That appears crass on several fronts, though I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that it's unintentional. North Africa is mostly Islamic, but it's not the Middle East, so people from North Africa are not Middle Easterners. All of North Africa and the Middle East should not be stereotyped based on a handful of immigrants. I had an apartment broken into, robbed and trashed by Americans. Does that mean that all Americans are primitive?
Also, your tone implies that what's "primitive" is bad by definition, despite your eating of a primitive diet. Most moderners would condemn you as an extreme primitive because of your diet and lifestyle, regardless of how much you might protest to the contrary, so it's ironic that you would use that word with others as if it were an insult. You also don't know why those intruders wiped themselves on the curtains, so it appears that you're making assumptions relating to cultural primitiveness when there could be other reasons, such as simple vandalism.
Did you know that centuries ago the first Arab travelers in Europe reported back to the Middle East that Northern Europeans were tattooed savages who didn't bathe? You’re probably aware that the Romans regarded Northern Europeans as savages. Maybe those perspectives will help you see that you shouldn't generalize and make assumptions at the expense of others and should instead take a broader historical perspective and consider circumstances, for often it's only when prejudice is aimed at us and people like us that we recognize it for what it is. Plus, if toilet paper defines what's not primitive, then does that mean that you regard the entire human race before its invention to have been "primitive"?
First of all this is all a big fuss over nothing. Secondly, while in the far past, North African countries like Egypt might be referred to as the Near East, this is no longer the case. Generally speaking, the Middle East as a term refers to those regions with a common Arab-Muslim heritage. Turkey is reasonably considered middle-eastern as is Morocco or Libya - further south in Africa counts really as West Africa despite some Muslim populations in those areas as the Arab contingent is negligible there. Persia is the extreme east of the Middle East sphere.
Secondly, breaking into a house is not itself an unusual behaviour trait so your American analogy is quite wrong, it`s the wiping of faeces on the curtain that is particularly backward. Since it wasn`t the only time this behaviour happened and the police had already due to evidence cited North African immigrants in the area as being responsible for the 2-3 occasions, it`s quite valid to make such a comment(simply put it wasn`t the sort of behaviour practised by local thieves). Plus, my own family had had some decades of varied experience in the Middle-East and were therefore unsurprised as to what happened.
Re primitiveness:- The very fact that they wiped their arses on the curtains rather than using the toilet paper available implies that they were not familiar with more modern methods of wiping arses. Even if they were simply practising vandalism, that would merely demonstrate a similiar level of primitivism. After all, more civilised people would break windows or just smash furniture.
Lastly, I don`t wish to embrace absolutely all palaeo principles. Eating with a knife and fork when in front of other people sounds fine to me, plus one could argue that since rpd diets have been with us for much longer than any other diet, that all other diets are merely new faddish diets and that rpd diet is just the natural diet. And I certainly want to be able to use toilet paper, I do think we need to adopt some standards of modern times and not praise primitive tribes for wiping their arses with leaves or whatever nonsense. Civilisation has brought us many benefits and we need to retain the key ones, though getting rid of others such as cooked foods.
And I might add that the Romans had rather good cause to label Northern Europeans as unsanitary savages. The Romans had a very clean culture in which their citizens were expected to bathe extremely often, attend public baths etc. Makes me wish the Roman Empire had never fallen.
Topic: Paul Chek on squating and your digestive system (Read 35160 times)