To be is to be contingent: nothing of which it can be said that "it is" can be alone and independent. But being is a member of paticca-samuppada as arising which contains ignorance. Being is only invertible by ignorance.

Destruction of ignorance destroys the illusion of being. When ignorance is no more, than consciousness no longer can attribute being (pahoti) at all. But that is not all for when consciousness is predicated of one who has no ignorance than it is no more indicatable (as it was indicated in M Sutta 22)

Nanamoli Thera

Thursday, February 27, 2020

Our culture eroded, modes of behaviour that have existed for many centuries in England have changed

If the settler comes from a lawless part of the world, he fetches his lack of respect for law; if being devious is a way of life where he comes from, he brings his deviousness; if getting all upset at the least little thing is in his culture, he imports histrionic behaviour. Harshly bureaucratic peoples have fetched their delight in causing problems when in a position to do so; religious fanaticism and intolerance have been introduced into our formerly peaceful and rational secular country. The rudeness endemic in backward countries has been imported wholesale. The settlers’ offspring inherit their parents’ traits, at the same time as tiresomely moaning that they did not ask to be born in a country where they do not feel they belong, implying that this is somehow the fault of the indigenous people and not a consequence of their parents’ decision to emigrate. The young males, fuelled by testosterone and their sense of grievance, engage in anti-social activities and crime. The indigenous people are expected to put up with all this. Our rulers, fearing our objections might get out of hand, have passed restrictive legislation, banning any criticism of the newcomers. Journalists acquiesce in deception, obscuring both the extent and the consequences of the mass immigration.

Our culture eroded, modes of behaviour that have existed for many centuries in England have changed. People need a culture. Without one, they degenerate.

A culture is neither education nor law-making: it is a heritage and an atmosphere. What makes a culture specific is the way in which over many centuries the elements have combined, developed and affected one another and eventually formed a system. The strengths of a people lie in continuity. To break with it is perilous.
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Thirty-five years ago, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin wrote a tribute to his Austrian friend Raimund von Hofmannsthal, who had settled in London after the war. ‘England seemed to him,’ Berlin wrote, ‘the embodiment of a quiet, honourable, humane existence, above all of a civilisation singularly free from violence, hysteria, meanness and vulgarity.’

Since then, the civic virtues, good manners, ingrained personal habits of self-control and moderation, and the national mistrust of excess, have all been jettisoned or destroyed. In the last few decades there has been a catastrophic collapse of English manners and habits. England now is a moral swamp in which the hug-and-confess culture is extirpating hardiness and self-reliance from the national character in favour of a banal, self-pitying, witless and shallow emotional incontinence.

Traditional English virtues have been largely destroyed, widely regarded now as emotional disorders or obsolete. In 1954 Geoffrey Gorer wrote, ‘The English are a truly unified people, more unified, I would hazard, than at any previous period in their history.’ The country had just been through a terrible war, which had required discipline and sacrifice shared by a population that was still homogenous. Over the following decades a rot set in as the country spurned the moral consensus that underpinned the era of the television series about a bobby on the beat, Dixon of Dock Green.
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When the pre-war fascist Sir Oswald Mosley returned from exile abroad to fight North Kensington in the 1959 general election on behalf of the ‘British Movement’ he finished bottom of the poll and lost his deposit. Most Britons remained unexcited by Mosley’s appeal to racism.

Because the people were not racist, successive governments, especially Labour ones, for years acted with extraordinary complacency. Settlers increased even under Winston Churchill, who was against immigration. When he regained power the numbers rose anyway, from 3,000 arrivals in 1953 to 42,650 two years later, including, it was rumoured, a former Caribbean Minister of Education. Afterwards the numbers steadied, fell, then increased again to reach 136,400 in 1961. When the Macmillan government the following year set up a voucher system for settlers, the Labour Party called the government racist and when it returned to power scrapped the system. Immigration was already a political problem.

It was noticeable that the settlers encroached. You would one day see a lone individual or a family in an area where none had ever been seen before - then, soon, you would regularly see several individuals or families in that area: then you heard it being said, ‘They’re taking over the district.’ Their wide distribution led to puzzled speculation more than their original sudden appearance. By 1976 a cricket Test match between England and the West Indies at The Oval in south London was regarded by the West Indies as a ‘home venue’, a feeling enhanced by the Caribbean heat of that summer.

Only then, three decades after the first arrivals came, did there begin to arise serious widespread misgivings among the indigenous people. As the West Indians multiplied, their presence affected more and more English people, and so more noticed how loud and flamboyant they were in an un-English way. They spoke louder, their adolescents’ horseplay was louder, they played their music louder and they dressed louder. Their cars hurtled along too fast, with headlights blazing and horns blaring at the mistakes of other motorists or pedestrians crossing the road. They kept finding occasion to shout to a friend on the other side of the street. Worst of all were the noisy all-night parties. Complaining neighbours were informed by way of explanation that, in the Caribbean, dwellings were spaced some distance apart so the noise did not bother neighbours. (We have here one of the early examples of modern settlers refusing to adapt. It did not occur to them that noisy parties are inappropriate in England, where most homes are flats or terraced houses.
Unfortunately, this lack of consideration was imitated by some young whites, and is now regarded as normal behaviour.
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Multi-culturalism seems to me more and more like cultural murder.

The Empire Windrush has acquired an iconic status almost equal to that of the Mayflower. With good reason. Both ships heralded a great tragedy for the indigenous people, who helplessly watched vast numbers of aliens settle on their shores to utterly change the nature of their land. And in our case this catastrophic change is lauded by some as being good for us!

David Abbott
Dark Albion
A Requiem for the English


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