> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.nationalism.io/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.nationalism.io/cultural-nationalism/cultural-citizenship.md).

# Cultural citizenship

With cultural nationalism, anyone could potentially become a citizen in another country. This might be possible after a number of years residence in the country. At some point an individual could be able to take a citizenship test to make sure the citizen has a sufficient amount of civic knowledge and understanding on how to live in that society and that they also have a sufficient amount of cultural knowledge.

## **Complexities with preserving and protecting culture**

Preserving and protecting culture is inherently difficult as the culture of any given nation-state can be constantly evolving. Culture is not static. Changes in technology, economic condition or social preferences could all change the environment that people live in and lead to emergent cultural changes. So there are many parts of culture that could become less prominent or be replaced with other forms of culture.

Even if you had a country that was fully homogenous, where only the long-established ancestral population lived in that country, you would still expect to cultural changes over time. Although there is some inevitability in cultural change happening over time there is still sufficient reasoning to adopt political systems that can better protect a culture that a population cares about. Cultural nationalism can help with slowing down the rate of change and for being more deliberate about the type of people that are invited to live in that nation-state and whether they are likely going to assimilate into their culture or not.

## **Complexities verifying cultural assimilation**

There are a few ways that you could attempt to verify whether someone has assimilated into a certain culture:

* **Verifying cultural knowledge** - Testing the individuals knowledge about the culture. It is difficult to ask questions that go beyond basic information as not every citizen is aware of or practices every piece of culture. Pragmatic questions would be those that only cover a cultural aspect that has been broadly adopted. Having knowledge about the culture does not mean you are assimilated into that culture.
* **Verifying cultural participation** - An individual could be tested based on their participation in the nations culture. That might mean joining local festivals, traditions and events or recreational and sports activities. It is difficult to verify that individuals have gone to a certain range of events that are considered cultural and it is also hard to say whether this means they are actually assimilated into the culture. Participating in the culture to pass a citizenship test does not mean you want to participate or that you are assimilated into the culture.
* **Verifying cultural contribution** - An individual could be tested based on their contributions towards the national culture. This could mean contributing through art, music, volunteering, film, literature or cooking as some examples. It is difficult to test whether someone is actively making these contributions outside of a citizenship test without direct monitoring the person who is claiming to make these contributions actively. Contributing to the culture by doing something the citizenship test wants you to do doesn’t mean the person is actively contributing that thing or that they are actually assimilated into the culture.

All of these different approaches for verifying assimilation into culture are not very compelling for accurately determining whether someone has assimilated or not in a national culture. Participation and contribution approaches would be very difficult to verify in a way that is reliable without mass surveillance of the individual being tested to actually confirm whether they are actively participating and contributing towards the national culture.

Verifying someones knowledge is easy enough to verify during an in-person test but it is not a reliable way to know that someone has assimilated into a culture. It only confirms whether they have memorised certain parts of the culture to pass the citizenship test. If there is an incentive for someone to pretend to adopt a culture to pass a citizenship test then it shouldn’t be surprising when people respond in this way to those incentives.

## **Ancestral and genetic influences on culture**

Another important question to consider when thinking about the realities of whether certain groups could assimilate into another countries culture is to determine how much ancestry and genetics play a role in influencing the nations culture.

One important factor that should be taken into account are any differences in the general levels of intelligence of each population. If one country has a higher average IQ score it might be easier for that group to create a prosperous society. A higher average IQ might make it easier to create a high-trust society where citizens more commonly cooperate together in positive sum games. A number of things could be downstream from having a higher average IQ score. It is difficult to say that every distinct ancestral group has the intellectual capacity to adopt the cultures from other groups due to genetic differences in general levels of intelligence. Even if factors such as intelligence were not a factor it would still be under the assumption that these groups want to fully adopt another groups culture and abandon their own.

The other important factor is how ancestral ties to certain cultures and heritage can influence peoples interest and willingness to promote the continuation of another ancestral groups culture at the expense of giving up their own. Even if these groups are able to adopt another groups culture does this mean they want to keep it exactly as it is in situations where their own ancestral group becomes a more dominant group with voting power in the future?

## **Prohibited cultural practices**

A nation-state may collectively decide to prohibit certain cultural practices to more reliably protect and preserve their own culture. Some examples of the types of things that a nation might prohibit could include other languages, religious practices, certain approaches to marriage or cultural events that originate from other countries.

