We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Why chocolate cake does not exist I like the style of this guy Gaius:
Readers are invited to supply Modualwoman with a list of other nations whose cultures are nonexistent because they have been influenced by foreign persons and ideas at any point in their history. I am sure she will want to tell them this herself. While she’s at it, she can inform everyone in Britain whose ancestors came here more recently than 1714 that they are still foreigners whatever their passport says.
When Wokes and Racists Actually Agree on Everything.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Modualwoman appears to be a very unhappy person. Probably best not to interact with her/him directly, just keep everything on here.
P.s. The textile industry is foreign? We must have imagined all that Industrial Revolution malarkey.
The thing that scares the hell out of these people, if they can be termed as such, is that the UK and the US have a certain genius for absorbing other people’s good ideas and putting them to use. The Japanese are much the same; I suspect that there’s a bit of “island nation” going on there that encourages this. As well, both the UK and Japan are the end-points of continental masses; you ain’t going no further east than Japan, and going further northwest from Europe past the UK really ain’t a thing.
Because of this, both nations wind up sucking in every good idea that comes their way, and usually adapting to their uses/needs. The English language is a perfect example; it’s sucked in every other language it ever connected with, and has words, spellings, entire grammars adopted over into it. It is probably the most all-absorbing language in the history of the human race, and pollutes others with the same casual ease.
Probably the unique genius of the British peoples is that ability to take things in and make use of them; that’s to be celebrated, and that’s what this ditz is missing, completely. It’s like with the US and foreign foods; most other countries would reject the various cuisines that are popular here, but what winds up happening? If enough people like it, it becomes a mainstay of the culture. Look at Tex-Mex, or any of the other so-called “fusion cuisines”. There’s a place I used to eat at over in the Puget Sound region me that sold a bizarre mixture of Vietnamese, Mexican, and barbecue turned into its own little thing. Really good food, but it totally defied description, and would have ripped the guts out of any of these arsehole claims about “cultural appropriation”. I mean, WTF are you going to do, when you’re a racial melange of African, Asian, and Mexican Indio? Curl up and die, or start making food based on all your cultural inputs?
All these arseholes seem to forget that the true glory of a culture isn’t how “pure” they remain, but how mutt-like they become, adopting and modifying everything and everyone that contributes…
I really have to wonder about the mentality behind these jackasses, sometimes… It’s actually the obverse side of racism, calling these fusions “cultural appropriation”. Who cares if a white guy wears dreadlocks? So did a lot of ancient Greeks, if the pottery depictions are to be believed…
I notice she didn’t point out that St Andrew wasn’t actually Scottish or that St Patrick wasn’t Irish. The idea that St George is somehow a plank of ‘British’ identity will come as news – and distinctly unwelcome news at that – to the Scots, the Irish and the Welsh.
The concepts of England and Englishness (especially as something distinct and separate from ‘Britain’ and ‘Britishness’) seem to trigger these kind of ideologues in a way that no other national or cultural identity quite does.
Well, to start with, the English language is not British; it was brought in by foreign invaders, and then modified by two further set of foreign invaders. (And likewise the Scots language, if you count it as a separate language.)
The English people are, by her definition, foreign too since they are (pre-empire) a mix of Dutch, German, Norse and French. Though the French that came aren’t French, they are Norse also. But the Scots and Irish — well they are originally celtic via Britany, and they weren’t french either. If you want to go back we are all Africans. No wait, we are all apes… no wait we are all fish…. not wait we are all molecules in a warm pool.
At some point ideas are mixed in a society and become endemic there and unique in that cultures flavor. So are Fish and Chips British? They are the way they are sold in Britain. Are curries British? Ask an Indian if what passes for a British “on the way home from the pub” curry resembles anything you’d find in India.
Which is to say she is a sniping little pain in the ass, and I’m not sure why we are giving her the one thing she wants, namely attention.
And for what it is worth — as a Brit living in America — I really miss those “on the way home from the pub” curries….
Carry this far enough, and the only original human culture resides in the Olduvai Gorge in Africa. Everything past that is derivative.
I don’t think these idiots use logic. Not as other human beings use it, anyway…
I had someone try this crap on me few years ago, when they were giving me crap for making some Middle-Eastern dishes. They said I was culturally appropriating, and I then suggested that since they were theoretically African, they ought to give up clothes, writing, and most modern technology. Along with the English language.
Didn’t go over very well.
However, it did shut her up.
OK, curries aren’t Indian – they use chilli (South/Central America), tomatoes (same origin), apples (Mesopotamian a LONG time ago) etc.
Thai Satay uses peanuts (also Latin American). I could go on but you get the point.
If we are going to insist only on eating the stuff that grew here (wherever “here” is for you) then there will be an awful lot of starving people with a very boring diet.
Pretty well every other country on earth: foreign industrial society.
You’re all welcome!
This is somehow related to the new fashion among the fascisti: asking white people what they like about being white.
It’s a trap, you see. If they actually name a feature of being white that they like, then they are racists for thinking that attribute belongs to white people. And if they say that there is nothing they like about being white, then why do they object to teachings about “the problem of whiteness”? Checkmate, honkeys.
Except that the simple answer is that the problem supposes that there are attributes that can be attributed to whiteness or to blackness. If you accept that presumption, you are done. The correct answer to the question is “what do you hate so much about white people that you are willing to teach a small child to hate themselves, if they are white?” And be belligerent in demanding an answer. Don’t like the race-fascists off the hook.
People who deny that there is any such thing as British Culture remind me of the old saying “first they smash your face in – then they say you were always ugly”. First they try to destroy British Culture – then they say it never existed.
“That is not a British saying – it is a Russian saying” – I know, but sadly it also fits the United Kingdom these days.
“Chocolate cake doesn’t exist…”
– What? – Is he saying the cake is a lie? {Sorry; had to…}
Dynamic cultures – cultures that produce art and innovations – borrow ideas from ANYWHERE and create variations on a theme. This makes them, and everyone else, richer. Textile industry? Yeah, everyone used to make their own cloth, but the textile industry in Britain introduced techniques that drove computing innovations for decades. Pair that up with steam engines (very British) and you get an industrial revolution. I think Modualwoman, though, hates the British, and probably modern industrial society, while taking modern goods and services for granted. She should also be glad she has a modern job and doesn’t have to spend the majority of the daylight hours engaged in subsistence farming.
Cultures trade ideas. If you look at the frontier in Colonial America, there was a lot of cultural trading of clothing, food, traditions, brides (both willing and unwilling), and so on. The farther away from the coasts and Piedmont area the more blended those cultures were. Observers at the time said there were no real way to tell whites and Indians apart after spending enough time together.
How far back are the Britons supposed to go back to get rid of their cultural appropriation? Get rid of everything from post-WW2? Post WW1? The Glorious Revolution? The Norman Invasion? The Anglo-Saxons arriving? The Romans showing up? The Celts setting up shop? Anything after the Homo antecessors showed up around 900,000 years ago?
Gaius does not exist, because all the genes in his cells are expressed in other people, just not in the same mix.
Since I have philosophised him out of existence, I can eat my chocolate cake in peace.
@Fraser, some of the later French immigrants were French, not Norse. My own heritage is Huguenot from the early seventeenth century, following the repeal of the edict on Nantes. My name is very much French. Just sayin’.
Seriously, though, I’m British. However as time goes on and Englishness is increasingly under attack, I find that I identify more as English than British. These people are having precisely the opposite effect to the tone they are hoping for.