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ExLegeLibertas t1_ixdcj69 wrote

Reply to comment by Comfortable_Dirt in ‘Without enough Latvians, we won’t be Latvia’: eastern Europe’s shrinking population | Latvia’s population is 30% smaller than it was in 1990 and by 2050 numbers will be in decline in over half of Europe’s 52 countries. by mossadnik

you can (and we should) preserve and perpetuate everything that's unique and good about any culture without enshrining it with the powers of statehood. nation-states are not the keepers of cultural identities and heritages. if anything, the game of states destroys human diversity with its inevitable wars and mutations into tyranny.

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Comfortable_Dirt t1_ixefofx wrote

If you want the Latvian culture to continue into the future you're going to need ethnic Latvians, and a healthy number of them. Do you think it's a coincidence that it's not the Japanese or Nigerians or Mexicans who preserve Latvian culture? Who is supposed to preserve and continue the Latvian heritage and the memory of their history and ancestors but ethnic Latvians themselves?

Your claim is a complete distortion of reality and a complete misunderstanding of why distinct cultures and nationalities exist at all and why wars happen. If there was no tribalism then humanity at this point would be a pathetic shadow of what it is now. Tribalism is what preserves and perpetuates the things you take as just self-evidently existing.

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ExLegeLibertas t1_ixei4c9 wrote

lol, lmao

"tribalism keeps cultures going"? really? really?

tell that to the Tutsis. tell it to the Kurds. or, hell, since you brought up the Japanese, tell that to the Ainu.

tribalism is the struggle of tribe against tribe. there's no unity in that theory at all.

if this is the level you're at, i'm not even gonna keep responding, sorry. read any book on cultures surviving through time, and the first thing you'll learn is that states are inevitably the death of endangered cultures, not their salvation.

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Comfortable_Dirt t1_ixfb3xj wrote

Sure tribalism has also significantly hurt and destroyed some cultures, but it has helped ridiculously enormously more than it has harmed. That's how literally everything works: It will do some cost and some benefit. The benefit however, has far outweighed the cost.

Show me the thing that has only benefits with no downsides, or the thing with only downsides: It does not exist. You're a complete child if you think it does.

But I don't expect you to understand such nuance, you clearly think it's all black and white and either purely good or purely bad lmao. Not worth my time either, go live in your simple world of simple beliefs and simple evaluations. It's your loss not mine. I see no reason to respond further either, I just home you one day learn that the world is actually complex with costs and benefits to everything, even - shocker - tribalism.

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