Traditional aspects of identity can be difficult to make sense of. Economic and technological developments put their functions in question. Who cares about inherited connections when contract, bureaucracy, and technical training seem more to the point?
Even so, they touch us deeply, and that makes discussion important. Last month, I discussed feminism. This month, I will touch on topics that can be even more fraught—culture, nationality, ethnicity, and so on.
However difficult issues relating to sex may be, extreme enmities are rare. We all have close relatives of the opposite sex, most of us are strongly attached to at least some of them, and there are basic functional connections that make it possible to say something sensible about what distinguishes the sexes and what the relations between them should be.
The situation is different with nationality, culture, ethnicity, and race. The differences can be less manageable, and the enmities far more extreme.
Cultural differences do include class differences, which involve people living and working together, so they usually have some connection to function. Rulers may develop an ethic of public service, workers pride in craftsmanship, and the feudal system emphasized mutual loyalty between classes.
But for the most part, ethnic, cultural, and similar differences have no clear functional significance. They exist because people have developed different ways of dealing with the world through living separately, usually for a long time and under rather different conditions. These differing ways of life have their own justification, but usually no functional relation to each other.
For example, the ancestors of Eskimos and equatorial Africans haven’t lived together or had to deal with each other for perhaps 60 thousand years. During that time they have lived and managed to survive—often under great difficulties—in very different settings. So it is not surprising that their ways of life, and even physical appearance, have ended up quite different.
They are still very much of the same human kind. There’s a fascinating book, An African in Greenland, about a Togolese boy who dreamed of going to Greenland for complicated reasons involving a large snake and a fall from a tree. He had read there were no snakes or trees in Greenland, so when he recovered from the fall, he ran away from home and headed north. He was a gifted traveler who hit it off with people wherever he went, and when he eventually arrived in Greenland he learned the language, came to share their way of life as it was 60 years ago—ice, raw meat, everything—and found he rather liked it.
From that we can see that even though the ways of life in Togo and Greenland are quite different, someone brought up in one may well be able to fit into the other. But we can’t infer much about how Togolese and Inuit should relate to each other if they should be thrown together in large numbers.
We could recommend Catholic social principles, such as goodwill and just dealing, but the specifics can be complicated, and there almost certainly would be problems. Togo has serious ethnic tensions of its own, and relations were apparently rather mixed in the Middle Ages, when Inuit from Greenland’s north and west expanded into the regions already occupied by indigenized Norse settlers.
Group relations are prone to such problems. As with feminism, the intractability of the problems—their resistance to clear analysis and solution—leads people to try to wish them away. So they say the problems and differences are imaginary or contrived, and would vanish if people would look at things more sensibly. It seems we’re diverse, but somehow the diversity never matters except in positive ways.
As with sex, though, there are reasons why the differences are real and don’t go away.
An ethnicity is a people defined by common history and the culture—the way of understanding and dealing with life—that has grown out of that history. These things are important. Part of what it is to say man is a social animal is to say he is cultural. His way of life is deeply affected by habits, attitudes, and understandings acquired from those around him.
Saint John Paul II put the point strongly in Centesimus annus:
At the heart of every culture lies the attitude man takes to the greatest mystery: the mystery of God. Different cultures are basically different ways of facing the question of the meaning of personal existence.
Such things obviously matter a great deal. We cannot live without particular values, expectations, and loyalties. That is why John Paul told young people in Dilecti amici that “we must do everything we can to accept this spiritual inheritance [of particular culture and history], to confirm it, maintain it and increase it.”
That remains true even though such things differ and clash among peoples. With that in mind, the current emphasis on outreach, welcome, inclusion, multiculturalism, and abolishing walls in favor of bridges must recognize limits at some point. American culture was never unified or perfect, but it was what we had, it had some virtues, and it was something to work with.
For Catholicism in America to grow and deepen, for example, it will have to purify and develop what it is, and that means it will have to maintain continuity. The continuing disruption of our ways of thinking, living, and connecting with each other by commercialism, bureaucratization, mass and social media, radical egalitarianism, and constant mass migration from everywhere has therefore been bad for us.
That disruption has made us cruder, individually more isolated, and far more at odds with each other. It has led to disappearance of shared social ideals capable of ordering personal life—what a marriage is, what a well-spent life should be, what it is to be a man, woman, or adult. These are all cultural, and they vary somewhat from one group to another, so they lose focus and become unusable in the face of ever-growing diversity, especially when combined with insistence that all group standards are equal and the supreme value is choice.
What to do? Someone said it’s easier to turn an aquarium into a stew of boiled fish and seaweed—to kill a living way of life—than the reverse. Progressives are terrified by the idea someone might try to “turn back the clock” through force. And that would indeed be futile.
