ZeV > Recent Status Updates

"States find it difficult to withstand these (terrorists) provocations because the legitimacy of the modern state is based on its promise to keep the public sphere free of political violence."

"Like terrorists, those combating terrorism should also think more like theater producers and less like army generals. Above all, if we want to combat terrorism effectively, we must realize that nothing the terrorists do can defeat us. We are the only ones who can defeat ourselves, if we overreact in a misguided way to their provocation."

"Terrorists don't think like army generals. Instead, they think like theater producers."

"Terrorists calculate that when the enraged enemy uses his massive power against them, he will raise a much more violent military and political storm than the terrorists themselves could ever create."

"One thing that might help Europe and the world as a whole to integrate better and to keep borders and minds open is to downplay the hysteria regarding terrorism. It would be extremely unfortunate if the European experiment in freedom and tolerance unraveled due to an overblown fear of terrorists. That would not only realize the terrorists' own goals but also give this handful of fanatics far too great a say..."

"If Greeks and Germans cannot agree on a common destiny, and if five hundred million affluent Europeans cannot absorb a few million impoverished refugees, what chance does humanity have of overcoming the far deeper conflicts that beset our global civilization?"

"the European debate about immigration is far from being a clear-cut battle between good and evil. It would be wrong to tar all anti-immigrationists as "fascists," just as it would be wrong to depict all pro-immigrationists as committed to "cultural suicide." Therefore, the debate about immigration should not be conducted as an uncompromising struggle over some nonnegotiable moral imperative."

"Anthropologists, sociologists, and historians feel extremely uneasy about this issue. One one hand, it all sounds dangerously close to racism. On the other hand, culturism has a much firmer scientific basis than racism, and particularly scholars in the humanities and social sciences cannot deny the existence and importance of cultural differences."

"The shift from biology to culture is not just a meaningless change of jargon. It is a profound shift with far-reaching practical consequences, some good, some bad. For starters, culture is more malleable than biology. This means, on one hand that present-day culturists might be more tolerant than traditional racists--if only the "others" adopt our culture, we will accept them as our equals."

(Coldians vs Wamlanders) "Both of these cases may seem to smack of racism. But in fact, they are not racist. They are "culturist." People continue to conduct a heroic struggle against traditional racism without noticing that the battlefront has shifted. Traditional racism is waning, but the world is now full of "culturists."

"Moreover, even when two cultural norms are equally valid in theory, in the practical context of immigration it might still be justified to judge the host culture as better. Norms and values that are appropriate in one country just don't work well under different circumstances."

"Cultural relativists argue that difference doesn't imply hierarchy, and we should never prefer one culture over another. Humans may think and behave in various ways, but we should celebrate this diversity and give equal value to all beliefs and practices. Unfortunately, such broad-minded attitudes cannot stand the test of reality."

"Do we enter the immigration debate with the assumption that all cultures are inherently equal, or do we think that some cultures might well be superior to others?"

"Past civilizations that assimilated foreigners and made them equal citizens--such as imperial Rome, the Muslim caliphate, the Chinese empires, and the Unites States--all took centuries rather than decades to accomplish the transformation."

"Numerous countries turn a blind eye to illegal immigration or even accept foreign workers on a temporary basis because they want to benefit from the foreigners' energy, talents, and cheap labor. But the countries then refuse to legalize the status of these people, saying that they don't want immigration."

"Anti-immigrationists stress that one of the most basic rights of every human collective is to defend itself against invasion, whether in the form of armies or migrants."

"Pro-immigrationists seem to think that countries have a moral duty to accept not just refugees but also people from poverty-stricken lands who seek jobs and a better future. Especially in a globalized world, all humans have moral obligations toward all other humans, and those shirking these obligations are egoists or even racists."

"Religions, rites, and rituals will remain important as long as the power of humankind rests on mass cooperation and as long as mass cooperation rests on belief in shared fictions. ... Unfortunately, all of this really makes traditional religions part of humanity's problem, not part of the remedy."

"This willingness was the product of the death-defying spirit of sacrifice cultivated by state Shinto. The kamikaze thus relied on combining state-of-the-art technology with state-of-the-art religious indoctrination." (The role of Shinto in the war-time Japan as the effectiveness of religion for national solidarity.)