Culture as an assault against freedom


© Francois Tremblay
Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic

The notion of culture as the distinctive attribute of one's society, race, gender, is routinely brandied about. Anything that is seen as threatening to the ambient culture is seen as a foreign body which must be eliminated.

In some countries, language is controlled. In most countries, the freedom to establish anything (such as an organization, a school, or any important contribution to one's way of life) steeped in a foreign language, religion, or tradition, is severely limited.

In that sense, culture is used as a tool of exclusion and discrimination. The key word being brandied about to justify this is "integration". We need to "integrate" people to our distinctive way of life. What this means is to interfere with the natural process of social evolution, and enforce what one designates as the "culture".

To understand this, we must understand what "culture" means in reality, instead of maintaining abstractions. It is important to come back to the basic premise that, whatever collectivist concept we may use to simplify our thoughts, society is nothing else than a group of individuals.

As such, when we say that something is part of "our culture", we mean that most people possess that attribute. If in Quebec we say that the culture includes "the french language", what that means is that most native people speak french.

It's a statistical average, nothing more than a descriptive term, and must be treated as such. As long as one is reminded of that fact, the word "culture" is not necessarily irrational. However, people often use the concept as a normative term - a principle which must be followed, a tool of social exclusion and persecution.

This is how most people see culture. And thus someone from Quebec sees the french language as a normative term, and people see no problem in passing laws against non-french advertising.

Their motto is basically "that is our culture, and if you disagree, leave" and the promotion of "integration" (i.e. coercive cultural cleansing). The standard is whatever culture native people have adopted. Thus culture is used, as I mentioned, as a tool of social exclusion. But rationally speaking, this is nothing more than a rule of the majority against freedom of movement.




Man has an inalienable right to go wherever he wants. Asking people to leave if they disagree is never an option, and even less here since movement is precisely at the core of the problem.

Go To Page: 1 2


Post this Article to facebook Add this Article to del.icio.us! Digg this Article furl this Article Add this Article to Reddit Add this Article to Technorati Add this Article to Newsvine Add this Article to Windows Live Add this Article to Yahoo Add this Article to StumbleUpon Add this Article to BlinkLists Add this Article to Spurl Add this Article to Google Add this Article to Ask Add this Article to Squidoo