I'm from the UK but I haven't lived there since 2022 and I left the country for all of 2010-2020.
When I was out for that decade, I had this romantic idea of 'the return.' I envisioned it to be some grand reconnection with my roots and like many anglophiles I started to see my own country this romantic lens of nature/countryside and fantastic cultural achievements through art and literature. I became immensely proud to be British when I didn't live there and then uh...I went back.
And I can only liken my return to when The Hobbits return to The Shire in the Lord of The Rings only to find it had been burned down. But even that realisation didn't come immediately because I was in denial. Afterall, wherever you live you have to make the best of it. I couldn't get up in the morning and enjoy my day at all if I truly believed that my country had been utterly destroyed and had zero redeeming qualities. The issues with immigration, women, the decline of cities and rise of cost of living all certainly put a dampner on any idolizing of my homeland - not to mention the fact that many well-interntioned and bright people had been utterly sucked into a mode of ideological thinking which not only does not serve them but actively works against their own interests as well as values that help a society to progress.
Now I've been abroad for 2 more years though and I start to feel that life abroad is also full of complications and difficulties as every country has it's own problems politically and economically and the challenges of being a foreigner brings different frustrations. It really depends what you want out of life but what I would say is making decisions based on escaping an ideology you hate is still ideology driven behaviour.
It's better to put what's important to your own fulfillment as the center. As Christians, it should be that and there ARE still churches and religious communities in the UK (as Roosh was also able to find in hellish US). If it's something else, I don't know, being an amateur boxer or devoting yourself to chess tournaments or some sort of performing art such as music or theater then all those things can be pursued in the UK. Not to mention the nature there still exists. What I want to say is that even in the most depressing places there are still opportunities to pursure what's meaningful to you. Sometimes I think living away from the UK has been more an act of negation than a positive step in the right direction.
When I was out for that decade, I had this romantic idea of 'the return.' I envisioned it to be some grand reconnection with my roots and like many anglophiles I started to see my own country this romantic lens of nature/countryside and fantastic cultural achievements through art and literature. I became immensely proud to be British when I didn't live there and then uh...I went back.
And I can only liken my return to when The Hobbits return to The Shire in the Lord of The Rings only to find it had been burned down. But even that realisation didn't come immediately because I was in denial. Afterall, wherever you live you have to make the best of it. I couldn't get up in the morning and enjoy my day at all if I truly believed that my country had been utterly destroyed and had zero redeeming qualities. The issues with immigration, women, the decline of cities and rise of cost of living all certainly put a dampner on any idolizing of my homeland - not to mention the fact that many well-interntioned and bright people had been utterly sucked into a mode of ideological thinking which not only does not serve them but actively works against their own interests as well as values that help a society to progress.
Now I've been abroad for 2 more years though and I start to feel that life abroad is also full of complications and difficulties as every country has it's own problems politically and economically and the challenges of being a foreigner brings different frustrations. It really depends what you want out of life but what I would say is making decisions based on escaping an ideology you hate is still ideology driven behaviour.
It's better to put what's important to your own fulfillment as the center. As Christians, it should be that and there ARE still churches and religious communities in the UK (as Roosh was also able to find in hellish US). If it's something else, I don't know, being an amateur boxer or devoting yourself to chess tournaments or some sort of performing art such as music or theater then all those things can be pursued in the UK. Not to mention the nature there still exists. What I want to say is that even in the most depressing places there are still opportunities to pursure what's meaningful to you. Sometimes I think living away from the UK has been more an act of negation than a positive step in the right direction.