Why do some diverse countries survive and even flourish while other diverse countries collapse and break up?

[WolfBear]

Why do some diverse countries survive and even flourish while other diverse countries collapse and break up? I've noticed that some diverse countries, such as Switzerland, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, et cetera are able to survive and sometimes (in the first three cases here) flourish at least to some extent while some other diverse countries such as Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union subsequently ended up imploding and breaking up. Sometimes there's a common theme with the breakups that involves a World War or Communism, but sometimes this isn't necessary, such as when British India broke up into India and Pakistan and then Pakistan itself broke up into Pakistan and Bangladesh. The US has survived in spite of it being diverse, but a lot of its diversity is relatively recent; the US was almost 90% non-Hispanic white back in 1940. Unsurprisingly, the US is currently experiencing a lot of tensions, in part related to this diversity but not completely since there were also a lot of tensions in the US in the 1970s when the US was much less diverse but when liberals nevertheless attempted to shove forced integration busing down America's throat (while themselves being quite capable of cherry-picking their diversity if they could actually afford to send their kids to fancy private schools), including in Northern US states which did not previously have a legally sanctioned Jim Crow regime. Anyway, even in recent years, diversity has been a mixed bag: For instance, Iraq was able to survive and recover from the rise of ISIS in its Sunni Arab territories while Ukraine actually benefitted from becoming more pro-Western as a result of it losing a lot of its pro-Russian inhabitants in Crimea and the Donbass--until Russia decided that it didn't actually have enough Ukrainian territory already and thus invaded Ukraine in order to get even more Ukrainian territory and human capital! But Yeah, overall it's quite interesting that the effect of diversity appears to be rather mixed. The Anglosphere is able to handle its own diversity a bit better than Western Europe, for instance, but even some countries in the developing world are able to handle their diversity relatively well or at least not too badly.

Anyway, what do you think?

 

[bintananth]

Anyway, what do you think?

The 90% non-Hispanic white you state for 1940 US demographics fails to take into account that merely measures skin tone and gives no indication of just how diverse the US population actually is.

A good indication would be just the sheer number of differences in the assorted local dialects and cultures. Someone who grew up in urban Miami would have absolutely no clue why someone from rural Colorado would have snow chains - or even know what they are - and why AWD off-road capable is something they consider essential. Likewise, I probably have more in common with someone from East St. Louis, MO than I do with someone from either Los Angeles, CA or New York, NY.

 

[WolfBear]

The 90% non-Hispanic white you state for 1940 US demographics fails to take into account that merely measures skin tone and gives no indication of just how diverse the US population actually is.

A good indication would be just the sheer number of differences in the assorted local dialects and cultures. Someone who grew up in urban Miami would have absolutely no clue why someone from rural Colorado would have snow chains - or even know what they are - and why AWD off-road capable is something they consider essential. Likewise, I probably have more in common with someone from East St. Louis, MO than I do with someone from either Los Angeles, CA or New York, NY.

Sure, US whites were not all of the same origins:

 

[S'task]

Ethnic diversity is actually fairly easy to handle within a culture because culture is not and never has been about ethnicity to begin with. Culture is founded on sets of shared experiences, beliefs, and worldview; none of which requires people be of the same race.

I would posit that the ethnically diverse countries that have done well is because they have a dominate unified culture that the majority, regardless of ethnicity, buys into. Something to bear in mind that there is a major thing that provides common experience, beliefs, and worldview and that is religion. The countries you list that have done well generally have been dominated by a single religion, and importantly religions that explicitly ignore race as part of their worldview. That is, of course, Christianity and Islam.

How then does one explain the US? Well, note that as the Christian worldview has come to less and less dominate the US culturally, its ability to maintain itself has diminished and see radically heightened tensions, but the tensions, while some are superficially racial, economic, and regional, actually all are foundationally worldview based, with the US having, functionally, two different diametrically opposed worldviews warring for the soul of the country.

Likewise, if you note many of the Empires that had issues, there was serious religious divisions within them. Christian vs Islam. State Atheist vs everyone else. etc. There also was a lack of shared experiences in many of those countries as because they lacked a significant middle class, they had considerable cultural divides between regions (middle classes act as a major source of homogenization on a culture).

Finally, of course, if one can't create such a unified culture, the only other choice is the Boot. This was how the old pre-modern empires kept everyone in line. IE, Rome. Rome didn't care about shared culture, so long as you paid your taxes and followed the laws. But if you didn't do those things, they would CRUSH you. That is... less acceptable in these times, and so now building a unified culture is the core way multi-ethnic states have to survive.

