The boss of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation recently sent a signal to the multicultural masses through his 2025 Lowy Lecture, indicating that from top to bottom we need to be working to promote social cohesion.
“Our social fabric is fraying – fraying in ways we have never experienced before. This is not an accident. Tonight, I will explore how security threats are damaging our cohesion, and how our damaged cohesion is amplifying security threats” – Mike Burgess, ASIO, November 4
In order to accomplish such a goal it would surely be prudent to examine the underpinnings of “social cohesion” and from whence it naturally arises. Social cohesion, as the term suggests, entails a “sticking together” as a people.
The will to remain identified with a group arises out an evolutionary need to firstly defend against threat, and secondly share and divide resources for the sake of technological development.
This quite obviously led through agrarian societies into specialisation and thus to modern human civil systems. A 2022 study on social cohesion notes: “For individuals to develop into a coherent group requires a perceptual shift, one based on self-organising principles, such as similarity, which can produce emergent features.”
These emergent features are what we call culture. Culture, therefore, arises secondarily to social cohesion. There cannot be a culture that produces social cohesion – that would be akin to putting the cart before the horse.
Common sense dictates that the greatest factor in similarity is that which is derived from ethnic affiliation. In Australia there are micro-ethno-cultures in which social cohesion is high, and yet this does not pervade as a homogenous force amongst the population.
We can only truly be Australian if what it means to be Australian is derived from such an ethnic affiliation – to claim otherwise is to deny the very forces that produce cohesion at a fundamental level.
Individuals may embrace social cohesion within an organisational hierarchy, but once the source of empowerment derived from that organisation dries up, the individual will revert to survival instinct and stick together with those most similar to them.
The notion of empowerment plays an important role in developing social cohesion, as outlined in a 2001 study. Giving agency to individuals within a group structure and empowering them to “alter and shape their socioenvironmental context” is a key factor in promoting cohesion among individuals and groups, the researchers found.
If the Australian government was serious about promoting social cohesion they would surely recognise the fundamental truth that ethnic affiliation and agency play key roles in defining how we relate to one another.
Rather than belittling, denigrating and disempowering the founding stock of this great nation, it would be wise to offer respect and validate the central role they play in Australia’s past and future.
The breakdown of social cohesion is not a product of White Australia, it is a product of policy decisions that allow outsiders with no heartfelt sense of belonging to exploit and parasite off what the forefathers of the Federation built for their offspring.
The studies referred to in this article:
- Speer, P. W., Jackson, C. B., & Peterson, N. A. (2001). The relationship between social cohesion and empowerment: Support and new implications for theory. Health education & behavior, 28(6), 716-732.
- Pineda, J. A. (2022). Is Social Cohesion a Different Mechanism of Evolution?. In The Social Impulse: The Evolution and Neuroscience of What Brings Us Together (pp. 43-51). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Header image: Patriotic Australians at a March for Australia rally in Sydney on October 19 (Jesse J.S – X).
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