biffvernon wrote:I'm British because I live in Britain. Britain is a diverse and multi-various place in which there is room for people of my views and for people with other views. That is a Good Thing.
There is no room in the UK for people who believe forced marriage, honour killings and female genital mutilation are acceptable.
God help us, you'd have though such a statement was pretty uncontroversial. But, apaprently not, since it would seem some people would sooner choke before adhering to anything other than an absolute, cultural relativism.
For all of its faults, and they are myriad, I am happy and proud to stand on the shoulders of all who went before me and sacrificed so much for me to have the freedom to speak and to act, and say that my culture is better than one which opresses half of its people and which imposes religious doctrine on all of its people.
biffvernon wrote:I'm British because I live in Britain. Britain is a diverse and multi-various place in which there is room for people of my views and for people with other views. That is a Good Thing.
There is no room in the UK for people who believe forced marriage, honour killings and female genital mutilation are acceptable.
Why do you limit your comment to the UK?
I would amend it thus: There is no room in the Multiverse for people who believe forced marriage, honour killings and female genital mutilation are acceptable.
biffvernon wrote:I'm British because I live in Britain. Britain is a diverse and multi-various place in which there is room for people of my views and for people with other views. That is a Good Thing.
Do you believe there should be room for cultural forms where a code of law that is both religiously informed and is not democratic is promoted and where proponents of such forms actively seek to enact changes to our society such that you should follow those codes as well, by force if necessary, simply because they believe you should? Do you consider that people who believe that women are little more than chattel and may be mutilated in the name of cultural preferences and/or may be forced to partake in marriages not of their own free choosing should be free to carry on with such cultural practices? Do you think it improper, even, to publicly state that such practices, as I have outlined above, are abhorrent to this culture and will not be tolerated, both strictly legally and, more amorphously, culturally?
Just wondering where your line is?
Such things should not be tolerated in any culture. Anywhere. Let's fight for what is right everywhere and stop being so parochial.
biffvernon wrote:There is no room in the Multiverse for people who believe forced marriage, honour killings and female genital mutilation are acceptable.
biffvernon wrote:I'm British because I live in Britain. Britain is a diverse and multi-various place in which there is room for people of my views and for people with other views. That is a Good Thing.
There is no room in the UK for people who believe forced marriage, honour killings and female genital mutilation are acceptable.
Why do you limit your comment to the UK?
Because I am a citizen of the UK, I get to vote in the UK and I have to live in the UK. I can say I don't believe these things are acceptable, but if they are deemed acceptable to the majority of people in another nation/culture then there is nothing I can do about it and I'm not even sure I am ethically justified in telling other people how their own culture and laws should be determined.
Put another way: we cannot justify trying to impose our cultural standards on other people in their own nations/cultures. We are here complaining about other people trying to impose their cultural standards on us, so if we start trying to do the same then we are liable to accusations of rank hypocrisy. Attempting to force cultural changes on others does not work. The changes have to be driven internally, or they won't stick.
"We fail to mandate economic sanity because our brains are addled by....compassion." (Garrett Hardin)
Who are these other people? We get too hung up on national borders. What about counties, districts, the EU, Europe etc...
We're all human, we all live on this planet. Further distinctions are rather subjective or transient in nature.
Oh for Christ's sake, this thread is f******g ridiculous.
No, Chris, the administrative units we call "independent nations" are not "subjective and transient." They are very real things. We can only be held responsible for cultural standards in our own jurisdiction. Outside of that jurisdiction we have no power, and no clear moral right to try and impose our standards on others.
REALISM please. I am getting very bored of this idiotic idealism.
"We fail to mandate economic sanity because our brains are addled by....compassion." (Garrett Hardin)
UndercoverElephant wrote:
Because I am a citizen of the UK, I get to vote in the UK and I have to live in the UK. I can say I don't believe these things are acceptable, but if they are deemed acceptable to the majority of people in another nation/culture then there is nothing I can do about it and I'm not even sure I am ethically justified in telling other people how their own culture and laws should be determined.
I am a citizen of the UK, I get to vote in the UK and my government has a seat at the United Nations where it is a permanent member of the Security Council. My voice is also represented at the International Court, the World Trade Organisation, the Antarctic Treaty and the World Tiddlywinks Federation. I am a world citizen. I will do my best to prevent many of the things others have mentioned above such as female genital mutilation along with male genital mutilation (aka circumcision) which has been embedded in aspects of British culture for centuries and yet is abhorrent. I will continue to tolerate people who like to watch football and Strictly Come Dancing as, by and large, it harms none.
