Multiculturalism: An Idea Promoting Unity or Divison?

[I take my train of thought here from remarks made by talk radio host Dennis Prager while I was driving in my car earlier today]

The idea known as "multiculturalism" has been very trendy for quite some time now. But, really, what the heck is this? What does it really mean? For a long time, there has been something about it--about what seem to be its social implications as it is usually promoted--that rubs me the wrong way.

It's not as though the United States has to be introduced to the idea that it is possible for a variety of people from a diverse array of ethnic and cultural backgrounds to live and work together in relative peace and harmony. There is no place on the planet as diverse and as relatively peaceful as the United States. It is one of our greatest identifying qualities that makes the U.S. special and unique. Just about everywhere else, significant differences of culture and ethnicity placed in close regular contact results in major strife and even violence.

There was a moment when this was made especially evident to me. It was while riding the Staten Island Ferry between Manhattan and Staten Island (at the time I was living on Staten Island and rode the ferry regularly to get to Manhattan). I surveyed the people around me on the ferry one day and I became suddenly amazed at how extraordinarily diverse the people on just that one, single ferry, truly were. That one ferry-load of people was a veritable United Nations of cultures. I'm not just talking about two or three. I'm talking probably a dozen, at least, different ethnic heritages were present on that one boat. People from seemingly every continent and every corner of the world. I'll bet there were easily 12--probably more--native languages spoken among the few hundred or so people. I was awestruck for a moment and thought to myself, nowhere but here--in the United States--could such an incredibly wide spectrum of people be together peacefully in one place and not only this, but that it might be a normal, everyday occurrence, so much so that no one particularly notices.

Sure, there are places in the world where different peoples live in proximity and intermingle regularly. But the sheer magnitude of the number of different heritages and the breadth of their diversity that is found frequently in American cities is unique to the United States. Nobody holds a candle to us on this front. We are human history's greatest living example of the peaceful coexistence of a vast multiplicity and diversity of cultures.

In light of this fact, what on earth is all this hubbub in the last 20 or so years of so-called "multiculturalism"?

I suspect that the term, "multiculturalism," is not meant merely to express positive sentiments about the peaceful and respectful coexistence of peoples of many cultures. If this were all it meant, it would be somewhat redundant; it would simply be a synonym for, "The United States of America." (And yes, I know that our history is not devoid of serious social clashes among us. But taking everything in our history into account we are still far, far more advanced on this than anywhere else).

So what, in the American context (the most diverse place on earth), is meant by this relatively new term, this supposedly new emphasis? What is implied in this term that is new or different from simply how America, on the whole, has been since our earliest days? What explains the perceived need for its use?

In the past, when people from other cultures settled in the United States, they desired to become American. They still had ties and maintained certain practices and customs from the places of their heritage. But, after making it here, they did not desire to remain associated above all else with the places from which they had come. Primarily, they wanted to be associated with being, simply, American. Living as and being an American was primary. Yes, secondarily, they were still Irish, or Italian, or German, or Vietnamese, or Korean, etc. Those things were not gone. They were still important. But they were no longer the most important thing about who they were. They were Americans first, and then (significantly, importantly, yet secondarily) Italian, Irish, etc.Would such people--our great-grandparents--be called multicultural by today's promoters of this idea?

I don't think they would. And here is the problem. Why not? "Multiculturalism" in today's lingo seems to imply that one ought to maintain your ethnic and cultural heritage as your primary identity and allegiance (especially if your heritage is from somewhere other than Western Europe). Your primary, personal, interior, psychological identity and highest value, in this view, is decidedly not placed upon American culture or being American. Rather, multiculturalism encourages a disregard for America as a singularly unique and special culture in its own right and puts in its place an allegiance to a (oftentimes, I suspect, more fantasy than real) largely imaginary bond to an overly romanticized notion of one's cultural heritage.

