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As someone else who currently lives in the UK, this is not true.
by vilmosi 9y ago
As someone else who currently lives in the UK, this is not true.
- bjelkeman-again 9y agoWhich part?
- barrkel 9y agoThey most definitely will not shut up about WWI/II; it's less an explicit verbosity than an assumed (and completely unwarranted) superiority. I know a bunch of British people who've visited the continent, and the only place they could think of to visit was Normandy, Dunkirk or the Somme. Their entire mental framing of Europe is around the wars, and their grandparents or great-grandparents. And the poppies! Always with the poppies. Insularity is real and many people, possibly a majority, outside the major metro areas are deeply incurious. The wars are the biggest semantic nodes in their heads associated with Europe, followed swiftly by something about bent bananas from Brussels.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- JetSetWilly 9y agoIf you look at the tourist habits of the typical British person, you will find that those examples are highly atypical. I don't think you'll find that the vast hordes going to Ibiza every year are "framing Europe around the wars". Secondly it is a bit insulting to blithely state that anyone from a non-metropolitan area is some sort of country bumpkin thicko.
- barrkel 9y agoI'm not saying they're country bumpkin thickos. I'm saying they're insular and incurious; that says nothing about how smart they are. They can be outstanding in their field; their fields just aren't very worldly. It's not even ignorance, per se; it's disinterest, combined with prejudice, in the literal sense of judged before the evidence. The kids going to Ibiza are just visiting a sunny British resort with funny accents. I'd barely consider that abroad, for the amount of cultural adjustment it entails.
- JetSetWilly 9y agoI don't think you can make a blanket statement that people who don't live in major cities are insular and incurious. This is just plain and simple snobbery and as far as I can tell there's nothing to back it up. Secondly, I wouldn't even say British holiday making habits are especially different to those of other major European nations. If you want to paint a picture of the UK being uniquely backwards and insular then fine, but it doesn't seem to be based on anything outside snobbery and prejudice. It is easy to claim that people you disagree with have all kinds of moral faults, but in doing so you become what you affect to criticise.