Comments by "" (@titteryenot4524) on "Islam and the West - Ed Husain" video.
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@teuzza23 I read this when I was younger, and I haven’t read anything better as to how to live a ‘good life’ : This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body. (Whitman)
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I consider the lack of patriotism/nationalism one of the most refreshing aspects of the UK. I’ve never understood this taking pride in an accident of birth. It’s akin to my taking pride in my shoe size or eye colour. It’s that level of irrational and illogical. I had no say in the matter, so why am I taking some ‘unearned credit’ for a random, arbitrary event I had no intrinsic say in? The difference with
nationalism/patriotism is their massive danger for the continued existence of our species. It all links in with the concomitant ideas around ‘taking offence’. For me, the greatest problem humanity faces, and has always faced, is the one of ‘taking offence’. Note ‘taking’. No one can be offended against their will. You are fully complicit in the act of ‘being offended’. The only long-term solution to this is obvious. Train oneself to not be offended. By anything. Don’t hitch yourself so tightly to this or that identity (family, tribe, nation, race, religion, sex, sports team etc) such that when someone else says something, anything, about the aforementioned it will be impossible for you to take offence, quite simply as you have refused to subsume so much of your identity in the perceived target another attacks. 😳
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@PibrochPonder ‘Indigenous’? So how far back do you go, son? Dryopithecus? Ramapithecus? Australopithecus? Homo-Erectus? Homo-Sapiens? Homo-Sapiens-Sapiens? Adam and Eve? Clovis people? Any Native American tribe you care to mention? Where, exactly, does ‘ownership’ come into this timeline? If you’re telling me people own a house within a nationally defined territory then, yes. But I, ‘born’ in the UK, don’t ‘own’ the UK anymore than Emmanuel Macron ‘owns’ France, or Joe Biden ‘owns’ America. And if you consider that I do own the UK, then you need to do more than just assert this, you need to demonstrate it, as from where I’m sitting, I no more ‘own’ the UK than I do the moon.👀
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@PibrochPonder Why are you wilfully misrepresenting what I’m saying? I never said you go somewhere and unlawfully, forcibly install yourself. I’m saying, that within the law, and where circumstances allow, people should be free to move wherever they want. Of course, immigration rules of individual countries will restrain this, but that’s why I said within the law and the prevailing circumstances. Now, I don’t call this ‘colonisation’ in any historical sense of that term, for as far as I can see people are not violently landing somewhere and imposing their will. So, once again, a bunch of Muslims come and live peacefully and lawfully in the UK: where’s the problem? And by the way, you still haven’t cleared up the vital question of just who is ‘indigenous’ to any place you care to mention. For example, I was born in the UK to a French father and an Irish mother. Does that make me ‘indigenous’? I fear you are just making this stuff up as you go along to suit your agenda.😳
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@PibrochPonder Yes, but the Clovis people were in the USA before the Native Americans; the ‘English’, as you put it, were/are a mixed race of all sorts: Jutes; Anglo-Saxons; French Normans; Viking Normans; Irish; Scots; Celts; Asians; Africans etc. You’re all over the place, mate. There is no indigenous, ideal ‘English’ person. Doesn’t exist. You need to get with the gig, sunshine.😉 By your logic, no white people should be allowed in Australia, as they are not ‘indigenous’. So, are you going to ask for the deportation of all the white, non-indigenous people of Australia? And New Zealand? 😳
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@PibrochPonder Ok, it looks like ‘indigenous’ is our bone of contention. All I’m saying is that if you are a citizen and you have a referendum on anything , then every citizen has a say. In that case my sister-in-law would have a say. You appeared to suggest, under your indigenous stuff, that she wouldn’t. Fine. She, and others like her get a vote. The whole ‘indigenous’ thing is invidious, for it depends how you define it. You’d have to look at the genes all the way down the line. To me, that’s just a open door for racist theory. I don’t give a fig about your ‘indigenous’ state or otherwise, however you want to define this. I don’t see British citizens as indigenous or non-indigenous, as you appear to. I just see a human. I take each person individually and try not to box them into this or that ethnic/cultural group and I have found this has served me well. As to immigration, I happen to think this is, on balance, a good thing. I am not for open doors, but I’m certainly for substantial controlled immigration and, frankly, as long as they are prepared to work, learn/speak the language and obey the law, I don’t really care where they come from. On balance, I think having a multicultural society is preferable to the alternatives. I don’t want anyone constraining me and asking me to assimilate, so why would I demand that of others? People need to be left free to think and act for themselves and not feel they are being straitjacketed into some assimilated mush. Give me the colour, difference, vibrancy and messiness of a multicultural society than a bland, gray, monocultural one any day of the week. Of course, you will disagree with this. Anyway, I think we’d better stop here as we are just at the risk of repeating ourselves.😳
