Multiculturalism, Silence, and Nihilism

James Thurber, in a witty and amusing manner, gave his readers some interesting insights into the foibles of life here behind the lines.  In one story (you can read it at http://www.newsun.com/TheBear.html ) he tells of a bear who had a drinking problem, that caused him to fall over, break things, and cause much concern.  So he quit, and would show people how healthy a decision it was by attempting to perform gymnastics, falling over, breaking things, and causing much concern.  Thurber’s moral: You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward. Perhaps a copy of this Thurber fable should be given to everyone who is enamored of the idea of multiculturalism.  The case can be made that its supporters are attempting to inculcate into our moral lives something very close to nihilism.

Multiculturalism has been making news these days.  European leaders are looking at it, concluding it is a failure, and saying so.  Closer to home, the Quebec legislature has voted unanimously to ban kirpans from its premises.  A kirpan is a knife.  It can be as small as a dagger, or approach the size of a sword.  The typical kirpan is more like the former, and can easily be concealed.  But unlike other knives, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled it was fine for that one to be carried in schools.  Now the courts have been rather scatter-gun in their approach this kind of question. CBC Toronto reported ( http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2011/02/07/ontario-marijuana-law365.html ) that a claim by some religious practitioners that smoking marijuana was a religious act was thrown out of the Ontario Superior Court.  The report stated:

… Justice Thea Herman of the Ontario Superior Court ruled that “distributing marijuana is not an activity that deserves protection as a religious freedom.” She ruled that giving a legal exemption for the use of marijuana for religious purposes is not feasible due to “difficulties in identifying both the religious user and the religious use of cannabis.”

So carrying a deadly weapon is protected as a religious freedom, and smoking grass isn’t.  It is noted that it is difficult to identify a religious user and religious use of marijuana.  The same can be said of carrying a knife, until, of course, it slips between a pair of ribs, or across a throat.  But that might, all things considered, be a little late in the game.  It’s enough to send one back to the appendix of Orwell’s 1984 to bone up on his analysis of newspeak and doublethink.  Something is going on here that clearly defies logic.

What also defies logic is the set of assertions made by supporters of multiculturalism whenever something is done that gores their sacred cow.  (Please excuse the metaphor if you have noticed that nothing seems to be sacred to these people, most of whom are acerbically secular.)  On February 11, 2011, John Ibbitson wrote an article in The Globe and Mail entitled “Kirpan ban puts Canada on brink of multiculturalism debate no one wants.”  I guess we should not be too surprised that the writer took it upon himself to speak for everyone, because that seems to be The Globe and Mail’s stock in trade.  On the showing of the article, he has a lot of problems with people speaking on a topic, except of course for himself, and perhaps those who agree with him.  We read:

Debating multiculturalism gives a voice to the angry, the frustrated and yes, the bigoted. It makes newer Canadians feel less welcome. It has the best walking on eggshells and the worst throwing eggs.

It is interesting that the writer seeks to define those who are not have a voice in an article where he is ostensibly championing diverse approaches to life.  Heaven help us when the day comes that anger brings with it a requirement for silence.  Even St. Paul spoke of the possibility of being angry but not sinning.  Yet, in the name of diversity, and carrying a knife, the writer demands silence.  But not just anger is a silencer. So is frustration.  There’s a bit of a cruel twist to that.  The writer seems quite content that those who disagree with him remain in silent torment.  They might, after all, be bigots, who he also would deny the right to speak.  One wonders, though, how he can identify whether someone who wants to debate the issue is a bigot before they speak any better than Madame Justice Thea Herman could identify the religious user and religious use of marijuana.

The vagueness and generality of the reference to new Canadians is almost insulting to the reader.  Besides, did they come here to become Canadians, or colonize this country or play the politics of their country of origin from here, in which latter cases, “welcome” is not perhaps the appropriate response to their efforts.  And where issues such as carrying weapons, abusing women, and honour killings present themselves, the reference to eggs is inappropriate and perhaps sinister.  Multiculturalism is, apparently, a “shut up and take it” proposition according to its supporters.  If we don’t, well, we are apparently not a nice kind of people.

But the writer does not stop there. He continues:

It gives rise to demands for a more robust definition of citizenship, which in essence is a demand for a loyalty oath. It forces us to endlessly parse language – like reasonable accommodation, or multiculturalism itself.