 

[Zyobot]

Finally, of course, if one can't create such a unified culture, the only other choice is the Boot. This was how the old pre-modern empires kept everyone in line. IE, Rome. Rome didn't care about shared culture, so long as you paid your taxes and followed the laws. But if you didn't do those things, they would CRUSH you. That is... less acceptable in these times, and so now building a unified culture is the core way multi-ethnic states have to survive.

In my experience, this portion tends to be overlooked by people who try to argue Rome was a very cosmopolitan, borderline “multicultural” place where all sorts of people lived and got along.

Sure, they weren’t afraid to take elements they liked from elsewhere and incorporate them — such as foreign gods or infatuation with everything Greek — but then the whole “Crucify lawbreakers!” who act the way non-assimilated migrants do in Western countries today is flatly ignored. Would probably be taboo to bring up, too, seeing as giving concrete examples of what we tolerate that they’d quash with extreme prejudice opens you up to accusations of being “secretly racist” and other such nonsense.

 

[Cherico]

Ethnic diversity is actually fairly easy to handle within a culture because culture is not and never has been about ethnicity to begin with. Culture is founded on sets of shared experiences, beliefs, and worldview; none of which requires people be of the same race.

I would posit that the ethnically diverse countries that have done well is because they have a dominate unified culture that the majority, regardless of ethnicity, buys into. Something to bear in mind that there is a major thing that provides common experience, beliefs, and worldview and that is religion. The countries you list that have done well generally have been dominated by a single religion, and importantly religions that explicitly ignore race as part of their worldview. That is, of course, Christianity and Islam.

How then does one explain the US? Well, note that as the Christian worldview has come to less and less dominate the US culturally, its ability to maintain itself has diminished and see radically heightened tensions, but the tensions, while some are superficially racial, economic, and regional, actually all are foundationally worldview based, with the US having, functionally, two different diametrically opposed worldviews warring for the soul of the country.

Likewise, if you note many of the Empires that had issues, there was serious religious divisions within them. Christian vs Islam. State Atheist vs everyone else. etc. There also was a lack of shared experiences in many of those countries as because they lacked a significant middle class, they had considerable cultural divides between regions (middle classes act as a major source of homogenization on a culture).

Finally, of course, if one can't create such a unified culture, the only other choice is the Boot. This was how the old pre-modern empires kept everyone in line. IE, Rome. Rome didn't care about shared culture, so long as you paid your taxes and followed the laws. But if you didn't do those things, they would CRUSH you. That is... less acceptable in these times, and so now building a unified culture is the core way multi-ethnic states have to survive.

by the standards of the time Rome was one of the nicer empires around.

 

[Batrix2070]

Anyway, what do you think?

Simple, those diverse countries that flourish either provide prosperity for the time being that they are temporarily able to bribe all the discontented with this prosperity or de facto their ruling layer is one nation and the other cultures have no ambition to enter politics and uncritically submit to those at the top. Because in order for a country to function properly, no matter the regime, the layer that runs the country* must consider itself to be one and the same group.

In the case of America, it is clear to see that ordinary Americans who are the group that runs the country do not consider themselves to be one nation, and increasingly believe that those in the other party are un-Americans who do not know what being an American is all about.

So far it has been possible to quell discontent with prosperity, but when that breaks you can see more and more that in fact, apart from living in the same country and benefiting from it, little is beginning to unite them. And this awakens the demons who are obviously demanding unification no matter how. And given that democracy is a form of polity in which the stratum with nominal influence over the life of the country in theory is de facto the largest of all types of polity, this obviously requires all Americans to think in more or less the same way. Which way? Doesn't matter, the base simply has to have one or there will be perpetual paralysis.

*In the sense, from their legimitation the government is based on they do not necessarily have to rule without indirectly. In the case of the current demolib, nominally this layer is all citizens. The more restrictive the regime in terms of those who can run the country, the smaller the group of people must have the same worldview/base.

 

[WolfBear]

Simple, those diverse countries that flourish either provide prosperity for the time being that they are temporarily able to bribe all the discontented with this prosperity or de facto their ruling layer is one nation and the other cultures have no ambition to enter politics and uncritically submit to those at the top. Because in order for a country to function properly, no matter the regime, the layer that runs the country* must consider itself to be one and the same group.

In the case of America, it is clear to see that ordinary Americans who are the group that runs the country do not consider themselves to be one nation, and increasingly believe that those in the other party are un-Americans who do not know what being an American is all about.

So far it has been possible to quell discontent with prosperity, but when that breaks you can see more and more that in fact, apart from living in the same country and benefiting from it, little is beginning to unite them. And this awakens the demons who are obviously demanding unification no matter how. And given that democracy is a form of polity in which the stratum with nominal influence over the life of the country in theory is de facto the largest of all types of polity, this obviously requires all Americans to think in more or less the same way. Which way? Doesn't matter, the base simply has to have one or there will be perpetual paralysis.

