FOR A WRITTEN CONSTITUTION TO MAKE OUR SYSTEM SANE AGAIN

20 November 2023

Do the 1st and 2nd generation immigrants in Edinburgh feel they "belong", or is there growing ethnic conflict in Edinburgh? How do native Edinburghers feel about immigration to their city?

START WITH A SURVEY

We could begin to collect some data on this question by conducting a social survey. Here roughly are some questions to kick off with.

1. Are some neighbourhoods ghettoised?

2. Is there a recent history of gang violence in Edinburgh? Is this down to immigrants?

3. Is there a pb of inequality in Edinburgh? 

4. Are the welfare services working effectively to integrate arrivals into the language and culture? 

5. If there's trouble, do police and social services have advance information? 

6. Is there a pb with resources for meeting immigrants' special needs? 

7. Has privatisation or cutbacks slowed any efforts to integrate these new arrivals?

8. Do you feel safe and free, like before mass immigration began? (Need to work on this question... )

CONCLUSIONS

Let's start at the end.

I think the authorities considered immigration a good way to increase their share of the vote and increase the power of the country (= population x wealth) and thus their ascent and their personal power; they considered helping refugees a humane act; they believed - still do - in the innate goodness of mankind and the power of the Liberal melting pot to convert and integrate all people from all over, irrespective of culture, with added value for the nation as a result.

Well that's the positives.

Soon, we'll be seeing these well organised minority groups infiltrating into the tentacles of government itself .. well they already have done in Edinburgh's Labour party....to pursue and impose their minority beliefs.

HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

I understand the demographic arguments for the decisions of successive govt.s, but they didn't understand the limits of toleration nor the costs nor the risks of their social engineering experiments. They didn't act in the real whole interests of their existing electorates, instead they saw only economic benefits, and not just for "society at large" (ie for themselves). 

How did this happen? That's easy to answer. There is no mechanism to make politicians accountable for longer-term costs or risks that materialise. 

No thought need be given to Edinburgh's future as a people-with-a-past, and a certain integrity, and coherence, and homogeneity. Instead, authorities seem to make efforts to wipe the past clean or manipulate us by distracting attention with trivial issues. With the result that native peoples have no benchmark and become disorientated. 

No thought is given to the ability of native populations to absorb change. No pedal for braking or dosing or buffering change, no chance to take account of the unpredictable side effects of change, manage the risks, the potential spinoffs and downsides.... it's the usual story I'm afraid of unaccountable elites who don't have to live in the buildings they design.

There are no constitutional legal levers on policy. No founding-father brakes. No controls. Nothing to contain or limit excess. This looks like wild hubris leading to our nemesis as a civilisation.

AN EXAMPLE OF A CONSTITUTIONAL BRAKE

The EU, as an example of what a brake looks like, has the 60-3 rule. This rule stops gov.t spending from exceeding tax income by more than 3%. The shortfall comes from borrowing. Public debt is limited by this rule to 60% of GDP. 60-3 - well it's true it is remembered to be forgotten. 

Those numbers are not just arbitrary, they are the results of extensive detailed studies by historians and economists. Beyond 60% the excess money borrowed and injected into the economy does not return the investment in full. Go beyond those limits and you are in trouble, benefits will be dwarfed by costs, interest costs may crowd out running expenses in the competition for tax money. We are in trouble today as a result of "profligacy", but cannot take austerity. 

Point being that uncontrolled immigration is a destabiliser just as is uncontrolled spending.

ROOT CAUSES

It is always necessary to get beyond the rhetoric, to understanding the underlying deep-down ground-in root causes. 

Just like there is no fiscal control brake on politicians spending, so there is no cultural brake on immigration policy. There are simply no brakes on the half-baked ideas and ambitions of these mediocre and self-interested politicians. No brakes means nothing to control lunatic policy. 

Even the very idea of a brake doesn't exist in the UK, still less a mechanism to control the behaviour of elected officials outside the urns. 

