Re: CHAT Which world? Which culture?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ian Spackman" <ianspackman@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2003 12:59 PM
Subject: Re: CHAT Which world? Which culture?


> At 07:03 16/07/03, Joe <joe@...>wrote:
>
> >And the British, of course, who still, for some reason, think they
matter.
>
> Do you think?  I'd have said the British would *like* still to matter, but
> aren't really under any such delusion.
>
> And of course, we're supposed to be *ashamed* of our past glories, because
> colonialism is out of fashion.  We're supposed to pretend we never did
> anything that wasn't evil, and that most of the world's problems are our
> fault.  (In fact I've heard that the history taught in schools is now
> pretty much down to Communism and Fascism, so we don't have to talk about
> anything so evil as ourselves.)
I think its an inevitable conflict between a nostalgia for an imperial past,
and a self hate inflicted by that past.  Which makes things very difficult
indeed.

> Ian
>