Garden Politics

Firstly, a little follow up from yesterday. I mentioned resources. A good example is the internet and the digital tech we now have. People have the resource of their laptop, and from that we now have a superabundance of art, music, journalism, blogs, books, memes and so on and so forth. Part of the impetus for this comes from a desire to make money and become successful of course, but it also comes from a natural desire to create and to share.

If people had the resources to produce more tangible things, like food for instance, we'd have a similar abundance of output. In this day and age, with our advancing technological prowess, we could feed ourselves ten times over if individuals only had the space to be as creative and industrious offline as they are online.

Sadly though the space people have as individuals seems to be shrinking. A good example being the way newly built homes tend to be very small and have a distinct lack of garden.

Part Two.

A little change of tack now. Immigration. It occurs to me that many of the people pushing for hyper-immigration simply don't realise the damage they're doing, and I think it's a psychological issue to some extent. I think they see countries like the US and UK as so big, bad and domineeringly white, and the various minorities as so tiny, weak and small, that they simply cannot conceive the impact these "tiny" immigrants are having on the "enormous" destination countries.

It's a bit like when you play fight with a child. You, the adult, go easy and just joke around, but the child comes at you with all their might. Safe in the belief that they're so small in comparison that it's impossible they could ever actually hurt you. Now it's not so bad when they're just toddlers and they're kicking and punching you, but when they start getting a bit older, say six or seven, it's not quite the same. I sometimes have to say to my nephews, "whoa, mate, if you punch and kick me that really hurts, you're getting too big to do that." But in their heads they simply don't see how big they're getting and conversely still see you the adult as an all-knowing, all-powerful grown-up. Impervious to their little fists of fury.

I think it's similar with immigration. Some people are saying "whoa, this is really damaging us, we can't cope with these immigration levels. It's really hurting us." But the people on the other side of the argument simply cannot envision that that could ever be the case. They see the various host populations as so big and so dominant that it's impossible in their minds that they could ever hurt under the weight of immigration. So therefore any complaints must be down to some other reason. Racism, nationalism, ignorance, etc.

Ironically this attitude is the very opposite of a true belief in equality. As it judges all people, their views and their problems, through the lens of race and creed. It's similar when it comes to things such as crime. A person from a minority background who commits a crime may be deemed a victim of their circumstances and therefore not entirely responsible for their actions, something which may in part be true of course. However, conversely someone from a non-minority background who commits a crime may be deemed entirely responsible for their actions, with no excuse for their behaviour.

It's a worldview that views and treats minorities as children, and that views and treats non-minority people (including they themselves, the people expressing these beliefs) as the responsible adults. It's a very imperial worldview in many ways.