Atheism
Politics
Memes
Mind
Matters
Random
Interact
Feedback
Links
Forum
Home
The Race Issue
Sustainable Development
Astrology is Bunk
Do you have a right to live as your ancestors have? Many French farmers seem to think that, we owe them their traditional living. Should this extend as far as nomads? And what about traditional thieves? Do the Danes have the right to set sail across the North Sea and raid the East coast of England as their exalted ancestors have done for centuries? This ancestral right line is obviously a very flawed argument. Most people would not agree that head-hunters and cannibals have a right to continue to live as their ancestors have done, but what about lion-killing macho posers of the Serengeti, Yorkshire miners and travelling horse thieves? Or Sicilian gangsters and all those thousands of "warriors" who sponge off the food preparing work of their wives and spend their days leaning on a spear? There is no consistent line that anybody can take on this one. The best that can be done is to see if the lifestyle of the "traditional people" in question actually imposes any burdens on the general society. To me this test is one that gypsies fail. They may have been parasitically living off the settled community for years but that is no reason to let them continue to do so in perpetuity.
There are two widespread notions about gypsies
Some people seem to think that agreeing with one stereotype must mean the other one is wrong. Why? There is no logical contradiction. Both seem to be true. |
  |
Many people in western capitalist societies seem to subscribe to the noble savage theory. I think the argument is something like this: our capitalist system is obviously selfish and unsustainable, any other system must be the opposite and therefore morally superior to our own (pity we are addicted to our consumption patterns, ah to be a gypsy living in harmony with the land.) So the middle class liberals uphold the right of the traveller to travel and camp on any bit of useless derelict land far away from where they live. The fact is that gypsies are no more in harmony with the land than anybody who can get away with taking more than their fair share and giving nothing back. Very few traditional people are anything like as benign an influence on the environment that us guilt ridden westerners would see them as. They generally do less damage than we do because they haven't got as good technology to damage the environment as we have. But in the case of the gypsies even that is not the case. They own plenty of particularly old and dirty internal combustion engine powered devices that they operate with no regard to any laws on emissions, tax or insurance. And often without the original owners full approval either.
Why is there this problem with gypsies and liberal ethics and modern societies? To my mind it is all due to there not being the social contract that liberalism supposedly is based upon. Gypsies were never part of any social contract, they never gave up freedoms in return for political power, they never traded anything with the rest of society. They claim the right to live on common land, but who does that land belong to? Everybody? No. To the commoners. The settled members of the community around it. Common land is not there for some Afghan herdsman to graze his goats on or for the Russian army to practice tank manoeuvres on. It belongs to the commoners. Not to everyone who might want to use it. Gypsies have used such land in the past and have not been stopped, but that should not give them rights in perpetuity. If the law says that it does then the law should be changed. Gypsies have been outsiders living within the boundaries of another state. This is not a tenable position. It does not work. Experience has shown that a spiral of crime and fear of crime has alienated the gypsy community from the settled community. There is no way that the two can peacefully coexist. The temptation to trespass, evade all tax and other liabilities then steal and then move on is just too strong. It is the behaviour that is expected of travellers and it is easier and more rewarding than living within the law.
The time has come to outlaw the travelling way of life. This is nothing to do with ethnicity and everything to do with lifestyle. Having a fixed address is the first part of being part of a modern state. Having somewhere to call home, to defend and keep clean. Having somewhere to be found. Being responsible and accountable. A traveller is only accountable to those who can catch him, that is not sufficient.
To be accountable is to be vulnerable to that playground threat "I know where you live."
I would like to extend this point further to cover other traditional ways of living in other parts of the world. Some alternative lifestyles are consistent with modern society and concern for the global environment, some are not. Most hunter-gatherers are still tenable where they survive but only if they are in tune with their neighbours. Warrior is not a legitimate career choice any more than gangster is. Inter-tribal warfare might be traditional but that is not the same thing as acceptable. Nomadic people must be held to account for all the land they use. Just because raising goats is the only way a particular tribe know how to survive does not mean they are right to do it. Personal survival is one thing, it gives people the right to take drastic defensive action, but there is no such equivalent right to defend a traditional lifestyle. Nobody need be in the situation that they have to choose between starvation and ecological destruction.