I'm sick of constantly hearing people moan about contemporary Western culture as if it's some kind of terrible aberration. Both lefties and righties constantly love to voice their disdain for modern Western life.
But I love living in the West.
I love the sex, drugs, and violence we see on TV, films, and video games. I love being able to go out and get wasted. I love the fact certain sections of society go on nights out in barely any clothes so they can get pissed up, find a mate, then go home and rut the night away, just like wild, dirty animals. I love the fact it's acceptable for me to have sex with either gender, and to never get married. I love seeing graffiti everywhere and anywhere, even if its just crappy scribbles, because it gives me a sense of the wealth of lives unknown and living on the fringes of society. I love the existence pornography, depraved rap lyrics, strip clubs and gay bars. I love the incredible variety of music, film, and art that continues to flourish. I love the fact and I have access to so much first class, unadulterated, theater, classical music, opera, stand-up comedy, and art. I love the incredible amount of festivals there are. I love that people get together for illegal raves to take drugs and listen to massive soundsystems in some field in the countryside. I love that swingers exist. I love all the different sub-cultures. I love getting fast food at two in the morning. I even love Disney films.
I'm not proud of this culture, that would be feeble. I just very much enjoy living in it and observing it, and would hate it to ever become more puritanical or contrived. I completely acknowledge the fact there are problems with it. But most of these problems are hardly just symptoms of contemporary Western culture.
I find a lot of Eastern culture, philosophy and religion to be fascinating and very important, and would even consider myself as effectively a contemplative Taoist. And I love the diversity of Asian and African influences that exist within Western culture.
But I'm sick of being forced to 'respect' a religion which hates many of the things I love. Most Muslims think it's perfectly OK to have disdain for Western culture, and the reason they think this is because rubbishing Western culture hasn't only become acceptable, it's become respectable. But if you rubbish their culture you are deemed an 'Islamophobe' or a 'bigot'.
Well I'm sorry but I love Western culture. Most things that Muslims or other religions freaks think is 'depraved' in contemporary Western culture are things which I consider to be wonderful.
I don't think this is something most Muslims actually understand. I think most Muslims think that everyone in the West hates modern Western culture, whether they be Daily Mail or Guardian readers, and so they don't see the hypocrisy when they get angry at those who criticize Islamic culture, but see no problem with criticizing Western culture.
And you can hardly blame them. The Daily Mail is a constant stream of hatred for the sex and violence in our media, pornography, for drugs or sub-cultures, or for what people do when the sun goes down, as well as totally sensationalizing the amount of crime in our society. And on the other side The Guardian is a constant stream of hatred for sexualized imagery in the media, aspects of youth culture, pop music lyrics, consumerism, capitalism, strip clubs, pornography, combat sports, and even Thomas the Tank Engine.
So yeh, I guess I'm a heretic. But hopefully I'm not the only one.