Assume everything you've been taught about the 20th century is wrong. Okay, so most of it isn't if you're going with facts and figures.
But if you look at the conclusions drawn from events, at the bigger movements you were told were behind things, everything you were told is a lie. Pretty much. Except, of course, that sometimes the people telling you the lies thought they were telling you the truth. Either because they, themselves, had been lead up the garden path by philosophers or (and often and) because they couldn't endure the truth. It didn't fit with some incredibly appealing theory they had been sold, and which demanded the plainly obvious reason for something not, in fact, be true. Even when it was.
Yes, we're back again to the vexed topic of World War I. And thereby to the topic of all the wars of the twentieth century. And the vexed topic of military service for "your country right or wrong."
In the comments on memorial day someone left a comment saying "Whatever your politics, thank the war dead for your freedom." Or something like.
Look, I've been surer or that than I am now.
Um... I am okay with thanking the war dead, because at the very least they thought they were defending freedom and the principles of our constitution, but as a friend (who is a veteran) said in his memorial day post, it is hard to imagine any of our honored military dead coming back and seeing what's happening in our land and not being profoundly confused, if not disappointed. Because in fact our own -- corrupted, frauded in -- government is indulging in the sins of the Kaiser and often -- sorry -- using the tactics of the German National Socialists.
They're doing this despite the Americans who shed their blood to stop crazy globalism, and partly because their government, their education and, oh, yeah, definitely their bureaucracy is running a program resting on the wrong conclusions taken from the clashes of cultures of the 19th and 20th century.
Look, I can never do this as a scientific theory, not because I can't develop methods to test it (though those would be mostly examining history) or accept or reject my hypothesis, but because the "science" of sociology currently is caca, and I'm not going to give any college my head for washing to get the right credentials.
So, instead, I'll write it into science fiction books, and maybe sometime in the future someone can codify it.
This is the thing, though: As far as I can tell, both from observation and experience (acculturating (twice)) and from reading history, cultures are not just the assemblage of a bunch of people under more or less arbitrary rules, which they follow because they're conformists or stupid or something. Cultures are also not (rolls eyes) born with the person, nor do they transmit genetically. Yes, we do know from animal husbandry that individuals can be born more docile or rebellious, more people-oriented or introverted, etc. and that those traits are inheritable within reason. (There are always sports.)
However, humans are not just creatures of nature, and on the nature nurture puts a veneer that puts limitations on or enhances traits, that rewards certain behaviors or suppresses others. So, even though most people in culture x might be docile if a baby is brought to a highly rebellious culture, like the US and raised in it, he or she will "conform" by being rebellious.
I, myself, had no idea I was introverted. Not a clue. Why? Because Portuguese culture is highly gregarious and group oriented. So, even though I was considered weird and standoffish for there, once I got to the US everyone thought I was very gregarious and people oriented. The one and only tell is that I'm utterly wiped out by being around people too much -- the definition of too much being way more than I'm used to -- and I either have to get some time away (when I disappear from a con, I've usually run to my room to read or listen to music, or do not much of anything. And Dan and I have been known to run away and have dinner by ourselves) or I start showing weird symptoms, like losing my voice. Until I figured that, I thought I always got sick after cons. Actually most of the time I don't. I'm just wiped out. This is because my natural introversion was shaped by the overlay of a culture where everyone lives in everyone's pockets, all the time.
Anyway, though, I have come to the conclusion from observation, that while individual humans are plastic to a certain extent, humans in a group, all belonging to the same culture are harder to mold and shape arbitrarily.
It is probably part of human evolution, that cultures react like sentient group entities when attacked, destroyed or occupied.
There is only one way -- known for sure -- of destroying a culture utterly without killing every member of that culture, meaning it's eradicated and doesn't surface again, ever. That is to kill everyone over the age of 3, adopt the surviving children and raise them as yours with no awareness of a separate entity.
