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Originally Posted by mojo
I sometimes get the sense that ong wants to pause time and lock current cultures and peoples in place and empower them to have the right to keep it all that way.
It's not about "pausing time". I don't want us to go back to horses and carts. Culture changes, largely thanks to technology, but also due to other forces such as cultural integration. That's not something I consider a bad thing.
But there are tons of cultural traits around the world that should be cherished and preserved. Language is one such example. Even though using the same language around the world would have huge economic benefits, it would be a huge human loss.
Music is another example. Should we associate reggae with Jamaica? Or just humans? They're proud of what they've given to the world of music, why take that away from them and say "this isn't yours, it doesn't belong to a nation or a group of people, it belongs to the world, to humans". Art, archaeology, education, there are so many things that can be considered "culture", that we should seek to preserve through love of history and love of the journey that our species is taking.
Culture is dynamic - constantly moving, evolving, adapting, embracing and rejecting - it is not the same today as it was a year ago, a decade ago, a century ago.
I sometimes feel like ong doesn't agree with me on that last sentence, but I can't figure out how.
Help me out, buddy?
Some cultural traits and identities are dynamic, others not so much. Language being the most obvious one that is almost static. You can't just say "culture is dynamic" and think that means any more than saying "planets move". Yes, but they remain the same planets, even if some things about that planet might have changed.
I don't understand why ong wants to pause the time "now"
I don't. I just also don't want to see nations of people, that is people who have a historical identity, whether that be English, Icelandic, whatever, lose that identity. This is not about preserving culture forever exactly as it is now, or any specific time in history, but celebrating what makes us different without it being about what makes us better.
You can say that "Icelandic" means nothing more than "a human born in Iceland" if you want, but I don't agree. If that were true, they would be identical to the English in every way except their place of birth. They are not. So being Icelandic means something more. Should we seek to destroy that distinction, or celebrate it?
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