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Nobody ever cared about politics when it comes to tourists. It's about your behaviour as a human being. Yes, there are different customs, and while the last fe

Nobody ever cared about politics when it comes to tourists. It's about your behaviour as a human being. Yes, there are different customs, and while the last few decades have steadily grinded to erode these, even today there are still stark differences between the different European people. If you are going to be loud, opinianated and callous, people are not going to dislike you for being 'american', 'english' or 'dutch', just for being loud, opinionated and callous. Many americans visit here and are amical, culturally curious and respectfull. Nobody sane over here is going to go object to you because 'trump'. Leave your maga hats as wel as your pronouns at home, and enjoy your trip.

happytoexplain 2y ago
>Leave your maga hats as wel as your pronouns at home, and enjoy your trip. It's hard not to point out how desperately sad the state of affairs is when wearing a political slogan and using a pronoun (I'm assuming there is an implicit premise you're leaving out) are on the same level of "being political". Shall we also leave our race and gender at home? How?
- sph 2y ago
  > Shall we also leave our race and gender at home? How? “I don’t want a Black History Month. Black History is American History. I’ll stop calling you a white man if you stop calling me a black man.” — Morgan Freeman You can leave race and gender at home if you stop talking about it all the damn time. Whatever passes these days for racial equality is anything but. I don’t hear people making so much fuss about including the correct quota of green eyes people in movies and work teams. /rant
  - threatofrain 2y ago
    It's the reverse direction which always warrants us fulfilling a causal chain. If we see something then we should be able to talk about it, even if there's an army of meta-commentators producing downstream effects. For example, we should be able to talk about an ongoing bank run even if it tilts the outcome, just as we should be able to talk about the plain observations of race in front of our faces.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - sph 2y ago
      I’m not calling for censorship. I’m just saying that until we stop focusing so much on race, we are still favouring one colour over another and creating inequality and resentment. As an aside, every time I open Reddit, I cringe that two of the most popular and promoted subs are WhitePeopleTwitter and BlackPeopleTwitter. The American model of integration often just feels like a positive, corporate-friendly spin on apartheid.
      - happytoexplain 2y ago
        First of all: You're preaching (ranting) to the choir. I 100% agree with your Morgan Freeman quote. But it's an intractable problem. Imagine if a president legally abolished Black History Month or something like that - the impression would be unavoidably hateful and antagonistic. Changes that are ostensibly positive suffer the ratchet effect. So yes, it would be nice if everybody just somehow agreed to "stop", but once a society has cultural distinctions along a racial line with any negative connotations, there is no path to "stop focusing on it" aside from letting time pass. E.g. my elderly friends and many of the people on the social internet aren't going to stop encouraging hatred of black people and encouraging beating or killing them for non-violent crimes, because of a call to "stop focusing so much on race"; and likewise other people aren't going to stop reacting to that hideous part of their own society (various reactions, that aren't all reasonable!) because of a call to "stop focusing so much on race". It's not a "just stop doing it" problem. Only centuries of patience and luck can evolve a society past such a stark divide (both sides think there are decades-scale forced fixes, and they're both wrong). Second of all: Your reply to me was tangential to the criticism I was making of the previous parent. You can and should choose not to rant about race/gender/sexuality abroad. You can't leave your own pronouns at home, like you can a hat. And even if you could, it would still be twisted and unfair to use it as an example of being "political" in direct comparison to wearing a political slogan hat - not to mention it being the slogan of one of the most politically antagonistic figures in the world's living memory. The comparison is emblematic of exactly the target of your rant: Misapplied focus.