The UK doesn't have a Constution or any way to enact controls on the policies of future govt.s, other than through the ballot box. Instead we have cutbacks and deregulation at home, leaving - in the case of unmanaged immigration - the way open for gangs and networks to take over and to recruit a membership from the very institutions like schools and welfare that are supposed to deliver care to the community. 

And we have a focus on foreign wars that divert our resources and our attention from private-sector to public-sector projects. Public-sector projects that, other than infrastructure, bring no benefit, instead that stifle common sense and private initiative.

RESULTS

So in short we believe in innate goodness and democracy (the powet of the people) and we use these tools to control people who work against our interests by using threats and violence and money. 

Under-resourced, the authorities cannot keep up with the pace of change and are left running an ambulance service of police action and legal punishment, rather than taking hold of the problem with policy controls and preventive measures. Measures especially for getting the children of 1st and 2nd gen immigrants through to finishing their sixth-form in schools and going on to quality universities, of which Edinburgh once had many.

DESIRED OUTCOMES

To continue the survey...The main thing is do you feel safe, happy and free and are you confident in Edinburgh's future? 

We would like immigrant communities to contribute to the economy and welfare of native residents of Edinburgh. After all, mmigrant groups might bring diverse skills, traditions, and an ability to empathise with and care for local communities, fostering a rich and supportive environment for all, including those residents with a memory of how things were. (Frankly speaking, this forlorn hope is an oblique way of saying we, as a civilisation, are f'ed.)

PERSPECTIVE

We seek to keep a perspective on this problem and not feel intimidated by all the foreign faces in the local cafe! 

Because immigration is only one of the problems facing the country, alas: internal unrest from excessive immigration and unrest between the cultures is one problem. There are also threats of extinction of our civilization from outside ie from foreign wars. And there is also the paralysis of our whole system and the risk of economic collapse from the debt mountain. 

(I'll have to rewrite the end of this article on note of encouragement.)

THE UNITED SELF

2 Aug 2022

1. Introduction

- The video "Personality, Modernity, and the Storied Self" explores the evolution of self and identity in modern times.

- Modernity, especially in the West, includes capitalism, markets, democracy, nation-states, and the dominance of science and technology.

2. Characteristics of Modern Western Peoples

- Scepticism Towards Tradition: Preference for data-driven approaches over traditional religious or authoritative beliefs.

- Coherent Self: Challenges in maintaining a consistent sense of self across different times and contexts, particularly in diverse societies.

- Emphasis on Uniqueness: Balancing the desire to be unique with the need for connection.

3. Six Characteristics of the Modern Self

- Work in Progress: The self is viewed as an ongoing project, continually improving and adapting.

- Agency: Individuals now have the responsibility to define their own identities and roles, unlike pre-modern times.

- Multi-layered and Deep: Modern individuals juggle multiple, overlapping roles, leading to a complex self-discovery process.

- Self-Development: Lifelong process involving various phases and evolving roles, requiring continual self-adaptation.

- Coherence: Maintaining a coherent narrative across different life phases to construct a unified identity.

- Connection and Pure Relationship: Striving for authentic, self-actualising relationships that fulfill personal needs and desires.

4. Conclusion

- The modern self is a project of self-discovery, adaptation, and improvement.

- It involves seeking uniqueness, connectedness, and authenticity through various life stages and relationships.

Glossary of Terms:

- Modernity: The quality or condition of being modern, characterized by changes brought about by the industrial revolution and beyond.

- Self-actualisation: The realisation or fulfillment of one's talents and potentialities, considered as a drive or need present in everyone.

References:

1. "Personality, Modernity, and the Storied Self," YouTube, August 2022.

2. "Impact of Modernity on Identity," Sociological Review.

