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> In the Star Trek future, people of all ethnicities think and act like Anglo-Americans, not like Bangladeshis. That's a weird way to cap off an endorsement o

> In the Star Trek future, people of all ethnicities think and act like Anglo-Americans, not like Bangladeshis. That's a weird way to cap off an endorsement of cultural racism? A series of fictional stories about the future, by and for Americans, tells a story that Americans would want to hear: QED, monolithic American culture is obviously the future. Let's get this paper submitted for peer review.

rayiner 21d ago
That term isn’t an accepted thing, as your own article points out. Your idea is also itself racist by treating race and culture as linked. I guess that in your version of Star Trek the Desi characters would be showing up hours late to dinner. You’d have bridge scenes where face saving communications and excessive deference to seniority impedes information flow and gets everyone killed. I think the actual Star Trek paints a much more optimistic and hopeful vision of a post-racial society where everyone in the Federation adopts Anglo-American culture and values.
- mullingitover 21d ago
  > That term isn’t an accepted thing, as your own article points out. Gravity and the spherical shape of the earth also aren't 'accepted things,' this 'I don't like it so it's not real' argument isn't really a coherent counterpoint.
  - rayiner 21d ago
    Articles about gravity don’t say “gravity should be considered a fundamental force,” as in the article you pointed to above. “Racism” as the word is generally accepted refers to skin color. It has nothing to do with culture. You’re playing word games to advance the position that culture should be treated the way society treats immutable characteristics, when those two things are completely different.
    - mullingitover 21d ago
      Your stance is that cultures are cardinally sortable things, with specific ones being more 'valuable' or 'better,' that you are allowed to be bigoted toward 'degenerate' ones, and imo you're taking it as a sort of consolation prize since you're not allowed to discriminate based on race. Just be bigoted on race, man. The richest man in the world does it, nothing stopping you from doing it too. You don't have to hide it in this era. Alternatively you can think harder and understand that the world is a complicated place, cultures can't be assigned numerical values and sorted, there's more variety within cultures than between them and have all sorts of circumstances and history that explain their situations that go beyond 'this culture is 3.75 eugenic units better than that one.'
      - rayiner 21d ago
        Again, culture isn’t an immutable characteristic, so the moral framework you’re using doesn’t apply. You should treat culture the same way Silicon Valley startups do. You emulate the successful ones and learn lessons from the unsuccessful ones. European culture is itself a product of that process. When the Germanic tribes conquered Rome, they didn’t impose their own culture on the Romans. Instead they adopted Romans’ self-evidently more successful culture, law, and institutions.
        mullingitover 21d ago
        > You emulate the successful ones and learn lessons from the unsuccessful ones. Please elaborate on what defines 'successful' and 'unsuccessful' cultures, and while you're at it let me know what the heck 'European culture' is? Or 'Roman culture' for that matter. I'm honestly lost.
        rayiner 20d ago
        > Please elaborate on what defines 'successful' and 'unsuccessful' cultures Building steam engines, rockets, the Internet, etc. > and while you're at it let me know what the heck 'European culture' is? European culture is one of the most well studied subjects in the world. It’s the culture that resulted from Roman colonization, followed by German conquest of Rome and the spread of Roman customs, language, law throughout Europe alongside Christianity. It’s why Slovenia and Spain both have a legal tradition built on Roman civil law. It’s why British law is full of Latin terms.
- tclancy 18d ago
  > guess that in your version of Star Trek the Desi characters would be showing up hours late to dinner. You’d have bridge scenes where face saving communications and excessive deference to seniority impedes information flow and gets everyone killed. I need you to both explain what this is all about and workshop up a treatment we can take to ONAN or something to start their sci fi division. How would someone show up late to dinner on a spaceship? Why is it people who tell me about a post-racial society always make it sound like they mean “post me erasing the Others”?

rayiner 21d ago

That term isn’t an accepted thing, as your own article points out. Your idea is also itself racist by treating race and culture as linked. I guess that in your version of Star Trek the Desi characters would be showing up hours late to dinner. You’d have bridge scenes where face saving communications and excessive deference to seniority impedes information flow and gets everyone killed. I think the actual Star Trek paints a much more optimistic and hopeful vision of a post-racial society where everyone in the Federation adopts Anglo-American culture and values.

mullingitover 21d ago
> That term isn’t an accepted thing, as your own article points out. Gravity and the spherical shape of the earth also aren't 'accepted things,' this 'I don't like it so it's not real' argument isn't really a coherent counterpoint.
- rayiner 21d ago
  Articles about gravity don’t say “gravity should be considered a fundamental force,” as in the article you pointed to above. “Racism” as the word is generally accepted refers to skin color. It has nothing to do with culture. You’re playing word games to advance the position that culture should be treated the way society treats immutable characteristics, when those two things are completely different.
  - mullingitover 21d ago
    Your stance is that cultures are cardinally sortable things, with specific ones being more 'valuable' or 'better,' that you are allowed to be bigoted toward 'degenerate' ones, and imo you're taking it as a sort of consolation prize since you're not allowed to discriminate based on race. Just be bigoted on race, man. The richest man in the world does it, nothing stopping you from doing it too. You don't have to hide it in this era. Alternatively you can think harder and understand that the world is a complicated place, cultures can't be assigned numerical values and sorted, there's more variety within cultures than between them and have all sorts of circumstances and history that explain their situations that go beyond 'this culture is 3.75 eugenic units better than that one.'
    - rayiner 21d ago
      Again, culture isn’t an immutable characteristic, so the moral framework you’re using doesn’t apply. You should treat culture the same way Silicon Valley startups do. You emulate the successful ones and learn lessons from the unsuccessful ones. European culture is itself a product of that process. When the Germanic tribes conquered Rome, they didn’t impose their own culture on the Romans. Instead they adopted Romans’ self-evidently more successful culture, law, and institutions.
      - mullingitover 21d ago
        > You emulate the successful ones and learn lessons from the unsuccessful ones. Please elaborate on what defines 'successful' and 'unsuccessful' cultures, and while you're at it let me know what the heck 'European culture' is? Or 'Roman culture' for that matter. I'm honestly lost.
        rayiner 20d ago
        > Please elaborate on what defines 'successful' and 'unsuccessful' cultures Building steam engines, rockets, the Internet, etc. > and while you're at it let me know what the heck 'European culture' is? European culture is one of the most well studied subjects in the world. It’s the culture that resulted from Roman colonization, followed by German conquest of Rome and the spread of Roman customs, language, law throughout Europe alongside Christianity. It’s why Slovenia and Spain both have a legal tradition built on Roman civil law. It’s why British law is full of Latin terms.
tclancy 18d ago
> guess that in your version of Star Trek the Desi characters would be showing up hours late to dinner. You’d have bridge scenes where face saving communications and excessive deference to seniority impedes information flow and gets everyone killed. I need you to both explain what this is all about and workshop up a treatment we can take to ONAN or something to start their sci fi division. How would someone show up late to dinner on a spaceship? Why is it people who tell me about a post-racial society always make it sound like they mean “post me erasing the Others”?