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@PibrochPonder I’m still not sure where you’re coming from on this. As I see it, the UK is already a kind of ‘melting-pot’ of different cultures, languages and customs, all held together under the notion of being ‘Brit’, however you want to define that term. Most people are just getting along with their lives, obeying the law and paying their way. If you are saying that there are extremist elements of certain groups, then yes. But just because of a few bad apples, are you going disbar the vast majority of others from being able to live their life in a culturally multifaceted UK? My main three points have always been learn the main language, pay your way, and obey the law. Hasn’t the vast majority of this country been doing this since time immemorial right up to the present day? Human beings are messy. No one said it’s easy to swing along with people of your ‘own’ skin colour/faith/tradition, let alone someone else with different ideas about these to yours. The vast majority of the UK population is integrated/assimilated according to your terms. So where’s the issue? Aside from the well-known extremist elements of Islam (a minuscule minority), where exactly is the UK not integrated/assimilated? Where are these fault lines, exactly, as I’m struggling to see them?🧐 You can’t have it both ways. The UK is a free, open, pluralistic, liberal democracy, which permits a certain level of immigration. If you want to stop all immigration at source, that’s fine. It’s just not the world I want to live in; that is an insular world where we each define ourselves as tribally and narrowly as possible and looking askance and with mistrust at everyone who happens to not tick the cultural/racial/religious profile boxes that I happen to tick.
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@mogznwaz Well, how very convenient. You ‘don’t define British culture, if you’re British you know it, recognise it and feel it, it doesn’t have to be explained.’ Really? If it doesn’t have to be explained why are certain people bending over backwards to defend some perceived British culture in the face of others whom they perceive, rightly or wrongly, to be ‘less British’ than the next person? You don’t have to explain it because you can’t fucking explain it. Britain and the idea of Britain is a thousand and one different things and more depending on who you speak to, but not one of these things is ‘intrinsically’ British, and could just as well be found in some other part of the planet. I was born here, have lived in France, Belgium, Israel and the USA, and I’m here to tell you that there is nothing you can name as some perceived part of a ‘British culture’ that you can’t also find in these countries and elsewhere under various similar but different guises. Just asserting that there is a ‘British culture’ without demonstrating it won’t do, sunshine. Every country, as far as I can see in this globalised, interconnected world, is a mix and match version of a whole host of multifarious stuff, but nothing you could necessarily pinpoint as intrinsically, say, ‘British’, or ‘French’ or ‘American’, for example. Tea? Well, you get that in China. Fish and chips? Belgium does these rather well, too. Football? Just about any other place you care to mention does this. I could go on and name every supposedly ‘British’ thing, and could also name this as a thing in more than one other country. I suppose you could argue the case for a kind of collective history, but an actual uniquely distinctive culture? Nah. You might have got away with arguing for distinctive national cultures 100 years ago, but not today. As to me being a ‘British self-loathing twat’, well, that just makes no fucking sense to me. Why anyone takes some kind of unearned pride or unearned credit in a random, arbitrary accident of birth is beyond me. You’re actually, with a straight face, telling me you're ‘proud’ your mother plopped you out on a random, arbitrary patch of territory and not some other random, arbitrary territory? You’ll be telling me next you’d have been ‘proud’ of the moon if your mother had miraculously managed to plop you out there, I suppose? I reserve my feelings of ‘pride’ for self-driven, self-motivated achievements: learning a few languages; learning a few musical instruments; raising a happy, healthy family; that kind of thing. Things that, like, y’know, I’ve actually put some fucking effort into. Being born somewhere and not somewhere else is not an achievement last time I checked. And anyway, why should I be forced to stand up in some kind of weird accident of birth pride, privileging those others who were randomly, arbitrarily born in the same plot of land as I? You’re going to force me to put them before some other people who weren’t born on the same plot as I? I don’t operate like that, pal. That’s just irrational and thinking for the unevolved amongst us. It’s like saying I’m ‘proud’ to be 6ft2 or proud I have size 11 feet. You want me to privilege 6ft 2 people over 6ft1 people? You want me to privilege people with size 11 feet over people with size 10 feet? You have no say where you are born so why the fuck are you taking random credit for this? If you had been born in France, you’d be trumpeting France, if you’d been born in Ukraine, you'd more than likely be willing to kill a few Russians just because they were randomly, arbitrarily born in the land we currently call ‘Russia’? If you’d been born in La La Land you’d be boring on at me about some non-existent La La ‘culture’, that you can’t seem to define but you just somehow magically ‘feel’. Get real. Nationalism, along with organised religion, has been the most egregious baleful blight on our planet that we ever invented as a species. Ideas around it are currently threatening our continued existence as a species as we speak. You need to look at the history books, son. Unless we have a critical mass of people defining themselves as first and foremost a human being we’ll be doomed to repeat this crap on an eternal loop ad nauseam. This doesn’t mean to say I’m not willing to defend myself when attacked, but it most certainly does mean that I’m not going to be murdering my species over random acts of birth or random, unverified and unverifiable daddy’s in the sky.😳
