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Brexit Banned from Cafe

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Comments

  • silversilver In the beginning there was nothing, and then it exploded. USA, Left coast. Veteran

    @person said:
    It seems like the EU, for better or worse, is attempting to turn nations into states. If I imagined the US where each state was its own sovereign nation that had its own language in addition to cultural differences, I don't imagine that most states would be all that happy to give up the ability to control who lives and works there. States rights vs national rights is still a hotly debated field and we were founded as a united republic. I'm on team brexit for wanting self-determination. I'm off the team for the xenophobia, its something we've seen in the US forever and have seen through its hyperbole.

    The xenophobia is going to be in there one way or the other. This vote has stirred up the fears hidden beneath a thin veneer of people's psyches. Self-determination and states rights is extremely important and has been shoved to the side for too long.

  • DairyLamaDairyLama Veteran Veteran
    edited July 2016

    I think Vikings should be banned from cafes. :p

    lobsterRuddyDuck9karasti
  • @Boru

    Indeed, if we take a step back and see the whole thing happen, from the U.S. to the Middle-East and Africa to Europe, it becomes clearer that this goes back to opportunism. I agree that it seems unlikely that one could be of sound mind and truly happy when being a lynchpin for so much misery. It seems apparent that one would need to cut off any emotional connection to support it.

    It's sort of like corporations. Some corporations are doing horrendous things in the world because they are designed to deliver profits to shareholders, nothing more. But regarding the individuals that work within it, I'm sure many would be the nicest people.

    Regarding Europe, I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that there will be more exits as long as the same economic policies (largely a template of American neoliberal policy) are in place. The people of Greece never asked for that kind of awful policy. It's an inherently coercive system. I don't think that some writers in North London townhomes or in Manhattan reflect the people for the most part- yet they seem to have framed the conversation from the get-go as if everyone for the exit were against internationalism/multiculturalism and everyone for it support them, while fawning over the EU. It's a toxic way to view things, and seems really detached from reality. Not everyone is so privileged.

    So yes, I'm really trying to understand and grow compassion too. Not easy, but I think it's worth it.

    RuddyDuck9silver
  • DairyLamaDairyLama Veteran Veteran
    edited July 2016

    @Shoshin said:and then I think about the amount of countries that Britain and other European countries had colonised where the indigenous populations became 'second class citizens' (or worse slavery or genocide) in their own land...

    All that happened was efficient English gentlemen having a good clear out. The religious fanatics were sent to America and the convicts to Australia. I think the Duke of Wellington was in charge, or it might have been Lawrence of Arabia. :p

  • ShoshinShoshin No one in particular Nowhere Special Veteran

    Boris & Nigel Oops Laurel & Hardy

    Umm and what about the Brexit plan ?

    "Plan!!! What plan???...No we didn't have a plan....Well we'll be off now tat tar " :)

    lobster
  • possibilitiespossibilities PNW, WA State Veteran

    Revisiting this thread after having read an article that incorporates a compassionate view (towards the bottom of the page). I don't know much yet about the author, Charles Eisenstein. He lived in Taiwan for a while, hence I suppose his leanings towards compassion.
    Obviously this is food for thought rather than a recipe for how to solve a global problem of wealth distribution. I like how it raises the issue of "otherness" and alienation, something we encounter daily without realizing it. (See also Alan Watts in his recorded talks on YouTube.) I also like how he points out that we all tend to vilify those who have the opposite view of our own - a thought process ingrained in us early on.

    Here is a passage from Eisenstein's essay (full version linked below)::
    "Well-being comes, in this story, through domination and control: glyphosate, antibiotics, GMOs, SSRIs, surveillance systems, border fences, kill lists, prisons, curfews…
    It is from this story too that neoliberal capitalism sources its power. It depends on the idealization of competition, encoded in “free markets,” as a law of nature and primary driver of progress; on the sanctity of private property (which is a primal form of domination) and, most of all, on exercising control over others through the creation and enforcement of debt. It finds a natural home within the Story of Separation; it is, perhaps, Separation’s culminating expression, threatening as it does the ecological basis of human existence. We cannot change it without letting go of that story in all its dimensions. Part of that is to let go of war mentality in politics, and replace it with compassion."

    http://charleseisenstein.net/the-fertile-ground-of-bewilderment/

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