Even our savage ancestors didn't do that, that we know. Oh, in pre-history -- even modern primitives (for lack of a better term. Cultures with no writing, and sometimes no future verb tenses or a limited language. Yes, they exist. Mostly tiny tribes in remote places -- it was fairly common, as far as we can tell, entire bands and tribes were completely wiped out, their culture leaving absolutely no trace in the future except maybe as a fragment of much-distorted myth. And probably there were times when only the babies were taken and adopted. (Or eaten. Look, there are no noble savages, okay?)
Most of the time, though, throughout most of history, fighting men (or all males) were killed and women, children and non-fighting men (maybe) enslaved.
Because of this, cultures developed what I can only call evolutionary adaptations to survive those events: the women become whores (usually for he conquerors), the men become submissive, and children learn the new language and lose the old, oh, and full blooded children of the old culture stop being born.
In fact most of the symptoms of what we believe are "decadent cultures" aren't. They're wounded cultures. Cultures which, sometimes wrongly, assume they've been conquered, and therefore go into "survive conquest" mode. This is the mode that will allow some (or most) of its traits to survive, by being passed on in stories, in what you teach the children, in "this is how we do things" even when a majority of those who carried the culture are killed or enslaved.
Now, when I talk of cultures deciding something it sounds like I'm going to break in paens of the Ashkantic records (sp) or perhaps start talking of the collective unconscious. It's not. It's a short hand. Because, you know, we are social creatures (even those of us who prefer to make friends over the internet and only see our close family on a regular basis.) This means when your subconscious adds two plus two and gets aardvark, you give certain signals most of them non-verbal. And when everyone does that, the culture acts like a collective entity. I refuse to explain this every single time, so I'll say the culture does this or that. You will most assuredly deal.
Our culture, yes, is acting like a conquered culture. This is because through most of history for someone to come in and impose on you "new ways of doing things" and trying to shape you into something different, meant that you had lost a war and a lot of you were laying dead.
In our times this is because our intelligentsia was converted against its own culture (while still being part of the culture, which makes them funny. Or they would be funny if this were happening to someone else long ago) by Marxist and "progressive" theories that purport that both humans and cultures are infinitely plastic. Being part of the ruling bureaucracy and class, they imposed arbitrary rules from above, which felt to our subconscious like conquerors giving commands.
Which brings us back to colonialism. As we all know the left considers colonialism evil. It probably is, at least when engaged in from above and arbitrarily. What I mean is, if you conquer a people and impose your ways on them, they're going to suffer and their culture is going to become corrupted in weird ways. Sometimes.... sometimes that's an improvement. For all their -- many -- faults, the Spaniards did stop human sacrifice to the South of (and in some portions of the Western states of) the US.
But it is strong medicine and a high price to pay. Also the reason why all the dreams of the early science fiction writers (and the retarded would-be techno lords of today) of a world government are not just impossible but utterly and unspeakably evil.
Because if you try to impose a culture (and the current idiots it's not even a culture, just the Marxist virus) on the whole world, it's going to .... change. And what it will become is not what you set out to impose, but this weird, bizarre amalgam. When you take in account all the cultures of the world, that means what results will be ... uh... alien is a good way to put it. And probably mostly Chinese. (Because their culture is older, and frankly while judged in terms of comfort to humans and ability to provide completely nonfunctional, nonfunctional in a way that has created mechanisms to increase the cyclic dysfunction. And those mechanisms will survive and infect everything.) And on the way to installing this maimed and maiming thing, you're going to kill most of the population of the world, and only a few outright. Most of them with depression and internal destruction.
And here we come back to the age of Empires from oh, the mid-fourteenth but more obvious from the mid-19th century to World War I. That was straight up internationalism.
Cultures that were in the industrial revolution and needed resources, but more importantly, cultures that were absolutely convinced they had the right way to live stomped around the globe showing everyone else how to live, and sometimes hard-enforcing it.
"But Sarah, that's nationalism," you'll say. Oh, is it? Because what they were trying to do was create international empires, all over the world, and enforce the one culture, with, in some cases (hi, Germany) the idea that eventually the whole world would be like them.
I don't care what they call it. Particularly when you look at the alliances of the ruling families (kings, queens, emperors, empresses, and princes and princesses) it becomes obvious that it was an overarching supra-national elite trying to add more regions to their already vast domains, and make their dominance world wide if possible.