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@teuzza23 Yes, but, frankly mate, the only real loyalty I feel is to family. Why? Blood. Even then it’s random and I’m certainly not going to blindly defend them if they commit a heinous crime. For me the 2 greatest disasters for humanity have been national pride and organised religion. Why am I to show more loyalty to people from Edinburgh (my birthplace), than people from Glasgow? Just because I was born in the former? Makes no sense. The greatest problem humanity faces, and has always faced, is the one of ‘taking offence’. Note ‘taking’. No one can be offended against their will. You are fully complicit in the act of ‘being offended’. The only long-term solution to this is obvious. Train oneself to not be offended. By anything. Don’t hitch yourself so tightly to this or that identity (family, tribe, nation, race, religion, sex, sports team etc) such that when someone else says something, anything, about the aforementioned it will be impossible for you to take offence, quite simply as you have refused to subsume so much of your identity in the perceived target another attacks.🤓
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@teuzza23 Good points, well made. 👍 I would just add this: I used to be sensitive to criticism about many things I once saw as ‘important’ but through many years have trained myself to not be offended by anyone about anything. I mean that. I used to be unthinkingly patriotic, unthinkingly religious, unthinkingly this or that, and then I re-examined everything and found that the secret to feeling ok with others coming at you for this or that was simply to expand your boundaries of self-definition. I know it sounds a bit sanctimonious so sorry, but it’s literally how I feel now after all these years of breast-beating and shaking my fists at those who ‘offended’ my then God, or my football team, or my country of birth etc. I understand where you are coming from when you talk about being part of an environment where one grew up and forming an emotional attachment, and I do have that, but if someone comes along and slags off Scotland, say, I genuinely am not bothered by it. So what? The not being offended is actually independent of the intent of the individual btw. Even if they intentionally come at me I can remain above it. It’s taken years of mental training though! 😳
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@jamesmason8436 Nothing you have said refutes the basic point that most of the people you mention are law-abiding, tax-paying citizens of this country, most of them 2nd, 3rd and 4th generation so you can’t give me that crap about ‘sending them back’. Have you thought about the idea that they may look at aspects of the culture they were born into and not be particularly enamoured of it? Huh? I’m sure you have ‘beliefs’ and ‘practices’ that are anathema to them. But in the final analysis, chum, none of this matters for the quite simple reason that many, if not most, were born here, pay their way, and have just as much right to be here as you do. You might have to just take this one on the chin, pal.🧐
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@jamesmason8436
‘Their ideology is migrant in origin then inherited by/imposed upon successive generations’, you say. I say, so what if it’s ‘migrant in origin’? And? Your point? I don’t believe it actually is for the majority of 2nd, 3rd, 4th generation. I live in Glasgow and we have a sizeable Muslim community here completely integrated, living and working in the community, very often holding the top jobs in medicine and the law. You just sound downright racist when you blithely say their ideology is ‘migrant in origin’. Even if it were, so what? You can’t do anything about it as far as I can see. Islam in the mainstream form doesn’t ‘impede human rights’ and the issues you mentioned earlier are, in my experience, in the minority. I, personally, work with 3 individuals who are Muslim, one is married to a white Scotsman, another is openly gay, and another is single, but has been partnered with non-Muslim people in the past. You seem to be monomaniacally focusing on a small sub-set which you have noticed and magnified this out of all proportion to the way the majority of Muslims live in the UK today. As I say, here in Scotland, there is little to no sense of ghettoisation and the Muslim community is well integrated. Yes, I do believe that if laws aren’t broken then, yes, that is hunky-dory. Let’s flip this. I’m a Muslim and can’t stand the prevalent drinking culture of the UK. What can I do about this? Nothing. Ditto you with cultural/religious practices you disdain. You have no right to stop anything on this score within the law. You seem to be implying that if you could you would step in here. If Muslims commit crime disproportionately you need to quote that statistic, not just assert it. Even if they did, again, so what? Whites commit lots of crime, too? Why focus on Muslims? Again, I suggest that if they commit crime and are caught and brought to justice, where’s the issue? As I say, crime is committed by all sorts, from all backgrounds. If there is a small radicalised element then, again, your point is? Are you going to demonise all the followers of a religion for a few black sheep? Your personal experience appears to have tainted your opinion of our Muslim community in the UK, but from my point of view, I’m not seeing what you’re seeing. 🧐 You seem to have the Muslim population of the UK as an obsessive hobby-horse to an almost unhealthy extent judging by the fixation you betray in this thread.
