so i’m back in the u.k.
a 6 day sojourn in
italy
germany
the netherlands
belgium
and france
has ended. and now i’m back in the good old u.k.
in paris i had the opportunity to watch 30 channels of islamic/arabic television. the hotel where we were staying in paris has a lot of guests from the arabic world, so i’ve had the opportunity to watch an excessive amount of arab television.
and here’s my report…
a-they love western style graphics. i saw tons and tons of shows that started with cnn/abc/etc style news graphics.
b-they love comedy. lots and lots of comedy. i have no idea if it was actually funny or not, cos i couldn’t understand what they were saying. it looked funny, though.
c-drama. lots of arab dramas. lots of stern looking dramatic men and troubled dramatic women. stern. troubled. drama.
d-talking. the arab/islamic world seems to be in love with talking. even more so than we western infidels.
so, there’s my report. it reminded me, simply, that we’re all human. there really is no divide between a shop owner in qatar and a shop owner in omaha. they both like being entertained. they both want good things for their children. they both want to feel good about their place in society.
it was encouraging to spend hours watching arab/islamic tv and to realize that as humans there are more things that unite us than that keep us seperated (to quote the offspring).
the world is really only about 2 centimeters away from solidarity and unity if only we’d all stop being so fucking stupid.
we’re all humans. we all laugh and cry and we all act like idiots. all of this nonsense about religious and political differences is, and i don’t mean this in a disrespectful and/or cavalier way, foolishness.
we’re people. people with the same interests. people interested in life and love and culture and our children and music and art and all of the other things that define the human condition. someone in the sudan might want to listen to different music than someone in belfast, but they’re looking for the same thing, even if the music is different.
so, come on, can’t we just admit that all of our parochial and provincial differences are just a destructive waste of time?
i know, i’m a simpleton. but maybe the simpletons will save the world by pointing out that our wars are predicated upon provincial stupidity and that our hatreds are groundless and that our commonalities are so much stronger than our intrinsic discrepancies.
just my opinion.
let’s all get along, ok?
sincerely,
moby the simpleton
