The Black Pleasure Of Hatred And Cultural Provincialism

Most excellent article by Kenny Pierce on cultural provincialism and demonization. Here's the paragraph I find the most insightful:

(...)"All cultures are equally valid" becomes, not a reason to value and attempt to learn from other cultures, but instead an excuse to ignore them.

But there is only one real cure for cultural provincialism. Every human being starts out with an immense amount of preconceptions and cultural filters, some of which enhance his world view and some of which are debilitating and self-destructive. Until you learn a foreign language you do not really understand the unique tang and character of your own; if you have lived your whole life without ever walking out the front door of the house in which you were born, then you don't really know what it looks like; and if you have not put in the sweat and effort genuinely to understand and value another culture, you not only don't understand the other cultures -- you don't even understand your own.

Thus the only cure for cultural provincialism is to fall in love with some culture other than your own and roll up your sleeves and put in the intellectual sweat necessary to become at least marginally at home in it. But multiculturalism, insofar as it inclines one to say, "My culture isn't any better than anybody else's, but then nobody else's is any better than mine; so rather than taking the trouble to learn a foreign language I think I'll play another round of World of Warcraft," undercuts the very motivation that makes genuine respect for other cultures, and genuinely healthy skepticism about one's own, a live possibility....more

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