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@jamesmason8436 Your principal problem as I see it, mate, is you’re having issues with the concept of a multicultural Britain. You’re just going to have to deal with this as this is how it’s going to be for the rest of your and my life. Personally, in general, I find the UK to be a pretty successful example of multiculturalism in action, notwithstanding the inevitable deficiencies. We have built our economy for the past 70 years on migrant labour, so you can’t have your cake and eat it. These immigrants from all corners of the world have, in my opinion, indubitably enhanced the UK, making it a relatively prosperous, far more interesting and diverse place that it would be without the colours, foods, languages, customs and, yes, religions, brought by these incomers. If you’re not a ‘believer’ in the multiculturalism of 21st century Britain, and I suspect you’re not, then you should have stated this from the outset and we could have saved ourselves a whole lot of trouble. I will repeat this though, you do seem to have a real bee in your bonnet about a part of the Muslim population, and perhaps the Muslim population in toto. That’s one of the things with multiculturalism: you get all the wonderful variety, and so inevitably within that pick and mix variety there will be flavours more to your taste than others. Like you, I have no time whatsoever for organised religion, but the only reason you’re not picking on Christianity, as far as I can see, is racial. You are culturally closer to Christianity, I’m assuming, so you’ve picked on the ‘funny foreigner’s’ brand. Why not go for Sikhs or Hindus or any other of the UK’s religions? You’ve picked Islam, I would suggest, as you’re intolerant of some of their cultural practices, and what’s more, they are carrying out these practices within your sight-line. That’s what living in a multicultural society means: looking at others and tolerating the difference. You should try it some day, pal.😉
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@jamesmason8436 ‘Liberals like me’ - lol. Massive assumption there, chummo. However, I’ve just gone to the dictionary definition and: Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally support individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), democracy, secularism, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion and a market economy. Now, pal, which of these, if any, do you not espouse, and if none, are you not a liberal, too?😳 Also, you’re being slightly patronising assuming I can’t have a qualitative experience of Muslims within a culture/society just because there are a few fewer up here in Scotland. I’ve lived in France, USA, and Belgium, and in all these societies, I was in contact with Muslims. I would also add that in the USA I was pleasantly surprised at the way most Muslims were integrated into society, but I’m sure this is mainly due to that country’s emphasis on patriotism/nationalism, something I generally look askance at as I place utterly no truck in an accident of birth as a determiner of my identity and in terms of ‘pride’. Pride, for me, is something you earn the right to feel; not something handed to you just because your mother plopped you out somewhere and not somewhere else. I’m sure this will be anathema to you, dare I say, the conservative amongst us.
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@olasmith8132 Get real. I lived in Belgium for 2 years. Beyond speaking French and obeying the law I did nothing consciously to assimilate/integrate. Why do people assume other people should have to radically change their very way of being if they go to live somewhere else? If you’re not harming anyone and, as I say, breaking no laws I argue that you are free to live as you wish. I lived in France for a year. Are you going to force me to sing the Marseillaise and salute the tricolour? No. And that’s as it should be. So why are you asking people who come here that they have to bend every sinew to be some non-existent, abstract version of a ‘Brit’? I was born in the UK. As far as I can see most Muslims who were born here are no less ‘British’ than I am, whatever the fuck that means anyway. I also spent a year in America. I had the language so all I had to do was keep my head down and obey the law. That I did. Now, if you are telling me there are some rogue, some outlying Muslims who come to the UK with nefarious purposes, then, yes, there are. However, there are dubious people from every creed and none, of every race and none, who come here for nefarious purposes. The vast majority of my dealings in my life with Muslims have been dealings of nothing but mutual tolerance, friendliness, and, if you’re talking ‘nationalism/patriotism’, in the majority of cases these people were more strongly ‘British’ in that sense than I am, as I see an accident of birth an utterly pointless, random, arbitrary, and very, very dangerous thing to hitch my identity to. I, like you, like every Muslim who happens to come here could have been born anywhere. Why you, or anyone else, are claiming territorial rights over others who were also born here is bizarre indeed. If they are living within the law, you need to hold your peace, otherwise you become a very pernicious factor in stoking unnecessary bad faith between different people. If, I, a Muslim, am born in the UK, pay my taxes, and I live within the law then you have nothing to say to me. If I happen to pray to Mecca 5 times a day, and you have an issue with that, well, tough; get over it.😳
