Cultural Diversity
When we talk about “celebrating cultural diversity”, are we being too selfish or too ignorant?
Preserving cultural diversity is considered a supreme virtue today, but the members of the diverse cultures don’t always see it that way. People have wants and needs, and when cultures rub shoulders, people in one culture are bound to notice when their neighbours are satisfying those desires better than they are. When they do notice, history tells us, they shamelessly borrow whatever works best. Far from being self-preserving monoliths, cultures are porous and constantly in flux. (Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate (Penguin Books,2002), p66)
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I am a true-blood Penang "kia" (son of Penang) who love everything about my beautiful home-state, well, almost everything. :)
Formerly I served as the Special Assistant to the Penang State Executive Councillor (State-level ministerial post) in charge of Youth and Sports. I am now pursuing an MA in Philosophy at a local university.
I am also the Executive Secretary of the Network of Social Democracy in Asia (www.socdem.asia) and sit on the committee of the State-sponsored Good Governance and Gender Equality Society (3Gs). Since 2007, I also served in various capacities in the office of the Hon' Madam Chong Eng, a leading Malaysian woman Parliamentarian.
Politically, I had the privilege to help manage four successful political campaigns since 2007 and was involved in planning, campaigning and monitoring of eight state and federal level elections in Malaysia.
I am engaged with the love of my life, Jorin. Both of us worship at the Bukit Mertajam Gospel Centre.
March 16th, 2009 at 9:12 am
Insightful thoughts from Pinker. Yet it doesn’t go over those, like some Muslims in the middle east, who are perfectly satisfy with status quo, besides accumulating more and more bombs and advanced weaponry. But their acquire of such technology is not to out of desire for better life as noticed in their neighbors’ lives. They do it to preserve their culture.
March 16th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
There are two propositions here:
(1) Each culture has its distinctiveness
(2) Each societal group will try to maintain its distinctiveness.
While culture is “constantly in flux”, it is not “porous.” I noticed that a lot of people who ‘celebrate cultural diversity’ does so from a Western, white, middle aged and imperialistic perspective.
March 17th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Alex,
This perspective may be bred by the enlightenment anthropological studies which sought to “objectively” observe and report the activities (culture) of a given group of people. There was a great sense of respect for distinctiveness, partly i believe out of the westerners’ guilt of previously conquering (and converting) foreign people.
March 17th, 2009 at 10:10 pm
True. Nevertheless there is this lingering sense of superiority…
I never forget reading the commentary of Matt 9:37-38 by a Sri Larkan theologian, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” – where is this harvest field? A land populated by inferior colored people that you need to bring the light of salvation and civilization; not necessarily in that order.