Reading

self and identity - a biography of our self - who we are - our identity

https://youtu.be/ZD52aZ5Jh7A

"personality modernity and the storied self"

modern

modernity means modern times. Especially in the West ("The West" by this time in the 21st century includes many non Western countries like South Korea or Japan, according to the following framework...).

we have to make a difference between pre modern or pre-industrial times and times since the industrial revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries.

what makes our time "modern" is: capitalism, markets, democracy, the nation-state, the dominance of Science and Technology.

drivers

and we should look at social, political and economic changes as causing, driving, the changes to our idea of self, of who we are.

characteristics of peoples living in modern Western times

1. a scepticism towards religion and other traditional sources of authority and a preference instead for a data-driven approach based on science, reasoning, objectivity, evidence, positivism etc ... a belief that if we take an evidence-based approach this will lead to improvement in our world

2. difficulty in keeping a coherent sense of one's modern self across the past, present and future and across even yesterday compared to today or tomorrow. Sense of self -read "who we are", "identity".

also keeping up that coherence or integrity across the different roles and contexts and situations that we operate in. Transactional view of who we are - we are what we do.

it's especially challenging for people living in societies with a lot of diversity or to put it another way, a low homogeneity.

For example, societies with different ethnic and religious mixes.

3. there's also more emphasis on our uniqueness rather than on conformity with the tribe or group and this is challenging because at the same time as we seek to be different we also seek to remain connected.

Six characteristics of the modern self

1. work in progress. we are all a work in progress, we are a project we are working on, the "I" is forever improving a "Me". it can be thought of as a reflexive project reflexive because we are turned towards our self we are changing our self.

this is modern because compare with pre modern times where a person was given a role or a position or a post and told to get on with it. they were not responsible for creating a unique self or innovating and updating a persona.

2. Agency. in pre-modern times it was the king, or the church or mosque, or the tribe that assigned us a role; but today, we have to work out our own identity and roles in a more day-to-day context of family and work and friends.

3. multi-layered and deep. compare the simple role that Hindu people in Bali have and live by, compare that with the situation in which modern man or woman find themselves. A modern person has multiple roles and overlapping roles all depending on the context and the person and so on and this complexity creates a challenge to know who we are and is why many people are forever on a voyage of self-discovery and why self-help groups are so popular

so before it was the church or mosque that was a moral authority, but these days, in the absence of that moral authority, it is us, we ourselves, who decide our own beliefs and values and and finally are our own identity and it is the search for this authentic identity that drives the projects to modernise ourselves

4. self development. we saw in the points above that the self is a project, for which we are responsible, and this project of ours is a voyage of self-discovery, adaption and improvement - a work in progress. now consider this as a series of projects, over the longer life that we live.

At the start of the 20th century, the average lifespan was maybe 50 years, but by the end it had reached 75 years and splits into different phases.

We go through different phases in that time span and so we have evolving roles and contexts and thus projects with different objectives for our self, as we mature and develop.

5. Coherence. we go from childhood to adolescence to young adulthood to middle age to old age or maybe more phases than that ("the seven ages of man") and we have different roles and contexts to adapt to that we also look for a coherence across all those phases so that we have a story to tell, a narrative, which stitches everything together and brings us one coherent picture of who we are.

this coherent narrative is our auto-biography and it's really important, this sense of coherence across the different phases of our life, because it's how we construct our idea of who we are, in other words our identity, our sense of self

6 connection and the "pure relationship". the 6th and final characteristic of modern selves is that two separate selves can connect to each other to form what we all look for, which is a pure or perfect relationship, in terms of connectedness, love and intimacy.

Modern love is not something dictated to us by our parents or arranged by the group or determined by the church or mosque, it is something we choose for ourselves in order to fulfil our deepest needs and desires, needs and desires that we have defined and which are part of our uniqueness.

the two persons, each true and authentic to themself, have a relationship which is honest and open and flexible and negotiable between the two of them. The focus is on both parties achieving what you might call self-actualisation or self-transcendence. Of course, anyone who's been in a modern romantic relationship knows that this is a pure fiction! ... but nonetheless it is an ideal and a vision that we can aim for.

Summary. we saw in the points above that the self is a project about constructing our sense of identity, who we are. We are responsible for this project. It is a voyage of self-discovery, adaption and improvement - a work in progress seeking uniqueness, connectedness and authenticity. It is a series of projects, over the longer life that we live. Like ying and yang, we seek union with another like-minded soul.