Sampson

it’s an interesting discussion but it is ultimately chicken or egg stuff. I’m not convinced people just latch on to people like Farage because they don’t feel like they listened to and they don’t care that he lies, sells them easy answers and pulls economic numbers from thin air. And that it isn’t Farage whipping people up into them thinking that there’s a problem. How much of those are “legitimate concerns” about immigration for example and how much are just chancers like Farage telling them they have legitimate concerns in very clever dog whistling ways that make it sound ok to centrists I’m not sure. For example, I think a lot of issues with the difficulty funding the public sector in western economies are undoubtedly caused by population ageing, but it’s an extremely uncomfortable truth that older people and pensioners who worked hard all their lives are the problem, especially in a democracy where older people become the major core of voters. I mean population ageing is a massive problem in democracies because you’ll get to the point where the people who have the most and influential votes are the ones draining the public purse - so it becomes a much more convenient truth to say it’s assylum seekers in hotels or benefit scroungers who are the problems to the public purse. People believe it because they don’t actually know these people and will never become one of those people, whereas they know they’ll become old and they have parents or grandparents who are old and need the state to help support them. In that case I think it’s the narrative being fed by bad actors like Farage and not the other way around. I think Macron has tried to do what Finnegan said and try to openly talk about discussing the concerns of the populist anti-establishment parties on both left and right and all it’s done has legitimise previously fringe views into the mainstream by making them seem like they’re being listened to about them and then made them feel comfortable being even more extreme. As for educating people in critical thinking, absolutely. I have no idea why critical thinking isn’t a mandatory subject in school between the ages of 13-16 and instead is a choice-based subject for 17 or 18 year olds which very few take. But I still don’t think it would have enough desired effect tbh. Tbh I’m just not sure human brains can cope with the barrage of information presented by social media and the internet and society doesn’t know what to do - especially given the 2 biggest challenges of the modern age are climate change and population ageing - the former of which requires global cooperation in a way humanity has never achieved before and the latter is a big test on democracy as it kind of inherently involves parties going after their own voters and a huge deal of voters being told they’re the problem and people inherently voting against their own self interest. Feels a bit like all the unrest that came out of the birth of the printing press which caused the overthrow of the Catholic status quo and caused mass war and conflict all over Europe. *cue the Metal Gear Solid 2 clip from about 25 years ago predicting the internet will lead to humans existentially struggling with the mass information overload and the lack of filter of genuine and fake information*

For someone who goes on about intolerant the other side are and how they don’t listen to others “opinion”, going into defensive mode instead of just admitting you got caught out by a parody advert is more than a little hypocritical.

It shouldn’t have mattered though. The fact she ever got up to being put forward as an mp candidate in the first place, then won, then got nominated as leader of the party with enough MPs seconding her even before that is baffling enough.

Just the way she speaks is so weird and unnatural. Generally baffled she even made as an MP, let alone was the prime minister.

Really good news for both the Tories and country if so. Her influence is so toxic on the party and country

Yeah I have absolutely no idea why people are getting riled up at Vine here. He had right of way and the bus was stationary and just pulled out with no signal or checking their mirror. Cyclists get killed every day that kind of complacency from the bus driver. Think what you like about Vine or cyclists in general, but that’s dangerous driving from the bus driver. You can’t just pull out like that without checking your mirrors or indicating.

What did they actually do? What exactly were they found guilty of? Frightening sentence in a democracy if it’s for organising protests tbh.

It was a genuinely interesting discussion until people started getting abusive tbh.

Yes and in that quote I am not saying people from Stoke have more in common than the people of rural Italy at all, I’m saying the opposite. You can believe what you like but please don’t misframe what I wrote. I don’t want to engage you in debate because you’re being abusive but you are still more than welcome to respond to what I put, but please don’t misframe what I wrote

What? Why are you answering me saying you mistreated me by quoting something that has absolutely nothing to do with saying people from Stoke should get on with people from rural Italy? I never said anything about your neighbour and what job he does. We were taking whether a nation which is often a huge landmass and some contain over a billion people where you will never meet or interact with 99.99% within is a natural progression of the hunter-gatherer tribes which consisted of less than 200 people and where everyone interacted. It was not about whether people in the immediate vicinity of each other get on, it was about whether people in cities and rural on opposite ends of a country who never interact have more in common than those of similar class styles in different countries: Stop deliberately misframing me and setting up straw men. You can believe what you like but please stop saying I’ve said things I haven’t.