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@Camelot House ‘Privileged visitor’?! What are you on about? Do you realise how racist and exclusionary that sounds. How am I, a Muslim, born here in the UK a ‘privileged visitor’? Huh? ‘Rules and standards’? Well, if you mean obeying the law that is self-evident. What else you could be talking about I have no clue. I’m 50. Been around the block. Worked with Muslims, lived with Muslims, been friends with Muslims. In not one of these cases were any of them ‘fighting to change their adopted country to their previous way of life’, as you put it. Apart from anything else they were mostly born here, so they had no previous fucking way of life to resort to. But even the ones that weren’t born here were doing nothing of which your scaremongering epithet suggests. It seems you see Muslims as a monolithic entity. They are not. If you are a racist and suspect Islam itself, no matter the Muslim in question, just admit this and we can save a lot of time. I, personally, have no time for any organised religion, but I have no right stopping another from practising ‘freedom of worship’, and that’s as it should be. Reading you, it’s almost as if Muslims should have to forfeit their faith as a condition of entry to the UK. If you’re going to go down that authoritarian road then you’re going to have to look at all the other non-indigenous faiths in the UK. Are you prepared to do this? 🧐
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@jamesmason8436 Yeah, man. But again you’re missing my point (wilfully or otherwise). If I’d gone to live in Iraq I would have learned Arabic, kept the laws, but not ditched my agnosticism and converted to Islam. If I’d gone to live in India, I would have learned Hindi, obeyed the laws but not chucked my agnosticism to convert to Hinduism. If I had gone to Japan, I would have learned Japanese, kept the laws but not discarded my agnosticism and converted to Shinto. If I had gone to Thailand, I would have learned Thai, kept the laws, but not jettisoned my agnosticism for Buddhism. If I had gone to China, I would have learned Chinese, followed the laws, but not chucked my agnosticism for atheism. Neither, in any of these places would I feel the need (unless I freely wanted to, of course) to bend my very being in a cultural sense to fit some pre-conceived, abstract, nebulous notion of ‘Iraqiness’, ‘Indianness’, ‘Japaneseness’, ‘Thainess’ or ‘Chineseness’. I am a human being, not some robot ready to be culturally moulded to fit some sinister, top-down imposed idea of how I should be when living somewhere, anywhere. Just for the record, in all the places other than the UK I lived in I was able to be an independently-acting, self-contained actor. I don’t identify with a ‘tribe’, and I feel that’s where you and I have our biggest difference. As I see it, you seem to have pretty set notions as to how others should behave (and particularly how they should behave on the patch of land you were randomly, arbitrarily born on). I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t work like that. What’s more, if there is an element of ghettoisation with some Muslims in the UK, then so be it. No one said the world was a clean-lined, perfect sort of place. What are you going to do about it? Force them to live and think as you do? You don’t dig multiculturalism. That’s fine. I just wish you’d been a better-faith player and baldly stated this much sooner. Beyond this there is nothing much more to say as I fear, like planes going around Heathrow after an aborted landing in a storm, we are merely repeating ourselves ad nauseam.😳
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@Raahiba You are entitled to your opinion, but all I would say is that if you move to another country, you learn the language, obey the laws and pay your taxes. If you are doing these three essential things, as I see them, then no one, in my opinion has any right to demand anything more from you. If you choose to change to ‘fit in’ better, then that, of course, is different. But for there to be a kind of enforcement of this, then this I can’t countenance. Of course you try to swing along with the culture of a country as best you can, for why wouldn’t you? Most people in the real world (including me) do alter our behaviours, subtly and not so subtly, for a quiet life, whatever culture/country we happen to live in. However, my fundamental point is about freedom and on this basis why should someone, anyone impose on me about anything if I’m breaking no laws, speaking the language and contributing to the economy? In the same way that I wouldn’t dream of telling any other human being, whoever they are, and wherever they are, to radically or even mildly alter their behaviour to suit me, just to make me more comfortable (assuming they are not threatening me), then I don’t expect others to demand this of me. 😳
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@Raahiba Furthermore, I’m not sure what you mean by ‘ their country’ beyond the notion of living and working there. And if you go to live and work there, which you have, then it’s just as much your country by virtue of living/working there, no? I don’t buy this idea that just because of an accident of birth you have a first dibs claim, as it were, on the territory you were randomly, arbitrarily born into. For this same reason, I don’t get the idea of nationalism and national pride. Everyone could have been born anywhere, so to take a kind of unearned ‘pride’ or credit for this accident of birth I’ve never understood. I’m not willing to hitch my identity to a politically drawn line on a map, I suppose.😳