*In the sense, from their legimitation the government is based on they do not necessarily have to rule without indirectly. In the case of the current demolib, nominally this layer is all citizens. The more restrictive the regime in terms of those who can run the country, the smaller the group of people must have the same worldview/base.

What about the Mughal Empire, when their aristocracy consisted of a whole bunch of different groups?

The Ethnic Composition of Mughal Nobility

Above is a chart I constructed using Mansabdari data, tabulated by Dr. Shakil Akhtar from Aligarh University. For those unaware…

araingang.medium.com

One could say that the feeling is mutual: That both the right and the left fear what the other has planned for the nation. Extreme fear, sometimes.

Unification with what?

 

[Batrix2070]

What about the Mughal Empire, when their aristocracy consisted of a whole bunch of different groups?

Balance, in such empires if the ruling group is too small to control everything then they are forced to look for willing servants from other groups but each time they will balance them with another group so that the ruling group is always the one with the tongue in cheek. So that everything depends on it in the end, so that any disputes are resolved by "neutrals".

 

[Aldarion]

Why do some diverse countries survive and even flourish while other diverse countries collapse and break up? I've noticed that some diverse countries, such as Switzerland, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, et cetera are able to survive and sometimes (in the first three cases here) flourish at least to some extent while some other diverse countries such as Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union subsequently ended up imploding and breaking up.

And here is the issue with your entire assumption.

1) Switzerland flourished because level of diversity was "low": that is, it had four ethnicites, but all four are indigenous Europeans. That is not what Leftists mean under "diversity". Further, each of the four ethnicities has their own territory, and they generally did not mix.
2) India, Indonesia, Pakistan and Nigeria hardly "flourish". All of them have massive issues. India has major problems with its Muslim population (and no, those are not "caused by the intolerant Hindus" as the Left would have you believe), Indonesia, Pakistan and Nigeria are all basket cases.
2) United States flourished back when vast majority of people were from Europe. Not so much nowadays, though case could be argued that both bad conditions and diversity are a consequence of socialism. But conditions in the US are definitely far worse today than in 1970s, or 1950s, or 1940s, or 1900s.
3) Austria-Hungary is just a phase of the Habsburg Monarchy. Habsburg Monarchy which, in that form, survived from 1527. until 1918. despite being in - compared to United States - terrible geostrategic position (monarchy itself was founded in 1273.). And of course, Holy Roman Empire lasted from either 843. or 962. until 1806. when it was dissolved by Napoleon. So you know, I would really appreciate it if the ignorant Americans stopped harping on how "monarchies fell apart" or "X/Y/Q monarchy/state no longer exist" when their own country is still wearing diapers, comparatively speaking. And United States has never had to face the sort of threats that Habsburgs handled with depressing regularity.
4) Ottoman Empire lasted from 1299. until 1922. So the same case as above.
5) Russian Empire lasted from 1547. until 1917. So yeah, almost as long as the United States. And that is Russian Empire, not Russian state.
6) Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union were socialist tyrannies which did their best to ignore the fact that they were made up of diverse populaces. Kinda like the modern-day EU does.

All and all, @Batrix2070 provided a decent answer.

EDIT: And you will notice that all the diverse countries which lasted long had territorial division by ethnicity. In other words, precisely what the leftists would have you believe is a bad thing.

 

[TheRomanSlayer]

These days, leftist definition of diversity is completely the opposite of what true diversity means. South Africa may be naturally diverse, but there’s lingering ethnic hatred that stemmed from the apartheid period. China may barely be stable, but simmering ethnic tensions remain between the Han Chinese and the ethnic minorities that reside in China.

Afghanistan, despite being diverse, also has ethnic and religious tensions simmering as well, especially Pashtuns and Hazaras, because the former is Sunni and the latter is Shia.

 

[Bassoe]

Balance, in such empires if the ruling group is too small to control everything then they are forced to look for willing servants from other groups but each time they will balance them with another group so that the ruling group is always the one with the tongue in cheek. So that everything depends on it in the end, so that any disputes are resolved by "neutrals".

Simplest explanation, free nations are naturally prone to making making citizenship exclusive. The lower classes of citizens aren't going to want to simultaneously increase the available demand for products and supply of labor, that directly harms their collective bargaining power, so if they exist in a society which actually lets them have a say in the matter, said society won't be doing so. On the other hand, in a dictatorship, more citizens = more tax revenue and cheaper labor, both of which benefit the wealthy and politically powerful ruling classes so if they're the only ones deciding how their society's gonna be ran...