Disagree. Especially when you consider the lifestyle in a huge international city like London where people interact daily with people from every corner of globe and never venture out of the city except to go on holiday abroad. That’s a radically different life to people who live in the most rural areas in the UK. Like whenever I catch a programme like Countryfile and the things people focus on and talk about, I find that kind of life completely alien to me, I’m almost certain I’m much more likely to get on with and share much more in common with a similarly metropolitan (for want of a better term) person from Germany or somewhere than the kind of people on countryfile.

Eh. You don’t need to deliberately try and misframe my point. I very specifically said the exact opposite of that, I said people in similar sized industrial towns with similar upbringings from different countries likely have more in common than those in very rural and urban areas within the same country. It’s hardly far fetched and completely outlandish to think you have more in common with people from different countries but otherwise a similar background than different backgrounds within the same country is it? It’s 2024, most of us who live in cities likely have work collegues, friends or family from other countries, even if not most then certainly a lot more than it being a “completely outlandish” scenario. Most of us probably find them a lot easier to get on with and are friends with them because we have a lot in common with them, more so than we would a lot of British people living very rural lives. And it probably works vice versa for rural people. That’s hardly a “completely outlandish” observation.

Huh? Are you seriously trying to posit multiculturalism to imperialism? What does anything we are talking about have to do with building castles?

The definition of patriotism is literally feeling pride in your country. That penultimate paragraph is my point, ultimately humans have to work together and patriotism is so often invoked to drive people apart: There are way more things that define us than our nation and feeling pride in it just feels strange to me and yes I believe it inherently leads people to exclusionism.

I’m not sure on your point here though.Even if so, what does any of that have to do with patriotism and why is it any reason whatsoever of being proud of your country?

It’s not a bold claim to make. You are arguing it is “natural” for humans feel patriotic and that nations are natural things, that inherently means it is something that should be universal for all of humanity. If you admit that you’re looking at it from a purely English perspective then aren’t you disproving your own hypothesis that it’s natural? And English is an official language in many other countries besides England too. So it clearly can’t be language that you feel proud of your nation and inherently have more emotional attachment to someone from Plymouth than Dublin, Vancouver or Lagos if they all have English as their mother tongue. Of course I’m using obvious examples, because it helps give obvious demonstration to the debate. I don’t get your point here? Language does have very little to do with nationhood in 2024, because nationhood is just a level of governance. The majority of countries in the world have more than 1 recognised language and many have countless regional languages and many languages are spoken in multiple countries and billions of people speak multiple languages. Languages changes, culture changes and culture and language are not the same thing as a nation at all. That’s why I just can’t get my head round why anyone would be proud of their country and feel more affinity to the people within it regardless of class or anything else.

But this has always been the case. Even in England we had Celtic languages and English and it was only through years of prosecution that Celtic died or was forced out. In India or Switzerland or Papua New Guinea you have always had multiple languages. And most standardisation of language is extremely manmade and modern. Modern German for example has only been standardised in the past few of hundreds of years and those previously speaking Bavarian and Saxon likely would not have been able to understand each other. Then you have languages like Norwegian and Danish that are mutually understandable and branched off from one another relatively recent in human terms. Talking about language just kind of just emphasises that modern nations are unnatural and manufactured and that this idea they are some natural collection of cultural ideals of a group of people who are naturally more aligned than those in a neighbouring country just falls down as soon as you remotely look into it.

There’s loads of multi-lingual countries though where people can’t communicate with each other, some with tens or hundreds of languages and it’s 2024, billions of people can speak English. Language has very very little to do with nationhood and culture in 2024 and will only continue to have less and less to do with it.