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@Mcgilead Mcgilead I repeat, if you come to live here, you learn the language, obey the laws and pay your taxes, that’s all I ask of you, so why are you asking for more than this from me? You call me ‘arrogant’; I’d call you arrogant and presumptuous to assume other people want to think, feel and live as you do. If I'm not harming you, and I’m not, as I’m obeying the law, then where’s the problem?😳 If you think about this a little you’ll see how fascistic it is to demand others conform to your random, arbitrary checklist of ‘how to be’. What are you going to prescribe for me? That I worship your God? What if I’m agnostic? Last time I checked there was such a thing as freedom of religion/worship and freedom to not worship any God(s) at all. Are you going to demand I eat what you eat? Don’t be daft. That’s just hypocritical, as in today’s Britain everyone eats everything anyway, and from all corners of the world as you might have noticed. Are you going to demand I wear what you wear? Really? You’re going to be that authoritarian that you’ll prescribe what I wear? That’s not the sort of society I want to live in. Are you going to tell me what to read, or that I must listen to the music that you like to listen to, or have the same hobbies as you just to make me ‘fit in’ with your staggeringly arrogant rules as to how I should live? Get real. Human beings are more complicated than your cramped McGilead vision of them. You need to think again. I will say this once more, as it bears repeating: if I am speaking the language, paying my taxes and breaking no laws you have absolutely no right to demand anything more of me. You need to deal with this basic fact of freedom in a pluralistic society. If you can’t then that’s just tough. Go and create your own McGilead republic if you must; just know that I won’t be joining you. You sound far too narrow to me, only wanting ‘people like you’ surrounding you; only people speaking with the same accent as you. I’ve lived in several other countries and travelled extensively in every continent, learning to speak 4 other languages along with my native language, and in not one of the places I visited/lived, did I do any more than I ask of others: language, law, taxes. You need to get over a random, arbitrary accident of birth as a marker of your identity. It means nothing. And if you’re going to mould your being to an accident of birth, fine, you are free to do what the fuck you want within the law, just don’t presume to dictate this for others, as it’s nothing less than a kind of fascism. I don’t know your politics, but I’m willing to bet you’re right-wing. I can usually smell this at 10 paces and I’m scenting that here with you. I’m not going to be told by anyone how I am to live my life if I’m harming no one. How you even feel you have the brass neck and temerity that you can demand this of another person in a free society is beyond me. It’s also mighty sinister, so think on. First and foremost, I’m a free-thinking, free-feeling, autonomous human being. I would not dream of arrogantly, haughtily, fascistically asking any other person to change their behaviour/way of life just to suit me. If I invite you to my home, all I ask is that you are polite (obey the laws), try to speak the language therein, and if you’re feeling generous, pop a few pennies into the donation jar. Wear what you want, eat what you want, read what you want, worship whatever God you want, listen to what you want, do what you want, within the law. Given all this, and in conclusion, you need to hold your peace if I’m obeying the law, paying my way and speaking the language. Anything else I’m doing is, quite frankly, none of your fucking business.😳
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@memeticist I agree. I’m for controlled immigration, not open door. I said this to someone else, but you can have it too, as this is an important issue of personal freedom that you seem to be blithely ignoring. Here goes: I repeat, if you come to live here, you learn the language, obey the laws and pay your taxes, that’s all I ask of you, so why are you asking for more than this from me? You call me ‘arrogant’; I’d call you arrogant and presumptuous to assume other people want to think, feel and live as you do. If I'm not harming you, and I’m not, as I’m obeying the law, then where’s the problem?😳 If you think about this a little you’ll see how fascistic it is to demand others conform to your random, arbitrary checklist of ‘how to be’. What are you going to prescribe for me? That I worship your God? What if I’m agnostic? Last time I checked there was such a thing as freedom of religion/worship and freedom to not worship any God(s) at all. Are you going to demand I eat what you eat? Don’t be daft. That’s just hypocritical, as in today’s Britain everyone eats everything anyway, and from all corners of the world as you might have noticed. Are you going to demand I wear what you wear? Really? You’re going to be that authoritarian that you’ll prescribe what I wear? That’s not the sort of society I want to live in. Are you going to tell me what to read, or that I must listen to the music that you like to listen to, or have the same hobbies as you just to make me ‘fit in’ with your staggeringly arrogant rules as to how I should live? Get real. Human beings are more complicated than your cramped Kenland vision of them. You need to think again. I will say this once more, as it bears repeating: if I am speaking the language, paying my taxes and breaking no laws you have absolutely no right to demand anything more of me. You need to deal with this basic fact of freedom in a pluralistic society. If you can’t then that’s just tough. Go and create your own Kenland republic if you must; just know that I won’t be joining you. You sound far too narrow to me, only wanting ‘people like you’ surrounding you; only people speaking with the same accent as you. I’ve lived in several other countries and travelled extensively in every continent, learning to speak 4 other languages along with my native language, and in not one of the places I visited/lived, did I do any more than I ask of others: language, law, taxes. You need to get over