Identifying with the Enemy - The Identity Crisis of the First World Posted: 07 Apr 2009 07:56 PM PDT  Identification is at the core of human allegiances. We identify with a family, a community and a nation. We identify with ideas and beliefs, with groups that share those beliefs. And we uphold the fusion of belief and community, idea Through this innate form of identification allegiance, nations and ideas, including our own nations and ideas, thrive and survive. The increasing failure of this process is also what's killing the First World. Much of the problem lies in the fact that the First World and its ideas and belief systems no longer has anything but the thinnest of identities. And without an identity, identification fails as the individual has nothing to grasp on to, and identify with. Most of the West has become "diversity oriented" with diversity no longer emphasized simply to promote tolerance, but as a goal in and of itself. Goal oriented diversity exists for no reason except to promote diversity as the ultimate good. Like a biological mechanism turned cancerous, diversity reproduces itself for no purpose except to have more diversity. And while some diversity is a good, unlimited diversity is as destructive as any virus because it breaks down all substance, leaving behind nothing behind but the worship of itself. Multiculturalism has increasingly diverged from promoting diversity in order to focus unity within a nation, to promoting diversity of nations within a nation. The Eurabia problem is the result of abandoning any limitations on diversity, and exposing a culture that believes in diversity to one that does not. The results are ugly and inevitable from both a biological and a sociological standpoint. And identification loses its hold when diversity has thinned down national identity and culture to the point that there is no longer anything to identify with-- that is except the outsider culture. Multicultural diversity promotes outsider culture and identity at the expense of national culture and identity, which has to make way for it, or be eradicated outright for standing in the way of the multicultural approach. Little wonder then that the development of the youth finds them identifying with the outsider culture. It is of course a normal part of the maturation process for youth to identify with an outsider culture, this can manifest itself in the children of the upper class seeking out the lower class, in music, culture and politics that is violent or revolutionary. As Churchill said, "If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain." The evolution from one to the other is not merely a matter of common sense or reason, but the more practical one that comes from maturing to identify with your adult role in life. (Much the same as children who identify closest with a cross-gender parent, realign their identification when they begin to actually fill a male or female role.) But to actually complete the identification process, there needs to be an adult role to fill within a nation that projects a strong sense of its own identity and interests. The failure of the First World to provide both these things has led to delayed adolescence and maturity, to the rise of 30 something and even 40 and 50 something old 'children' who have never grown up. And it has of course greatly increased the number of 'twenty-five year old liberals' who failed to grow a brain, even when they're sixty-five. The two problems are intertwined with each other, and they have helped create a constellation of other destructive cultural pathogens feeding off each other. The delayed maturity has created a youth centered culture, so that First World nations have cultures that are oriented not toward the wisdom of age, but the flashy impulses of youth... the new, the trendy and the loud and furious. Obama's victory was the product of a culture that had warped itself to worship youth, in which style and fashion were far more decisive than experience and knowledge. Such a culture is of course absurdly easy to manipulate if you have the leverage and the organization. A youth oriented culture is a Carpe Diem culture, it does not plan or think ahead... it simply does. Its identifications are shallow and fleeting, though often passionate... because it is still looking for something to identify with. The value of a thing is indicated by its stylishness and fashionability. Cutting edge matters more than reliability.  The maturation process is one in which the total identification of the child often gives way to therebelliousness disidentification with family and society, an individuation technique that causes identification to drift until it localizes itself back on the family and the nation, as the now developed individual takes on an adult role in his society. Revolutionary movements throughout history have understood that gap quite well and exploited it, most successfully by the left wing movements of the 19th and 20th centuries which turned revolution into a science. The second half of the 20th century however saw the culmination of their triumph in America and Europe. (The 1980's in the case of Israel.) Using the youth as leverage, the counter-culture became simply culture, both in the general and the political sense. The nature of the "adult role" in the First World changed dramatically, the family imploded, and every generation thereafter was in turn the product of a society whose elders were no longer true adults