  - scoofy 2y ago
    We have to choose between two worlds: a world where nobody cares about our differences, or a world where we celebrate everyone's differences. The mid-century American civil rights movement was based on the former. The modern movement seems to want the latter. The problem is that these two positions are subtly in conflict with each other. The former erases identities, the latter reinforces them. The both have similar goals, but they present very different ways of living and very different social norms, which is why I see them both as potentially high-conflict norms when visiting other cultures.
    - happytoexplain 2y ago
      We certainly do not have to choose between those two extremes. More importantly, you said: - One side wants nobody to care about our differences, and that erases identity. - The other side wants to celebrate everyone's differences, and that reinforces identity. This seems unrealistic, and the wording is starkly one-sided (in terms of painting one side as "wrong" and the other as "right"). You're splitting on the right metric, but the wrong dimension. One side wants nobody to care about our differences in negative contexts ("X people are bad in some way", "Y people are better than X people"), and wants to celebrate our differences in positive contexts (cultural exposure, diversity, etc). However, some of the details are often unrealistically idealistic. The other side wants to neither ignore nor celebrate differences. This side is simpler, and has real benefits, but makes more room for the human tendency to express difference-based negativity, which ranges from understandable to horrifying. However, it doesn't suffer from as much of the complication of idealism.
      - scoofy 2y ago
        Again, I would argue that we do have to choose. I also think that the tension between these positions is what is causing quite a bit of conflict in American politics right now. There is an essentialism inherent with these contexts. Just like French"ness" or British"ness", we have white"ness" or black"ness", and it can be applied to any race, sexual preference, or gender identity, etc., etc. This view has practical limits, and where those are drawn is important, because we run into trouble with the "green eyes"-ness brought up by the previous poster. And, there is ultimately a conflict that comes from this. Non-essentialists would argue that the attributes that make up these differences are effectively accidental, so eliminating the differences is arbitrary, and perfectly reasonable. This means that nothing is lost when one context is adopted by the other. Different people have different views on this though. This also means that for the non-essentialist, negative-based differences must also be accidental, which is an important difference, and while essentialists may want to eliminate the negative-based differences, there is a sense in which the essentialist view endorses the idea that they must exist. Practically speaking though, when we have people participating outside of their context, does the essentialism evaporate? Should it? That is to say, if white people start moving into a Chinatown, does it ever stop being an "Asian neighborhood"? At what point does it stop? Should we try to preserve it? If we do, is it right to discriminate in doing that? This is the conflict between acculturation, assimilation, and amalgamation? Essentialist views often see mass adoption as acculturation. Non-essentialists see it as amalgamation. These are subtle differences, but they yield vastly different policy prescriptions.
- schmookeeg 2y ago
  Both draw a line, and often the purveyor is trying to adopt a "with me or against me" stance. My amateur and unpracticed use of the French language has probably mis-pronouned plenty of folk across Europe and West Africa. Luckily everyone understood my motives and took it in stride.
- BrandoElFollito 2y ago
  No, of course not. You come with the whole package but we do not care. We do not care of you support black live matters or trump or abortion. This is your thing and except if you are with people who want to discuss this you let keep it to yourself. There are plenty of people that are Ken to discuss, we are not prude. This is so obvious to me that I feel I must be missing something.
  - lucyjojo 2y ago
    i'll put a huge asterisk on that "we"
    - BrandoElFollito 2y ago
      OK, we the normal French, who represent 95% of the population :)
imartin2k 2y ago
And the 20% tipping, please leave that at home too.

