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> The UK has largely degenerated into an "entitled" society, and any veneer of sensibility and fairness has been stripped away with a vengeance. Why should peo

> The UK has largely degenerated into an "entitled" society, and any veneer of sensibility and fairness has been stripped away with a vengeance. Why should people do the right thing when they feel they have nothing in common with their fellow countrymen? It used to be the case that we had a strong shared national culture that enforced certain standards of behaviour, and thus one had a stake in maintaining these standards due to collective reciprocity, but we've been told for decades that said national culture is hateful and outdated and must be destroyed without any decent replacement. I cite Orwell: 'England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality.' 'If the English people suffered for several years a real weakening of morale, so that the Fascist nations judged that they were ‘decadent’ and that it was safe to plunge into war, the intellectual sabotage from the Left was partly responsible.' edit: yeah, suspected a dose of uncomfortable truth wouldn't go down easily.

shawnz 7y ago
> Why should people do the right thing when they feel they have nothing in common with their fellow countrymen? .. why would that ever be a condition for doing the right thing? What does having a shared culture have to do with having humanity?
- growlist 7y ago
  > What does having a shared culture have to do with having humanity? I'm not trying to kick off a flamewar but this is hopelessly naive - divide and conquer has been used for thousands of years - just look at Rwanda for a recent dreadful example. With the UK being a diverse multiracial population it's even more important to attempt to unify everyone around some kind of shared values etc. Otherwise you end up with people living right next door to each other that are mentally living in completely different universes. It should be obvious that this is not an ideal starting point for rallying a population around a unified goal. The USA used to be seen as particularly successful in absorbing everyone no matter their origins, and giving them a strong identity as American that superceded everything else. Not sure if that's still valid though.
fader 7y ago
> edit: yeah, suspected a dose of uncomfortable truth wouldn't go down easily. It might be worth considering if maybe you are the one in the wrong here. Could it be that the majority of people disagree with you not because your view is "uncomfortable" but because it's not truth? Your phrasing certainly reads to me like reactionary defensiveness when presented with legitimate criticism of certain aspects of this culture and a refusal to evaluate things from any other point of view than your own.
- Chris2048 7y ago
  If that was the case, wouldn't there be rebuttals instead of straight downvotes?
  - fader 7y ago
    Not necessarily. Once someone has established that they won't engage in good faith ("told for decades that said national culture is hateful and outdated and must be destroyed without any decent replacement" isn't exactly an opening for discussion) it's wasted effort to engage. It's still worth hoping they'll at least consider that downvotes aren't because people hate and fear the secret truth that they are the only one smart enough to see, though. ("Am I out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong.")
mikestew 7y ago
yeah, suspected a dose of uncomfortable truth wouldn't go down easily Even in middle-age, my ears aren’t so bad that I don’t know a dog whistle when I hear it.
- Chris2048 7y ago
  By dog whistle, you are suggesting what? By "shared national culture" he's talking about something racist? Isn't that exactly the "national culture is hateful and outdated" notion he's talking about?
  - fader 7y ago
