> For countries that are based on a unique language, ethnicity and culture, it is damaging.
Let's take those one at a time.
Language: Sure, granted, there's a tendency to gravitate towards more common languages. Arguably that's a net benefit for people who would otherwise have grown up only speaking a less common language; learning a more common language grants access to a much larger set of speakers, information, and opportunities. That said, language doesn't tend to be lost, just not kept as an exclusive cultural barrier. Witness the massive efforts to internationalize information, to improve accessibility. And it's still common in many countries to look down upon anyone not speaking the native language, if that can be considered a feature.
Ethnicity: What do you have in mind other than language and culture, here? Because I hope you're not suggesting "racial purity" as a property worth preserving.
Finally, culture: Only if that culture is unable to propagate itself on its own merits, or in other words, if that culture has merits worth propagating. Some cultures have incredible history and traditions, and those have typically been preserved and spread further than they ever would have been otherwise. On the other hand, there are cultures built on oppression, indoctrination, suppression of dissent, lack of opportunity, and other undesirable properties; those cultures don't tend to survive exposure to broader information and the outside world (as well as the visibility of those cultures and their traditions to the outside world), which is all the more reason for such exposure. Not all traditions are worth preserving.
You're right that not all traditions are worth preserving, but Darwinism isn't the best way to choose which traditions are worth preserving. The problem is that ability to propagate does not imply merit. If you put a bad guy and a good guy in a room together, sometimes the bad guy just beats up the good guy, and you realize that you shouldn't have put them together. This is the same kind of fallacy as "if a company went out of business, it must've been a bad company", and also "the invisible hand of gravity means it's good that the vase broke".
For example, there's tons of cultures that think murder for personal grievances is okay and praise-worthy. I've seen first hand what happens when such a culture meets a gentle Western culture, when the latter doesn't have an overwhelming force advantage. It's not pretty.
I'm not suggesting darwinism here, just availability of information. Assuming information or communication is not being actively suppressed (e.g. the Great Firewall), then it's up to individuals what culture(s) and traditions they want to uphold.
Social pressure and influence. I could feel myself changing when moving between Norway and Germany. I have the same amount of information, but I involuntarily adjust to my environment. I don't like everything about Norwegian culture (it makes your life a bit boring), but I like a lot of it.
Some people in a small, homogeneous country might feel hat their traditions are worth preserving. Theirs is the voice that matters.
You can't hold a global referendum on that, because their votes would be vastly outnumbered by those who don't care or who want to trample on them and help themselves to their resources or whatever.
You can't hold a global referendum on that, because their votes would be vastly outnumbered by those who don't care or who want to trample on them and help themselves to their resources or whatever.
Eh, that's just cultural conservatism, the rallying cry of racists and skinheads the world over. Are you also afraid they might marry your women and corrupt your children?
It's really quite fascinating... Europe, for generations, colonized the rest of the world, imposing their own cultures on indigenous populations (and I say that as a Canadian... we spent 100 years trying to wipe out our own indigenous population).
Now that the tables are turning and Europeans are struggling with immigration into their own countries, violent xenophobia is springing up like a vile weed.
Ironic, really.
Now, that's not to say large, unintegrated (and note, I say unintegrated, not unassimilated... those are different things) immigrant populations aren't a challenge. They most definitely are. Any isolated population, particularly if they're disconnected from government, law enforcement, or the social safety net, are a difficult challenge (my own city struggles with pockets of unintegrated north african immigrant populations, for example). But it's a challenge xenophobic europeans created for themselves, by allowing these immigrant populations to remain isolated in the first place... ironically, in part specifically because of that very xenophobia.
> It's really quite fascinating... Europe, for generations, colonized the rest of the world, imposing their own cultures on indigenous populations (and I say that as a Canadian... we spent 100 years trying to wipe out our own indigenous population).
> Now that the tables are turning and Europeans are struggling with immigration into their own countries, violent xenophobia is springing up like a vile weed.
> Ironic, really.
Why? Do you think the indigenous populations meekly surrendered to the Europeans? They fought and lost (some because of diseases, some because of inferior weaponry). The Europeans are now are superior in weaponry, they have working (in theory) immigration controls. Why is it wrong if they fight?
(note: I am not European. From a former European colony.).
> Some people in a small, homogeneous country might feel hat their traditions are worth preserving. Theirs is the voice that matters.
Some cultures have long and proud traditions of oppression, suppression, subjugation, racism, sexism, murder, genocide, and similar; those cultures don't get a vote in whether to continue those traditions.
But with the exception of that, then of course, any culture gets to choose whether it wants to (collectively, rather than just individually) participate and interact with the rest of the world.
And this has nothing to do with resources; we're talking about culture and traditions here, not about land and strip-mining.
Let's take those one at a time.
Language: Sure, granted, there's a tendency to gravitate towards more common languages. Arguably that's a net benefit for people who would otherwise have grown up only speaking a less common language; learning a more common language grants access to a much larger set of speakers, information, and opportunities. That said, language doesn't tend to be lost, just not kept as an exclusive cultural barrier. Witness the massive efforts to internationalize information, to improve accessibility. And it's still common in many countries to look down upon anyone not speaking the native language, if that can be considered a feature.
Ethnicity: What do you have in mind other than language and culture, here? Because I hope you're not suggesting "racial purity" as a property worth preserving.
Finally, culture: Only if that culture is unable to propagate itself on its own merits, or in other words, if that culture has merits worth propagating. Some cultures have incredible history and traditions, and those have typically been preserved and spread further than they ever would have been otherwise. On the other hand, there are cultures built on oppression, indoctrination, suppression of dissent, lack of opportunity, and other undesirable properties; those cultures don't tend to survive exposure to broader information and the outside world (as well as the visibility of those cultures and their traditions to the outside world), which is all the more reason for such exposure. Not all traditions are worth preserving.