The Essential "Except"

I woke up in the middle of last night and could not get back to sleep, what a nuisance. So I was ruminating on the recent Singaporean clampdown on racial blogs. Of course in a multi-racial society and with a daily influx of Malaysians it is important to ensure that the harmony is not disturbed. The interlinking of influences is essential and probably easier than actually getting the connections shown above to work!

But my mind went wandering on and I thought of how I had my own prejudices. Having been born in Scotland, with a Scottish mother, I naturally view the English with contempt (in spite of my English father). Since my house is in England I naturally view the French with contempt. Having spent a long time in Africa, the Gulf and the Far East I am naturally convinced that, on the whole, westerners are a bunch of rather arrogant, fat plonkers; regrettably this also describes me rather well. And so it goes on.

What seems important to me is to avoid ghettos so that there is always a person that one knows. Thus one can think "Indians are {insert your choice of word; e.g. lazy} except for that helpful guy in my department"; or "Muslims are {insert your choice of word; e.g. terrorists} except for that nice lady that lives nearby"; or "Westerners are {insert your choice of word; e.g. fat, ugly, arrogant} except for Mike".

Any tiny bit of thought will then lead to the realisation that the "except" proves the ridiculous nature of sweeping generalisations. Oh that reminds me "Americans are crap at spelling, unable to realise when an "s" should be used rather than a "z"".

So surely anyone with even half a brain should realise that the "except" shows that people have to be taken individually, that to be a racialist is to deny individuality to all the members of whatever race, religion, colour or whatever other division one is attempting to berate.

Luckily at about that point I did manage to fall asleep before getting into anything more complicated!