When Menacians Meet Enderlendians
The scene is set in a virtual world. Mister A comes from a country called Menace, and Mister B comes from a country named Enderlenden. One day they accidentially meet in a third country of in this virtual world. They know nothing about eachother except from what countries they are. They speak different native languages, but fortunately the two of them learned the same second language at school. Although they do not speak this language well any more, they try to talk with eachother. After chatting a bit, Mister A suddenly switches the topic to politics.
Mister A: By the way, is it true that you Enderlendians want to annect the city of Numbourgh and the surrounding area, which belongs to our country?
Mister B: Hmmmm...? Who gave you this idea, I have never heard about it!
Mister A: Come on! Sure you know it! I read about it in a Menacian quality newspaper. It says that a huge majority of your population pursue this aim, and your government is already secretly recruting soldiers and building weapons to do so!
Mister B: What? But that cannot be the case! We are a peace-loving folk.
Mister A: You ain't! Remember the Great War when your troops came to conquer us?
Mister B: But that already happened 200 years ago. It has nothing to do with the attitude of our politicians and people today. Besides, we did not have a democratic government then. The king who ruled the country wanted to expand his power and therefore without our people's agreement, he...
Mister A: No! I don't believe you! You all supported your king, just like you support your fascist government now. It is well-known to us Menacians that you Enderlendians are warlike people. When your king ruled 200 years ago short before the Great War, Numbourgh belonged to Enderlenden although the majority of its population was of Menacian descent. It was only justice that you lost the war and the area of Numbourgh became a part of our empire. We rebuilt the country which had so badly gone to rack and ruin while you had ruled there. We founded schools, revived economy and so on. That you now want to take our land away again just shows that your attitude has not changed for these 200 years, you bastards!
Mister B: Sorry, but I have to disagree! You accuse us of having ruined the area of Numbourgh? That is the worst accusation I have ever heard! On the contrary, we were the ones who brought some civilization in this piece of land. Look what Numbourgh was like under our rule and how dilapidated everything is now that it belongs to your country! Besides, the majority of Numbourgh's population may have been of Menacian descent, okay, but they all spoke our Enderlendian language and regarded themselves as part of our culture! That is much more important! They did not like at all that you annected the city and the surrounding country!
Mister A: OKAY! That was all I wanted to hear! Now I know that after all, what they wrote in the newspaper about the Enderlandian people was really right. You damned nationalists! Of course you want to annect our beautiful Numbourgh. But you will not get it for free. We will not only defend ourselves but attack you before you can attack us and in this way spread OUR culture and OUR language!
They start fighting against eachother. Fortunately, after a few seconds the police arrive and manage to separate them. They are taken to a police headquarter, from where they are released again after paying a fine. Then they leave the country to return to their own homes.
The two men never saw eachother after this incident. However, they kept their prejudices against the other nation till the end of their lives.
After returning home, Mister A immediately wrote a letter to the newspaper he was subscribed to. He talked about his conversation with the Enderlendenian, a bit exaggaratedly of course. The newspaper published the letter in its next issue because it exactly fit their political attitude.
At the same time Mister B joined a political party which blamed the Menacians for all the economic and political problems the country had. Since Enderlendenian suffered from a big economic crisis at that time and the political basis was not stable, people with lower education were easily attracted by such radical parties. One day, the party Mister B had joined was voted for by the majority of the population in the parlamentary elections.
Now the anti-Enderlendanian parties in Menace seemed their theories proved, and they also gained many supporters. Soon they became in power and started a preventive war against the other country, in which millions of people were killed and in which cities, economy and cultural buildings were destroyed. After the war peace was officially restored, but still the two peoples did not find eachother more likeable than it had been in the past, and secretly many of them wished the war to continue in order to finally beat the other country.
This was a very simplified story about something that happened many times in the past and still happens today in some parts of the world - fortunately not in Europe.
However, although we have democratic governments and the individual countries get on well with eachother, there are still some countries, politicians and 'normal' people who think that their own language, culture or country is superior to the others. Often do they not give full expression to their actual ideas, but some even dare to summon their fellow-countrymen to aggressively use their language in front of people from other countries or try to spread their culture.
I think this is just the opposite of the process which Europe is in at the moment, namely uniting. A united Europe with a single, democratic government, a single language, and a single culture would be the best way to prohibit wars in its inside.
The international demoscene shows that people from all over the world can get on very well, using a single language everyone knows. Nobody in the scene cares where you come from, how you look like or what you believe in. Often we do not even know that! Why can't it be like this in the whole world?
One day, mankind will probably have to unite anyway to survive. If intelligent life exists on other planets than earth, too, we might meet these creatures in the remote future. We do not know how they will behave. Maybe they will be hostile. Then mankind will have big problems if it still deals with all its little internal quarrels.
Why cannot we all unite, use only one language and have one culture?
- adok^hugi
"the fastest way to rotate a bitmap is to rotate it by 360 degrees"