Why is this bad? Ironically, it creates division rather than unity. The older approach did not disregard the special and unique value of many aspects of one's own cultural heritage (though at times people were probably too quick to distance themselves from all of the particularly singular aspects of their cultural heritage). But, their continued identity as being a part of a unique heritage which is Italian, German, Cambodian, etc., was placed in second place to becoming and embracing life as an American. In other words, they were still Italian, but, willingly transformed by the unique set of values which are the foundational values of America. It seems to me that "multiculturalism" no longer even cares to recognize that there is such a thing as an American culture and values in itself. Rather, it seems to want us to maintain divisions among ourselves along ethnic-cultural lines to such an extent that there could be no other option but to live in a kind of lowest-common-denominator equality in separate enclaves. If there is no overarching culture which unites us together, how can the great melting pot which is America still be a single pot, with all the flavors coming together in harmony? The direction of multiculturalism's thrust does not envision different cultures coming together making one single, unified community (i.e. America, as based on founding American values). Rather, it seems to envision lots of small pots each with their own ingredients, never mingling together as one.

So, that's my issue (one, anyways) with so-called multiculturalism. I'm all for the ideal of many diverse cultures living together in peace and harmony and mutual respect, mutually benefiting from each other's rich cultural treasures. But if we are to do this in the context of the United States of America, it ought to be done in such a way that we truly come together under the big tent of shared values that are specifically American values. To the extent that multiculturalism does not support this (and may in fact even be hostile to this), I am of the opinion that rather than being a good thing, it is (as it is actually promoted) a cancer, instilling a potentially lethal sickness into our nation. This is a sickness that divides and pulls us apart in the name of "diversity."

The Cult of Female Sexual Power: A Boon to Women?

Today I came across a very interesting article: "Aging," by former supermodel Paulina Porizkova.

It seems to me that one of the things radical feminism has done, at least in years past, is to buy into the idea that women gain back power over their sexuality by deliberately flaunting it. It's something the whole fashion industry culture seems to take for granted. An overt, over-the-top focus on the sexual values of a woman's body is presumed to be a boon for women overall in the culture at large. Just look at the clothes in department stores for teen girls for evidence (I don't spend time doing this myself, but many others have commented on this phenomenon).

And closely connected to this is our culture's excessive and unbalanced worship of all things youthful. If it has to do with being young, a thing is presumed to be good. If something has to do with being old (especially looking old), it is presumed to be negative. The modeling and fashion industries, and advertising in general, promote these ideas. And there seems to be at least a kind of loose association in the culture between this and the progress women have made in society compared to years past.

It is true that things have become better in many ways for women over the last century. And this is, of course, a good thing. But consider the following excerpts from Paulina's article. I think she makes very prescient observations.

My first recognition of age setting in was exactly on my 36th birthday. I have no idea why, on this day of all days, I looked in the mirror and realized my face no longer looked young. I didn't look bad: only, the freshness had somehow disappeared. I immediately became hyper-conscious of my looks and went out and bought the most expensive cream on the market. (For your information, it did nothing.) And I began the battle of acceptance, something I have to do now almost every time I face a mirror. 

 And later,

But would I ever have dreamed that I would miss the time I couldn't walk past a construction site unmolested? These days when someone whistles at me, it's mostly a bike messenger about to mow me down.

And,

To me, to let yourself age means that you're comfortable with who you are. Yes, sorry, I do believe that all the little shots here and there, and the pulling of skin here and there and the removal of fat here and there, means you still have something to prove; you're still not comfortable in your skin. The beauty of age was supposed to be about the wisdom acquired and with it, an acceptance and celebration of who you are. Now all we want for people to see is that we have not yet attained that wisdom. Aging has become something to fight, not something to accept.

Contemporary fashion and marketing have made these negative experience worse for women. Does this indicate true progress for women?

According to the messages present in our popular culture (fostered at least in a background way by a radical feminist acceptance of the notion that control of sexuality is gained by flaunting it), the most important thing about a woman is her sexual power (and this is closely linked to her youthful appearance and exterior beauty). But in such a cultural climate what happens to society's valuation of women, and of women's own sense of worth to themselves, as they age?

