John Cleese criticised for saying London no longer an English city - Sensationalist Headlines

The parable of the cave tells us that if people only know a certain truth, then anything beyond that isn't something they could choose. Essentially, when you're looking at someones experience in their culture, it would be fair to say that you can't talk about a lot of cultures without looking at various parts of the structure. I think you'd be hard pressed to argue that any low "class" person in any given society across history has had a bad time of things. Though I never stated countries like Canada or the US are better(Because I didn't, and I'm not going to) because they aren't flatly "better" or "worse". They're different, and they have different expenses on different parts of the society with in it. There are clear and present issues in countries like India and China with their culture, and they actively work to better it and change it and move away from some more antiquated traditions. They aren't always succesful, and I don't think it's an indictment of a culture to point this shit out. The basic problem that this argument stems from, is that you, despite your talk about anthropology, seem to have trouble with anyone studying cultures, and taking away personal value judgements based on their own experiences. For instance, there are a great deal of ex-pat Koreans living in my city. I know many of them quite well. Most, if not all of them, would say they prefer many aspects of the experience of life here more. Are they not able to make a value judgement on "our" culture? Are we not able to exchange thoughts or value judgements on this? I don't think Canada's doing all that well, so trying to tarnish my pride in my country isn't going to work for your argument. I simply don't care. Most cultures have amazing elements to them. And most cultures have fucking terrible elements to them. Noticing this, and knowing this, doesn't make someone racist, unlearned, or against anthropology. Jesus.

My points questioning people's motivations when 'criticizing' other cultures in this "my culture better than your culture' aren't based on the idea that you cannot divorce criticism of culture from criticism of the people, in principle you could, but in the context of the meaningless broadstroke, near jingoistic claim that you know some other culture is "worse" than yours, I'm raising an eyebrow at they idea that people are. But that's really not my main point here, my main point here is that you cannot understand a culture unless you understand the experiences of the people in it, and thus the claim that you could know an entire culture's sum merits and demerits as an armchair anthropologist without interacting with anyone within it is utterly contrary to the field of anthropology and how its practiced. Even in a person's entire lifetime of research they could only come to know a portion of a given culture.

To bring it back to where this started: Cleese said it's ok to have a cultural preference, that means a culture you prefer subjectively. You don't need a god damn PhD in anthropology to have a preference, and having one doesn't make you racist. There, that was easy wasn't it? I think this argument started because Mort made the mistake of conflating a subjective opinion with a broad, objective judgement, backed up by years of research and expertise. If that's even possible to do.

Yeah I don't really take that much issue with Cleese's comments (though his reasoning about genital mutilation seems pretty flimsy when he ignores very similar Western practices that, while less common in the UK than in North America is quite legal and absolutely does happen), I can give benefit of the doubt to someone simply saying the prefer some culture to another. I mean I'd prefer to live in my culture than in most middle eastern countries, sure. My values have been shaped by my culture and I prefer being somewhere that those values are represented. I do wholeheartedly disagree with anybody who thinks that makes one culture superior to another though.

what a load of wank. who is responsible for this image. veggie fried? in birmingham? croissants here in leeds? it's sweaty sausage sarnies as far as the eye can see. maybe a full english if you're feeling a bit extra.

I saw a video on youtube not long ago, and almost every comment. thousands and thousands of them, said more or less the same thing about how England isn't England and it's all immigrants or muslims. Just... SO MANY comments. I'd swear it was just a bot army but the comments aren't identical. It's super weird