Reform😱

[ForKeenDeer]

Gaining popularity by the minute. Scary times

Actually these things are part of pratriotism.
You care for your surroundings and country you live in/were born in and the people who live/lived in it with you or who share your heritage, culture and so on. .
People don't have pride in country per se. It's the culture, heritage, place etc. These just happen to be a country so it all goes under that label.

Uk needs bit more of it, maybe it would atop people just throwing rubbish anywhere...

Again. I strongly suspect you are confusing patriotism and nationalism.

I have pride of who I am, where I came from and where I live. The latter two massively shaped the former. I am big promoter of both countries (also a critic). Do I like them more than others? Yes. Because I have connection, so logically I will like them more than others then.

Yes...two young people I've been speaking to want to vote for Farage. One has never voted before. One as Farage wants to make people work if they have been unemployed for 4 months. Really?

I don’t think I’m confusing them. I think you can do good things without it being either due to religion or patriotism.

I vaccinate myself for all humans. Not for the country I live in or its culture or landscape or sports or monarch or whatever. I don’t even think of that stuff, their presence in my field of awareness is just a side-effect of the latitude and longitude I currently live at.

When I did national service in my other country once again I did not do it with any sense of pride or admiration for that place. I did it because the rules told me I had to. Again, it was a side-effect of living at that latitude and longitude.

Why would someone who has been out of work for 4 months not want to work?

I think you can do those things for the generalised benefit of human life.

I just don’t think many people do. Anywhere in the world. So removing patriotism would have a massive dis-benefit in those areas.

After all, many people on these boards support higher taxes, but very few make tax-level donations to support people overseas, even though that would produce more benefit to humanity as a whole.

To me, you are confusing philosophically necessary with socially beneficial. I can agree with you that patriotism isn’t philosophically necessary, in a strict sense, but I think it’s very beneficial on balance. That’s because I think the nation state is beneficial on balance and can’t see how in reality you would make that work without patriotism. Perhaps you could do it through fear (worse), or by aligning states with some other locus of loyalty like race or religion (possible, but not obviously better).

And while I agree that in a sense country is ‘just’ one level, I don’t see how that undermines its legitimacy. And it’s patriotism that makes the borders something more than merely administrative.

Do you see any benefit to attaching pride/loyalty to family, friendship group, locality, kinship networks, language group, race or any other level? If so, why?

@brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

When I did national service in my other country once again I did not do it with any sense of pride or admiration for that place. I did it because the rules told me I had to.

Would you have felt better or worse about doing national service if you had felt a sense of pride or admiration for the place?

Would national service be objectively more or less defensible if the people required to serve did so with pride and admiration? It say more defensible. The imposition is less.

Do you see any benefit to attaching pride/loyalty to family, friendship group, locality, kinship networks, language group, race or any other level? If so, why?

Not really. It’s all just arbitrary rings on a venn diagram which enable differences to be exploited. I’m only interested in the outermost ring.

Would you have felt better or worse about doing national service if you had felt a sense of pride or admiration for the place?

It would have been no more or no less pointless. That’s the inescapable truth. Had it been rolled in the glitter of national pride, some people may have felt better. But it’s a superficial sugaring of a bitter pill which only works on the less logical and more credulous people.

Why do you think that the military should share a skillset with the police?

I'm not sure the correct word here is 'should'. It's more accurate to say they often have transferable skillsets appropriate to policing.

Psychological and physical strength, teamwork, and experience of humanitarian work. (The military isn't only about active conflict. Many are engaged in humanitarian aid).

Too often veterans are overlooked for jobs and not supported with transition to civilian life, so if that's where Reform's coming from (as opposed to wanting to make the police more militarised) I'd be in favour of that. I'd say it's something whoever's next in government should look at.

I don't know much about Reform's plans but regardless of Reform, I can see why some ex-forces would be potentially welcome additions to the police.

Why would someone who has been out of work for 4 months not want to work?

I'd say it's a good idea if the plan is to get them into proper jobs with fair working conditions and pay (and on the job training if necessary).

From time to time, parents are prosecuted for neglect, because they have not looked after their child.

But no one is ever prosecuted for neglecting a child on the other side of the earth.

Are you puzzled by this illogicality?

Also, do you assign value to reciprocity?

