Comment by dijksterhuis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dijksterhuis | Hacker News Reader

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> England's traditional dignity culture (the virtuous man can overlook slights)

i’m english and i have no idea what you’re on about there mate.

are you talking about having basic tolerance for other people? that’s a pretty universal skill not exclusive to england.

> but "countries are [nothing] more than a shared historical hallucination" is just incorrect.

countries are mostly lines drawn on a map.

cultures, which i think is what you’re trying to get at in your post generally, differ everywhere to varying degrees.

dundee (where i currently am) has a different culture to glasgow, which has a different culture to edinburgh, which has a different culture to york, which has a different culture to liverpool, which has a different culture to manchester, which has a different culture to leeds leeds leeds, which has a different culture to oxford, which has a different culture to reading, which has …

the lines are imaginary.

(although yes i live on a massive island so there is a non-imaginary physical boundary where you have to get on a boat or a plane or a train to travel to here).

> are you talking about having basic tolerance for other people? that’s a pretty universal skill not exclusive to england.

You'd be surprised how it's not the case in most of the world. Heck, India has a caste system that Indians have now exported to areas where they're in numbers like California. Arabs have a tribal system that makes them suspicious of anyone not from the in-group. Russian Muscovites treat all of their fellow non-Muscovite countrymen like shit.

> You'd be surprised how it's not the case in most of the world.

What you listed isn't "most of the world". And the exceptions do not make a rule.

India + Africa + South East Asia + China & Japan + Middle East (ex-Iran) + Russia = More than 60% of the global population.

You're making rather sweeping generalizations. "Arabs" have, for most of the last 1400 years, been part of 3 MASSIVE states, which spanned from the farthest Atlantic coast of Africa to parts of what is now Pakistan. Not alliances. Actual single states.

Thats the very opposite of parochialism, xenophobia, suspicion or inward societal thinking (however one wants to describe it)

Amidst the destruction of all that SHARED history, and the arbitrary Sykes-Picot jigsaw imposed on "the Arab world", falling back to more local structures is an obvious, and in the grand scheme of things, temporary, defensive mechanism.

The very fact that despite 100 years of Western imposed Sykes-Picot madness, West Asia is still an intricate mosaic of multiple groups - that shows that traditionally the Arabs are WELL CAPABLE of working with those not in their, as you put it, "in group".

The Indian caste system, aka apartheid on steroids, is a horrid example which makes your point. You should have stopped there

"Thats the very opposite of parochialism, xenophobia, suspicion or inward societal thinking (however one wants to describe it)"

Though I am not an expert in Arabic history, Arab culture spreat through colonialism, had an extensive slave system, denied basic rights to religious minorities and the Islam religion feels superior to non - Islamic religion and atheism.

Many Arabs dont want to admit these problems which IMHO is the reason for their long term decline.

Oh come on. Now you're just parroting ignorant tropes. Actual students of history will inform you that, especially per the standards of the day (as any state should be judged), Arab Muslim states were probably THE MOST tolerant of their time.

As evidenced by how many different Christian denominations (more than in Europe) still existed throughout West Asia, under direct Arab Muslim rule, for over a MILLENIA.

Denied basic rights? Basic rights to minority Christian, Jewish & Zoroastrian groups was ENSHRINED in the very makeup of these states. Leaders of these communities had official roles & responsibilities reserved for them.

You simply don't know what you're talking about. You're taking a modern day story about "Arabs" & "Muslims", which is predominantly the result of 100 years of subjugation & being broken up by the West (& having Western vassals & elites imposed as ruling classes), added to the need to create unsavory impressions of them amongst Western populations in order to justify that.

And you're taking this mess & overlaying it over the previous 1300 years, without a single regard for the truth. Seriously, go get a genuine history book, or talk to a history professor who knows about the Arab & Muslim world, and then curl up in embarrassment...

" Oh come on. Now you're just parroting ignorant tropes. Actual students of history will inform you that, especially per the standards of the day (as any state should be judged), Arab Muslim states were probably THE MOST tolerant of their time. " Ehm sorry as tolerant as e.g in India? Even in Europe Netherlands and Poland - Lithuania were very tolerant to religious freedom. But the Dhimmi system might be historically tolerant - Today is a oppressive system and orthogonal to religious freedom, as practiced by many Muslim and Islamist states.

"Denied basic rights? Basic rights to minority Christian, Jewish & Zoroastrian groups "

Maybe you just talked to Iranian Christians, Iranian Jewish or Atheist from Arabic countries. They might give a different clue.

" 100 years of subjugation & being broken up by the West (& having Western vassals & elites imposed as ruling classes),"

That's an excuse. No Western power force the Mullah regime to be so Islamist or the Islamic state to genocide Kurdish people. It stilled happened.

"you're taking this mess & overlaying it over the previous 1300 years, without a single regard for the truth. Seriously, go get a genuine history book, or talk to a history professor who knows about the Arab & Muslim world, and then curl up in embarrassment..."

Living in Berlin the city is fueled with people escaping from Islamic States. I take their word genuine.

But thank for the insight. In my opinion you can see a declining area how to react to critism. Many Americans deny their homes problem. So you do about the problems in Islam. But you what? There is a growing secular and anti islam movement in the Arabic world. Looks some people are smarter than you.

OK, the usual half-baked Islamophobic propaganda, with all the usual dog whistles of that fake bandwagon. So drearily predictable. Keep on shouting at the wall.

Ehm complaining about religious freedom of Atheist in Islamic states is dog whistle (for whom?)?

I'd like to know more.

In any debate or discussion, if someone discusses historical behaviour stretching back a thousand odd years then that isn't refuted by only talking about contemporary anecdata.

You are right.

I know by intuition the place is of course way more complicated.

It's just a growing frustration based on Wikipedia pages, the homophobia made by Muslim refugees, talking with Atheist by these areas...

I guess the fact that Islam sees itself as a purer version and successor religion of Christianity doesn't help inner self criticism.

By the way we can see the same behaviour of Americans.

thank you for putting it this succinctly

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