Why can't we all just get along?

I got a wedding invite today. It served to show what a pedant I am. In life I hate uncertainty. I can’t gamble because of it. There may be a 99.9% chance that one thing will happen, but to my mind that doesn’t constitute a guarantee. I devote my time to contemplating the outcome of the 0.01% probability.

Ambiguity is fine in the right place. After all, art is supposed to be open to interpretation. Uncertainty, however, has no place in anything instructional, and a wedding invite certainly falls into that category. I spent ages trying to work out whether I’d been invited to the whole day or just the evening. It just wasn’t at all clear. I thought I was invited to everything, but I wasn’t 100% sure. It was only after conferring with other invitees that I finally reached a conclusion.

I’m actually rather fortunate to be suffering from the effects of anxiety at the moment. I suspect that the accompanying tightening of my throat is the only thing protecting my body from all the itinerant germs that are spreading throughout the house.

I haven’t suffered from anxiety for some months now. It’s odd that as soon as I decide not to be depressed and take action to address that issue, I start to suffer from the opposite problem. I suspect I’m feeling anxious about the difficulties that lie ahead. With depression, there is no progression, no future, only the pain of the present. With anxiety there is worry and fear about what may or may not come. Anxiety is panic of living, depression comforting embrace of death.

I started looking for a new job today, but there’s little about. I’ve maintained for a while that there is, in a lot of job advertisements, a number of subtle, almost clandestine hints that people who are not of ethnic minorities will have less chance of getting the job. At least that’s how I’d interpret the statement “We are particularly interested in applicant form ethnic minorities.”

Whether there is any actual discrimination going on (The term “positive discrimination” is, after all, an oxymoron. The job should go to whomever is most suited regardless of skin colour, sexuality or whatever) is, of course debatable. My point of view could just be a result of my own insecurities. It’s just my interpretation of a carelessly ambiguous statement. I am after all, a depressive, and I’m bound to think that the world is against me. I’m so frequently at odds with it I seldom see things any other way.

However, with the advert I stumbled upon last night, there was no room for interpretation. The advert was for a position at a company specialising in routing low cost calls to Poland. Now, I’ll leave the debate about European Union expansion into Eastern Europe for another time. All I will say is that there is clearly a market for the product that this company is peddling. What I am going to take issue with is the wording of the advert. Companies are, by law, forbidden from discriminating for any number of reasons (race, sexuality, disability) when it comes to recruiting for jobs. Apparently this company either don’t know of this law, or they simply don’t care. This advert demanded that any applicant for the position had to be Polish. This, I should add, is for a position at a company based in England. I could understand if the add said that any applicants had to be fluent Polish speakers; linguistic talents can, after all be attained, they are not proscribed by birth. But that wasn’t what this company said. How on earth can they get away with this?

I strongly believe that if decide to live in a different country you should embrace the native culture and values. This doesn’t mean giving up your own beliefs; that would be wrong as well as terribly boring. From my perspective, if I were to move to another country I'd make damn sure that I tried to learn their language and respect their traditions. I'd want to learn as much about their ways as I possibly could to prevent myself from unwittingly causing offence.Perhaps that's just me though. I do hold a great deal of stock in politeness, showing respect and behaving properly. As they say, "When in Rome."

As a child I remember lamenting my lack of diverse heritage. I distinctly remember being a little upset by my boring ancestry. Other cultures seemed so much more interesting by comparison. Their way’s fascinated me. Let's face it, Britain would be a more boring place without it’s many diverse cultures. However, it seems to me that things work best when other cultures become integrated in the main. They retain their unique identities whilst becoming a part of society as a whole. Problems arise when sections of the population segregate themselves from everyone else, bringing about a “them and us” mentality. If people don’t understand each other then there is little chance they’ll get along. For some reason, people become violently opposed to that which they believe to be different. I suppose there must be something tribal about our nature. We pin our colours to one team and support them above all others. We despise those whose loyalties lie elsewhere. We actively seek out those that are different so that we might have somebody to oppose, somebody to hate. However, if people of different backgrounds are given the chance to mix with one another they’ll realise that we’re far more alike than they may have first thought. If only we all understood each other a little better.

The point is, people should have a modicum of respect for the ways of their adoptive home and try to integrate themselves in to it. Prohibiting the indigenous inhabitants from taking a job with your country is hardly going to help promote understanding. More likely it will just incite hatred and resentment.

Poles already appear to have an image problem as far as a great number of British people are concerned. This sort of thing will only make it worse even amongst the more moderate or right minded members of the populace. After all, if somebody discriminates against you, it’s a hell of a lot easier to hate them right back.And remember, that cuts both ways.