However, exposed to the wider modern world, you can see where the willful part comes into play. But then the whole thing loops back in on itself, trying to determine what part of it is just being mean and stubborn, vs. what their whole island has lived with.
But I'm biased, and I tend to think about these things in a somewhat amoral utilitarian manner, believing that (classical) liberal Western Civ is what's best. (shrug)
What if your exposure to the wider, modern world shows you that the majority in that world are stinking savages incapable of assimilating or maintaining your civilization? Literally, they
stink more than your reference group. And they act in ways that are not only foreign, but objectively more primitive (relative to your reference group)?
All these accusations of xenophobia and chewing over the causes of it forget a few things and seems an attempt to circumvent any thought on the issue:
1. There are good, objective reasons why a local population would not want to admit immigrants.
2. It is their (i)land and their culture, so piss off.
3. Some people do not believe in the magic of transformational dirt in that moving a benighted peasant who still pisses in the same stream from which they get their drinking water from one spot on Earth to another spot on Earth transforms that peasant into a solid citizen of a representative republic founded on 18th century liberalism.
Liberal Western Civ is my favored civilization, too. But, it is pretty obvious that:
1. Some groups have the capacity to neither begin nor maintain western civ.
2. Some groups may have what it takes, but do not want to partake. The lie that "scratch a foreigner_of_some_sort" and you'll find an American underneath has been proved wrong many, many times.
3. Introduce too many non-Anglo, non-NW Europeans into a liberal Western civilization and soon you no longer have liberal Western civ.