The benefit of this approach is it makes it harder for migrants to join the society and continue their cultural practices which aren’t aligned with the national culture they are moving into. Although this may prevent public displays of these cultural differences it does not mean that the migrants who are not allowed to practice these differences in culture are happy with that outcome. Given enough voting power in the future they might want to change these policies.

It is possible to prohibit certain cultural aspects that are more publicly visible. However many cultural aspects are not easy to prohibit. Values, social norms, communication styles, social etiquette, family structures, dating norms, cuisine preferences and many other different cultural aspects are very personal. It is futile to ban certain cultural differences that someone could exhibit in their day to day lives that could only be identified through mass surveillance.

Prohibiting certain cultural practices could help with at least preventing certain cultural differences from public emerging in a given nation-state. It cannot prevent all cultural differences from becoming more prominent but it could help to slow down any rate of change. In the long term those policies might be removed if the demographics of the population change enough for the preferences to change on what cultural differences should be prohibited.

In terms of creating a prohibited cultural practices list this could either be achieved through representatives or through a democratic vote from the long-established ancestral population. It could be something that happens gradually over time as certain cultural differences are identified that have become problematic. Once the differences are better understood a vote could be used to add it to the prohibited list. Opinion polls could be used to determine whether an official vote might be needed to remove things off this list if the preferences or culture of the nation changes in the future. Alternatively a representative could be delegated this responsibility of gathering public sentiment and responding accordingly.

## **Complexities with cultural citizenship tests**

A cultural citizenship test would likely be an extension of the civic citizenship test as many of the pieces of testing criteria for a civic nation-state would also be relevant to culture. When you review all the different cultural factors that can exist it does become apparent that it would be impossible to test against all of these cultural factors in anyway that is reliable. It is very difficult to provide any guarantee that someone has assimilated into a culture through a citizenship test. Civic factors like learning the national language or having general knowledge on the countries history is fairly easy to test. However the majority of cultural things are difficult to turn into an verifiable test. It would be easy for someone to say that they have adopted certain social norms, preferences and attitudes but it would be difficult to know whether that is actually what they prefer and what they practice in person. The only way you could find out is by mass surveilling each individual to see what they say and do in their daily life. A solution like this would be excessively invasive into the lives of these residents.

Another fundamental problem with these citizenship tests is that once someone has passed the simple cultural knowledge test and becomes a citizen they will have voting power and an influence on the continuation and structure of these tests. Citizens could advocate for removing certain prohibited cultural practices or they could start changing the culture themselves through how they act and what they say. No cultural citizenship test will ever be able to reliably guarantee any meaningful assimilation into the nations culture.

## **Pragmatic tests for cultural nationalism citizenship**

The only pragmatic pieces of testing criteria are those that are simple to verify and test against. Trying to enforce a particular type of culture in day to day life would likely require an authoritarian environment that requires mass surveillance and excessive control over the population. Therefore cultural nationalism has some serious limitations in being able to reliably protect and preserve a large amount of a nations culture. The most pragmatic tests for cultural nationalist citizenship test will likely involve knowledge based tests such as:

* **Basic cultural knowledge** - Individuals could be tested on examples like greetings, gift-giving norms, visiting etiquette, table manners, dress expectations in formal settings, funeral or wedding etiquette and appropriate ways to address older people or professionals.
* **Prohibited cultural practices knowledge** - Knowledge about which cultural aspects have been prohibited in the country. For example, religions that are not part of the countries history may have been partly banned by banning certain practices or fully banned from being able to use public infrastructure or hold public events.

Individuals that pass this test are providing evidence that they have remembered some relevant cultural factors that are important to the nation. It does not provide evidence that the person completing the test is aligned with those cultural differences and that they want to adopt them fully themselves.

## **Other approaches to protect and preserve culture**

Testing for cultural assimilation is extremely difficult and in many cases it is realistically feasible to do this accurately. One of the most obvious ways that a nation-state could limit the influence from external cultures in their own nation-state is to drastically reduce the rates of immigration into their country. If only a small number of people are able to migrate into the country at a time the chances of them being able to assimilate into the nations culture should increase. Migrants would then be at least surrounded by other citizens that exhibit the nations culture. This can make it easier to understand it and adopt those differences over time. The slower the rate of migration the easier it can become to adopt the hosts cultural differences due. The faster it is the easier it becomes for migrants to retain their cultural differences and have a larger impact on the hosts culture instead of assimilating into it.

Another approach that can help with enabling long term change it to stop giving out citizenships entirely to migrants. This would greatly slow down any demographic change in the country and make it easier to reverse demographic change or remove groups that exhibit undesirable cultural differences.