What is needed is to allow the human ways of living and relating to each other that are fostered and made concrete by settled cultural norms to grow back. That will involve greater stability in ways of life and thought. And that will require less emphasis on bridges and inclusiveness and more on walls and local particularities.
How that would happen in an age of globalization, mass migration, and all-pervasive electronic connectivity presents difficulties. More time offline, more local community involvement, and more emphasis on national borders have been suggestions. The “Benedict Option,” with its emphasis on local community based on religion—and no doubt other felt affinities—is another.
Mankind is universal but not cosmopolitan. Peace requires acceptance that others are different, and the resulting conflicts can be softened by physical or social distance. Cultivating our own gardens, which is the basis of most human goods, requires at least a modus vivendi with our neighbors, and thus recognition of common humanity.
Current circumstances make the accommodation between universal and particular very difficult. Catholics need to reject nationalist and one-world ideologies while promoting both peace and specific concrete communities. How to do that will require a great deal of thought and judgment. May we rise to the occasion with realism and good will.
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To promote both peace and specific concrete communities would gravitate toward what consolidates communities by nature. Ethnicity, language, cultural specificities. In simple terms nationalism, or national identity. Kalb makes an interesting study of the complexity of achieving the reality.
America is a macrocosm of the question. Our written ideals would make for unity in diversity although that hasn’t occurred. There’s greater violence, tribalism than ever. “An age of globalization, mass migration, and all-pervasive electronic connectivity presents difficulties”. Indeed. Taking James Kalb’s study, the issues, shaken together and rolled out, realistically as always the response is a God resolution. Globalization transformed into Christian conversation.
This essay is a sort of veiled “theology” for White Christian Nationalism, an apologetics for MAGA. It is contrary to the biblical principles expounded in Catholic Social Teachings, like the latest social encyclical, Fratelli Tutti.
No, it’s not. Once again, you resort to slander. Shameful.
So says the man defending the Palestinian artrocity of 7 October.
It would help if you would point to false propositions I state or imply.
And btw, what an awful and indiscriminate attack on Mr. Kalb, an unfailingly thoughtful, fair-minded and peaceable writer and contributor to this site.
In contrast to you sir, who drops comments here like “rocket attacks” from Hamas and Hezbollah.
There is no such thing as Christian Nationalism. Try to think beyond your talking points. Such ignorance is unbecoming.
Deacon Dom, cultures don’t have colours. A shared culture brings us together. Perhaps there are in fact “White Christian Nationalists” somewhere but I really don’t think this article endorses that sort of ideology. Christians & those who love their nations come in every colour.
Regarding The United States Of America, unique in that it is a Nation of persons from various Nations, and thus the essence of Nationalism in The United States Of America, is in essence a blending of Nations, that originally desired to be , One Nation, Under God (with the capital G) and thus Indivisible, With Liberty And Justice For All.
The atheist materialist over population alarmist globalists are Globalists who deny that God, The Most Holy And Undivided (Blessed) Trinity (See The Treaty Of Paris Which Ended The Revolution War), Is The Author Of Love, Of Life, And Of Marriage, because they desire to render onto Caesar or themselves, what Has Always And Will Always belong to God.
It is only logical to assume that for The United States Of America, the concept of Nationalism is a globalist concept, whose danger lies when we align ourselves with the atheist materialist overpopulation alarmist globalists who view the Gift Of Life to be a burden and not a Blessing, while denying that God Is The Author Of Love, Of Life, And Of Marriage, and thus the author of our unalienable Right to Life, To Liberty, And To The Pursuit Of Happiness, the purpose of which can only be what God, Our Creator, intended.
The UN, WHO, And WEF, for example, are anti Christ in their globalist politics, because they deny God Is The Author Of Love, Of Life, And Of Marriage.
“When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being. The defence of the family is about man himself. And it becomes clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears. Whoever defends God is defending man.” – Pope Benedict’s Christmas Address 2012
There is a difference between the politics of a globalism that denies that God, The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity, Through The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, Is The Author Of Love, Of Life, And Of Marriage, and thus The Author Of Our Unalienable Right To Life, To Liberty, And To The Pursuit Of Happiness, and the politics of a globalism that is anti Christ, and thus desires to render onto Caesar, or themselves, what Has Always And Will Always belong to God, Our Creator. That difference, makes all the difference, in Heaven and on Earth.
Perfect Love, does not divide, it multiplies, as in The Miracle Of The Loaves And Fishes.
The atheist materialist overpopulation alarmist globalists cannot possibly subsist within The One Body Of Christ because they serve in opposition to The Word Of God Incarnate.