If someone looked after you when you were ill, or were young, do you attach value to looking after them in return when they are ill, or are old?

Or would be illogical if they needed that help less than someone else somewhere on earth?

And what is about the outer ring that attracts your loyalty?

ie, why care about humanity?

Do you care about the welfare of current humans more than that of future humans?

And do you care about human welfare more than animal welfare? If so, on what grounds?

I care about all welfare of all humans and wild animals on earth. I choose the outer ring because it cannot be transcended (we are physically trapped on this planet).

I don’t think your analogies about caring for humans / children / reciprocity have any relevance. Living in a place doesn’t imply responsibility towards that place nor a requirement for that place to be responsible for you. It’s simply a latitude and a longitude.

@brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr The reason you feel a responsibility to your children, or to someone who has helped you, is because you are human. Not all other species do this.

Discussing logic in the context of human obligations must ultimately be grounded in facts about humanity.

If you are happy to call patriotism illogical, why not reciprocity or familial obligation? One could imagine an intelligent species without those impulses.

I agree with you about widening moral circles of concern, by the way, and it's a good thing that they have typically widened over the course of history.

But decrying one of the main factors in that widening (the extension of moral concern from tribe to nation) is odd.

Your claim is also not that patriotism is bad on balance, but that there are no benefits to patriotism.

I struggle to see how you can derive that rationally from what you see in the world around you, unless you have extremely utopian beliefs about not just what should replace patriotism, but what actually would (Even then, I don't think that would negate the positives of patriotism, even if you think it's holding back something better).

(Sorry for bombarding you with questions by the way. I'm genuinely very interested, because I sense we agree strongly on a few things and disagree strongly on many others. Always the most interesting conversations).

My brain went straight to “reformer Pilates” and for a second I really couldn’t understand the worry 😂

In any country, people have freedom to live in any state or region. It's not just US.

Everyone else is shit but far right is not? You know this is how far right rise but you will still vote for them.

Living in a place doesn’t imply responsibility towards that place nor a requirement for that place to be responsible for you. It’s simply a latitude and a longitude.

I disagree. Of course you have responsibility and so does the place towards you.
If people don't care and have no responsibility towards where they live it would end up as a dirty shithole with fully individualistic society, riddled with crime.
Equally if place have no responsibility towards people who live there, there would be no support, no public transport, no safety.

Very true.

I have no issues with anybody wanting to come and live and work in the UK. I also have no issue with the UK taking in and looking after those from other countries who need it (political refugees for example). I would like to think this country had a heart and cared for the needy.

But population growth needs to be monitored and controlled at times. The infrastructure has to be allowed to grow/adapt to cope with an increasing population.

But often, on social media, anyone with this view point is shot down in flames, and no doubt I will be too. So if someone cannot express an opinion and have a reasoned debate, and is harangued and made to feel ostracised then these people will express their opinion at the polls.

I think it's inevitable that Labour will win with a good, if not huge, majority.

The only thing to look forward to in this scenario will be Mumsnet.

The boards will be clogged with posters wondering why they have not received their Golden Elephant-in whatever form their personal Golden Elephant would take. It will be amusing to see the bewilderment on their little faces.

They will not allow themselves to say, 'This fucking Labour government' but will be left to fall back on-'Labour can't deliver because of what the fucking Tory government did.'

I imagine they will still be saying this after Labour have been in power for 15 years.

I couldn't ignore this. I live in Switzerland. I have also lived in the UK. Switzerland is not more densely populated than UK. The most populated city is Zurich with a population of 450k people, Geneva is the second with less than 200k people, entire country has 8 million people. There is no comparison. Switzerland does not give its citizenship as easily as UK does. You have to learn German and even then they can find reasons to not give you citizenship. It is also not as multi cultural, they mostly have immigrants from Europe. Brown or black people are very tiny % and you can just see that by living here even in a flourishing city.

I'm not expecting a golden elephant.

And despite your sneering, the incoming government will have a heck of a mess to address.

Other than racism, how does being brown or black make any difference ?

Not strictly true in the UK (don't know about other countries). If low income, it's not easy to move regions because, I understand, eligibility for social housing is based on living or working in the local area. Not to mention sometimes hostile locals complaining about displaced 'blow-ins'.