happytoexplain 2y ago

>Leave your maga hats as wel as your pronouns at home, and enjoy your trip. It's hard not to point out how desperately sad the state of affairs is when wearing a political slogan and using a pronoun (I'm assuming there is an implicit premise you're leaving out) are on the same level of "being political". Shall we also leave our race and gender at home? How?

sph 2y ago
> Shall we also leave our race and gender at home? How? “I don’t want a Black History Month. Black History is American History. I’ll stop calling you a white man if you stop calling me a black man.” — Morgan Freeman You can leave race and gender at home if you stop talking about it all the damn time. Whatever passes these days for racial equality is anything but. I don’t hear people making so much fuss about including the correct quota of green eyes people in movies and work teams. /rant
- threatofrain 2y ago
  It's the reverse direction which always warrants us fulfilling a causal chain. If we see something then we should be able to talk about it, even if there's an army of meta-commentators producing downstream effects. For example, we should be able to talk about an ongoing bank run even if it tilts the outcome, just as we should be able to talk about the plain observations of race in front of our faces.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - sph 2y ago
    I’m not calling for censorship. I’m just saying that until we stop focusing so much on race, we are still favouring one colour over another and creating inequality and resentment. As an aside, every time I open Reddit, I cringe that two of the most popular and promoted subs are WhitePeopleTwitter and BlackPeopleTwitter. The American model of integration often just feels like a positive, corporate-friendly spin on apartheid.
    - happytoexplain 2y ago
      First of all: You're preaching (ranting) to the choir. I 100% agree with your Morgan Freeman quote. But it's an intractable problem. Imagine if a president legally abolished Black History Month or something like that - the impression would be unavoidably hateful and antagonistic. Changes that are ostensibly positive suffer the ratchet effect. So yes, it would be nice if everybody just somehow agreed to "stop", but once a society has cultural distinctions along a racial line with any negative connotations, there is no path to "stop focusing on it" aside from letting time pass. E.g. my elderly friends and many of the people on the social internet aren't going to stop encouraging hatred of black people and encouraging beating or killing them for non-violent crimes, because of a call to "stop focusing so much on race"; and likewise other people aren't going to stop reacting to that hideous part of their own society (various reactions, that aren't all reasonable!) because of a call to "stop focusing so much on race". It's not a "just stop doing it" problem. Only centuries of patience and luck can evolve a society past such a stark divide (both sides think there are decades-scale forced fixes, and they're both wrong). Second of all: Your reply to me was tangential to the criticism I was making of the previous parent. You can and should choose not to rant about race/gender/sexuality abroad. You can't leave your own pronouns at home, like you can a hat. And even if you could, it would still be twisted and unfair to use it as an example of being "political" in direct comparison to wearing a political slogan hat - not to mention it being the slogan of one of the most politically antagonistic figures in the world's living memory. The comparison is emblematic of exactly the target of your rant: Misapplied focus.
- scoofy 2y ago
  We have to choose between two worlds: a world where nobody cares about our differences, or a world where we celebrate everyone's differences. The mid-century American civil rights movement was based on the former. The modern movement seems to want the latter. The problem is that these two positions are subtly in conflict with each other. The former erases identities, the latter reinforces them. The both have similar goals, but they present very different ways of living and very different social norms, which is why I see them both as potentially high-conflict norms when visiting other cultures.
  - happytoexplain 2y ago
    We certainly do not have to choose between those two extremes. More importantly, you said: - One side wants nobody to care about our differences, and that erases identity. - The other side wants to celebrate everyone's differences, and that reinforces identity. This seems unrealistic, and the wording is starkly one-sided (in terms of painting one side as "wrong" and the other as "right"). You're splitting on the right metric, but the wrong dimension. One side wants nobody to care about our differences in negative contexts ("X people are bad in some way", "Y people are better than X people"), and wants to celebrate our differences in positive contexts (cultural exposure, diversity, etc). However, some of the details are often unrealistically idealistic. The other side wants to neither ignore nor celebrate differences. This side is simpler, and has real benefits, but makes more room for the human tendency to express difference-based negativity, which ranges from understandable to horrifying. However, it doesn't suffer from as much of the complication of idealism.
    - scoofy 2y ago
      Again, I would argue that we do have to choose. I also think that the tension between these positions is what is causing quite a bit of conflict in American politics right now. There is an essentialism inherent with these contexts. Just like French"ness" or British"ness", we have white"ness" or black"ness", and it can be applied to any race, sexual preference, or gender identity, etc., etc. This view has practical limits, and where those are drawn is important, because we run into trouble with the "green eyes"-ness brought up by the previous poster. And, there is ultimately a conflict that comes from this. Non-essentialists would argue that the attributes that make up these differences are effectively accidental, so eliminating the differences is arbitrary, and perfectly reasonable. This means that nothing is lost when one context is adopted by the other. Different people have different views on this though. This also means that for the non-essentialist, negative-based differences must also be accidental, which is an important difference, and while essentialists may want to eliminate the negative-based differences, there is a sense in which the essentialist view endorses the idea that they must exist. Practically speaking though, when we have people participating outside of their context, does the essentialism evaporate? Should it? That is to say, if white people start moving into a Chinatown, does it ever stop being an "Asian neighborhood"? At what point does it stop? Should we try to preserve it? If we do, is it right to discriminate in doing that? This is the conflict between acculturation, assimilation, and amalgamation? Essentialist views often see mass adoption as acculturation. Non-essentialists see it as amalgamation. These are subtle differences, but they yield vastly different policy prescriptions.
schmookeeg 2y ago
Both draw a line, and often the purveyor is trying to adopt a "with me or against me" stance. My amateur and unpracticed use of the French language has probably mis-pronouned plenty of folk across Europe and West Africa. Luckily everyone understood my motives and took it in stride.
BrandoElFollito 2y ago
No, of course not. You come with the whole package but we do not care. We do not care of you support black live matters or trump or abortion. This is your thing and except if you are with people who want to discuss this you let keep it to yourself. There are plenty of people that are Ken to discuss, we are not prude. This is so obvious to me that I feel I must be missing something.
- lucyjojo 2y ago
  i'll put a huge asterisk on that "we"
  - BrandoElFollito 2y ago
    OK, we the normal French, who represent 95% of the population :)

imartin2k 2y ago

And the 20% tipping, please leave that at home too.