Let's Blame The British

Let's Blame The British

One day, out of frustration I wrote an article I titled "Let's Blame the British." I am not completely satisfied with the title since I don't really like to "blame". I do, however, like to look for cause and effect. When I try to figure out how America got so messed up, I cannot ignore the influence of England and its culture.

For a long time I didn't post the link to this article in a very prominent place. But today, reluctantly, I decided to. I say reluctantantly because I don't to offend the site visitors from England. At the same time, I need to be honest in expressing my beliefs and sharing my own experiences.

I won't write all the things I have to say about England just now, that would take me much too long. I say that seriously, not sarcastically. I feel somber about this topic because it is a very serious one, one which I believe most people have ignored.

Also, I am sucking up a bit to my American readers, giving them a scapegoat, an excuse, and, yes, someone else to blame. But again I want to stress that it is not just blame I advocate. Blame quickly suggests punishment. It is impractical to even imagine "punishing" England. So what is more helpful is to focus on cause and effect. Cause and effect is something I try to make a constant theme of my writing and this website. So this is a part of that. An important part because America is now more influential than England in the world. America is more a threat, a direct threat, to the lives, and ironically, the freedom of millions or even billions.

America has not learned how to solve problems peacefully. It is increasingly less free, not more. And as it expands its powers and influence, it can't help but spread its dysfunctional culture and values. American power-holders value money, power and control. These values are inconsistent with freedom. American power-holders also value propaganda. This is also inconsistent with freedom. A brainwashed, patriotic public is not a free public.

In any case, below is my article, Let's Blame the British. I was motivated to formally post it today because of a woman from England, now living in Canada who has been contaminating my hostel dorm room here in Malaysia. She is so needy. So dominating. So loud. So lacking in self-awareness. I have found British people, like Americans to be very emotionally needy. Very insecure. Very defensive. I have found them, like Americans, to be very emotionally damaged. And I am definitely not the only one who has found them to be arrogant, judgmental and self-righteous. Again, not surprisingly, like too many Americans. I need to admit that I also feel superior and judgmental myself. I like to think at least that I am relatively aware of this and constantly working on it. I hope more Americans and British will do the same.

S. Hein
Nov 19, 2011
Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia

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Let’s Blame the British

What’s wrong with America these days? Why are there so many social problems? I won't even list them now. I believe most of the world is aware of them. To get right to the point, I say, "Let’s Blame the British."

I say this only partly in jest. Mostly though, I am dead serious. Why did I just say “dead” serious?

It is because I just read of another example of someone in England encouraging someone else to kill themselves. I had heard of this before. A volunteer from the UK told me that a young man was standing on a building, thinking of jumping. Police and social workers arrived. So did a crowd of onlookers. Some were taunting and jeering him. Eventually one said “Just get on with it. You are wasting taxpayers' money.”

So he jumped to his death.

Something similar happened with a live online video suicide in England. Someone left a message that said “just f*ing do it.” That was the final, fatal straw. There is now one less sensitive person living in the world.

From a legal standpoint, neither person who encouraged another's suicide in England has been formally charged with crime. But from an emotional perspective, what could we say about not just the individuals who were for some reason motivated to utter such homicidal words, but also of a culture that could produce such …. such... what shall I call them? Monsters? Yet they are not monsters. They are products of their environment.

And moreover, the normal citizens, those who have set up, manage and maintain the very institutions which keep England “functioning”, have not understood that it is a far worse crime to hurt someone emotionally than it is to steal their cell phone, or "mobile" as they say there. And remember, I am not just speaking of hurting someone, I am talking about literally pushing them over the edge to their own death.

Now let’s jump to the USA. Barack Obama has talked of an empathy deficit in the America. So where did the country go wrong, the USA I mean, to end up in such a situation? Could it be at least partially traced back to the influence of England? Of course there were other strong influences, but my purpose here is to focus on, or let’s go ahead and say, blame, England.

