless anarchy, and they fall apart when that external power can no longer protect them.



The political polarisation is obvious yes, the parties are beginning to represent racial divides, denying it vehemently as they may. The GOP has been transforming into the "White party" and the Democrats into the "Anti-White" party, though that won't last. I'm expecting a Mexican party by any other name to pop up soon. Similar things are happening all over post-mass-immigration Europe.

I don't know how much stock to put in crime rates. It could be a sign of the central power weakening, or more a result of long-standing failure and wrong-headed ideology in the justice system.



Possibly, but I suspect not. If it wasn't religion, the divide may well have instead centered around something else. The core divide is "not us by blood". The ethnic signifiers, when there isn't an obvious phenotypical difference are things like language, custom, architecture, even something as silly as clothes. Religion being the strongest of the abstract identities with medium-strong heredity often fills the role of primary delineator of an ethnic divide. The important thing to recognise is they weren't blowing each other up because they actually had disagreements about transubstantiation or anything remotely theological. Are you a Protestant Atheist or a Catholic Atheist? Are you one of our kin or not?

I should clarify my identity hierarchy. Where religion is wholly abstract and not tied with other identities, Family, Ethnicity and Race will usually trump Religion. Not just being a useful badge of one's tribe however, Religion ties back with, reinforces and even creates Ethnic differences over time. Making Religion sometimes appear as prime mover when it is really just an expression of the ethnic impulse.

<------- Stronger Heredity | Weaker Heredity ------->
Family (direct blood ties) > Ethnicity > Race > Religion > Economics/Class/Political > Everything Else
<------- Instinctual | Abstract ------->

So how would this work for people who are multiracial and aware of it?

If the people one views as family come from several races that's going to impact what phenotypes they view as 'like my family' and hopefully will have no choice but to realize that how society understands race is just a construct.

On an individual level: It often results in what is -not coincidentally- called an identity crisis. There are reams of material easily found on the internet about people experiencing them, particularly White-Asian mixes for some reason. The crisis can be resolved in more than one way, if it is solved at all.

You can move down or up the hierarchy and make another identity your primary one e.g. place all your faith in religion or the idolatry of politics.

Or if you are too uncomfortable without a racial/ethnic identity, as many are, you pick one of your parent identities and try to absorb yourself in that. The problem with this is the racial groups generally don't truly accept mixes as part of the group, particularly if it is obviously visible. It only tends to work if your phenotype fits more than it doesn't. If you look more White than Asian, Asians are almost always going to treat you as an outsider.

There are some very unusual circumstances where the mix can satisfy the impulse with a different blood identity as a result of the mix. I'm thinking La Raza in the remnants of the Spanish empire or some "coloured" identities in South Africa, but this is a pretty rare outcome.

---

On a broader level, which is what the hierarchy is really about - modelling the how groups bind together, interact and the likely outcomes: the hierarchy still applies to the world but the mix usually has no racial/ethnic group to turn to. It's a very dangerous time for them when things get "hot". Your skin becomes your uniform and if you don't pass as one or the other, you tend to be come everyone's target.

Edit:

It depends how the identity crisis is resolved. It's another one of those feedback loops like religion and ethnicity that complicates matters.

Your scenario is generally true if the crisis is resolved by giving up the blood identities of race and ethnicity and moving lower down the hierarchy.

However, if it is resolved by picking the race you feel most comfortable with this can feedback into the family ties both negatively and positively. The family ties of the chosen identity become much more important and are strengthened, explored, maintained more assertively etc. which feeds back into the lower blood identities, while the opposite is true for the family of the "incorrect", rejected race which can sometimes be entirely cut off or meet underserved hatred.

I suggest reading about the problems and thoughts of mixed race people going through identity crises. A lot of this comes up and it is quite fascinating.

"State welfare programs" become necessary as soon as (or, at least, within a generation or two after) an empire stops expanding. As long as the empire is still expanding, the expansion itself serves as a de facto state social program, sending poor people and/or military veterans out to the frontier as settlers. This can't happen anymore when there is no longer a frontier.


For geographic reasons, New York is unlikely to get invaded and "sacked and conquered," although we certainly could, at some point, get destroyed by a nuclear bomb. If that happens, it is likely that the entire country would get destroyed, including our more ethnically homogeneous places as well as our more heterogeneous places.

Also, an important big difference between our civilization and previous ones: The level of technology, and the high degree of social organization necessary to wield said technology militarily. Seems to me we are long past the era when some displaced primitive tribe could suddenly pop up out of nowhere and conquer vast territories.

We certainly do face big potential dangers from both Russia and China, but we would face these dangers no matter how cosmopolitan we are or aren't.

We also face some significant internal dangers, primarily from the QAnon crowd. This can be seen as a racial thing, and to some extent it is, but it's a whole lot more than that. I see QAnon as a new, potentially much more malignant variant of the "Satanic ritual abuse" scare, of the 1980's.


Depends what you mean by an "external" power. Does the New York City government count as an "external" power?


