“It is interesting how Brits seem oblivious to how weird our country is, especially the ‘nanny state’ (here a bag of peanuts will contain a warning: ‘this product contains peanuts’)” – this is a keen observation that a friend from Scotland was making in an e-mail to me a few weeks ago.“A good joke,” some could say… Well, for those who can’t imagine how weird these Brits can be, I must confirm that it’s sheer fact.
Except for the UK, I haven’t ever been to another country where milk chocolate – and not any chocolate, but an ‘iconic brand’ named Dairy Milk!!! – contains a warning that says: ‘This product contains milk.’ Nor do I know don’t know any other more absurd and hypocritical Nanny State than the British one.
There’s an exaggerate care from Big Brother’s part that people in this country wouldn’t get any allergies, that’s why you could find this kind of silly messages on food packages. Every now and then, you could see a similar warning label on an alcohol bottle, but not on an ‘iconic’ whisky bottle or beer can.
Such warnings like the one placed on chocolate bars would be regarded as offensive on other products, as if food allergies were the worst thing that could happen to someone in the UK!
I haven't noticed any cohesive campaign against serious hazards to one’s health in the UK taking into consideration anything else than an evolutionist/atheist perspective upon human life!
How can you possibly promise a better life for people if you only try to make them safe from external dangers, but not from spiritual dangers (sins), which are the roots of all human suffering? What if someone posted little stickers saying ‘Abortion kills living human beings’ on the billboards (seen in the London Underground) advertising access to abortion?!
If this excessive warning labelling were contained to food products, that would be more or less acceptable. However, I saw that even groups of children were ‘marked’ with fluorescent safety vests, as if everyone else, to careless drivers to pedophiles, should be warned ‘Beware, these are children’ (actually, ‘Be seen, be safe’ was written on one of the vests that I saw).
I wonder how many accidents, kidnappings or other unfortunate events involving children these fluorescent vests did prevent...Big Brother appears to be trying his best to defend children from the outer world, form their own parents, who are sometimes killing their offspring with the unhealthy food they are offering them, but he can’t (or actually doesn’t want to!) protect them from the demons eating their souls from within: invidualism, promiscuity (the most obvious result of sexual education in primary school!), egoism, atheism, hedonism.
Like the links that I posted here show, the UK is some of the worst places to grow as a child, in spite of all the warnings which are meant to make you feel your life is safer than it would be without those very warnings issued by a careful Big Brother – a well-wishing ‘entity’ loving you more than you can love yourself, always knowing more that you could ever learn... a sort of mockery of God’s love and omniscience.
Ultimately, the most important aspect that this Nanny State appears to have done for you is the way it solved all moral dilemmas on your behalf. “There’s no absolute truth, no God,” Big Brother says, so just enjoy your life, worring only about respecting all these warnings meant to give you a comfortable life!
Just wear the safety vest, follow Big Brother’s directions, and everything will be alright! Don’t worry about any afterlife, it’s just this life that matters!
Sticking to regulations and respecting warnings should make all people in a country like the UK feel their lives are safer, but they can rarely fill up the needs of a human soul, as all souls – even those of children brought up in an atheist society – are meant to have a more meaningful existence than one made up of a succession of pleasant experiences.
There’s nothing more meaningful in our existence than meeting the One Who brought You to life, and allowing Him to love you! The abundace of surrogates for true happiness (delights, challenges, experiences, pleasures, ambitions, career paths, knowlege or wealth gathered etc) can’t make up for not having Him in your life!
Unfortunately, many people in the UK live empty lives, never able to fill them with with anything meaningful after having banished the very concept of God from their hearts.
[For all the episodes of this series, and all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate episoadele din această serie şi toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]
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3 comments:
Dear Bogdan
I am in full agreement here. However, I think that defending civil liberties in Britain is even more difficult than I thought, especially after reading this article in the 'defense' of our liberties:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/simon-carr/simon-carr-its-going-to-be-a-long-hard-road-to-defend-our-liberties-1419297.html
'Hmm, yes but whether or not that's (a police state) far-fetched, the result is a generation away.'