I would suggest that the contemporary cult of female sexual power--the unbalanced hyper-emphasis of sexual values above all other human and personal values--has not been a boon to women. In the long run, it has turned into a curse, making them more vulnerable to abuse and to being seen as less than whole persons. The tendency to quickly demote and even disregard women as soon as they become less physically attractive with age plainly shows this. Women like Paulina know this. Do the rest of us?

Conversion by Way of Evil, Part 4

See part 1 here, part 2 here, and part 3 here.

So, I had come to believe that only supernatural origins are able to explain, ultimately, the reality of both good and evil acted out in human life in all its complexity. And I became certain that this source influencing us toward actions that we call good (for the very meaning of "the good" entails this) is superior to that source influencing us to do what we call evil.

Again, if only nature were at play in the sphere of human action--with no supernatural influence involved--it should be the case that I should be able to always do that which I have decided rationally is the best thing to do. But I can't, and I don't. This split between the knowledge of the good and what I actually do bores a hole right through any merely utilitarian or pragmatic attempt to explain human moral sensibility--most especially in considering the wretchedness that lies in waiting at the darkest depths of our worst selves. This is no mere realm of earthly nature.

So, what is this "good"--this beyond-nature source of moral influence in human life that is superior to that which pulls us toward evil? I will speak in a very summary fashion. The source of goodness must be singular--one (there does not seem to be a competition among multiple systems of goodness). This is our human experience. Search our conscience, our heart, our soul, our psyche, and we find there a spiritual wellspring gently pointing us toward the good which is entirely consistent, whole, integral, of-a-piece, with itself. It is one. I do not wonder whether that which guides me to prefer beauty over ugliness, or love over hatred, or honesty over deceitfulness, is multiple or is singular. It speaks to my heart with a unified, singular voice. It is a single orchestra playing with perfect harmony. Or, more accurately, a single benevolent power, speaking to me through various spiritual instruments that nonetheless are perfectly attentive to his one conductor's wand. This does not mean that there are no competing voices in my heart, but, I recognize them as such. Powers that try to bend me toward depravity and selfishness I realize are different powers than that one unified influence which beckons me to choose the good.

Why does this superior, unified, spiritual power have any interest in me??? Why should there be any such thing as some beyond-nature being who cares one whit what I do with my life??? These are highly perplexing questions.

Philosophically I realized, if there is such a thing as god (meaning, one single supernatural being who is all-powerful), it can not be the case that god--a real god, that is--could have any need whatsoever for human beings. For if a supposed god had any need for us he/it would not be god. Any being who needs other beings for anything, well, what kind of a god is that? Not much of a god if he/it is not all-sufficient within himself. No, god is not god if he has to seek outside himself to supply some lack within.

So, back to the question. The explanation for god's manifest interest in human life cannot be--it is philosophically impossible--that he needs to be interested in us. In other words, if god is god, we cannot be for him a source of good that he does not already contain fully in himself. If all good does not reside in all fullness in him, god is not god. A god that has to take an interest in human beings in order to gain something he lacks within, is not god. As I thought about all this, I came to this conclusion: the only explanation for god's (the singular source of all goodness) interest in we human beings has to be because he loves us! It's not because we provide something he needs. He is interested in us out of sheer goodness--out of love--out of benevolent regard for us to be good ourselves. Nothing else (if god is god--a robust, full, real god--not some wimpy half-god who needs stuff from mere human beings) makes any rational sense!