At the heart of Liberty Is Christ, “4For it is impossible for those who were once illuminated, have tasted also the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, 5Have moreover tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come…”, to not believe that Christ’s Sacrifice On The Cross will lead us to Salvation, but we must desire forgiveness for our sins, and accept Salvational Love, God’s Gift Of Grace And Mercy; believe in The Power And The Glory Of Salvation Love, and rejoice in the fact that No Greater Love Is There Than This, To Desire Salvation For One’s Beloved.
“Hail The Cross, Our Only Hope.”
“Blessed are they who are Called to The Marriage Supper Of The Lamb.”
About nationality, ethnicity, culture and race (but also languages, dialects, subsistence, and tribalism), Kalb concludes: “Current circumstances make the accommodation between universal and particular very difficult [….] How to do that will require a great deal of thought and judgment.”
Indeed! St. Augustine stopped short by distinguishing the elemental “city of God” from the “city of Man.” The vast expanse of the modern (and therefore modernist) “social science” does catalogue a wide variety of, shall we say, “provisional agreements,” all of the transitory in varying degrees.
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From the literature, this menu:
Federalism finds its examples in the monarchic Austro-Hungarian Empire prior to World War I and Versailles, and as one feature of national India composed largely of language-based states,
Communalism is found in the Ottoman millet system where non-Muslim groups were not assimilated, but subordinated under their own accountable leadership;
Elite consensus is well known throughout history, and was the major premise of dialectical materialism;
Coercion is exampled by the recent Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, history’s last empire following the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and then the British Empire, the Imperial Empire of Japan;
Economic interdependence supplies functional ties spanning across more embedded communal groups (oil economics between the post-Christian West and the Muslim Middle East);
Representation whereby the different communal groups parcel out positions of state, as in Lebanon;
Neutrality where the leadership disassociates itself from any ethnic group (a feature of some earlier European dynasties where the monarch might have come from the outside);
Ideology as in the descent into national socialism, communism, and now one-worldism;
Expatriation as in the mutual separation of Muslim Pakistan from Hindu India in 1947;
Assimilation as partly in the former(?) American “melting-pot” before the ideology of “identity politics” captured academia and media moguls, and grievances;
Encapsulation (occupationally, politically, socially) as with the Christian enclaves within the early Islamic world (e.g., converted Syrian scribes) or the persistent caste system in Hindu India.
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With the shared “Memory and Identity” (book title) of united and possibly atypical Poland surely in mind, Pope St. John Paul II makes passing reference to “tribal groups not yet amalgamated [!] into genuine national communit[ies]” (Centesimus Annus, 1991, n. 20). The possibly unusual outcome in the nation-state West presumes the “social science model” (ideology?) of rationalized and integrating “levels” of development—and might not fit well the fully human and very multidimensional situation of a mosaic and communally self-identifying world.
Nation-building? About Kalb’s call for “thought and judgment” and “realism and good will,” the Catholic Social Teaching centers, therefore, on the “transcendent dignity of the human person” (and therefore, families, and solidarity never isolated from subsidiarity). But, then, does our basic vocabulary, e.g., “fraternity” or “natural law,” even mean the same thing to the parties engaged in presumed “dialogue”?
Thanks for the list of possibilities! Current discussion is incredibly impoverished. Between sentimentalism, American and liberal individualism, dreams of a perfectly rational global technocracy, and the genuine difficulty of the issues and today of political discussion generally, people want to pretend they don’t exist except maybe as historical residues that need to be eradicated.
Exactly what I needed today!
“What is needed is to allow the human ways of living and relating to each other that are fostered and made concrete by settled cultural norms to grow back. ”
Alas, this is the part that may require the use of force, to defend against those who would prevent the rightful development and growth of community.
Being a believer in Occam’s Razor, I’m led to and grounded in Galatians 5:1. True freedom consists in ordered liberty, which the governments of man are supposed to protect, not dispense or curtail according to passion and whimsy. Our Constitution is grounded on that idea — or was.
We are a Nation of Nations founded on Judeo Christian Principles , not on atheistic, materialistic , over population alarmist globalism.
We recognize that God, not Caesar or ourselves, Endows us with our inherent Right to Life, to Liberty, And to The Pursuit Of Happiness, the purpose of which can only be, what God intended.
We have witnessed that when we desire to render onto Caesar or ourselves, what belongs to God, our inherent, unalienable Rights become alienable and anything can become permissible, including the destruction of a beloved son or daughter residing in their mother’s womb.
We cannot possibly be Great, if we desire to deny our founding Judeo Christian principles by rendering onto Caesar or ourselves what belongs to God and embracing an ideology that is anti Christ.
God save The Papacy and our Nation from atheist materialist over population alarmist globalism through The Triumph of Our Blessed Mother’s Immaculate Heart🙏💕