Secular civil libertarians can only see this in terms of consumer choice (will the dangers balance the advantages), not in terms of the state blasphemously taking on a pseudo-divine role in people's lives. Even if I fully trusted the government, which I don't, I would not approve of their surveillance. But this was a real scream:
'For the last thousand years, England (and then Britain) has been on the progressive side of the question. The Nation State. Democracy. Industry. Enlightenment (50 years before the French, incidentally). And now, the modern thing is how to control or monitor the masses.
Of course we are in the vanguard, we always are.'
Sadly, he is not joking. He honestly believes that the state monitoring its own civilians is a trend, and a positive one that is the envy of Europe.
It reminds me of that Russian website I linked to where the author stated that Brits (though I would say English specifically) feel great resentment at the collapse of the country. The land of Shakespeare is now besotted by 'celebrity' reality TV. The land that once controlled 1/3 of the earth's surface is losing a 7 year war against Afghan peasants.
I think after seeing the results in Britain, few countries will follow our lead. We are more canary than vanguard.
'Even when it goes obviously wrong the damage isn't apocalyptic. When all those records were lost, for instance, did anyone on the list suffer any discernible harm?'
No, but what of Menezes, who was shot seven times through the head by 'counter terrorism' officers?
It makes me sad that Brits define themselves as democrats because various people pretend to disagree with each other. I don't think that Carr is for civil liberties, but by hashing arguments in their favor, he is contributing to the myth that Britain has a free media.
Dear Gregor,
I wish defending civil liberties in the UK was only 'more difficult' (than we usually imagine) but I am tending to believe that it's becoming impossible.
My rather pesimistic view comes from the fact that this nation of four nations (English, Scots, Welsh and Irish) is slowly losing its core, its most profound values, its direction.
What 'Britishness', and what ideals of liberty can you defend as long as people are slowly reduced to 'consumers' who only have 'rights' but no responsibilities, no awareness of a common history to defend, and no greater aspiration going beyond this material world?
Moreover, people in this country have no true knowledge of Jesus Christ, as long as the Church of England, the Episcopalian Church, the Church of Scotland, the so-called Free Church of Scotland etc, along with dozens of other 'denominations' have no connection whatsoever with the Lord. They simply preach a 'character' whom they do not know, and theorize vague concepts of divinity, without getting close to the essence of The Truth.
It's very sad to see how this dreadful political correctness, this insane consumerism, this replacement of moral self-restraint with overwhelming surveillance capabilities is gradually trying to erase the 'image of God' from all human souls living in this country!
Nevertheless, I can't be completely pesimistic, and give up the hope that the Lord will not allow a complete obliteration of this natural aspiration to eternity (to the real - eternal!!! - life, to true happiness!) that all humans are born with. Not all women in the UK are promiscuous, not all guys care only of booze, cars & football, not all people are irreligious or egoistic!
On the contrary, there are many remnants of 'British civility', many bright young people, many old-fashined older guys from whom you really have useful things to learn, many smart & beautiful girls who want a family, not just to 'have fun'... On top of everything else, what amazed me was a great sense of personal freedom in this country that I haven't felt in other countries where the Lord took me to.
People don't have ID cards, and - in many cases - if someone gives you his word, then that's enough! No need of French-style bureaucracy, no room for mistrust between people - a mistrust which this Orwellian society is slowly inducing among the Brits... That was the 'ideal Britain' of which I only caught glimpses during my stay, as this ideal is slowly overturned.
If 250-300 years ago Britain was the place where the Industrial Revolution began, present-day UK is also the scene of an experiment that will eventually change the world... obviously for the worse!
You probably know how Marx & Engels envisioned a 'worker's state' in an developed industrial society like the British or German ones were in the 19th century. In reality, the terrible (and utterly satanic experiment - given what happened in the gulag!) would be enacted in the archaic peasant society of Russia. That meant that, although it lasted for 70 years, the Communist experiment eventually failed... not when people wanted, but when the Lord decided it was the time. It wasn't Reagan, Thatcher, Gorbachev, the Pope, not even the Solidarity movement in Poland who destroyed Communism, it wasn't the assumed 'superiority' of the free-market laws - it was the Lord!