England. Let’s think about this country. This former empire. I have travelled around the world now. I have seen what the British have done in many countries. Simply put, they went in with guns and soldiers and killed thousands or millions of people in order to establish their British colonies and send money back to the King or Queen.

Now what could motivate young children to grow up to participate in such killing and theft of someone else’s land? By the way, something I learned in Australia while living there is that the British killed about 90 percent of the aboriginals there. 90 percent. I talked to one Australian with British ancestors and he said the only mistake the Brits made was that they didn’t kill them all. Believe me, I am not making this up. Those were his exact words and I will never forget them.

England. I have often criticized it on these pages. See my section on education in England for example. England. The land of school uniforms and murder by bullying just because someone is a goth. Is the British society a model to be followed in the world, with its emphasis on rules, punishment and tightly controlled emotions and behavior? I think not.

I am now living in a small, new country called Montenegro. In case you didn’t know, as I didn’t until recently, it was part of the former Yugoslavia. Here in Montenegro, I can not imagine someone saying such incredibly compassion-lacking comments to someone who is suicidal. Unfortunately, I could imagine it in the USA, the country I grew up in. So I say again, Let’s Blame the British.

Some people will say it doesn’t help to blame someone else. But in this case, I say it does. It does because it helps us understand what went wrong in America. It helps us look backwards to our roots, so to speak, to see where we came from. Of course all Americans didn’t come from England. That is one of the most unique things about the USA, its plurality. But the dominating cultural values came from England, and probably next, Germany – also not a country known for its empathy or compassion.

England and Germany are known for being organized, efficient. But is that always a good thing? Can it go too far? I say, yes, it can. When living in Argentina, I spoke with someone who had been to England and they said, "It is very organized there. But too organized."

While in Argentina and Uruguay I saw how they often modeled their English classes on British English, not American English. Thus they used textbooks written and published in England. Reading them helped me get a glimpse of how British people think. And it was not something I wanted to see being spread, like a toxic poison around. It was in stark contrast to say Argentina, a country with many happy, relaxed people. Relaxed. I just asked myself this question: Is that a word we would use to describe Brits? Or Americans?

Jumping again to Montenegro. I just got an email from a university student here who saw my website on Montenegro. He said it made him laugh and he said, “Yeah, that is just how we are. A pretty laidback country, huh?”

Laidback. Is that what you would call England... or America? I was in the UK in 2007. I took many photos. Unfortunately I haven’t had time to sort them out well, but perhaps one day I will. I can tell you though that I have never seen a more paranoid country. Over and over again I saw signs that threatened people with fines and said things like “Report any suspicious activity to the police.”

One of my favorites is a poster promoting community safety which says “We do not open our doors to strangers”. In Montenegro I have been told it is considered an insult to your neighbors if you lock your door! It is the custom here to knock once or twice, then just come in. At least it was. But things here are changing, too. Are they getting better? That depends on how you define that word.

So back to England. A country that became very skilled at teaching and training young people to be soldiers without compassion. To go off to foreign lands, kill people and steal their land. Am I being too harsh? Perhaps, but I am trying to make a point.

What kind of things do you have to do to convince children that they are somehow better than other humans to the point of them turning out to be adults who can go, as I said, to another part of the world and obey orders to mercilessly kill them? If anyone has seen the film Gandhi, this shows what I mean very well. A British military leader once ordered his troops to shoot at a crowd of unarmed Indians in a public plaza. He wanted to bring in a tank, but it couldn’t make it through the walled gate. Granted, he was later punished, possibly because what he did became international news, but his intention was to open fire, with a tank, on unarmed citizens.

What combination of things in a person’s environment and upbringing would lead to such thinking? To such feeling. Or lack of it.

