Experts reveal why cultural heritage is important for community unity | Hacker News Reader

Experts reveal why cultural heritage is important for community unity

phys.org

"And what about immigration"? Is the obvious unanswered question.

Depends on how well (or poorly) you handle it. Immigrant-heavy America fought extremely well together against WWII Germany - even though a great many of the Americans fighting, and their military leaders, were of fairly-recent German or near-German decent. (Actually, quite a few had themselves been born in Germany.)

Vs. the uber-secret Manhattan Project had 4+ Soviet spies inside its "Top Secret" tent right from the start - all for ideological reasons.

Wow, TIL.

And a couple were only recently uncovered.

Um...obviously yes? Though I might disagree with some bits like

> true resilience also requires genuine public involvement in city planning and decision-making.

- which will be very culture- and situation-dependent.

Related: I've kinda wondered whether the local culture around this month's Central Texas Floods was so broken that the locals really couldn't bootstrap some sort of warning system. (That ain't rocket science: "It's up 15 feet! Call anybody you know downstream, and tell them to start pounding on doors of everybody living close to the river!") Or, is that just not the sort of narrative that my usual news sources want to sell?

I think the problem was more: People running out of burning buildings are unlikely to run next door and warn the neighbors. It's just not in the nature of humans reacting with fear.

Maybe I'm old, and admittedly I've never run out of a burning building...but I've heard a lot of stories where that's the very first thing the people did.

Also admittedly - the context often included "and tell them to call the Fire Dept.".

But I'd say that whether or not one does that goes back to the article's main point - do you see see those neighbors as fellow members of "your" community? Or as unconnected random strangers?

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