[Fineus]

What would you rather do then? I do see what you mean - but I don't know how you'd rather things were done. I have my own little ways of celibrating things like Samhain and Yule - because god knows that only one or two other people I know might do things the same way - but the vast majority of people will eat their turkey at Christmas, their chocolate at Easter and so on.

But in the end, what is a holiday for? Or at least what is a holiday with meaning for (such as Christmas or Easter... not your average summer vacation). The best you can hope for is that people remember eachother and care for even the smallest of moments - even if they don't know why they're doing it.

How would you have it be?

[Stryke 9]

I would rather holidays meant something. Things like eating home-cooked food or being with your family can be done any day, and honestly should, people use holidays as an excuse to be assholes in the meantime all too often. You ever seen a Catholic Lent and Easter? That means something, they're in direct communication with their God, expressing sympathy and gratitude for all he's done for 'em. Ever seen a Day of the Dead celebration- a real one, not one of those elementary-school knockoffs? Paper-mache skulls aren't just an alternate-culture substitute for jack-o-lanterns, that's the day when the ****ing dead come out and chill with their families, and the towns have a big ****ing party for 'em. It's really ****ing bizarre if you didn't grow up with it (and especially if "dead coming back to life" means "Night of the Living Dead" to you, like it does me), but it has meaning, there's a reason it's that day that doesn't have anything to do with companies trying to sell you ****, and it's an experience genuinely worth having.

And some holidays, they just shouldn't exist now. Thanksgiving... what business do British people have celebrating that? It doesn't have anything to do with them. Hell, it really doesn't have anything to do with Americans anymore- it's a harvest festival (and a very specific one, there are plenty of other harvest festivals for cultures that still know what a harvest is), and these days when anything we eat comes from some anonymous location thousands of miles away when it's still growing season, there's no such thing as a harvest anymore unless you live on one of the few self-sufficient farms left around. Thanksgiving only lives on as a day the meat industry rakes it in, and pasting up something that looks vaguely like a turkey or hat with a buckle on it means there's something on sale today.

I'd rather our gas didn't just come from the pumps and our dinners from the stores. I'd rather there was a reason we lived our lives the reason we do more than just that that's the way irritating voices on the airwaves say is the right way to do it. I'd rather people knew why, or at least gave a rat's ass. You wanna know the reason everything's so ****ed, why Bush is waging wars for Halliburton at the expense of all of us and everything you eat and wear was essentially made by slave labor and a ridiculous percentage of the country here won't eat enough today while we're throwing out excess food by the metric ton and nobody gives a ****? That's why, and it won't be long before we're all thoroughly screwed because of it. What were the figures on how long the current oil supply will last again? Oh, wait, nobody cares. Won't be our grandchildren who have to deal with it, it won't be our children, it'll be us in the not-so-distant future who'll be back to the goddamn Dark Ages, and nobody cares, nobody wants to hear that anything they do means something. Especially not that it doesn't mean life'll go on as ordinary and there'll always be a happy ending like we keep getting told.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Warlock

And so far every country on the planet has done that in one form or another, your point?

Probably that not many other countries celebrate it.........

oops, that's been said.  I don't have any real argument over Thanksgiving, just think that more should be done to recognise the impact on the natives.  

From what I've read (not much albeit, mostly a Bill Bryson book) the same stands for Australia & aborigines.  but that's another argument I can't be arsed with.

[01010]

Originally posted by Stryke 9
I would rather holidays meant something. Things like eating home-cooked food or being with your family can be done any day, and honestly should, people use holidays as an excuse to be assholes in the meantime all too often. You ever seen a Catholic Lent and Easter? That means something, they're in direct communication with their God, expressing sympathy and gratitude for all he's done for 'em. Ever seen a Day of the Dead celebration- a real one, not one of those elementary-school knockoffs? Paper-mache skulls aren't just an alternate-culture substitute for jack-o-lanterns, that's the day when the ****ing dead come out and chill with their families, and the towns have a big ****ing party for 'em. It's really ****ing bizarre if you didn't grow up with it (and especially if "dead coming back to life" means "Night of the Living Dead" to you, like it does me), but it has meaning, there's a reason it's that day that doesn't have anything to do with companies trying to sell you ****, and it's an experience genuinely worth having.

