Tuesday, 9 August 2011

A simple question

I filled Mrs P's car with diesel this evening. The bloke on the cashdesk was Middle Eastern in appearance, with a strong accent. We chatted while I fiddled with my PIN number. He had a question he wanted answering.

Why are they doing this? In Middle East, we have no Opposition party. We gave no rights. You have good society here. We come to England, to safest country in the world, and you have riots? Why? There is nothing to riot about here!
I couldn't really answer that.

I'm not making this up, either.

1 comment:

  1. I'm shocked you both don't know this answer!

    Humans love to fight, it's part (and reason) of who and what we are.

    In our society we civilised the warfare (think football, etc) and in almost every society there is a code of honour in war and games as well. It's what keeps us civil (for the most part).

    With those 'games' people learn as children how to channel their natural aggression into constructive energy and how to lose gracefully (and behave manly, but this is verboten now, along with any notion of 'honour').

    We have removed this part of civilising education from the children since the 90's, we no longer let them learn how to compete and how to control and express their natural aggression safely and acceptably.

    But it is knowing their nature and being to handle it in all facets that creates a civilised people from savages, not ignorance of their own humanity.

    We cannot remove this natural urge to compete from humanity, we can only redirect and harness it, hence the success of modernity. If we fail to do that, the result is riots instead of successful teams that successfully play sports and/or do business, winning the 'real war' out there for all of us.

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