But let's suppose you'd try (as a historian) to state this idea, that human history is guided by God for the salvation of mankind (in spite of the satanic attempts to lead to its destruction)... wouldn't you be laughed at in the UK or anywhere else in Europe for that matter? If you dared to mention 'Jesus Christ', you'd be immediately labelled as 'right-wing extremist', as the only voices who 'mention Him' in the discourse of mainstream world media are those of heretical American Neoprotestants!
However, let me get back to my idea, and say that another satanic experiment is under way in the UK - the edification of a surveillance society, where all 'consumers' should be 'happy', as the 'working class' was promised 'happiness' in Marxist societies! And I guess that, unlike the Communist experiment, started on rather 'improper soil' (Orthodox Russia), this antichristic experiment taking place in today's Britain has found the most 'suitable soil' - the amoral, irreligious, and hedonist British society.
This doesn't mean that the war against human liberty isn't waged on other fronts as well. From this perspective, see here what's happening in Romania:
"Starting on Tuesday, all short messages and e-mails, Internet navigation history, along with all phone calls, will be recorded and stored for six months, as a measure within the anti-terrorist campaign. The content of the communication will not be recorded, instead the new databases will include the phone numbers of the callers and call recipients, their geographical location, the messages' content and the e-mail addresses"
http://www.actmedia.eu/2009/01/21/top+story/phone+calls,+sms,+e-mails+in+romania+will+be+recorded+as+of+tuesday/18559
I guess I wrote too much this time, and mixed-up many ideas, so I'd rather stop now, offering my personal response to the 'what should we do?' questions that many people have when realizing how these demonic plans are advancing. There's no other strategy, solution, response from our part than PRAYER.
The Lord will show to each of us, in each separate destiny that we have (yet so connected to the whole destiny of mankind) what to do, and how to behave! We don't have to wait for 'miraculous signs' or for 'voices in our heads' like the Neoprotestants, but we just have to trust the Lord that He will guide us!
'However, let me get back to my idea, and say that another satanic experiment is under way in the UK - the edification of a surveillance society, where all 'consumers' should be 'happy', as the 'working class' was promised 'happiness' in Marxist societies! And I guess that, unlike the Communist experiment, started on rather 'improper soil' (Orthodox Russia), this antichristic experiment taking place in today's Britain has found the most 'suitable soil' - the amoral, irreligious, and hedonist British society.'
It is interesting that you say that because I find one of the most interesting British journalists is Peter Hitchens, who was formerly a Russian correspondent reporting from the USSR.
A common theme of his work is that there are disturbing similarities between Britain and the USSR. Certainly I notice spiritual similarities in books published by Soviet dissidents. That is not to imply moral equivalence between the states. But rather, there is a sense of enforced egalitarianism, a senselessness, a media that relentlessly praises the government and the British people. A feeling that patriotism and Christianity are unnecessary. Just as America was hated by the Soviet media, the British media expresses jealous hatred towards 'the other', in this case France and Europe.
'If you dared to mention 'Jesus Christ', you'd be immediately labelled as 'right-wing extremist', as the only voices who 'mention Him' in the discourse of mainstream world media are those of heretical American Neoprotestants!'
On a website I often visit someone called Dave Weeden wrote:
‘I don’t think anyone, barring a few religious nuts, has ever valued embryos per se.’
To which I replied:
'Do you think the embryo you came from was valuable?'
Mr Weeden evidently thought that such a comment from a 'religious nut' was not worthy of an answer.
'On the contrary, there are many remnants of 'British civility', many bright young people, many old-fashined older guys from whom you really have useful things to learn, many smart & beautiful girls who want a family, not just to 'have fun'...'
I agree with you there, I know several wonderful British people. As you said earlier, though, the distorted faiths here have given them a false impression of Christ and 'religion'. If I had not read Dostoyevsky and Berdyaev, I might still be an agnostic.
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