And some holidays, they just shouldn't exist now. Thanksgiving... what business do British people have celebrating that? It doesn't have anything to do with them. Hell, it really doesn't have anything to do with Americans anymore- it's a harvest festival (and a very specific one, there are plenty of other harvest festivals for cultures that still know what a harvest is), and these days when anything we eat comes from some anonymous location thousands of miles away when it's still growing season, there's no such thing as a harvest anymore unless you live on one of the few self-sufficient farms left around. Thanksgiving only lives on as a day the meat industry rakes it in, and pasting up something that looks vaguely like a turkey or hat with a buckle on it means there's something on sale today.

I'd rather our gas didn't just come from the pumps and our dinners from the stores. I'd rather there was a reason we lived our lives the reason we do more than just that that's the way irritating voices on the airwaves say is the right way to do it. I'd rather people knew why, or at least gave a rat's ass. You wanna know the reason everything's so ****ed, why Bush is waging wars for Halliburton at the expense of all of us and everything you eat and wear was essentially made by slave labor and a ridiculous percentage of the country here won't eat enough today while we're throwing out excess food by the metric ton and nobody gives a ****? That's why, and it won't be long before we're all thoroughly screwed because of it. What were the figures on how long the current oil supply will last again? Oh, wait, nobody cares. Won't be our grandchildren who have to deal with it, it won't be our children, it'll be us in the not-so-distant future who'll be back to the goddamn Dark Ages, and nobody cares, nobody wants to hear that anything they do means something. Especially not that it doesn't mean life'll go on as ordinary and there'll always be a happy ending like we keep getting told.

It is, as they say, for some people (too many people) that ignorance is bliss.

As far as I know though, I've never met a British person that celebrates thanksgiving.

Apathy is a ****ing curse and it gets worse with every generation of mindless drones that are left to sit in front of the T.V while the parents are in another room doing **** all. It's a curse that leads people to believe that they don't have to do anything about problems that this whole race have because "someone else will deal with it".

Do you have a newsletter and can I subscribe to it?

[Stryke 9]

I ***** here at a rate proportional to my frustrations at finding an adequate movement to stem these sorts of things, which is pretty much exponential, so if that counts, yeah.

And I think there is an increasing nervous sense of it growing nowadays, just because it's so bloody obvious, but it's in a very small group of the usual suspects and a lot of it's misdirected, so I don't trust it to help us in time. The problem is- what do you really do about complete and total apathy? You can't, as a general rule, shock people into awareness- they're too jaded, and if it such tactics worked the SPCA would be more than a fringe group by now. You can't reason with people who don't care- they'll just continue not caring. Going about the riot method to get attention has been blunted since the late 60s, and now that it'd have to compete with ****ing reality shows... Basically, only way I see is to keep going on and hope people engage at some point or other, start listening. And that... well, bleh. I'd really rather pick up some good street clothes and go stomp some cops or something, but those days are gone, I guess...

[01010]

Originally posted by Stryke 9
I ***** here at a rate proportional to my frustrations at finding an adequate movement to stem these sorts of things, which is pretty much exponential, so if that counts, yeah.

And I think there is an increasing nervous sense of it growing nowadays, just because it's so bloody obvious, but it's in a very small group of the usual suspects and a lot of it's misdirected, so I don't trust it to help us in time. The problem is- what do you really do about complete and total apathy? You can't, as a general rule, shock people into awareness- they're too jaded, and if it such tactics worked the SPCA would be more than a fringe group by now. You can't reason with people who don't care- they'll just continue not caring. Going about the riot method to get attention has been blunted since the late 60s, and now that it'd have to compete with ****ing reality shows... Basically, only way I see is to keep going on and hope people engage at some point or other, start listening. And that... well, bleh. I'd really rather pick up some good street clothes and go stomp some cops or something, but those days are gone, I guess...

Tonight on "Generic TV Station 3" the all new, amazing "When Riots Go Bad"

I know what you mean, reality T.V really is the direst and most pointless creation since, actually, there is no since.

Big Brother. Watch 12 people live in a house. WOW! Watch as these 12 ****ing morons with nothing more productive to do with their time cook clean and argue. Or alternatively, go outside and do something with your life, interact with REAL people, do REAL, EXCITING things such as WALKING, EXERCISE, CONVERSATION.

Or how about the nauseating Pop Idol (American Idol) which shows just how ****ing disgusting these millionaires, who become celebrities just through putting people through a grinder on national T.V, really are. They take a process that's abhorrent to me anyway (plastic packaged music) then show the guts of it, the personal agony of shattered hopes, on T.V. Then people wonder WHY we live in a society where noone has respect for each other, where people are scared to talk to their neighbour, where people are afraid to walk their own streets. A lack of compassion and respect for each other is bred on the T.V screens and it makes me sad.