They were not, despite the nationalism of those in the trenches, fighting to preserve their own tiny countries, but their vast international alliances and empires.
Yes, the Germans were the most rampant case of this and they were stopped by the sacrifices of those in World War One and World War Two. And we're grateful for that.
Our degree of gratitude doesn't change, but their wasted sacrifice might make us furious when we see the global elite has either achieved their objectives through other means (We're looking at you EU) or are trying to achieve the rest of it by even stupider means (We're looking at you WEF.) Oh, and let their buddies in the Soviet Union go a-colonizing for most of the 20th century, and would do it again (the Soviet Union never really existed. It was always Russian colonialism) given half a chance. And are now trying to distract us with a fun proxy make-believe war.
World War I was not caused by nationalism. Though it shocked various internationalists, including the Marxists, that individuals would fight to preserve their countries against internationalism, rather than the workers of the world uniting.
It was caused by colonialist impulses and imperial land grabs.
We -- nationalists -- have been at war with internationalism for a long time, and it's time we recognized it, shedding the wrong stuff we were taught.
Yes some cultures are appalling judged on the only standard that counts: Do they promote human productivity happiness and health?
Yes, cultures can change. What they can't is "directed change." America has infiltrated more cultures than I care to mention from the beginning, purely by example. Yep, some of the results -- I'm looking at you, French revolution -- were appalling, because they were the result of our principles being taken up by an entirely different culture, that couldn't process them as we did. (Not wouldn't. Couldn't. Note this is what I mean that a world-culture would be unspeakably alien.)
It's entirely possible overtime we can change most cultures into being more functional and better for their members. But we can't do that by imposing it from above. (Is looking seriously at the EU where most of the members are behaving like conquered cultures. And therefore becoming increasingly more dysfunctional.)
Colonialism is evil because it wounds existing cultures, and often imposes more dysfunctional ones. But even functional cultures, as colonizers, can cause splintering they don't understand and can't prevent. It might be needed but it's always a form of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Imperialism, the formation of vast international empires, is a form of colonialism, whether under the banner of the Soviet Union, the WEF or Kaiser Wilhelm.
Cultures evolve in isolation. In our hyper connected world, they'll change and meld through contact. The best we can do is denounce the bad changes. And keep the local identities as much as possible.
Because in the end, nationalism is good. Despite our fantasies -- and I often have them -- both a culture imposed from above -- whether a real or synthetic one -- and a world in which our physical location doesn't matter are unworkable. And if they worked, they'd be nightmares.
Even as we live and work across borders, even as we borrow each other's food and clothing, it is important to remember that the national culture evolved for a reason, and that everything we experience of other cultures must be experienced through our culture.
It is important to remember other cultures we come in contact with are intrinsically different and shaped through millennia (or in our case centuries. Hey, we're the annoying genius kid) of different evolution. Evolution suited to the needs and location of the majority of people.
It is important to remember that every immigrant-group will bring culture with them, and that they will process their acculturation through their culture. (For individuals acculturation is more complete and faster. Not to say that it's always 100%. It's not. See my figuring out I was not an extrovert.) This is one of the reasons open borders is stupid. (Sorry. Yes, I badly wanted to believe in a borderless world. But that just guarantees the least functional, most predatory culture wins over all. No.) It is also one of the reasons that countries should be able to vet who comes in, and keep it -- if possible -- to individuals. And countries must demand and enforce acculturation and integration.
Because cultures will war with each other, openly or not. And because there are no noble savages, and the deep background of our culture was formed in a time of utter savagery, if you let cultures war, the least functional will win.
Cherish your national culture. Protect your national borders.
The dream of a borderless world is a nightmare, where elites completely divorced from the regional beliefs and needs rule all, according to their arbitrary will and their philosophical illusions.
Think of the different cultures as the founders thought of states: Little laboratories of humanity, competing (but not warring. Not if we limit immigration and don't try to grab each other's land and people) to see which is best for humanity. The best at achieving prosperity freedom and innovation will spread naturally.
Which is why all over the world, the future already comes from America.
Let's make it a functional future. Let's make it an American future.
Get to it.
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