a random, arbitrary accident of birth as a marker of your identity. It means nothing. And if you’re going to mould your being to an accident of birth, fine, you are free to do what the fuck you want within the law, just don’t presume to dictate this for others, as it’s nothing less than a kind of fascism. I don’t know your politics, but I’m willing to bet you’re right-wing. I can usually smell this at 10 paces and I’m scenting that here with you. I’m not going to be told by anyone how I am to live my life if I’m harming no one. How you even feel you have the brass neck and temerity that you can demand this of another person in a free society is beyond me. It’s also mighty sinister, so think on. First and foremost, I’m a free-thinking, free-feeling, autonomous human being. I would not dream of arrogantly, haughtily, fascistically asking any other person to change their behaviour/way of life just to suit me. If I invite you to my home, all I ask is that you are polite (obey the laws), try to speak the language therein, and if you’re feeling generous, pop a few pennies into the donation jar. Wear what you want, eat what you want, read what you want, worship whatever God you want, listen to what you want, do what you want, within the law. Given all this, and in conclusion, you need to hold your peace if I’m obeying the law, paying my way and speaking the language. Anything else I’m doing is, quite frankly, none of your fucking business.😳
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@memeticist Exactly, you are talking about the things 99% of us do most of the time, anyway. So, if this is all you’re asking, fine. Say hello, be polite, try to get on. All this is self-evident; so self-evident we, most of us, do it anyway.👀 If a few don’t do it, are you going to constrain everybody else’s freedom to behave how they choose if they are not breaking any laws, on the basis of these outlying rogues? I certainly hope not.
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@memeticist Aside from an infinitesimal, minuscule minority, I can’t think of anyone in my 50 years on the planet who didn’t do these basics things. If you’re talking of some Islamic people, and I suspect you are, then these are a minority. I live in Glasgow, it has a well-integrated Muslim population (but they still honour their cultural traditions), and in my living and working with Muslim men and women I can’t think of a single one, man or woman, who didn’t shake hands upon meeting another. As to the burka thing, the principal point here is the woman’s choice to wear what she wants. There are no laws being broken if she chooses to wear a burka. I would go further, though, even if she were being peer-pressured into this, you can do nothing about it, unless laws of the land are being broken. If I force my wife to wear jeans every other day, are you going to stop me? No. Therefore you have no right to interfere with the lives of others if they are obeying the laws of the land, as 99% of us do anyway. 😳
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@memeticist You need to be more specific as to whom you’re referring as I’m at a loss to grasp who you are talking about. I’ve lived and worked with people from all sorts of cultural backgrounds (born both in these places and born here: Indians; Chinese; Pakistanis; Japanese; French; Spanish; Americans etc.,) and all of these people were just peacefully living their lives, paying their way, obeying the law, going about their day, as that’s how it goes in 2022 UK. Yes, there are elements of the Muslim population who seem to want to live slightly separately, but, my fundamental point throughout this whole thread pertains here too: if they are breaking no laws, you can do jack about it. You can’t have a pluralistic, free, liberal society without a certain messiness. Put it this way: I’d rather have what we have with all the colour, interest and, yes, messiness that entails, than the horrendously monocultural alternative you appear to be championing. 👀
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@memeticist Just for the record, I have travelled extensively in Muslim majority countries: in not a single one of them did they ask me to wear what they were wearing. I’d have been horrified if they had. Also, I lived in the middle-east for a year in a very Jewish-inflected place, culturally and religiously, and not once did anyone there ask me to ditch my agnosticism for Judaism, for that would have just been fascist madness on their part. If you want a certain level of immigration, and I would imagine you would, given our ageing, stagnating population, then you have to accept them in toto. If they are speaking English, paying their way, and obeying the law, and yes, performing the social niceties most of us do anyway, then you have no right to demand any more than this.😳
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@hooligan9794 Just be proud of your self-motivated achievements, pal. Learning a language, learning a musical instrument, raising a happy family, that sort of thing. After organised religion, national pride has been the most baleful blight on the human species. If you’ve actively contributed to something, then, if you want to, take ‘pride’ in that. Don’t take unearned pride, unearned credit in the random, arbitrary event of your mother plopping you out here and not there. I would argue, don’t even fall into the trap of defining anything at a national level. It’s too dangerous and humans cannot be trusted at this stage in our evolution. I try, as far as possible, to define myself in the widest, largest terms possible, and in this way I don’t get ‘offended’ when someone disses my place of birth, or when someone mocks my (non)-belief, in a deity. Human beings are still far, far too tribal, alas.🧐
