No more hyphens.

[hooplala]

I think this thread has kind of degenerated into retarded oversimplification.

If that is in regard to my comment, I wasn't being facetious.  That is my true view.  I reject nationalism completely.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Hippie.

No, mostly I was referring to the whole "No culture is truly native, culture is independent of place" philosophy being expressed, which anyone who has ever put a modicum of effort into understanding the evolution of cultures will recognize as meaningless hippie apologist bullshit.

You can back away and back away and back away, and when you get far enough out EVERYTHING becomes a construct and is meaningless. That doesn't nullify the existence of distinct cultures, the effect geography has on them, or any given cultural sense of being "native".

Anyway.

We're all one, man, hugs! Peace out.

[Mangrove]

I agree with Cain, Bawheed, Payne etc that once you've moved around enough and experienced a mix of countries and cultures, nationalism is kind of hard to take seriously.

Nigel - you're right, it is easy to endlessly abstract until you get to the point where it becomes meaningless. I guess 'Native-American' stands as an identifier....though perhaps it could be 'Last Known Occupants'?

[P3nT4gR4m]

Hippie.

No, mostly I was referring to the whole "No culture is truly native, culture is independent of place" philosophy being expressed, which anyone who has ever put a modicum of effort into understanding the evolution of cultures will recognize as meaningless hippie apologist bullshit.

You can back away and back away and back away, and when you get far enough out EVERYTHING becomes a construct and is meaningless. That doesn't nullify the existence of distinct cultures, the effect geography has on them, or any given cultural sense of being "native".

Anyway.

We're all one, man, hugs! Peace out.

I see it as completely the opposite. Culture itself is something that is awesome and art and worth preserving as part of what makes the human animal so mindbendingly cool but "Cultural Identity" is narrow minded Xenophobia at its fucking worse. I celebrate scottish culture but I think of myself as a member of the human race, not a scot.

[LMNO]

Hippie.

No, mostly I was referring to the whole "No culture is truly native, culture is independent of place" philosophy being expressed, which anyone who has ever put a modicum of effort into understanding the evolution of cultures will recognize as meaningless hippie apologist bullshit.

You can back away and back away and back away, and when you get far enough out EVERYTHING becomes a construct and is meaningless. That doesn't nullify the existence of distinct cultures, the effect geography has on them, or any given cultural sense of being "native".

Anyway.

We're all one, man, hugs! Peace out.

Yeah, but you're part rapist, so of course you'd say that.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Hippie.

No, mostly I was referring to the whole "No culture is truly native, culture is independent of place" philosophy being expressed, which anyone who has ever put a modicum of effort into understanding the evolution of cultures will recognize as meaningless hippie apologist bullshit.

You can back away and back away and back away, and when you get far enough out EVERYTHING becomes a construct and is meaningless. That doesn't nullify the existence of distinct cultures, the effect geography has on them, or any given cultural sense of being "native".

Anyway.

We're all one, man, hugs! Peace out.

Yeah, but you're part rapist, so of course you'd say that.

Stop seeing through me!

[East Coast Hustle]

Long story short: the Plains Indians were pretty damn brutal (in particular, though I recall some PNW tribes could be nasty little sods too).  Whitey just had superior ROF.

this.

Also some bit about them not actually being "native".

and this.

Are there truly any natives of anywhere?  Weren't all people nomadic in nature at one time in their history?

I am native to this planet. 

For me, it ends there.

also, this.

I have a pretty unique cultural background, and while I'm proud of it and I am thankful for having a perspective of the world from more than one cultural viewpoint, being West Indian only has those passive effects on who I am as a person. I feel no need to actively latch on to something that may not be relevant or appreciated where I am now. So I am who I am and I love the land where I am from AND the land(s) which I spend most of my time in now and none of it means anything to who I am as a person other than providing the scenery and the other people with whom I interact.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The thing is, it's all a matter of perspective. Yeah, culture and race (race in particular) are just human constructs. Fundamentally, all people are just people. Pan out a little more, and all people are just mammals. Pan out a little more, and all mammals are just complex organisms on a planet. The more you step back, the less meaningful or relevant these categorizations become. That does not make it valid to dismiss the existence of different cultures, and in fact starts to look dangerously like an excuse to annihilate smaller cultures and homogenize the planet. Homogeneity is one of the reasons you can already travel to so many places and find the cultures so very similar... the US, Canada, Australia, Great Britain. Those aren't examples of disparate cultures which turn out not to be so different after all, they're examples of a relatively homogenous Western culture which has spread.

[HRD Frederick T Fowyer]

The thing is, it's all a matter of perspective. Yeah, culture and race (race in particular) are just human constructs. Fundamentally, all people are just people. Pan out a little more, and all people are just mammals. Pan out a little more, and all mammals are just complex organisms on a planet. The more you step back, the less meaningful or relevant these categorizations become. That does not make it valid to dismiss the existence of different cultures, and in fact starts to look dangerously like an excuse to annihilate smaller cultures and homogenize the planet. Homogeneity is one of the reasons you can already travel to so many places and find the cultures so very similar... the US, Canada, Australia, Great Britain. Those aren't examples of disparate cultures which turn out not to be so different after all, they're examples of a relatively homogenous Western culture which has spread.

Agreed. White Americans like to think that they have no culture because their culture has been spread so broadly that they can't see its borders any more.

And I realize that I mistyped earlier-- I should have said that a person's culture has everything to do with how they're raised. Cultures themselves grow out of geography.

[Mangrove]

Having lived in the US, the UK and Canada (can't speak for Australia), I would say they are not as homogenous and you'd think.

Also, if they do exhibit similarities, it owing to common language coupled with the fact that the USA is a former British colony and Australia & Canada are both Commonwealth Nations.

[East Coast Hustle]

yeah, as much fun as it is to make jokes about the 51st state, it's really not America v.2.0, just as America isn't Britain v.2.0.

it doesn't seem to take very long (in an historical context) for distance and geography to create cultural diversity out of cultural homogeny.

[Suu]

As an Italo-Greco-Irish-Japanese-American. I second everything the OP says.

I'm a United States of American. It sucks at times, but I can't really do anything about it, now can I?

[East Coast Hustle]

I'd also like to say that when you are talking about a country with as vast an area as the USA or Canada or China, you will frequently find cultural divisions within the same nation that are wider than the divisions between smaller nation-states in parts of Europe or Central America, for example. People in western Washington State who have lived here for a generation or more (west of the cascade mountains) generally have more in common culturally with people in western British Columbia than they do with people in DC or Miami. Similarly, Tibetans and Uighurs have less in common with their "fellow" Chinese than they do with, say, most of Kyrgyzstan.

[Suu]

I'd also like to say that when you are talking about a country with as vast an area as the USA or Canada or China, you will frequently find cultural divisions within the same nation that are wider than the divisions between smaller nation-states in parts of Europe or Central America, for example. People in western Washington State who have lived here for a generation or more (west of the cascade mountains) generally have more in common culturally with people in western British Columbia than they do with people in DC or Miami. Similarly, Tibetans and Uighurs have less in common with their "fellow" Chinese than they do with, say, most of Kyrgyzstan.

Precisely. Which is why Cram won't eat grits. It's cultural to the South, but not to the North where he grew up.

[East Coast Hustle]

and then, of course, you have to note that many conquered territories of far-flung empires have retained and developed their own culture as much or more than they have adopted the culture of their overlords.