I thought about this quite a bit. I tried to come up with a philosophically satisfactory alternative explanation that answers the question why does god (understood as the all-powerful, singular source of all goodness) have an interest in human life if not because of a completely gratuitous love? Can there be any other explanation? I concluded--no. Rationally, philosophically speaking, if god is god (lacking in nothing) only one reason offers any sensible explanation as to why he should care about human beings at all--sheer love; love freely given out of total, simple generosity, and not out of any necessity. I tried to find alternative explanations for god's interest, and there are none. The only way you can find an alternative possibility to god's regard for human life than freely given love is if you demote god to less than god so that his interest can then be explained in virtue of some necessity in him to go outside himself.

And, I have not traced this line of thinking out here, but along with all of this I was realizing as well that because of the nature of the good and its influence on human life, of its unified character, and because love is the only philosophically tenable explanation for god's having any interest in us at all, god (now, capital 'G,' God) must be personal. God is a personal being! He has to be if the reason He cares about us is because of love. Non-personal beings cannot love. I had become utterly convinced that God cares about us because He must love us. And therefore, He must be personal.

I had become a thoroughly convinced and believing theist, believing not only that God exists (as the only reasonable explanation for the source of goodness in the cosmos and for its unfailing superiority over evil), but that He is a personal being who loves us out of a freely chosen gratuitous love--that He is interested in us because He loves us; that, in fact, . . . He . . . loves . . . ME!!!

This totally rocked my world. I was no longer alone in the cosmos. I had come to know that I live under the benevolent regard of a personal God who loves me out of His sheer goodness. Thanks be to God! I started thanking Him for life, for His care, for creation.

Real Man Gives Life for Wife & Baby in Split Second Decision

Men out there. This is what manhood is about. Giving of ourselves with nothing held back. Sacrificing for others. Even until death.

So many things in our culture today encourage us (men and women both) to be horribly self-absorbed. We are lulled into a kind of self-killing self-preoccupation. I hope this video is a reminder to stop being so absorbed in ourselves and start giving more of ourselves away to others in love. This is the heart and power and significance of real manhood. Most especially, Christian manhood, modeled upon the self-sacrifice of Christ.

I hope this is inspiring to others as it is to me. So men, let's stop living for ourselves and start living for others, especially the women in our lives. We aren't being real men--men after the heart of Christ--until we do.

Note from this video that this real man was already in the long habit of readily giving himself for his wife--putting her first. Here is a question for us all to ask ourselves: If I had a split second decision to make like this, no time to think it over, would I be already in the habit of choosing others over myself? Would I instantly give myself, without hesitation, so another could live?

Help us, Lord, to react like you did on the cross!

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Conversion by Way of Evil, Part 3

See part 1 here and part 2 here . . .


5. Given the above steps one through four, I came to hold that evil deeds, whether done by others or by myself, are not wholly explainable by natural, practical, utilitarian reasons. This is especially clear in cases of truly horrendous human evil. I concluded that the evidence of the awful depths of depravity of the worst human acts, together with the evidence of my own inability to prevent myself from doing bad things even when I know they are bad, reveals that there must be some power stronger than myself--stronger than any human person--that somehow tries to pull us toward evil. In fact, I came to hold that there must be a supernatural source--a power greater than can be found in the realm of the natural world alone--acting upon human persons or involved in some way, dragging us down into the depths of depravity. I simply could no longer believe, given the reality of how we experience evil in our life, that evil is totally explainable without any supernatural reality factoring in to the mix. Evil has a source beyond, outside nature, beyond that which is merely human. To me, nothing else made sense. This was the first time in my adult life that I became completely convinced that there is, without a doubt, more to the universe of existing things than what we can observe with our senses. There is a supernatural realm. And this realm is not material, but spiritual.

