‘All Cultures Are Not Equal’

[kybkh]

All cultures are not equal. Or at least they are not equal in preparing people to be productive in an advanced economy. The culture of the Plains Indians was designed for nomadic hunters, but is not suited to a First World, 21st-century environment. Nor are the single-parent, antisocial habits, prevalent among some working-class whites; the anti-“acting white” rap culture of inner-city blacks; the anti-assimilation ideas gaining ground among some Hispanic immigrants. These cultural orientations are not only incompatible with what an advanced free-market economy and a viable democracy require, they are also destructive of a sense of solidarity and reciprocity among Americans. If the bourgeois cultural script — which the upper-middle class still largely observes but now hesitates to preach — cannot be widely reinstated, things are likely to get worse for us all.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/ ... bourgeois/

Most compelling part of article.

"the upper-middle class still largely observes but now hesitates to preach"

Being part of this class, I can confirm this to be accurate. Single parents are automatically considered suspect, out of wedlock children...not at my daughter's Girl Scout meetings, and hard work is the only way to get in our school district. All this equals a high quality life experience for my family.

[DBTrek]

The article isn't saying anything that wasn't said by studies cited in other threads in this forum. The data supports that following a Graduate Highschool -> Get Married -> THEN have children pattern overwhelmingly leads to better life outcomes than the lifestyles that break some point in that chain.

Folks don't want to hear that because everyone hates criticism. No high school dropout with a kid on the way wants to hear "Damn, you fucked up. Odds are your life is going to be a lot harder due to your decisions, and your kid's life is going to be a lot harder too". But those are the facts as the data represents them.

Criticism, however, implicitly invokes a conversation where the individual is held responsible for their actions. You don't have o look too far around yourself to see how unpopular the idea of personal responsibility is today.

That being said - there's nothing fundamentally unAmerican about breaking the Highschool -> Marriage -> Children chain. It's a bad decision, but it's not like our country is one linear progression of good decisions. I say that because "middle class" culture may yield superior results to the alternatives, but it's important that we all see ourselves as a part of the larger American culture.

[ssu]

Some cultures can simply create a lot more than others. Starting from things like wealth and prosperity.

[DBTrek]

Some cultures can simply create a lot more than others. Starting from things like wealth and prosperity.

?

What culture started from wealth and prosperity?

[doc_loliday]

I think we could do better to prepare non college bound kids for some kind of work. It seems our only answer, as a society, is to tell children to go to college. The End. There are enormous swaths of the country that have very little work beyond retail, otherwise low wage, and/or part time service jobs. Preparing kids for the future is a tradition that needs to be more vigorously upheld. We need more winners in this economy otherwise we won't have enough people to fight the marxists. Charter schools seem to be doing really well, and that is great, but isn't there something we else we could be doing to make sure millions more kids have some kind of marketable skills?

[Speaker to Animals]

I am just going to join the Aztecs.

[DBTrek]

I think we could do better to prepare non college bound kids for some kind of work. It seems our only answer, as a society, is to tell children to go to college. The End. There are enormous swaths of the country that have very little work beyond retail, otherwise low wage, and/or part time service jobs. Preparing kids for the future is a tradition that needs to be more vigorously upheld. We need more winners in this economy otherwise we won't have enough people to fight the marxists. Charter schools seem to be doing really well, and that is great, but isn't there something we else we could be doing to make sure millions more kids have some kind of marketable skills?

Well . . . we could have their parents graduate high school, and get married before procreating.
That seems to yield pretty decent results.

[Speaker to Animals]

What if I told you almost everybody is a winner in our system?

[doc_loliday]

What if I told you almost everybody is a winner in our system?

Well I would be inclined to agree, even our poor are doing relatively well, but there certainly is no honor nor is there pride in "just getting by". Earned success does a body good, and I would like to see more Americans thrive.

Back to thrust of the opinion piece though; even supposing that it weren't so precarious for your average conservative to publicly uphold his morality and politics, I think it unlikely that we put the genie back in the bottle. If kids aren't raised in the kind of environment described in the article it is unlikely they will find their way to it on their own.

[DBTrek]

Back to thrust of the opinion piece though; even supposing that it weren't so precarious for your average conservative to publicly uphold his morality and politics, I think it unlikely that we put the genie back in the bottle. If kids aren't raised in the kind of environment described in the article it is unlikely they will find their way to it on their own.

Well . . . nobody started there, it was a place that society evolved to over time.
So I guess the question would be is there a way we can evolve there again?