| | | But a big difference is that Great Britain made everyone British subjects with British passports
I don't know if this is true, but I suspect it is not. For example when part of S Asia (India? Burma?) was under the Queen's fat thumb, they were not citizens. And also, though this is not widely understood, there is the notion of a first-class citizen and a second-class citizen.
For example, when a US citizen of Asian origin is given an aggressive finger by a threatening face outside her car window (she was alone in the driver's seat) after she had just voted at the November elections, she is given to understand that she is a second class citizen. I did not witness it but heard about it from a friend of hers.
I have stopped to chase after facts. Because, strangely enough for a world teeming with smarts and technology, facts are becoming increasingly difficult to verify. It's almost a paradox. Instead of running about trying to fill my head with things (which is getting to more and more be an international pastime), I focus on my experience, a smaller world, and more detailed and relevant things. My capacity is small and is better at certain creative things and detail than at information gathering. I think.
The increased information-flow and interaction between East and West is running up against things few people understand well. Beneath everything --- in the subconscous --- lie instructions that govern people's actions. These are complex and informed by such things as religion and family. Just to give one example. In the West religion has always had a moral inflection. God is personalized, "good" and is the "source" of all the energy we think we know. In the East, God is impersonal, neutral and simply the manifestation of the energy we know and do not know. [For example, the phrase "virtous Victorian values" reveals the belief in "good" and "ethical", and (I believe) comes out of a religiously informed Western ground].
And we must thus ask ..... how can humanity expect the small minds of beings like Trump and Xi to actually solve deep problems between peoples?
This is why each short-sighted "we gotta have this to be re-elected" solution may bring at least two new and unforeseen problems. But, because time is large, this will be hard to see. |
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