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Hey dudes,

thought I’d kick start this Article Submit site with a poll and test it out.

The poll relates to my travel Europe pages and it’s the first interesting poll I could think of. You can be as silly and untruthful with your answers as you like and feel free to add goofy comments at the bottom of the page. I’m just testing it out, but it’s fun too.

My first question:

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I believe it does because all the racism I run into while traveling seems to be from local geeks who feel somehow threatened by my foreign presence and who do not seem like the type to travel much at all. And just to add text to this page (for search engine optimization reasons) I’ll go into my theory what qualities in a person create racism. You can skip this reading if you do not have time and just want to jump to the next poll below.

While lying in a caravan truck most of my time by myself and with my laptop on my belly, I tend to have ample opportunity to reflect than when I was living in Prague, where I would constantly receive smses and emails from horrible friends inviting me for beers and what not.

I believe racism is created at an early stage in life when children are subjected to the pressures of school life, parents, and society in general. The pressures I’m talking about is the pressure to conform. Especially among young children at school. If you do not wear a Benetton sweatshirt and the right brand names of pretty well everything you wear, and do not act in a certain way, you are in risk of being branded an outsider and ridiculed. Having been born in the Czech Republic and raised by Czech parents (who naturally tried to indoctrinate me with their culture, against the culture I was growing up in), even though I moved to Canada before the age of four and to a country which is generally tolerant of foreigners (where only 22% of Canadians are considered “real”, fourth-or-more-generation Canadians), I felt rather displaced my entire life. A bit of an odd outsider, even though I speak with zero accent and my mannerisms are fully Canadian. When I moved back to the Czech Republic at the age of 30, everything suddenly seemed like home and familiar to me. Not sure if it is because of genetics or whatever indoctrination my parents succeeded at, but it was definitely nice to feel in place. Or perhaps it was because most of the people I hung out with were adventurous expats who moved to Czech shortly after the fall of communism, and who were like-minded people not so interested in settling down and producing babies as soon as they graduated from high school, like many of the dorks we left behind when escaping to and in search of something fresh and captivating.

In any case, no matter how displaced I may have felt while growing up in Canada, it was my nature, being the rebel that I am, to battle every attempted indoctrination of my parents or the social pressure of my peers. In short, I had a f-u attitude and I stuck to my guns like a homeless bum holds onto his only blanket.

But now in hindsight, I can see that most people simply are not the adamant individualist I am, seem like weak cowards to me, and by their ready indoctrination to conform to the accepted “standard” of whatever hick town they grow up in, I see that the forced compromise of who they really are has killed something inside them such that they naturally develop envy when they see someone who basically does whatever the crap they want to and who is not swayed by the incapacitated cows – the masses.

And since they have sacrificed their very soul and individuality and learned to mimic the behaviours of those around them or what they see on the dummy box (TV), and because of their never-ending and perpetually ingrained fear of becoming outcasts in their fragile social structure, they naturally envy and/or resent someone who does not fit the mould to which they have compromised their very selves. Seeing someone who seems happy to go through life without having to make such serious and deeply internal compromises would naturally swell such envy until it quickly becomes a despised hatred, and voila, we have racism. Racism even against those who look exactly the same but who simply choose to look or behave different than the “norm”, whatever that may be. Xenophobia and racism are the same.

Humans, after all, are a social animal who have survived the millennia by working together against their more powerful animal counterparts. After all, if it wasn’t for our cooperation, intelligence, language and the dexterity of our thumb which allows us to create and wield tools, we stand practically no chance against any other animal. Anyway, I consider this natural and quick conformity a weakness of the masses, and while traveling around the world the last few years, I have learned that people are pretty well EXACTLY the same everywhere: you have assholes, good, bad, charitable, funny etc. people everywhere. You can totally remove the outside shell and you will find exactly the same types of character everywhere you go – the dum redneck hick, the sociable comedian… you name it.

I believe that if people were to travel more they would eventually understand that people from all over the world are the same. On the other hand, many of those who travel can afford it, and many times might find themselves locked behind the brass bars of a five star hotel, lounging in their pool, frequenting the expensive tourist restaurants, and never venturing down those shady and dirtier streets where the real locals abide. The only locals they might come across are employees at the fancy hotels who are quite glad to have a good job and would never reveal anything personable about themselves. And hence this poll. What do you think? I guess there are too few nut-heads like myself who would move into a tin can on wheels and ONLY frequent the shady and dirtier streets where the real and genuine people abide.

My second poll:

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No comments from this peanut gallery but looking forward to reading yours!