    Yes, characterizing any anti-racist efforts as being "told for decades that said national culture is hateful" and "must be destroyed without any decent replacement" is a dogwhistle. This sort of cherry picking and sliding definition of terms while pretending to be "just asking some questions", however, is known as sealioning: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Sealioning https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Sealioning
    - Chris2048 7y ago
      > characterizing any anti-racist efforts as.. I know what a dog-whistle is, I'm asking why you think you know OP is referring to "anti-racist efforts". > This sort of cherry picking.. What are you referring to as "this"? my comments? I don't see the words you quoted (""just asking some questions").
- growlist 7y ago
  I'm not saying anything particularly controversial here. Even Gordon Brown - our last Labour Prime Minister - recognised as such and was seeking to create some kind of coalescing new national identity. When even the left recognise it as a problem, you know something's up.
bryanrasmussen 7y ago
"Another marked characteristic is the emotional shallowness of people who live in a world of ideas and have little contact with physical reality" - George Orwell. "Even the devil can quote Orwell to his purpose" - me.
- growlist 7y ago
  > "Another marked characteristic is the emotional shallowness of people who live in a world of ideas and have little contact with physical reality" - George Orwell. Care to elaborate? This seems like a personal attack. > "Even the devil can quote Orwell to his purpose" - me. Well fair enough, that made me chuckle.
  - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
    >Care to elaborate? This seems like a personal attack. Your post seemed to me mainly composed of 1. some quotes from Orwell 2. a knock against that all-purpose bogeyman "the Left" as an enabler of fascism. Which is funny how often the Left is an enabler of the ultra-right, but the Right never is. 3. and some references to such vague things as shared national culture. Which, I mean, not to put too fine a point on it - a concern with a shared national culture is really top priority with those nasty people the Left enables. All these abstractions show someone who maybe lives in a world of ideas, and I thought it's funny that Orwell in the same part where he talked about the nasty Left and so forth, also noted this marked characteristic as something that was one of the roots of their problems. Finally, and I didn't point this out before but I shall now, I doubt that Orwell's Left is the same as today, mortality being what it is, and the cause of personal disaffection from the national culture might not have the same causes as it did in the 20s-40s. The Left that makes saying "God Save the Queen" unpopular has been replaced by media that makes it old-fashioned and silly (Look at that Silly John Lydon up there, done up like my granny!), and while I know that it is often pleasant to point at the media and say Look, the Left - I think there is just as much reason to point at it and say Look, the Corporations! Although since saving the Queen has been out of fashion for longer than I've been alive I have to think there may be bonds less nation-state sounding that have been worn through more recently that we could worry about, and whatever those bonds should be, if we were to agree to worry about them being broken I would think it were more reasonable to accuse multinational corporations of destroying them than a powerless political viewpoint. Or, if we were to choose a political viewpoint as the chief source of our woes, then choose one with more power at the moment - such as The Right. on edit: however I didn't downvote you although your on edit about truth at the end did put it right on the border. Because who really knows what the truth is.
mywittyname 7y ago
> edit: yeah, suspected a dose of uncomfortable truth wouldn't go down easily. I suspect you're getting downvoted because your argument is based on the idea that Britons have nothing in common with one another. Which is a clearly false supposition. It comes off as either ignorant of the other nations or low-key racist.

