Ethnocentrism
Ethnocentrism is a term with several meanings. It can refer to preference for a particular race or culture to all others.[1] It can also refer to argued superiority of one's own group[2] aswell as to judging individuals from other cultures by the standard's of one's own culture. In this sense, it is the opposite of cultural relativism.
Contents
History
The mobilising conviction, distinct to all long-living peoples, that they belong to something superior and that they must conserve their ethnic identity, if they are to endure in history.
Whether it’s ‘objectively’ true or false doesn’t matter: ethnocentrism is the psychological condition necessary to a people’s (or nation’s) survival. History is not a field in which intellectually objective principles are worked out, but one conditioned by the will to power, competition, and selection. Scholastic disputes about a people’s superiority or inferiority are beside the point. In the struggle for survival, the feeling of being superior and right is indispensable to acting and succeeding.
Long-living peoples, the great and the small, whether Chinese or Jews, have always been ethnocentric. But one should be wary of a metaphysical supremacism that becomes demobilising or discourages all effort (‘we will always be intrinsically superior, it’s futile to worry about it’). It’s the fable of the turtle and the hare. History has repeatedly demonstrated that a people imbued with a fierce will and a hardened character can defeat and subjugate more brilliant and gifted populations and civilisations which are overly confident or decadent. This was the case of all those peoples between the Seventh and the Eleventh centuries who were overrun by the eruption of Muslim Bedouins. This is our situation today, for we too risk being overwhelmed by peoples of different cultures and civilisations.
Europeans were powerful when they remained naïvely ethnocentric. Once they starting asking themselves about ‘the value of the Other’, the decline set in. America’s present dynamism is based on the conviction — whether true or not — that her model is superior to all the others. History is above all a field of subjectivity, of struggle between subjectivities.
European ethnocentrism was never a matter of hot air. The contribution European civilisation (including its American prodigal) has made to the history of humanity surpasses, in every domain, that of every other people. But one must never rest on one’s laurels. In the larger struggle of planetary competition, nothing is ever gained forever. Civilisations in any case don’t last if they don’t cultivate an inner pride, an implicit sentiment of being irreplaceable, a ferocious will ‘of identity and continuity’ (see competition; consciousness, ethnic).
Afrocentrism
Related term include Afrocentrism (the politically correct view is that this is good) and Eurocentrism (the politically correct view is that this is bad).
See also
- Anthropology
- Separation
- Racial awareness
- Racial genetic interests
- Identitarianism
- Ethnopluralism
- Ethnic heterogeneity
- Jewish group evolutionary strategy
References
- ↑ Cambridge dictionary https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/ethnocentric
- ↑ Merriam-Webster https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ethnocentric