Neither are nation states -- or, at least, any nation states that are reasonably well-run.

Here in the Americas at least, the kinds of "human formations that naturally appear out of lawless anarchy" are:

1) Drug gangs.
2) Evangelical Christian churches.
3) Church-gang hybrids, such as La Familia Michoacana.

Gangs tend to be of a single ethnicity/race, but there do exist multi-ethnic/multi-racial gangs too. Ditto for evangelical Christian churches.


I see the Democrats as the pro-cosmopolitan party, not the anti-White party. There's a big difference between ethnic minority civil rights and ethnic minority nationalism. While Black nationalists do exist too here in the U.S.A., they're a tiny fringe with no direct involvement in Democratic Party politics, as far as I can tell.

Given how the electoral system works here in the U.S.A., intrinsically favoring two and only two major parties, a new Mexican-dominated or otherwise Latin-American-dominated party is exceedingly unlikely.


Mostly it's a sign of the economic fallout of the COVID crisis, I think.

Regarding Irish natives vs. Scottish settlers:


Seems to me these kinds of differences would eventually fade, as people on both sides give up their traditional garb, etc., in favor of the latest international fashions.


How significant the theological differences are varies from one generation to the next, it seems to me. I'm under the impression that, back in the 1950's and earlier, the theological differences were a much more significant aspect of the Irish divide than they were later, as the Irish people gradually became less religious, and as relations between Catholics and Protestants worldwide thawed more generally in the wake of Vatican II.

Back in the 1950's, my father was on the mailing list of some Irish Protestant militant group; and, according to what he later told me about it, their beefs were indeed mostly about the theological differences. However, by the late 1970's, I began hearing other people say that the Irish divide wasn't really about religion after all, but really just an ethnic thing.

I don't really disagree, but this sounds like a retort to something.





I'm not saying Russia or China will try to invade New York if the US government collapses. The invasion can and probably would come from nearby territory that was formerly part of the empire. See *** below



I don't think so, technology has regressed pretty severely in the past during such episodes. I don't think we are immune from it, even if technology did hinder, rather than aid an upstart tribe.



I think they are side-show, myself.



I mean the US government.



Nations are natural formations and require no human effort to maintain or create, while it's true nation-states aren't "natural" in the sense we were talking, they aren't much of a deviation compared to empire or localised cosmopolitan spaces.



Doesn't this fit rather well with the hierarchy and even what I've been saying about the feedback loop of religion and ethnicity?

The hierarchy only says that one identity is stronger than the other. It says that groups based on stronger identities are more likely to form or transform according to the hierarchy and they are more likely to survive over the long term.

*** This is what would probably happen to New York - many such gangs like your examples above form during and after the collapse and the attack would come from one of them maybe 10-100 miles away as they secure and extend their territories. It is unlikely that there would be a Chinese or Russian invasion or a move by some other old enemy mainly due to the troublesome logistics.



We'll have to see.



You understand that even if theology is being thrown about, that may not mean it is a religious conflict. These people do X differently or believe this and that compared to us who believe that and this is usually just another way of saying "not our kin". Protestant Atheist or Catholic Atheist?

What do you see as the most likely causes of the "collapse" in the first place?


The "upstart tribe" would have to launch a major coordinated attack on our infrastructure and go undetected during the planning phases.


No, they are, by far, the largest social movement we have containing any significant number of people who both (1) advocate overthrow of the U.S. government (in the event that Trump doesn't get reinstated) and (2) are armed.


The NYC government has only very rarely had difficulty keeping order here. The vast majority of people here have no desire to cause any kind of trouble.


What??? I thought most nations were created by joining together a bunch of tribes/clans -- which would not likely be a totally effortless process.

In any case, in today's world, it does take plenty of "human effort" for small nations to maintain themselves and hold on to their distinct cultures, and to resist what would otherwise be the natural tendency of their people to follow international fashions to the point of losing any distinct identity.


My neighborhood, and NYC more generally, don't feel "unnatural" to me. People come here voluntarily, from all over the world, because they want to be here. And, for the most part, we get along.


How old is this "Protestant Atheist or Catholic Atheist" joke?

When people sincerely believe that their immortal soul is at stake, theology matters a whole lot more than most Europeans can imagine it mattering today.

This is the question of questions. Why don't empires ever survive? What is it about them that dooms them? It could be any one thing that appears to trigger the collapse, the proverbial straw upon the camel's back. But see this thread from a few years ago for my favourite general theory of social complexity and societal "energy":
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=370536
Here's a link to the article with the pictures all working: https://archive.is/fJI9C
It's as good as any theory at the moment. It should be obvious how identity slots into the complexity theory.



It does so under the shadow and with the implicit support of the federal government, the seat of imperial power if you like. Once the central power collapses I wouldn't bet on any local government lasting very long. Whatever weapons it has at its disposal will quickly be looted and distributed by whichever former government employee gets them first. Without the threat of the Empire keeping things in check and scarcity due to collapse, the cosmopolitan dream suddenly becomes a nightmare.



