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mwengler comments on Open thread, 16-22 June 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Hard question:
How should people facing colonization act to avoid cultural and economic subjugation?
Let's give some hindsight benefit - suppose you were transported back to America circa 1800 as a respected chieftain, how could you act to minimize the horrible stuff that would happen to the Native Americans over the next 100 years? What's the best you could hope for given that you couldn't magically make the USA behave better?
Join a different culture.
I've always admired the immigrants to the US who were emigrants from relatively oppressed countries. Some of them were pretty happy to join US culture, others thought they could preserve their former cultures while here, but their children drifted over anyway.
Maybe it is environmental, or maybe I am missing some common gene, but I have never had any interest in preserving the culture of my forefather's in any sense in which it was not a winning culture.
That's not always possible, especially if your phenotype doesn't match.
It also depends on how do you perceive your identity and whether you can let go of old-culture values including, for example, your religion.
It mostly depends on how the culture you want to join perceives identity; it's easier to become American than to become Jewish.
I disagree -- humans, in particular, adults, are not that malleable. Discarding your old identity is hard.
Of course, some cultures are more accepting of newcomers (e.g. US) and some less (e.g. Japan).
I think of "Jewish" as mostly ethnicity (if you prefer, a particular gene pool) and somewhat culture. In that sense you cannot "become" Jewish. You probably mean "convert to Judaism", though, and that's not that hard to do. Judaism does not proselytize for historical reasons, but if you want to convert you can do so.
That also applies to some extent to most European nationalities.
Yes, but "Jewish" is part of two different sets: one is "French, German, Italian, Jewish, ..." and the other one is "Christian, Moslem, Jewish, ..." and that gives rise to a lot of confusion.
Fer sure not always possible.
But if it is possible, that would be my recommendation. And in the modern world, we have tremendous existence proofs of world wide migration with immigrants from Africa and Asia (among other places) visibly succeeding in many places in Europe, the America's, other parts of Asia, and Oceania.