6. Then, I realized that the source of what we call "good" in the realm of human experience, ultimately, must also be supernatural. Not only must it be supernatural, it must be more powerful--superior--to the supernatural font of evil. And it must be one--unified--singular. How so? What we call "good," is, by its very inherent meaning, better than and preferable to evil (bad). The very meaning of the term, "good," is that which we prefer and understand to be better than other things in regard to our happiness and the fulfillment of our own lives. We call a thing "good" because it is by its inner nature better than, preferable, and superior to things we call "evil" or "bad." Now, this has consequences. Evil, I had become convinced, is ultimately involved with a supernatural reality beyond this world. But, the good is always better than those things which are evil. We understand this. It is universal to human nature. And recalling that there is a fundamental and common moral sense of right and wrong which is universally shared by all human persons (e.g. it is wrong to steal) means that there are some ultimate goods that are always and everywhere understood by we humans as better (higher, superior, always preferable) than those things we call evil. This has to mean that the ultimate source of what we call "good" is more powerful than evil. If this were not the case, we would have no universal concept of "the good" as preferable to the bad. "Good" itself would not always be good if it were not rooted in something ultimately superior and more powerful than that in which evil is rooted. Now since evil is rooted in a supernatural reality the good, therefore, must also be rooted in a supernatural reality and indeed in a supernatural reality that is always and everywhere more powerful than that reality from which evil arises. If good were not the boss in an ultimate sense, of the bad, the very term "good" would have no meaning.

Continued in part 4

Conversion by Way of Evil, Part 2

This continues part 1 . . .

4. This is closely related to no. 2, but now restricted only to one's own self. Notice carefully the interior situation of your own person in regard to doing bad things--those circumstances when you have done something wrong and you are aware that you did something wrong. If it were true that the universal human moral code that identifies what we recognize as "good" vs. "bad" human actions were merely a matter of practical and utilitarian observation, then our own personal lives do not make sense. Think carefully about your own experience of temptation and giving in to doing something you know is ultimately bad in the final analysis (though you probably have some justification based on a lower, more superficial good). It is true in my own life, and it is manifestly also true for others, that we often do bad things that we don't really want to do, and yet we find ourselves doing them anyways. This situation has to be explained in order that any particular viewpoint about the true nature of human life might be considered reasonable. With careful analysis, I came to realize that this seemingly simple (though so often frustrating) fact about human life--that we sometimes commit evil that we do not want to do--makes a merely pragmatic and natural explanation of the universal moral nature of mankind unreasonable, even irrational. It calls out for a hard-hitting question that a pragmatist has no answer for: If choosing good acts and shunning the bad were only a result of making conclusions based upon observations and experience of what works well for an ordered society and what doesn't, then why, oh why, do we still sometimes do what we know on the deepest level of significance that we should not? This makes no sense from an exclusively pragmatic viewpoint. In other words, if it were true that the interior urgings that prompt me to act in certain ways were only shaped by the conclusions that I have reached as a result of experience and reason I ought to be able to do what I know to be right--every single time! But, in fact, I don't. WHY??? If I know that certain actions are bad (whether of lesser or greater moral gravity) and my interior motivations were impacted only by practical reasoning, I should have no trouble simply not doing what I have identified as bad actions. All that should be required to avoid them, is simply to have categorized them as bad. But this is not real life. We still find ourselves seemingly pulled against our best judgment at times to do things we know we will regret, that harm the social order rather than up-build it. If life worked on solely utilitarian and practical principles, this would not be the case. Yet it is. Therefore, I concluded that a solely practical and utilitarian explanation of the reality of human moral life as it actually exists, is highly irrational.

And so, I came to realize that an exclusively natural, pragmatic approach to explaining morally relevant human action simply fails to explain human life as it really is in two very important arenas: in regard to the most heinous, depraved and despicable evil actions done by others, and in regard to the interior reality that I, myself, (as is true for each individual person) cannot always successfully avoid doing the bad things that I nonetheless know I should not do. Think deeply about these facts of life. Ponder them. Question them. I found that when I did so, I had no choice but to consider the pragmatic explanation of our moral nature as human persons an indisputable failure. And this, most especially when pondering the true character of evil acts as committed by others and ourselves.

Continued in part 3 . . .

Conversion by Way of Evil

A frend of mine asked me to write about this, so here goes. . .