and whose societies had traded their national ideals for progressive liberal filler. What are the consequences of all that? When the maturation process is interrupted, the identification with the adult role does not occur. Like a rope without an anchor, such a person is untethered from any long term allegances, guided only by emotion and frustration with his limitations. For such a person "outsider identification" becomes the norm, a way to channel his own rejection of an adult role and authority. On a societal scale, what happens looks a good deal like Stockholm Syndrome... but it is an identification driven not by fear, but by immaturity. For "outsider identification" to be a serious factor, the outsider culture must be stronger and more durable than his own culture. This of course is a natural product of shortchanging a national culture as being reactionary, racist or nationalistic... in order to make way for the diversity of a multicultural society. When a native culture is displaced to make way for an outside culture or cultures, the natives begin to identify with the last culture standing, or the one that appears stronger, more vital and more defined. The same process that occurred in the Third World, in Africa and Asia and the Middle East... has now reversed and is taking place in the First World, in countries such as Europe and America instead. Outsider identification is not unusual for oppressed minorities. For example the Brown vs Board of Education Supreme Court case relied on the Clark doll test in which black children identified black dolls as ugly and white dolls as appealing. And in counterpoint, Larry King's daughter wishing she was black in the aftermath of Obama's election demonstrated a reversal of the Clark doll test. But Americans and Europeans are not oppressed minorities, they are successful majorities. They have not been segregated, shunned, enslaved or discriminated against for a long time. Until now. The cultures of the First World are no longer thriving, they are dying. It's a slow death and it's an ugly one, much like a man who year after year consumes contaminated food that he knows will kill him. The black children in the Clark doll experiment identified with white dolls because they had learned implicitly that being black was bad and white was good. American, European, Australian, Israel and many other children from the First World have been taught for over two generations now that their nations, their cultures, their way of life and their ideals are bad. Their nations and cultures are only good to the extent that they identify with the outsider. Is there any wonder that we're living in nations which have swerved destructively to the left? It would be a miracle if we weren't. Nor is it remarkable that we're living in societies run and stocked with children who have never grown up. To grow up you have to take an adult role in your society. With nations held in contempt, society transformed into a multicultural comparison chart and the family despised... it would be a miracle if we weren't overrun with overgrown children everywhere we looked. The identity crisis of the First World, of the civilized nations of the world, is at the heart of our problems. It isn't simply a matter of what is taught in the schools, because the focus on identifying with the outside culture is a message projected in every form of popular culture, it is echoed by truisms and advice columns, by movies and TV, by music and literature. There is no escaping it and no way to insulate yourself defensively from it.  Islam has emerged now as the ultimate outsider culture, one that is transforming Europe into Eurabia. And ever since 9/11, for eight years straight, the Muslim world has been the focus of attention in America. Little wonder that we can see Keffiyahs everywhere. Not in a system that has repeated the message over and over again that Muslims are our victims, that their religion and way of life is nobler and superior to our own. That is the problem we face and our challenge. To survive we need to promote a positive national identity that is not based on diversity or outsider culture, and we need to channel it into resisting outsider culture where it is inappropriate or a threat to our own nations or cultures. That does not mean intolerance for the sake of intolerance, but an identification with our own way of life. The Islamic threat is a terroristic one, but also a demographic and a cultural one. Yet it is often the cultural threat that is most decisive, for to conquer a nation you must first destroy its culture, its sense of self and the method by which a nation's youth identify its future as their own. To survive and to win, we must have more than strong militaries, we must have strong cultures. Patriotism, nationalism and faith attached to vital and specific identities can form a generation capable of standing off the tyranny of Islam. It can help transform First World nations from childishness to maturity, as the aftermath of 9/11 temporarily did for so many Americans. That atrocity was the wake up call for many who realized not just the evils of our enemies, but the virtues of our nation. It faded, like most awakenings based on the shock of an individual event will. What we need is more than just a wake up call, but national awakenings built on a revival of national values and culture to show us who we were and who we can be again. |
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