Society

A society cannot exist functionally as a factionalized collection of diverse cultures, languages and classes. The American liberal ideal of diversity and multiculturalism cannot be achieved when the various groups in the society refuse to acculturate or subscribe to a common culture, which supersedes other cultural prejudices and traditions. I am currently experiencing the negative effects of a neighbor's racism and refusal to acculturate and comply with established American codes of behavior. The neighbor, who is foreign-born, refuses to step out from a very basic alienating defense, based in language and race. He resists friendship. He acts autonomously in the way he behaves on his property, which adjoins the property of others. He does not feel responsible to his neighborhood in any way, and he makes this quite clear. He represents, in my way of thinking, what is wrong with the current American tolerance of dysfunctional immigrant behavior. Our leaders, the rich and powerful, obsess on terrorism from abroad because they do not live among the uncultured immigrants who populate America's working class neighborhoods. They fail to realize that the actual threat to the best of American culture, the commonality of purpose and ideals of social harmony, lies in the factionalism caused when immigrants isolate themselves and cling to the less ideal aspects of the cultures from which they originate. While my own practice entails trying to reach out to individuals from diverse backgrounds, I accept that America's decline may come from its lack to venerate its own unique cultural ideals, based in the the much maligned and secular Protestant Ethic of its founders.