a friend is worried
Sep. 2nd, 2005 07:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miriam_eA friend in Britain is worried about the day coming when the enclaves of muslims in Britain grow in number and strength to where Sharia law becomes a possibility. When I said that it won't come to that, he asked how would I reassure someone that it won't when all they need is a majority in a democratic nation.
Here is my reply
Well, they have a long way to go to become a majority, but even so, I think it just takes people a little while to realise how good a taste of freedoms can be. There has been a backlash against the fundamentalists in Iran after they ruled with sharia law. The youth became pissed that they had lost their future due to these closed-minded withered old men. All it takes is a taste of freedoms and luxuries.
The trick is not to repress or ostracise them in Britain, and do what can be done to prevent ghettos (again, that comes down to avoiding ostracism and racism). If they get a chance to have a better life than the muslim religious nuts can ever deliver then there is no way they'll ever want to go back to more restrictive lives.
Bear in mind that our current lifestyles are being threatened by more than just muslims though. There are several pressures upon us at the moment. They must all be solved if we are not to have imams brainwashing disaffected youths into becoming suicide bombers.
One of the worst problems is the incredible disparity of wealth between rich and poor. There have always been rich and poor, and there probably always will be. It is healthy for any ecology to have many kinds of lifestyle, but the disparity today is far beyond anything in previous times and threatens the planet and the cohesion of society. Up until a couple of decades ago the executives of a company earned perhaps 20 to 40 times the amount those on the shop floor earned. That was already not a healthy situation. But now executives often earn thousands of times what the people on the shop floor earn. That money has to come from somewhere, and it comes from the sweat of the little people. For a long time this was fairly successfully covered, but things have been changing now so that the people who work their asses off wonder why some relatively idle bastard is given millions for just showing up. This is a dangerous rip in the social fabric, and it needs to be repaired before it tears our society apart. Its potential for damage is terribly underestimated.
Capitalism is a very successful system, but as with all previous systems it depends upon slavery to survive. The brilliance of capitalism is that it convinces people that they want to be slaves. This works only so long as the slaves have some power of self determination and a reasonable stake in the profits. But take away the rewards and their say in how things are done and the slavery is revealed as bare and ugly. With the ultra-rich hoarding the wealth, leaving less and less for the rest of the population, the 'slaves' see their share vanishing. As big media are revealed to be mere hand-puppets of the powers that be and elections are carefully rigged, the 'slaves' lose their say in how things are done.
Fix those and most of the threat from christian fundamentalists and muslim extremists and everybody else just blows away in the breeze.
The worst danger is related to the earlier-mentioned hoarding of wealth and control by a small part of the population. In previous civilisations that crashed and burned a common factor has always been the isolation of those in control so that they could feel that everything is OK while the ecological support systems around them collapsed. We can see this happening now. But it is not just a small civilisation on an island or a fertile valley that is threatened... now it is the whole damn planet. We need to fix it. Very soon.
Here is my reply
Well, they have a long way to go to become a majority, but even so, I think it just takes people a little while to realise how good a taste of freedoms can be. There has been a backlash against the fundamentalists in Iran after they ruled with sharia law. The youth became pissed that they had lost their future due to these closed-minded withered old men. All it takes is a taste of freedoms and luxuries.
The trick is not to repress or ostracise them in Britain, and do what can be done to prevent ghettos (again, that comes down to avoiding ostracism and racism). If they get a chance to have a better life than the muslim religious nuts can ever deliver then there is no way they'll ever want to go back to more restrictive lives.
Bear in mind that our current lifestyles are being threatened by more than just muslims though. There are several pressures upon us at the moment. They must all be solved if we are not to have imams brainwashing disaffected youths into becoming suicide bombers.
One of the worst problems is the incredible disparity of wealth between rich and poor. There have always been rich and poor, and there probably always will be. It is healthy for any ecology to have many kinds of lifestyle, but the disparity today is far beyond anything in previous times and threatens the planet and the cohesion of society. Up until a couple of decades ago the executives of a company earned perhaps 20 to 40 times the amount those on the shop floor earned. That was already not a healthy situation. But now executives often earn thousands of times what the people on the shop floor earn. That money has to come from somewhere, and it comes from the sweat of the little people. For a long time this was fairly successfully covered, but things have been changing now so that the people who work their asses off wonder why some relatively idle bastard is given millions for just showing up. This is a dangerous rip in the social fabric, and it needs to be repaired before it tears our society apart. Its potential for damage is terribly underestimated.
Capitalism is a very successful system, but as with all previous systems it depends upon slavery to survive. The brilliance of capitalism is that it convinces people that they want to be slaves. This works only so long as the slaves have some power of self determination and a reasonable stake in the profits. But take away the rewards and their say in how things are done and the slavery is revealed as bare and ugly. With the ultra-rich hoarding the wealth, leaving less and less for the rest of the population, the 'slaves' see their share vanishing. As big media are revealed to be mere hand-puppets of the powers that be and elections are carefully rigged, the 'slaves' lose their say in how things are done.
Fix those and most of the threat from christian fundamentalists and muslim extremists and everybody else just blows away in the breeze.
The worst danger is related to the earlier-mentioned hoarding of wealth and control by a small part of the population. In previous civilisations that crashed and burned a common factor has always been the isolation of those in control so that they could feel that everything is OK while the ecological support systems around them collapsed. We can see this happening now. But it is not just a small civilisation on an island or a fertile valley that is threatened... now it is the whole damn planet. We need to fix it. Very soon.