Sunday 21 February 2016

The EU. In or out? To Brexit or not to Brexit?

The European Union
The EU, that massive political nuisance foisted on us sneakily over the top of the old EEC.
In June this year we will, at long last, have a referendum on whether or not we should remain in it with all those 'Johnny Foreigners', not to mention the Germans, and worse: the French!
To read some tabloids you would think that the Empire still exists, WW2 was last week, and the Napoleonic Wars ended the week before.

We actually are friends with those countries now, y'know.

Them and Us.
People just love to blame war on religion, stating that if we ditch religion, we end the reason and causes for war.
Wrong.
It's not about religion and it actually never has been. Religious wars are far outnumbered throughout history by wars for land, over women, food, water, honour, insult, and even boredom. There is one thing and one thing only that causes wars, and that is 'Them' and 'Us'.

Human beings form cliques and then fight to protect/expand/avenge/feed them.  They tell themselves that 'we' are better than 'them'. Our football club is better, our skin is prettier, our favourite TV show is more intellectual, our clothes are nicer, our schools are better, our people more intelligent, our skulls show that we are more evolved, our god is real, our specific order of service is right, our understanding of grammar is better, we have indoor plumbing, we don't baptise children.
'They' are not completely human, they follow a useless football team, their skin is a different (and uglier) colour, they watch stupid low-brow TV, they wear silly fashions, their schools teach nothing, their average IQ is low, their skulls contain less forebrain, their god is a silly fantasy god. they don't have an order of service, they don't understand apostrophes, they don't have toilets at all and have to 'go' in the fields, they baptise children.

The lists are endless. Every single thing that I have listed has either been the cause of a war or a reason why the enemy is sub-human and needs to be put in his or her 'place'. (Using the word 'war' here to mean any battle, no matter how small or large. It's all the same thing, no matter how many people pile into the fight, yelling and aiming to hurt as many as possible.)

What has this to do with Brexit?

Just this:
Leaving the EU is part of this 'them' and 'us' attitude.
There's nothing wrong in being proud about what British people achieved in history, but it doesn't make us special. Every country has things of which its people can be proud.


It's that fragmentation into 'we are better than them' that is so dangerous.

The strongest groups are the ones who put aside lesser differences in order to stand together. The bigger the group saying 'we are one', the stronger. We need our groups to get bigger, not smaller.

Look at the US. They have their internal 'them' and 'us' divisions (Republican v Democrat, racism, south and north, indigenes and everyone who's not) but push them and suddenly they're shoulder to shoulder (ok with some jostling) and squaring up for a fight. Now I'm not saying that 'we' should emulate 'their' willingness to escalate a war (see what I did there?) but the fact is that that ability to suddenly spread 'us' to include everyone (or almost everyone) on the continent does make them strong. If they split off into individual States, each one becoming a separate kingdom with its own army and government, and no over-ruling central control, they would not be strong.
When the UK was many small kingdoms, conquest was easy. The Romans did it one kingdom at a time. The Angles and Saxons and Danes also sailed in and took possession every few decades.
Once those kingdoms united, conquest was a lot harder. The Normans managed it, but that was over a thousand years ago. Unity, not division, increases strength.

It's really that simple. We need 'us' to include as many human beings on this planet as possible. We need 'us' to be able to dismiss lesser differences as unimportant if threatened from outside.
We need to remember that we are one race and any differences should be something to celebrate, not fight over.

Leaving the EU weakens us all. If there are inequalities we should address them from within, not pick up our toys and walk off in a huff.

#eureferendum #brexit #eu #uk

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