As some reading this blog may already know, I am a convert to the Catholic faith. Although (thanks be to God) I was  baptized a Christian as an infant, as I became a teenager and then an adult, my personal belief about God was agnostic.  I thought that if a person was logical and scientific in his thinking, there was no way he could be certain that God existed. If God were real, we could only guess about him from a distance, never knowing anything with conviction. This was my personal belief about God well into my twenty's. Because of this, I did not attend church on my own. I realized that it would have been a rather false way of acting to be present in a church for the ostensible purpose of worshiping a God whom I wasn't even sure existed, and even less did I think that God (if he were real) might have wanted anything to do with me personally.

And then God came very surprisingly and unexpectedly into my life in an extremely real way. But I want to write now simply about the very beginning of this major change in my life, the change from being agnostic to being completely certain, in every fiber of my being, that God is real and that not only I, but human persons in general are open to God and can indeed become certain about his reality. And that this God is not a distant God, but that He created us out of love and for love and bends down to help us follow the path of Godly wisdom.

And this conversion began, for me, by way of evil. Let me explain. . .

It has to do with morality--the reality of a universal human moral compass. I have always believed (based on human experience, observation, self-knowledge, and philosophical reflection) that human beings have a fundamental moral compass inside of us; we have a basic, bedrock orientation to want to do what we understand to be good, and to avoid what we understand to be bad (i,e, evil). And not only do we have a moral compass differentiating morally relevant acts into categories of good and evil but, at the most fundamental level of life, setting aside matters of less significance, what we recognize as good and as evil seems to be universal to all mankind. Who thinks murder is good? What culture sees lying as acceptable? Who has no problem with someone stealing their property? Such things, and others, are held to be bad by human beings everywhere.

It may not be obvious, but this sort of thinking is a very important crack (at least it was for me) in opening a doorway in the human soul to come to know God. If you firmly deny anything like a commonly shared moral compass that all human beings possess, this train of thought may not have an impact on you. But, if you are a person who, as I did, accepts that there is such a shared moral tendency within us, you might find this line of thinking resonates with you.

I used to think that our moral nature as human beings was thoroughly explainable simply upon pragmatic and utilitarian grounds. My thinking went something like this. By nature we are communal creatures and we need to live in society with other human beings. In order to live in a society that functions well and does not descend into chaos, we have to follow certain moral standards. We quickly learn what these standards are (e.g. don't kill, don't steal, don't lie) and abide by them for the sake of being able to have the sort of human community that is necessary for the support of a healthy, happy human life.

This approach has a certain tidy reasonableness. But with much deeper analysis and reflection upon the reality of human evil this explanation, I came to realize, is totally inadequate to explain life as it really is in this world.

How, then, can the reality of evil open up a path to knowing God? I will summarize how this process worked for me in numbered steps.

1. Human beings are moral creatures by nature (see above). We have an inherent and commonly shared desire to do "good" (that which we desire to do as related to our human fulfillment and happiness) and avoid "evil."

2. Observe seriously the character of human evil acts--the worst of what human beings can and have done to each other. There is no explanation on a merely natural, practical level, for the most depraved of human evils. We are capable of horrible, heinous, wretched things. Think for yourself of examples of the most horrible things you have heard of people doing. Call to mind, for example, the things people have done to innocent children. Sexual abuse. Physical and emotional abuse and neglect. Think of the awful physical torture of other persons that human beings have engaged in. Mass murder on unimaginable scales. They are truly horrible. Words fail to capture the level of horror. They are, we sometimes say, "inhuman." Indeed, they are.

3. Although I could convince myself that good acts are explainable by the need for societal harmony and thus are simply learned on a pragmatic basis, I ran into a serious problem when I thought of the darkest, most wretched depths of the worst of human evil actions. Any explanation of the human moral compass must explain both good AND evil. If you can explain only our preference for good, but cannot explain the darkest depths of human evil, your explanation fails. It is inadequate to the reality of life as it truly is.

Continued in part 2 . . .