shawnz 7y ago

> Why should people do the right thing when they feel they have nothing in common with their fellow countrymen? .. why would that ever be a condition for doing the right thing? What does having a shared culture have to do with having humanity?

growlist 7y ago
> What does having a shared culture have to do with having humanity? I'm not trying to kick off a flamewar but this is hopelessly naive - divide and conquer has been used for thousands of years - just look at Rwanda for a recent dreadful example. With the UK being a diverse multiracial population it's even more important to attempt to unify everyone around some kind of shared values etc. Otherwise you end up with people living right next door to each other that are mentally living in completely different universes. It should be obvious that this is not an ideal starting point for rallying a population around a unified goal. The USA used to be seen as particularly successful in absorbing everyone no matter their origins, and giving them a strong identity as American that superceded everything else. Not sure if that's still valid though.

fader 7y ago

> edit: yeah, suspected a dose of uncomfortable truth wouldn't go down easily. It might be worth considering if maybe you are the one in the wrong here. Could it be that the majority of people disagree with you not because your view is "uncomfortable" but because it's not truth? Your phrasing certainly reads to me like reactionary defensiveness when presented with legitimate criticism of certain aspects of this culture and a refusal to evaluate things from any other point of view than your own.

Chris2048 7y ago
If that was the case, wouldn't there be rebuttals instead of straight downvotes?
- fader 7y ago
  Not necessarily. Once someone has established that they won't engage in good faith ("told for decades that said national culture is hateful and outdated and must be destroyed without any decent replacement" isn't exactly an opening for discussion) it's wasted effort to engage. It's still worth hoping they'll at least consider that downvotes aren't because people hate and fear the secret truth that they are the only one smart enough to see, though. ("Am I out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong.")

mikestew 7y ago

yeah, suspected a dose of uncomfortable truth wouldn't go down easily Even in middle-age, my ears aren’t so bad that I don’t know a dog whistle when I hear it.

Chris2048 7y ago
By dog whistle, you are suggesting what? By "shared national culture" he's talking about something racist? Isn't that exactly the "national culture is hateful and outdated" notion he's talking about?
- fader 7y ago
  Yes, characterizing any anti-racist efforts as being "told for decades that said national culture is hateful" and "must be destroyed without any decent replacement" is a dogwhistle. This sort of cherry picking and sliding definition of terms while pretending to be "just asking some questions", however, is known as sealioning: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Sealioning https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Sealioning
  - Chris2048 7y ago
    > characterizing any anti-racist efforts as.. I know what a dog-whistle is, I'm asking why you think you know OP is referring to "anti-racist efforts". > This sort of cherry picking.. What are you referring to as "this"? my comments? I don't see the words you quoted (""just asking some questions").
growlist 7y ago
I'm not saying anything particularly controversial here. Even Gordon Brown - our last Labour Prime Minister - recognised as such and was seeking to create some kind of coalescing new national identity. When even the left recognise it as a problem, you know something's up.

bryanrasmussen 7y ago

"Another marked characteristic is the emotional shallowness of people who live in a world of ideas and have little contact with physical reality" - George Orwell. "Even the devil can quote Orwell to his purpose" - me.

growlist 7y ago
> "Another marked characteristic is the emotional shallowness of people who live in a world of ideas and have little contact with physical reality" - George Orwell. Care to elaborate? This seems like a personal attack. > "Even the devil can quote Orwell to his purpose" - me. Well fair enough, that made me chuckle.
- bryanrasmussen 7y ago
  >Care to elaborate? This seems like a personal attack. Your post seemed to me mainly composed of 1. some quotes from Orwell 2. a knock against that all-purpose bogeyman "the Left" as an enabler of fascism. Which is funny how often the Left is an enabler of the ultra-right, but the Right never is. 3. and some references to such vague things as shared national culture. Which, I mean, not to put too fine a point on it - a concern with a shared national culture is really top priority with those nasty people the Left enables. All these abstractions show someone who maybe lives in a world of ideas, and I thought it's funny that Orwell in the same part where he talked about the nasty Left and so forth, also noted this marked characteristic as something that was one of the roots of their problems. Finally, and I didn't point this out before but I shall now, I doubt that Orwell's Left is the same as today, mortality being what it is, and the cause of personal disaffection from the national culture might not have the same causes as it did in the 20s-40s. The Left that makes saying "God Save the Queen" unpopular has been replaced by media that makes it old-fashioned and silly (Look at that Silly John Lydon up there, done up like my granny!), and while I know that it is often pleasant to point at the media and say Look, the Left - I think there is just as much reason to point at it and say Look, the Corporations! Although since saving the Queen has been out of fashion for longer than I've been alive I have to think there may be bonds less nation-state sounding that have been worn through more recently that we could worry about, and whatever those bonds should be, if we were to agree to worry about them being broken I would think it were more reasonable to accuse multinational corporations of destroying them than a powerless political viewpoint. Or, if we were to choose a political viewpoint as the chief source of our woes, then choose one with more power at the moment - such as The Right. on edit: however I didn't downvote you although your on edit about truth at the end did put it right on the border. Because who really knows what the truth is.

mywittyname 7y ago

> edit: yeah, suspected a dose of uncomfortable truth wouldn't go down easily. I suspect you're getting downvoted because your argument is based on the idea that Britons have nothing in common with one another. Which is a clearly false supposition. It comes off as either ignorant of the other nations or low-key racist.