Irish police remove blonde child from Roma family

[raging moderate]

92. Everyone else's ancestors once belonged to a tightly-knit pre-industrial culture.

Updating one's culture to fit into the twenty-first century can be quite painful, but in the era ahead, when there will be so many more human beings, we really will need to learn to understand each other and cooperate with each other if we are to survive. Many ancestral groups did lose some valuable traits and customs. Actually, 100% of all human beings on this planet are descended from such groups, and many of them were kicked from pillar to post for hundreds or thousands of years. This is true even of groups you don't suspect, such as the English and the Scots, only longer ago. Perhaps that is why some of them are acting so bullheaded, although really I do think it is high time they got over it already. When you open up a little, there are some wonderful advantages to be gained, and sometimes you can learn new skills that enhance your culture and maybe you have skills and knowledge that the rest of us need to learn. And, as the Polish, Native Americans, Israelis, Welsh, and Irish have shown, it is possible to go back and retrieve valuable parts of one's culture, including language and social structure. What if you could just agree to expand your cooperation a little with the outside world, in exchange for certain guarantees of safety and respect to be given to you?

Of course, the rest of us should strive to understand that this suggestion must be terrifying, if, like the Roma, you are part of a group that has been targeted a number of times for extermination, in Asia and in Europe, most notably by the Nazis, and sometimes persecuted in America as well. Be comforted, Roma, you are not alone in this experience. Can you see how you could actually be getting tricked into helping vicious people such as child rapists without even realizing it? Some of us outside have been developing these cooperative verification systems to thwart these psychopaths. Who knows, you may have unique skills that could really help us to safeguard everybody's children. Being visible can mean that you will find out you have many more secret sympathers and admirers than you ever dreamed possible. And not just for superficial things like cute clothes and fancy dances, but for deeper things such as the social networks that have been described recently and the ingenuity, courage, and perceptiveness that have been observed even when you guys thought nobody else was noticing you. You are not really as invisible as you think you are, and, if you are having trouble or facing persecution, maybe these friends could help?