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Comment by gumby | Hacker News Reader

Good to get some perspective on a process that is happening worldwide.

When I think of what a globalised world will look like, I think of Singapore Airport. People of all colours and creeds, living peacefully together, with absolutely no history or cultural memory beyond the present moment, and nothing to do except shop for globally marketed luxury brands and aspire towards the ownership of fancier globally marketed luxury brands. A giant, clean, lowest common denominator shopping mall. But the food court is good.

  I think of Singapore Airport.

Which - being an airport - is about as transient as you can possibly get.

No community, no common culture, no (historical) shared experiences…just a brief fleeting visit in the present moment, on your way to somewhere else.

Which is maybe a reflection of the experience of modern life.

Its an extreme form of white privilege and domination in that whites do strongly fetishize the suicide of their own white culture, but other cultures feel no need to suicide their culture just because whites have a weird desire, and telling them they're going to have to eliminate their traditional family life or bulldoze their mosques or forget their traditions and holidays and histories to fit some kind of white ideal of zen like annihilation of the self is pretty racist and is likely not to work so well.

In disagreement with grand OPs daydream of a multicultural future utopia, the multicultural area of the future probably looks a lot more like multicultural areas of the present and recent past, the burbs of Paris burning, genocide in Africa and the middle east, raping and violence by refugees in Europe. The multicultural world of the future will look a lot like Syria, lets say, but angrier more violent and less functional, and it'll be everywhere not just "over there". Except for the rich people in their gated communities profiting off all of it.

If you are referring to gydfi's post as the "daydream", I don't think you interpreted the tone correctly. I didn't read it as a description of a utopia. The last sentence gives away that the preceding ones don't describe something good.

> that whites do strongly fetishize the suicide of their own white culture

There is no one single 'white culture', you need to at the very least specify 'white American culture', or Scottish/Australian/Russian, etc.

But even if we accepted that false generalisation, I'm rather curious as to how you see us fetishising its suicide. Care to elaborate?

Thankfully, your prognostications are completely divorced from reality. My advice to you is to reduce your Breitbart and Stormfront intake.

I have trouble figuring out your point. First paragraph talks about white privilege. Second paragraph disparages multiculturalism.

BTW when I said "worldwide" I was also thinking of rural USA.

That was kind of my impression of Singapore the city when I was a kid in the 1960s. Well, wasn't so clean like it is now.

Food is a form of cultural memory. Maybe the most important one?

What if it all ends up as chic commercial fusion food artisanally and algorithmically optimized for flavor and appeal to the popular taste of the moment?

Disposable fashion is still culture, but I agree, that doesn't sound like a situation you could characterize as "memory" (apart from the fact that it's always going to be catering to acquired or innate taste preferences)

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