I haven't watched T.V much at all since I realised a few years ago that I squandered my childhood in front of that ****ing box.

[Stryke 9]

Actually, I'm not entirely familiar with reality shows later than roughtly Temptation Island. Accidentially caught the tail end of an episode, swore off TV since. Still download Family Guy episodes off the network once in a while, but that's about the extent of it.

But yeah, you pretty much got it. Pretty much says it all when the highest entertainment ratings go to watching people get debased on live TV, with the repeated assurance that what you're watching is real humiliation and suffering. Gotta wonder about the mentality that makes people willing to go through all that just so they can get some attention and a short-lived illusion of importance. Brings to mind the Roman Colosseum, really- how long you think before we start getting some gladiator action on FOX?

[01010]

Oh God, in watching Temptation Island you got to witness T.V at its lowest ebb. Lets take a group of guys with fiancees, put them on an island with models that are paid to seduce them (hookers?) and watch the absolute heartbreak of their better halves as their resolve crumbles in three seconds flat. I'd call it car crash T.V but it's far worse than that.

The Roman Collosseum idea is actually pretty good, especially if it was a bloodsport, most certainly the most cost effective way of ridding the world of these greedy, arrogant, self centred, opinionated, attention seeking ****wits that think that five minutes of fame is their right.

I find it weird that someone like me, that tends not to get riled up by much, can get so frustrated by something that people enjoy, but it's not entertainment, it's a sedative masquerading as something worthwhile.

[Stryke 9]

You'd have a hard time ridding the world of them, they're much the same portion that believes every speech that comes out of the White House and that commercials really work on.

[01010]

Sadly it seems that idiots are a lot more prolific in breeding than the reasonably more educated masses.

[Stryke 9]

Who says intelligence is genetic? It at least appears to be more of a matter of using what you have properly than having a lot. Genius also seems to involve effort and dedication to a single goal or subject, and that is the kicker. Who wants to exert themselves, when you can work on putting an ass-groove in the couch?

Look at the way things are promoted today. Leisure and convenience are vaunted as the highest goods, the things to which all aspire. After watching a couple decades of ads for things that'll peel carrots for you, make it easier to do your work, things that will aid you in taking a ****, who'd be interested in anything that sounded difficult or complicated? We're in an idiot-proof culture, and that inevitably lets the culture become that of idiots.

[01010]

I agree with the intelligence not being genetic, though it's fair to say that a more intelligent parent is going to try to raise their child to have some degree of intellect. I know my parents read to me from an early age and I attribute this to my confidence with the English language. I know I'd try my hardest not to let my child (if that were the case) be another idiot too, but sometimes they just are (like my brother, the biggest waste of space I've ever known) and there isn't a lot you can do, other than trying to teach them the difference between right and wrong (something fundamental, but it's shocking the amount of parents I've seen that neglect it).

I couldn't agree more about the conveniences too, sure it IS nice to have a job and sometimes it's nice to buy something to make life a bit more fun, but the extents of laziness that people have reached now are ridiculous. Do you really NEED to drive around the corner just to go to the shop and back in broad daylight?

I personally believe that the human race have reached this far THROUGH complication and difficulty because it drove the need to become more intelligent, as they say "Necessity is the mother of invention", unfortunately it seems we've reached a point where we're stagnating.

[Devils_Hitman]

I hate how america litery takes over everything, culture, land, resorces.

Many countries are being "invaded" by force, sold weapons, and wost of all culture is being destroyed.

Americans are just brittish convicts, and not much has changed.

Power, is allways in the hands of people who abuse it. The american government, gorge bush, (wtf!!) and others.

They'll literary destroy the world in the next 50 years.
just wait.

I realise that there are many good people in america, so i do not direct this at you.

[01010]

I thought this had moved on from America bashing now?

I also thought that the Aussies were the convicts and the Yanks were the Puritans. Leaving us pure and wholesome Church of Englanders (ha!) with a whole island that we could run around and divorce whomever we like on.

[Stryke 9]

Um... Masachusetts was Puritans, Georgia was convicts, basically everywhere else were corporations. Except for Pennsylvania, which was the colonial-era equivalent of hippies. Guess which area was first to stop being some hickish backwater.

[01010]

Fair enough, don't really know much about American history and it was never even looked at in school. My guess is the hippy one