[PJ] Exactly how beneficial to a society is multiculturalism, this word that is so celebrated in the West?First one must first define the word: It is "the view that cultures, races, and ethnicities, particularly those of minority groups, deserve special acknowledgement of their differences within a dominant political culture."
Give me 'Strange Tongues and Tribal Dispersal' for $600. Alex.
Note the immediate inaccuracies within this standard definition. "Races," which indicate a people’s innate physical makeup, are conflated with "cultures" -- which are neither innate nor physical, but learned and metaphysical.
This mix-up explains why for many in the West, the word "culture" often conjures at most physical, surface differences -- "exotic" food or dress. In reality, cultures are nothing less than entire and distinct worldviews with their own unique sets of right and wrongs, often rooted in a religion or philosophy. Cultures bring much more than, say, the convenience of having Indian cuisine down the street.
As Anglo-French historian Hilaire Belloc once explained it:
Cultures spring from religions; ultimately the vital force which maintains any culture is its philosophy, its attitude toward the universe; the decay of a religion involves the decay of the culture corresponding to it -- we see that most clearly in the breakdown of Christendom today.
Put differently, all values prized by the modern West -- religious freedom, tolerance, humanism, gender equality, monogamy -- did not develop in a vacuum but rather are inextricably rooted to Judeo-Christian principles which, over the course of some 2,000 years, have had a profound influence on Western epistemology, society and, of course, culture.
While they are now taken for granted and seen as "universal" virtues, it’s not for nothing that these values were born and nourished in Western -- not Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, Confucian, or pagan -- nations.
All this is missed by those ignorant of the spiritual and intellectual roots of Western civilization. This is, incidentally, why growing numbers of Western people arrogantly see themselves as the culmination of all human history and culture -- "enlightened" thinkers who have left all cultural and religious baggage behind -- and are thus convinced that cultures offer only minor, or superficial differences (always to be "celebrated"). They embrace notions of relativism and multiculturalism, the idea that all religions and cultures are at most "skin deep," or more subtly, that they are destined to develop like the West, which is no longer seen as a distinct culture but rather the end point of all cultures.