BOWLING ALONE

>>My observation is that a multi-racial society can be successful but a multi-cultural one is doomed.
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I agree in principle, but, in practice, it appears rare to have a multi-racial society that is not also multi-cultural. The rare exceptions seem to be places where mixed race people without a distinct racial identity form an absolute majority of the population. This seems to happen mainly in Latin America, which is not the worst place in the world and may be a more psychologically healthy group of societies than we have in the US and Europe, but it is hardly a “first world” society in terms of economic and cultural achievement.

Related to this problem is the question of “which races” are trying to live together under the same state. The mastodon in the living room is the forbidden topic of heritable IQ differences coinciding with visible racial differences. These differences are often of a magnitude similar to the IQ differences between the upper middle class and the working class. If one reads Aristotle’s “The Politics,” or if one is acquainted with European history, it becomes clear that class differences by themselves can become quite destabilizing, which has been less obvious in the US because we started with lots of cheap land, then, as we urbanized, replaced Britain as the workshop of the world, and then we had no competition for a generation after our rivals were destroyed during WW2 while post-New Deal policies and social mobility in the post-War boom tended to blur class differences during the Cold War. Nowadays, as we lose our unique advantages, Europe’s long-standing class tensions are starting to emerge here, but they intersect with racial differences, not just visible racial differences, but also racial differences in IQ and temperament (the latter probably being related to the documented racial differences in various hormone levels). This complicates matters immensely, but mainstream society is terrified even to mention the existence of this conundrum.

In Asia and Africa, both racial and cultural differences tend to be managed by de facto segregation. In Latin America, society has tended strongly toward a tri-racial caste system: Whites at the top, Indios or Blacks at the bottom, and a vast throng of Mestizos or Mulattoes in the middle. This is sometimes rationalized by concepts such as “racial democracy” in Brazil or the “universal race” in Mexico, similar to the “melting pot” myth we developed in America to ease tensions between our European ethnics during our previous wave of mass immigration. The tri-racial caste“` arrangement appears to be more stable and harmonious (relatively!) than the Old World’s segregated cultures, but hardly ideal.

Most Americans seem determined to reject both segregation and a racial caste system, demanding instead that every group have outcomes at least equal to the European derived population. No one wants to ask, or to let anyone else ask, “Is this even possible, much less realistic?”` Look around the world, and you will not find equal outcomes anywhere. Why might that be? What evidence do we have that this is an achievable outcome? Yet we have undertaken this vast experiment, based on the implicit and sometimes explicit assumption that emerged during the “anti-fascist” propaganda campaigns of the 1940’s that all men, or at least all human groups, really are created equal. No one wanted to ask, “What may ultimately happen if we undertake this grand experiment in social engineering and our underlying assumption turns out to have been wrong? What happens if the bigots we love to hate are right?”

And, without waiting for America’s example to provide the answer, Canada and western Europe have plunged into the same experiment. And what do any of us gain for the risk we are taking? Cheap labor for the monied classes? Is it really worth it?

And what can be done if wish to pursue more risk averse policies? We can curtail immigration, but the old America with a sustainable Anglo-European majority is demographically finished, no matter what. And pushing for cultural conformity would force everyone to conform to a dominant culture that has become morally reprehensible.

And when transport fuel becomes dear–that day is not many years away, when “fracking” production goes into irreversible decline shortly after 2020–geographic mobility will go way down, and, with different races being unevenly distributed across the country, true Balkanization will likely begin to emerge in America.

By the way, social media plays a role in this as well. It has tended to erode nationalist sentiments in favor of a more cosmopolitan, transnational outlook, but also strengthens localist sympathies.

When some future historian will be able to look back and write the story of Old America’s decline and fall, it will make for a fascinating read, but I imagine that story will surrounded by furious debates and controversies. Economic, cultural, political, and biological theories will contend for explanatory power. In truth, all these factors are strongly against us, and it is due both to their combined weight and the negative synergy of their mutual interactions that our fate is already sealed. Donald Trump is a tragic hero, whose labors are not those of a Hercules but of a Sisyphus. “Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin.”

Nevertheless, that does not mean America is destined to break up. Notwithstanding cultural fragmentation, the vast, fertile plain between the Appalachians and the Rockies, much of it drawn together by the extensively navigable Mississippi River and its major tributaries, and emptying into the intracoastal waterway that stretches from Corpus Christi to the Chesapeake Bay, will always have a unifying effect, even more after land and air transport become much more costly. The rivalries and tensions that have always characterized America may wax more intense, and shared national identity may wane, but the psychic relief that might come from full political separation will not be easily attained. If many people of all affinities find that thought unbearable, I suggest organized enclave formation as the best achievable solution for most people. Some people can opt for emigration, but other countries are not beds of roses either. America’s age of greatness is passing fast, but America as a continent-spanning political entity, however troubled, is likely to persist, for better or worse.