As amazing as it may seem, the writer is pushing for a definition of citizenship that is something less than “robust.”  In fact, it seems the definition must be so lacking in robustness that an oath of loyalty is simply out of the question.  Excuse me?  Twice in my lifetime, once when I put my life at the disposal of this country in the military for 8 years, and again when I undertook an office of trust in her government, I had to take an oath of loyalty.  It didn’t hurt a bit.  Surely if one is called upon to declare loyalty when one hands over one’s life, or offers one’s self for trust and service, then it is not a particularly bad thing to do?  But we are, it seems, to proceed uncritically and unquestioningly, not deliberating at all on what the meaning of the concepts we are called upon to espouse and exemplify might mean.  Unconsidered loyalty to unexamined concepts seems to be expected to be true to multiculturalism.  It makes one pause, and wonder, just what this concept indeed involves.

The writer continues:

Worst of all, it undermines the greatest strength of Canadian society – our capacity to get along – and strengthens its greatest weaknesses – the cultural and linguistic divides that undermine the country whenever we choose to let them.

In the context of the demands in the previous paragraphs, the writer seems to be calling for nothing less than a studied indifference to what happens around us, in the interest of “getting along.”  Where nothing matters, nothing can be bothersome.  In the nihilism of indifference, getting along would present no difficulties, and all would blend together into an amorphous, grey mass of uneventful coexistence.  Strength, it seems, involves ignoring such things as honour killings, female genital mutilation, sham marriages for citizenship purposes, illegal entry, funding terrorism, and all sorts of other things that might serve to divide us.  It would appear that, since what happens is what we choose to let happen, indifference to differences is the panacea that will solve all problems related to something like unity in society.  The nihilism of indifference will save the day, because where nothing matters, or at least where we choose to let nothing matter, nothing can divide.  That, it seems, is how ignoring such minor things as language can serve as templates for ignoring everything.  Don’t worry; be happy.  Just “get along.”

At the risk of being labeled as not being a team player, or being some kind of a fanatic, who happens to think that loyalty and principles actually matter, I will suggest that this is not the way to build a country.  If indifference is the price for national survival, then the country in question is probably dead already, and simply awaiting scavenging.  We are not there yet, and we should not go there.  Rather than nihilism, rather than not daring to grapple with what multiculturalism has produced, and what it has equally failed to deliver, we should bite the bullet.  But what is preventing us?

Near the end of the article, we find that multiculturalism is identified as something that “remains an integral value in Canadian life.”  But a value is something that is place on something else.  So then, for what is multiculturalism a value?  If it is a value, it cannot be an end in its own right.  And if it is a value, it is not an absolute entity like a virtue, but merely a circumstantial and variable evaluation of worth.  But the worth of what?  There is the real risk we face behind the lines – the risk of leaving undefined that for which things like multiculturalism express a measure of worth.  As an end in itself, multiculturalism is a trap.  And silence concerning it camouflages the trap.  Silence means acceptance of whatever is smuggled into our lives in the name of multiculturalism, and some of the things smuggled in are downright despicable.  Harm has already been done when lawyers go to court and argue that honour killings, or forcible confinement of women is to be excused on the grounds of cultural considerations pertinent to the perpetrators.   We can’t not know that silence is inappropriate.

Multiculturalism cannot mean the abandonment of principles.  It is not a principle in itself, and cannot hope to serve as a replacement for what it would suppress to survive.  It is fully appropriate that we examine the fruit produced by the branches of the multicultural tree, and where that fruit is bad, according to the principles of honesty, decency, respect, and the other things that are enduring virtues, throw bad fruit into the fire, and if it persists, prune the limb that produces it.  It is this positive action, not the nihilism of silence that consigns all fruit into the same bowl that is called for and will serve to make society decent.  Failure to examine and speak out could end up being something very close to a suicide pact.

If the company is in trouble, protecting the value of the stock will not save it, and is an impossible task.  Here behind the lines, the same applies to the value of multiculturalism in countries.  Calls to silence are calls to nihilism, where there is simply a mute and bland acceptance of whatever accompanies it.  Mind you, I’d bet the writer would object if anyone called on him to be silent in his urgings towards nihilism.  Yet another paradox, here behind the lines.  We are to permit calls to fall flat on our faces from those who would have us lean over too far backwards, by being silent on principles, and boosting values.  Whether or not multiculturalism is an idea whose time is past, the nihilism of silence on issues like it is an idea whose time will never come.