FOX News: Americans "keep marrying other species and ethnics"

[Cain]

People like having identities.  It gives them a map for interactions, adds meaning to an otherwise potentially meaningless existence.

I quoted someone a while back on "Ontological Security" if you want to search for it, I think something like that often goes on in cases like this.

[Jenne]

I'm all for picking a label--it's a nasty habit that can't be broken and we're taught to do it from early on.

What's sad and difficult for me personally is the kind of rhetoric you have to deal with when you make the conscious decision TO marry outside the confines of your own culture.  Making OTHERS upset and disgruntled over it--probably affects me more than it should.  I don't give a shit if they're uncomfortable at having to speak in English to me or if my relatives are scared my husband's going to hare off to parts unknown with my children (that "Not Without My Children" movie REALLY made an impact in the 80's and 90's--it's just about all anyone knew of Muslims back then till 9/11).  The fact I have to put up with it is just the outside of enough.

But I don't mean to go on about it.  I have no stigma, I guess, except being middle class, white and educated in America.  Those are enough.  Therefore I have little to cling to that I have to lose.  Perhaps my understanding of this is just a little skewed in that respect.

[Cain]

Here is the thread in question:  http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=21181.0

The links between honor and identity are stressed in constructivist writings on "ontological security." The concept was developed by R. D. Laing, but given a wider audience by Anthony Giddens,who reformulated it in his theory of structuration.  Drawing more on the work of Goffman and Erikson than on Laing, Giddens contends that people need to reduce anxiety by developing confidence in their understandings of the physical and social world and the patterns of responses they sustain. The largely routinized nature of social intercourse helps people structure their identities and enhance their capacity for agency, and accordingly becomes a powerful component of their security system. People suffer acute anxiety when these routines are disrupted by novel or critical situations.

The concept of ontological security has been applied to international relations on the assumption that states, like people, seek ontological security. They are said to require consistent concepts of self that are generated and sustained through foreign policy routines. These routines are embedded in biographical narratives that government officials, media and intellectuals develop and invoke to explain and justify foreign policies. Policies at odds with these narratives and the values they encode can bring shame on officials if public opinion judges their behavior incongruent with their states' identity.

Thucydides' account of the origins of the Peloponnesian War is in every way consistent with the ontological security hypothesis. The narrative of Book 1 indicates that Sparta's decision for war in 431 BCE had more to do with threats to its identity than to its security. The rise of Athenian power was sufficiently steep to threaten Sparta's standing as the leading hegemon, and with it the identities and self-esteem of its citizens.  Erik Ringmar suggests that wars are not only fought to protect well-established identities but to forge new ones. In its effort to develop a national identity, Sweden declared itself to be the leading Lutheran power and the heir to the Goths and their heroic myths. This biographical narrative, not just strategic considerations, required it to intervene in the Thirty Years War to protect Lutherans from the Catholic armies of the Holy Roman Empire.  Jennifer Mitzen contends that states can become dependent on security dilemmas because the routines they provide, while dangerous, help to stabilize their identities. Leaders can adhere to these routines rigidly or reflexively, which has important consequences for conflict management and resolution.

There is an obvious overlap between my project and the ontological security research program. Ontological security recognizes that identities are structured around diverse narratives and values, which once established give leaders strong incentives to act consistently with them, or at least to defend their policies with reference to them. Self-esteem, I will argue, is a critical component of identity, and is maintained through the quest for honor or standing. Understanding this relationship, how it functions at both the individual and state levels, and how they are linked, can provide insights into a largely neglected but important set of motives for state behavior.

[LMNO]

"We all just need to keep fuckin' each other 'till we're all the same color."
                                                                                            /

[Corvidia]

I'm not arguing (and I don't think GA or Jenne is, either) that heritage is not a valid part of someone's identity. Cultural heritage is different than Heritage as GA is using it, I think. Who your ancestors are means relatively little, but especially if you haven't done anything with your own life. It's fun to know, sure, but really? You can be x ethnicity without having the fact that you're related to y person who is a x be super important.

[Jenne]

It's an easily manipulatable thing because it does have such a visceral appeal to most people.  I've watched it happen in immigrants as loosely rooted as my own husband.  The pull of that tie between you and your homeland, culture, upbringing, etc. has on your emotions, behaviors and decisions is amazingly scary and strong.

So when the media decides to blast this study or that study, or a mob of people take up the proverbial pitchforks and cudgels against another group or family of so-called outsiders...it's just more of the us vs. them mentality that does nothing but stir shit and destroys.

You can build unity through other means, but this one is so ready to hand, and it works very well most of the time.  And yeah, the fallacies it perpetuates have their own ripple effects, the historical evidence of which can be seen in works like death camps and mushroom clouds.

Again, I don't mean to go on about it...but somehow one day I have to sit my children down and probably explain why following lockstep in either direction their parents have taken wouldn't do them any good.  Forging their own road is fine--and I'm not always sure my husband will agree...mostly because he sees both sides and can go either way depending on the nature of the particular conversation and who he's conversing WITH.

[Sir Squid Diddimus]

We Americans keep-a marryin outside our SPECIES!!
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[AFK]

It's a Kind of Magic!!
                      \

[MMIX]

"We all just need to keep fuckin' each other 'till we're all the same color."
                                                                                            /

. . . 

but those two guys are the same colour . . . and I don't mean red, white and blue

[LMNO]

Movie = "Bullworth".

See it.

[MMIX]

Movie = "Bullworth".

See it.

Cheers for the rec I just iMDB'd it & it looks interesting - I'd never heard of it. If I watch it will it clarify the point or is it just a cool movie . . ?

[LMNO]

Both.

[Jenne]

We Americans keep-a marryin outside our SPECIES!!
                      \

ZOMG...that's an instant classic if I never saw one.

[Bu🤠ns]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z2mLOTe6Lo 

oh and he pretty much LOOKS like those dogs when you watch him speak.


plus the added "Huh." at the very end. =