I have an inkling you might be sealioning now and ignoring everything I’ve written. But to give you the benefit of the doubt, I’ll say it again: Nations are not just “updated versions of tribes” because they have nothing to do with caring about and protecting the people you know and working together which gives you an evolutionary advantage to getting food and to surviving in a hunter-gatherer society. I find the idea that you should inherently tie yourself to one person you have never met within your imaginary set of lines with an entirely different class, upbringing and living style than someone else you have never met with a similar class, upbringing and living style outside your imaginary set of lines to be entirely manufactured and an extremely recent invention (considering the history of humans as a whole) and detrimental to humanity as a whole. That “traditional borders” are a relatively extremely new and artificial invention and that we should be extremely conscious of that is my point. Humanity as a whole requires global understanding and solutions to problems being faced in 2024 and caring about short term national issues over global issues is extremely detrimental. And the fact that we have been able to manufacture the feelings of pride for landmasses spanning tens of thousands of miles with over a billion people suggests we should be able to manufacture pride in humanity as a whole and the earth as a whole, which would be far more beneficial to humanity if not essential to its very survival.

No it doesn’t, humans are hundreds of thousands of years old. Nations have existed for less than 1% of human history. Tribes of around 100 people are natural to humans, not nations of tens of millions. Favouring nations of that size over humanity as a whole is an extremely manufactured and recent invention. And if humans can successfully manufacture pride of nations spanning tens thousands of miles and containing over a billion people then it should be able to successfully manufacture pride of humanity and the earth as a whole and get rid of patriotism.

It doesn’t matter whether it had existed for centuries it’s still an unnatural invention. Religion has existed for way longer and has a far bigger influence on shared culture than nationdom but no one would consider it “natural”. I just chose Carlisle because it was near the border. Sure, but Stoke has a similar class structure and history to Leicester as similarly sized post-industrial cities which is my point. That isn’t the comparison you should be making it’s whether you are culturally closer to the multi-millionaire financiers in the city of London who have maids and don’t even know how to shop or the agricultural workers in rural Somerset who have never left the county than you do people in similar industries with a similar backstories to you in similar cities in Italy. Which I really don’t think anyone does if they actually interact with those people separately

But that isn’t a country is it? A country is just a relatively recent idea of a level of governance. It might be natural to have that connection to say Blaby, but what does that have to do with having an emotional connection to Carlisle or Dover? There might be something natural about about favouring a local area of land, but not something as huge as a country over favouring your continent or the earth as a whole. There’s absolutely nothing natural about someone having a closer emotional connection to Carlisle over Cowdenbeath (or Derry over Dublin if you’re considering the UK and not England) when you or your ancestors have never even been to Carlisle or Derry, that is all entirely manmade and contrived.

To me patriotism is one of the worst and most detrimental inventions of mankind and it’s a complete unnatural invention. Humans are tribal animals and it is totally natural to care more about protecting your friends and family for sure. But that’s supposedly a group of roughly 50-150 people we have genuine connections with not tens of millions. And I don’t buy the “shared culture” reasons either because so much of culture is based on class and the reality is your average postal worker in Leicester shares way more in common to an average postal worker in a similarly sized post-industrial city in Ireland, Germany or even Japan than he does some upper class multi-millionaire from the Home Counties who goes on about his nanny.

Still can’t believe on of the main arguments Farage used to trot out for Brexit was that people wanted to get closer ties to and try to get a trade agreement with America, as if they care about us. Our values are much closer to other western and central European countries than the US anyway and given we’re a small player nowadays in the geopolitical game, I’d far far rather that we side with the EU, despite some of its faults than with the US, Russia or China.

The problem is - it’s a common theme around the west that leaders have record low approval ratings. People automatically see candidates as bad now. You can romance how popular people like Tony Blair or Barack Obama were when they came to power but today they’d just be slaughtered and made to be unpopular by everyone else, because someone would find some quirk of their personality to focus on. It’s how divisive our politics have become - every candidate, be them Left, Right or Centre or anything in between is seen negatively and with negative approval rates.