Cause and effect. Was he “evil”? Did the devil make him do it? Unlikely. If so the devil made a lot of people do a lot of heartless things in a country which has an official religion and makes no claim to separate church from state. They call it the Church of England don’t they? At least in the USA there is no such thing. Not yet anyhow. Some people are trying to say that the USA is a nation founded on one religion in particular’s principles and values, but officially at least, there is no state religion in the USA. This seems to be forgotten by a lot of people though, and I am sure that many people would like there to be one. Yet if religion improved society, then England should be nearly perfect. But it is not. I won’t even comment on the killing in Northern Ireland. Well, ok, I will. I just changed my mind.

I was in Ireland. I liked it. People were very friendly. It was very unlike England. Anyone who has been to both can tell you the differences. And yet what did England do? They stole a part of Ireland and absolutely refuse to give it back.

England. I could go on and on. But first, I want to say that my idea that religion in a country doesn’t guarantee much didn’t come from my observations of England. It came first from Indonesia. It was in Indonesia when I said to myself, “If religion improved countries, Indonesia should be perfect.” In Indonesia almost every one has some religion. In fact, you must state your religion on your ID card. I asked someone why this was and they said “So when you die, they know who has to pay to bury you.”

Let me clarify by saying that I am talking about organized religion. And the way it has been misused and abused by governments and others. I am not saying that there is anything in particular wrong with any particular religious ideology. Since England is, according to them, a Christian country, I will mention this quote from Gandhi, one which I wholeheartedly agree with. He said to the British: I like your Christ. But your Christians are so unlike Christ.

I dare say that Gandhi understood the message of Christ better than the British. And what was the message of Christ? As people like to say, what would Jesus actually do?

In South America I saw a lot of child abuse. But there it is normal to hit children, as it still is in England. Yet all of South America is something like 90 percent Catholic, the religion which the Church of England is based upon, with slight modifications. So I started asking children, “Do you think Jesus would ever hit a child?”

Later I will write more about that, but here I will just say, the overwhelming response I got was a clear and simple “no”.

But in England there is still commonly accepted that there is nothing wrong with hitting or “Smacking” as they say, a child. England seems to me to be the land of punishment and behavior control. But it is not working.

In Australia I often asked hostel owners who their worst guests were. Hands down it was the British. I was told they would come to Australia, get drunk, or “pissed” as they say there and in the UK, watch soccer, tear up the hostels and get into fights. One manager said he thinks it is because they are so controlled in England, they go wild as soon as they get away. Self-disciplined? I don’t think so. So does punishment lead to self-discipline? This is a very important question. The Brits are likely to say yes. But do the facts support them?

Does America want to be come even more like England? Or less? Can we actually Blame the British? Maybe yes, Maybe no. But I’d say it is something well worth giving serious thought to.

How did America get in the current condition it is in? And how can things be turned around? Two very important questions. America is now the world leader in terms of cultural influence. Watching American movies and music videos all around the world, speaking with young people, listening to what they say and seeing how they are changing in formerly poor or communist countries has convinced me of this. In my mind there is no doubt whatsoever that the American culture is now dominating much of the world. But yet many countries are safer than the USA, many countries have much less drug use and far fewer people in prison per capita (I have read that the USA is now leading the world in that statistic).

So I believe it is vitally important that we understand what went wrong in America. Obama has a vision which, for the most part, inspires me. You may have seen a website I helped create in fact, Obamainspires.me I agree with him about the empathy deficit and many other things. But I am not sure even he understands what is wrong in America and why. I believe you really have to leave a country or culture for an extended period of time to be able to look at it in any way objectively.

Now I will be the first to admit I am not objective. I am partial to America because I was born there. I learned many important principles there, even if I can not say they are all being practiced now. America was the model of democracy for many other countries and revolutions. I want to see America use its power and influence in a way which is better for the world. I would like to see America shake off more of its British heritage when it comes to empire building, for example. To build an empire you can’t really have a lot of compassion. At least it won’t be one of your highest values. Your highest values will be things like expansion, growth, management, organization, control, indoctrination and nowadays, “manufactured consent”, as Noam Chomsky says.

Ok, I am done, for now, with my rant about England. Thanks for reading.
--

S. Hein

Originally written in 2010 in Montenegro.