"British culture": destroyed by immigrants?

It's Laika dammit. As in the Russian dog sent to space. Or the Arcade Fire song which is where I took it from. If it will spare a 10 page argument, I take back my comments against Howard, lets just get back to defining British culture. Anyone got any offerings?

I have already defined British culture.


lets try this:


Does the country known as the UK have a culture at present?

Answer - yes.

Ergo - THAT is British culture. Ie the culture of Britian as it is.

its not tough.

Are you retarded? What components make up the current British culture? Is that more clear?


Discuss.

Everyone is shying away from the challenge of defining British culture in theri own words.

Im not doing your damn empirical research for you ... you want people to sit here and list all the components of British culture? Jesus... what idiocy.

Most of the time people make the comment - What IS british culture as another way of saying - there is no such thing as British culture - so to want to protect is from immigration makes no sense...

my point is there is very much a British culture.

You want to know what it is ?
go the **** outside and see for yourself.

Im not doing your damn empirical research for you ... you want people to sit here and list all the components of British culture?

All I'm saying is that it's just a bizarre way to descrive what British culture is. Of course Britain has its own unique culture, there's no debate about that. But before we can determine if we are losing any kind of cultural identity we need to be able to define what that culture is. otherwise it's just a baseless claim to say we're losing culture due to immigration.

Basically (in my opinion) there are no fixed attributes to culture. Culture evolves and changes to reflect the time period and location of a given society. British culture now is different to that of the 90s, the 80s etc. To say we're 'losing' culture because of immigration is to suggest that there are some fixed, timeless attributes to 'britishness' and is to deny the constantly evolving nature of culture. So in order to say whether we are losing anything, we must determine what attributes there are to 'British culture', that is, a consistent culture that is not constantly changing due to general social trends.

I just think without explaining what you mean by culture, you can't claim immigration is destroying it.

History is also British culute, and no amount of immigration can erase that.

I've made the point time and time again, including backed up by a dictionary definition, which nicely agreed with me, that culture is the sum total of everything, thoughts and actions of the people, through out the history of the nation.
For some reason unless we can turn that everything into one simple object, or thing, like fish and chips, then certain parties claim there is no culture, even though by the very defenition of culture, if there was none then that also means that there has never been anything, thought or action, in Britain, through out history, and therefore none of us exist, and this forum does not exist, and the internet it's on does not exist, which means they couldn't have made the posts stating that there is no culture, that they have done.
So their mere posting that there is no culture is a contradiction of the fact.

It seems to be quite a common practice, if we can argue long enough about how many angels we can get to tap dance on a pin head, we won't have enough time to discuss the actual topic at hand.
Fact A: There is a British culture
Fact B: Immigration affects that culture
This brings us to the real question, is that affect positive, or negative?
This is what we should be discussing, but you watch, as soon as this post is up there that question will be totally ignored and people will return to asking about how many angels they can get to tap dance on a pin head again.

Indeed. And another interesting thing i noted from that site is how many visual aspects of Britain they included that make up its culture. It talked a whole lot about architecture, art. It talked about the arts in general, music, theatre. It talked about historic people, who made scientific, artistic, wonderful contributions. It talked about housing arrangement. Laika, how can immigrants change any of that? Do they possess time machines to wipe away all of that stuff? Are they coming off the boats with bulldozers to knock down all of the buildings? How are immigrants able to take away the things that are alreayd here, and already revered by people?

I've made the point time and time again, including backed up by a dictionary definition, which nicely agreed with me, that culture is the sum total of everything, thoughts and actions of the people, through out the history of the nation.

You dont need to list things. You simply say in 20 years - will the culture be very different from what it is RIGHT NOW, and will immigration make that more likely. If the answer is yes, then immigration contributes to the destruction fo the current cultural status quo.

Sufficed to say that immigration changes such things, and increases, generaly teh speed of such change. For someone who likes things the way they are, immigration thus, to SOME extent is a bad thing.

I then ask you, why should immigration be singled out as a prime cause in that change? If culture is constantly changing and people wishing to preserve our present culture do so purely out of personal fondness for Britian circa 2006, then why should other causes of cultural change also not be targeted? Should we also not be saying 'No-one produce any more art, literature or music, for we wish to preserve the current cultural status of Britain.' 'No more film or other media must be imported in order to preserve the culture of current Britain'. Why single out immigration?

Too vague. How about patterns of though, social and moral values, traditions, language, art, music, politics?

Ok, you seem to be adopting a slightly different tone to the other argument.

Basically you're saying that culture is constantly changing, immigration contributes in part to that (amongst many other things) and it can thus be inferred that immigration is partly responsible for Britain the way it is today being lost. Am I correct?

I then ask you, why should immigration be singled out as a prime cause in that change

If culture is constantly changing and people wishing to preserve our present culture do so purely out of personal fondness for Britian circa 2006, then why should other causes of cultural change also not be targeted?

Should we also not be saying 'No-one produce any more art, literature or music, for we wish to preserve the current cultural status of Britain.' 'No more film or other media must be imported in order to preserve the culture of current Britain'. Why single out immigration?

Furthermore I direct you to point 2 of my previous post, does modern day immigration really play a significant role in changing culture when access to globalised cultures is so easy in the modern world?

Cultural changes from within Britain constitute the extension and progression of British culture. Immigration involves the introduction of very foreign ( in the alien sense) concepts to our existing culture. It can thus be argued that immigration causes the removal of, rather than the progression of, British culture.