UndercoverElephant wrote:
Because I am a citizen of the UK, I get to vote in the UK and I have to live in the UK. I can say I don't believe these things are acceptable, but if they are deemed acceptable to the majority of people in another nation/culture then there is nothing I can do about it and I'm not even sure I am ethically justified in telling other people how their own culture and laws should be determined.
I am a citizen of the UK, I get to vote in the UK and my government has a seat at the UTTERLY TOOTHLESS AND INEFFECTIVE United Nations where it is a permanent member of the Security Council. My voice is also represented at the TOOTHLESS AND INEFFECTIVE International Court, the CORRUPT, IN-THE-HANDS-OF-BANKER-CORPORATIONS World Trade Organisation, the Antarctic Treaty and the World Tiddlywinks Federation.
There. Fixed it for you.
I am a world citizen.
There is no such thing. When the UN enforces its own resolutions concerning Israel, then you can talk to me about being a "world citizen." I do not acknowledge the authority of an organisation which turns a blind eye to the greatest ongoing injustice on this planet.
"We fail to mandate economic sanity because our brains are addled by....compassion." (Garrett Hardin)
Is one English, British or a citizen of the EU? These three jurisdictions are very intermixed and certainly transient. The EU didn't even exist a few decades ago and may not in another few.
Placing on the focus on the nation (the UK in yours and my case) is a problem. There is good argument that some issues should be dealt with at a smaller scale and also good argument that other issues should be dealt with a larger scale.
It really isn't just about nation states any more, the multi-national corporation tax issue is a recent example.
I want some people on here to imagine the following thought experiment.
You have two people. You have not personally met either of them. One of them, though, is a member of your community to which you culturally may be said to belong. The other is a member of a distant community to which you culturally may be said to not belong. You discover both of these people are in imminent danger of, say, starvation, and that you only have sufficient spare resources of your own to be able to help just one of them. Do you choose to help none of them or one of them? If you do choose to help one of them, what criteria do you use to decide which one?
The thought experiment, above, is an extreme situation rarely found in such a literal form in the real world. However, it is informative in terms discovering where one's bottom line exists, as it were. For me, I should say the answer is simple. I help the stranger from my own community first. The reason is simple. It's because charity begins at home. The reason it begins at home is because I don't know when I may need help but, when/if I do, I am probably going to need to look to my neighbour for that help before expecting it from someone from far way in another community. By showing preference for my own community I am showing good sense. But, that contract works both ways. That is to say, it only remains stable as long as I can be sure that, when push comes to shove, I know that my neighbours will catch me when I fall. I can only be sure of that by knowing that, in all of the fundamentals of life, we share the same beliefs and cultural practices. If there exists on the one community two entirely different and incompatible belief systems about those fundamentals, then we are not looking at one community any more. It is, in effect two communities that simply happen to exist in the same space. Fine, as long as times a good. Very bad when times get tough.
All of which is why it is not sufficient to state that this patch of land called England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales is merely the arbitrary place where people simultaneously happen to reside and where those people should feel no more or less commitment to the well being of their neighbours than they do towards someone from a distant land. If people really felt like that, we would never have been able to build institutions such as the NHS, nor have been able to persuade people of the need for the social contract that is progressive taxation. Nor would we have had the fortitude to stand united against the tyranny of the Third Reich. Frankly, I find it disgusting to listen to the limp-wristed cultural self-loathing and apathy of some people on here.
The thing about this kind of cultural relativism is that, very quickly, it can morph into cultural apathy and, eventually, to cultural selfishness and, finally, to complete nihilistic cultural atomisation. As I said previously, if this is really how some people feel, they deserve to lose what culture they have. One that our ancestors took somewhat more seriously and were prepared, on occasion, to lay their lives down for.
Last edited by Little John on 26 Feb 2013, 19:57, edited 1 time in total.
UndercoverElephant wrote: When the UN enforces its own resolutions concerning Israel, then you can talk to me about being a "world citizen." I do not acknowledge the authority of an organisation which turns a blind eye to the greatest ongoing injustice on this planet.
The UN has many shortcomings, not dealing properly with Israel being just one of them. Much of the trouble stems from the very limited powers that the UN has, what with having to find agreement of a large number of nation states that do seem to like keeping power for themselves. The UN will not function effectively until people think of themselves more as world citizens and less as national citizens.
I am also a North Somercotes Parish citizen, and East Lindsey citizen, a Lincolnshire citizen and an English citizen. Subsidiarity is an interesting, and often poorly used, concept. Government can operate at different levels and, sadly, often operates at a sub-optimal level.
