the biggest critique i have of multiculturalism in how it's practiced is that it tends to correlate religion with ethnicity. when i talk of post-culturalism, what i mean is breaking the connection between religion and identity and reasserting cultural individuality. this would help in minimizing the political impact of religion, as well.

we should not see ourselves or define ourselves as members of ethnic groups, by default; we should be building communities based on shared values and goals, not on where our dna comes from or what language our grandparents spoke.

i guess this goes back to not really being able to tell the difference between a political party and an organized religion; if organized religion is just another type of politics, why not accept it on it's face and adjust to more appropriate ways to congregate?

so, instead of having the arabic doctor that's forced to be a muslim because it's the family tradition, let's have doctors just be doctors, and seek out other people that have like interests, regardless of their background. let's let people be individuals, rather than statistics.

to me, that's post-culturalism, and it's the world i want to live in - not one where we split ourselves up by ethnic types, and then pretend that ethnic types have something to do with religion.

if you read the old literature on multiculturalism from the 60s, what we have today is not what they intended. they actually were aiming for a system where individuals overlapped with multiple cultures. so, they thought they'd create these weird kind of gurus that would go to yoga in the morning, say their prayers at noon and then attend a church service at night, before going for drinks with friends and waking up in the middle of a one-night stand. all of the contradictions inherent in this apparently went over the heads of those that designed this system, perhaps as a reflection of the shallowness of 60s culture. it's all just market choice, right? all about the experience. woah.

what we have, instead, are isolated tribes all plotting to assert their will on each other, and nobody intended for that or should want it to sustain itself, moving forward.

what we should learn from this is that integration and multiculturalism are actually in opposition to each other, and adjust to it, if what we want is integration and the tearing down of boundaries and labels.