We are loosing culture in leaps and bounds - it is exponential. Our ships, then telegraphs, then phones and radios and tvs and sat tvs and internets and message boards.
It is not always about making everything the same. This country used to be about just being your way, not even being the same or different.
Homo sapiens is a relatively young species and has not had as much time to accumulate genetic variation as have the vast majority of species on earth, most of which predate humans by enormous expanses of time. Between any two humans, the amount of genetic variation—biochemical individuality—is about 0.1 percent. This means that about one base pair out of every 1,000 will be different between any two individuals.
Furthermore, genetic variation around the world is distributed in a rather continuous manner; there are no sharp, discontinuous boundaries between human population groups. In fact, research results consistently demonstrate that about 85 percent of all human genetic variation exists within human populations, whereas about only 15 percent of variation exists between populations (Figure 4). That is, research reveals that Homo sapiens is one continuously variable, inter-breeding species. Ongoing investigation of human genetic variation has even led biologists and physical anthropologists to rethink traditional notions of human racial groups. The amount of genetic variation between these traditional classifications actually falls below the level that taxonomists use to designate subspecies, the taxonomic category for other species that corresponds to the designation of race in Homo sapiens. This finding has caused some biologists to call the validity of race as a biological construct into serious question.
To call oneself a German American, as I do because my ancestry is traced to at least my great-great grandparents on both sides, is merely an artificial construct meant to emphasize cultural distinctions, not political, social, or biological/race/ethnic distinctions. As the USA of a melting pot of cultures, I see no problem in celebrating what we culturally bring to the table that's different, especially as calling oneself a specific culture + American is rarely used, and certainly not for anything official.
Diversity is a strength, not a weakness. Biologically and culturally! If we celebrate our differences, instead of trying to force commonalities (which exist more-so than most people stop to think about), maybe we'd all get a little more compassionate and understanding of each other.
"Now, more than ever, the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe.” -King T'Challa, Black Panther
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it. ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~Winston Churchill
People should be proud of their heritage and pass that along to their children.
I see nothing wrong with hyphenated descriptions.
Why do people celebrate holidays based on heritage? Wouldn't that be divisive, too? No, it's a way to share you heritage with others. I never had squid until I went to the Greek Festival in Denver many years ago, and tried it. Now, it's one of my favorite foods. I would like to thank the Greeks for introducing me to it.
I choose to remember these differences as being created by God at the Tower of Babel as a result of our losing sight of what we were created for. But then science has evolved and understands much more that I could ever have imagined as a youth.
I understand Pride in your families ancestry and culture. To me, each of you have missed my intent of starting this thread. It wasn't to point out difference's, but to proudly show what all of us have in common, being Americans. I guess it just comes with my tiredness with the constant retort of racism in prior posts and threads, that I have had to read through and then have the thread shutdown on the other forum.
I hope my Biblical response was not a turn-off to those of you who choose to be Atheist or Agnostic. I choose to try to get closer to God in these troubled times. My Good!! ( Maybe to you , it is my bad)
Nmysys, I didn't miss your point. I was trying to show that we have, in fact, more in common than most realize and the bigger picture is not just that we are all Americans, but that we are all humans. The genetic differences are so small as to not even classify any group as a sub-species. Racial/ethnic groupings (usually, but not always, based on country of origin) are merely cultural artifacts, not biological facts. Those who use the racism card are ignorant at best, and destructive at worst. Americans are no more exceptional than Europeans, Africans, Asians, etc. Each continent/country/area has had a period of greatness; America has had the fortune to have enjoyed the latest. All things change. Unless we learn to embrace our exceptionality as a species, then we will continually be at odds over our "differences" culturally, and we never evolve as a species.
And this agnostic appreciates your inclusiveness, and is in no way offended by your spirituality - we must all find it somewhere.
"Now, more than ever, the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe.” -King T'Challa, Black Panther
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it. ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~Winston Churchill
Nmysys wrote: I choose to remember these differences as being created by God at the Tower of Babel as a result of our losing sight of what we were created for. But then science ...
I hope my Biblical response was not a turn-off to those of you who choose to be Atheist or Agnostic. I choose to try to get closer to God in these troubled times. My Good!! ( Maybe to you , it is my bad)
I have a response for your Biblical reference that is not meant to be offensive either, but may give some people that are into the bible a perspective of those that are not and how some stuff may sound. I say this at the risk of getting all Christians to hate me, but I guess if you are christian, hate is out of the picture right.
When one says "I choose to remember these differences as being created by God at the Tower of Babel as a result of our losing sight of what we were created for."
you could replace it with, "I choose to remember these differences as being created by Ploribus of Aragon as he decended and then miniturized and we all forgot about the original universal incarnation"
To many agnostics or Atheists, they sound the same. Again not meant to be offensive, but to say that if someone does not believe in your God or his associated tale, the equally do not believe in most all the other possible tales. Sure yours could be true and would seem to be to any individual person, but sounds just as odd those those that don't as any other thing one could make up. Yes some are more popular in some places and some of the most common christian religions here are by no means the most popular worldwide.
I think the most popular religion worldwide is Atheism, attributed to the USSR and their demolition of many religions within.
Off topic I know, but related to comments within the topic. Here I will bring it back...Isn't making a biblical reference into a crowd of individuals of many different religions slightly divisive? Would it not bring us together to speak in a language we all agree on....I know we may loose some culture in the process (as I stated earlier), but we will likely have a better dialogue on the topic at hand.
Wow, posteryoyo, great post. Welcome to 285Bound! I look forward to reading more of your posts.
Also a question here, Nimysys. If you believe God created all the languages at that time, English certainly wasn't one of them, as it developed much later and is an amalgam of other languages. How do you feel about speaking a language that was not God created? I would think, if you follow other tenets of the Bible, you'd want to use what God created and not an artificial language that was created by man.
As I am not scholarly, I cannot recall a language created by God. I seem to recall Aramaeic ( hopefully spelled right ) as being one of the oldest, but it is not language I was trying to question. It was why we want to celebrate the differences instead of what we had in common.
By the way to clarify things, I happen to be Jewish. I respect all the differences, languages, customs, traditions, etc. I was just trying to figure out how to bring us together instead of further apart.
I guess it show how poor I am at starting threads. I tried.
And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
<snip>
Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
That passage implies to me that God created languages so they couldn't understand one another.
Babel is from ancient Hebrew, "balal", meaning to jumble.