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@MsMounen
Yeah, and your random, arbitrary, meaningless accident of birth makes you ‘belong’ to this island. Really? Think about this better. You could have been born anywhere. Stop taking an unearned ‘pride’, a weird unearned credit in a complete accident of birth. If you had been born in France you would, no doubt, be trumpeting your ‘Frenchness’ at me. If you had been born in China you would, no doubt, be championing the greatness of China. If you had been born in La La Land, you would be going all lala over La La Land? Do you not see this? Do you not see that nationalism, along with organised religion, has been the most egregious baleful blight on our planet? Can you not see that? Are you that primitive that just because your mother happened to plop you out somewhere, and not elsewhere, that you automatically take pride in that random place she plopped you out? Really? Last time I checked, I thought people took pride in their self-driven achievements. Learning a new language, learning a musical instrument, raising a happy, healthy family, for example, are all worthy of your pride. But an accident of birth? Have you not seen the news today? People about to kill one another over an accident of birth. Think about this and get back to me with a better answer as I feel you might be better than this.😳
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@MsMounen I will give you this one concession, as I like you. In your case, I’m deducing it’s a benevolent patriotism you feel linked to upbringing etc. That’s fine (as long as it remains at the benign, benevolent level), as it’s linked to your history and friends and family and experiences. I get that. All I am saying is quite simple: don’t define yourself on an accident of birth such that you are willing to die for this accident of birth. With you, I hope, I don’t feel you would descend to this obvious madness. But when patriotism and nationalism get blurred, then human beings all too often get violent and tribal and hunkered down in their camps purely based on a random, arbitrary accident of birth. The only way out of this is to expand your self-definition. For example, my first and primary definition is ‘human being’. I’m not willing to define myself as less than this, if it means excluding others. As a result I’m not going to get violent with another over an arbitrary accident of birth or a random pie-in-the-sky daddy. Humanity needs to learn to do this if we are to have any chance of getting out of here alive. ☀️
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@MsMounen Of course I have connections. I have a close family and extended family and friends. I don’t feel this need to ‘belong’ as you seem to, and particularly to belong to the random people surrounding me in the part of the world I was born and raised. Why on Earth are you going to limit yourself to a sense of ‘belonging’ and ‘connection’ to the tiny bit of the world you were randomly born into? Huh? Surely it’s better to expand your sense of who you are to encompass as many fellow human beings as possible? No? Some of my family have lived for generations in the same place, while others have moved around, lived in other countries, learned other languages, as have I, and we have thereby refused to be tied to this or that small patch we happened to have been randomly, arbitrarily born on. You seem to be suggesting that we can only feel ‘belonging’ and ‘connection’ with those who happen to come from where we happened to originate from. How sad. How bizarre. How dangerous. I feel no need to limit my connections to those who happen to share my language or happen to originate from my small spot on this Earth. I speak 4 languages based on my life experience and travels on this fascinating planet. Can’t you see that the reason for much of humanity’s troubles issues from limiting ourselves to those we happen to have been born among? Can’t you see that the trouble starts when we start identifying with this or that person to the exclusion of someone else? Have you not looked at our history recently? Currently, in Russia and Ukraine we have human beings about to annihilate each other on an industrial scale, and for what? Why? I would suggest that Ukrainians and Russians have far more in common than they don’t. The only, I repeat, the only reason that they are about to mutually massacre one another is quite simple: they have been brainwashed into believing they have more differences than similarities. They have been taught to hate such that they are prepared to murder one another without scruple. Does a Russian child hate a Ukrainian child? Of course not. Why? They haven’t been indoctrinated into the delusions of adults that say we have more differences than similarities compared to the next person. I find it patronising and insulting and laughable that you suggest I cannot have a sense of belonging just because I see nationalism/patriotism as irrational, pointless, but more importantly, very very dangerous. I belong to the Earth. And the sun. And the stars. I identify with every single human being ever born and refuse to abase myself to a petty accident of birth. You need to think about this. As to ‘spiritual beliefs’, well, I’m not a fan of organised religion, as I see it, along with nationalism/patriotism, as the greatest disaster our species ever invented. Yet, this notwithstanding, I am spiritual in my own way. The difference with me, and it’s the vital difference, is that I am not prepared to kill another for my ideas. I’m not prepared to harm a fellow human being on the basis of invented, abstract nothings, as I see them. ‘Creeds and schools in abeyance’ is the only creed I live by, along with a self-definition as large as I can encompass. 😉
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