If that's true you might be in trouble. It's long been thought by US military wargamers that any serious Right wing revolution would result in quick and brutal total victory for the Right in America. Besides the obvious and expected desertion or treason of most of the armed forces, the Red States could very easily blockade and starve out the Blue states. I don't think QAnon is going to be that, I'm more inclined to believe the theory that it was a government psyop to keep the Right placated and doing nothing ("Trust the Plan") rather than actually doing something like fighting (and probably winning).



Yes, nations can and have grown through violent assimilation (we'd call that a form of cultural genocide today), but internally they are relatively stable and lasting, I like to think of it like a low energy state. Unlike Empires which are constantly fighting and inevitably losing the battle against human entropy.



I probably should have nixed the use of the word natural in this context. Arguably everything humans do is natural. Nations and nation-states are low energy, stable human formations.



In a Christian context, how does killing your neighbour because his church uses Latin and incense help your immortal soul? I mean if you really want to push the religious war, I'll listen to your theory and the theological grounds for it.

Not really. Because, even in a relatively homogeneous culture, people will still find ways to split into competing gangs if things go bad. And, even if things are going well, there will still be "culture wars" between conservatives and progressives. Also, today's technology makes the formation of new subcultures very easy.


A collapse of the federal government would be a disaster for the cities regardless of how cosmopolitan-vs.-monocultural the cities are.


Perhaps so, but QAnon has also helped to popularize its underlying grand conspiracy ideology -- the idea that the Democratic Party is part of one vast "Satanic cult" and child sex ring. That idea, which is a reincarnation of the "Satanic Ritual Abuse" scare of the 1980's, can be hugely de-stabilizing if enough people believe it.


It doesn't seem to me that nations and nation-states are necessarily "low energy, stable human formations." They too will find some way to split up into gangs when things go bad and there isn't an external enemy to unite against. Even when things are going relatively well, they will likely suffer a brain drain as their young folks seek student visas to more cosmopolitan countries.


Because, until around 1960 or so, a lot of Catholic countries still clung to the medieval idea that their religion was something that should be forced on people (for the sake of saving their souls, of course), or at the very least strongly encouraged, by a Catholic government. In a lot of Catholic countries, the rights of Protestants were severely restricted.

Therefore, in Northern Ireland, the Ulster Protestants wanted to remain part of the U.K. in order to preserve their own religious freedom and thus save their children's souls, whereas the Irish Catholics wanted the entire country of Ireland to be Catholic and thus save as many Irish souls as possible.

Religious freedom for the Ulster Protestants gradually became less of an issue after 1960 or so, and in general the religious dimension of the conflict gradually became less important, as a lot of people on both sides gradually became less religious. As the religious dimension of the conflict subsided, what remained was just an ongoing hereditary grudge.

I don't disagree, but the hierarchy makes certain predictions about this as well. In the homogenous West of relatively recent times, the divides were about economics and class. In the post mass-immigration West these arguments are fading into obscurity and the main divides in society are coalescing around blood identities. Nationalism is rising.
In the UK Torys are winning votes in old working class areas, something bewildering to Labour, something is overruling their old economic/class rivalries. On the other side of the pond, Mr Billionaire Donald Trump is leading a "working class" revolution. Why? The hierarchy answers that question.



Yes. I've forgotten where we were going with this.



I think historians will see it as a symptom of destabilisation, rather than cause.



Nations have always been with us and they tend to survive all kinds of schisms, civil wars, being conquered etc. I don't think its too much of a stretch to see them as made of tougher stuff compared to other human groups.



Hehehehe.



I think the hallmark of a true religious conflict must be attempts to convert the enemy. This sort of thing is pretty rare outside of the middle age Christendom or Islam more recently. The Irish troubles in particular was about "The Brits", "imperialism" and territory and the IRA's attitude towards Ulster was downright genocidal, they wanted them gone, not converted - these are hallmarks of an ethnic conflict to me. To my knowledge there was no "convert or die" rhetoric or offers of clemency for religious converts by either side, though I'd love to see if you can dig up an example.

Not sure if I posted this before on this forum;

When I was a teenager, we took a road trip from New Jersey down to Florida. On the way back up, my father decided to skip I-95 and go into the interior, and we ended up in Columbia, South Carolina.

There was this old wrought iron statue of George Washington holding a cane that had been erected sometime during the Antebellum years and still stood. Originally, Washington's cane made it all the way down to the ground. However, when the Union troops came through ~1865, they attacked the statue and broke off the thin piece of Washington's lower cane.

I thought it was odd. These were Northern troops, pro-Union, why would they attack a statue of the first president of the union they were trying to preserve? The little modern historical placard next to the statue said something like "They were so caught up with the fervor of invading and capturing the city, that they didn't care what they were vandalizing. They just wanted to destroy."

I see the same fervor today. If we can tear down one old statue, then we can tear them ALL down! It's no longer about the politics, just about the destruction. I don't think the Yankees had anything against Washington, they were just destroying property in the city of Columbia willy-nilly.