More multicultural = less caring

From TheRealists:

The problem is, we won’t care

July 10th, 2008

Calling someone a turtle used to be imply that they were doing something in slow motion. That description may be in need of a revamp as members of multicultural societies bunker down and go into their shell instead of dealing with the outside world.

Members of multicultural societies have been likened to turtles because of the way they participate less in community events, shun the outside world and show less care and goodwill towards their fellow citizens.

Such a description will come across as apt for people living in modern multicultural Australia. We’ve all heard stories of passers-by not going to the aid of someone in distress; people feeling isolated in our big cities and of elderly people dying without anyone noticing for weeks or even months.

A more insidious issue is that this lack of concern by individuals also means that individuals become indifferent to the negative aspects of multiculturalism.

Put another way, the more multicultural we become the more we retreat from and the less we care about communities. The more this goes on (the more that community breaks down and the less people care about each other), the further we retreat into our shell and care even less.

Some Australians will choose to get out altogether - witness the ‘white flight’ from troubled suburbs in our major cities to new ‘greenfield’ suburbs on city outskirts or to coastal communities.

The end result is that we end up with less community and a breakdown of society; the problems of which are well known.

The people who can see these problems and speak out are branded as racist. The rest of the population are kept in the dark and encouraged to ‘celebrate’ diversity, even as it tears apart their neighbourhood.

Frank Salter summed it up when he wrote “…to induce people to be indifferent about their ethnic environment or to prefer diversity, it might be necessary to create an atomized, discontented, uncaring, divided, conflict prone, distrustful, and politically passive society”

Australians are witnessing the death of the Australia they once knew. As the Australian way of life that we grew up with slowly fades we’ll retreat into our shell, and we won’t care.

Source

More on the deleterious effects of immigration-induced diversity:

Ethnic diversity 'breeds mistrust'

Peter Wilson, Europe correspondent | October 10, 2006

ETHNIC diversity seriously undermines the trust and social bonds within a community, according to important new research that casts a gloomy shadow over optimistic theories about the benefits of the social melting pot in immigrant societies such as Australia.

The worrying findings about the effects of ethnic diversity were developed by Robert Putnam, a Harvard University political scientist whose previous research on community dynamics has been highly influential among policymakers in the US and cited by Australian prime ministerial aspirants Peter Costello and Mark Latham.
Professor Putnam has delayed releasing the results of his research for fear of the impact it could have on politicians and other policymakers, but he revealed its thrust yesterday in an interview with London's Financial Times newspaper.

His extensive research found that the more diverse a community, the less likely were its inhabitants to trust anyone, from their next-door neighbour to their local government.

People were even more wary of members of their own ethnic groups, as well as people from different backgrounds.

The impact of the research will be amplified because of the status of Professor Putnam, whose book Bowling Alone was closely studied by governments and academics around the world after its publication in 2000.

Bowling Alone spelled out the extent to which "social capital" has fallen away in recent decades as fewer people join the volunteer and community groups that have long played a role in social cohesion.

The title referred to Professor Putnam's finding that many people were dropping out of groups such as bowling clubs and spending time alone, rather than in social networks.

Both the federal Treasurer and the former federal Labor leader Mr Latham borrowed concepts from the book in speeches on social capital.

Professor Putnam, who is now working in Britain, told the Financial Times that, after several years of research, he had held off publishing his results until he could develop suggestions that might help compensate for the negative effects of diversity, saying it "would have been irresponsible to publish without that".

His most important finding was that "in the presence of diversity, we hunker down".

"We act like turtles," he said. "The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined."

His research was conducted in the US but he believes its findings are likely to be mirrored in other countries.

It will be studied closely in Australia and most European countries, where governments are increasingly struggling with the political and social fallout of immigration and ethnic and religious diversity.

Professor Putnam found that trust was lowest in Los Angeles, "the most diverse human habitation in human history", but his findings also held for rural South Dakota, where "diversity means inviting Swedes to a Norwegians' picnic".

When the data were adjusted for class, income and other factors, they showed that the more people of different races lived in the same community, the greater the loss of trust.

Source