Met some guys who are sons and grandsons of Bosniak and Albanian immigrants. Pretty cool guys, tough, traditional European-ish types, but at least pay lip service to Islam. What's your advice in dealing with them?
-Mcorman
Sir, I have a history of getting along with most kind of folks better than most folks. I only offer a retroactive study in my methods that came about organically not according to some plan.
My starting point for people who come from cultures that make a base line demand that I am “less” based on my lineage, is:
Avoid religious and political conversations.
Talk about what they do, what activities brought you together.
History is one thing that can be discussed, if you are careful. More on that below. But, as with women, who are all government spies and house-binders, men from an enemy or alien culture, even if that feud has cooled for hundreds of years, are best dealt with in a positive fashion by asking them questions. Ask them about the things they are positively engaged in. Eventually, if you decline to criticize or judge them, they might offer some thoughts on uncomfortable things: the economy, their performance in the gym, their drug addict little brother, their slacker coworker. If and when that happens, after you have practiced listening to them, not prying like an interview, but just taking in what they offer, they have made the call that you are wise. Simply letting them do most of the talking and not being a dick, answering their questions about you simply and direct without whining, complaining, bitching or moaning, will develop trust. You have at least shown care, reservation and self-respect.
A nice retreat or diversion from potential friction, especially if you work or train with these men, is if you read history. Most men, even those in their 20s, are still highly, emotionally invested and haunted by the industrial scale wars of the last century. The history conversation must be about things before everything became ideologically entangled. British Empire, Age of Exploration, or medieval history are great things to discuss like paintings in a gallery. Industrial War imagery is still used to stoke emotions, hatred, anxiety and distrust. If conversation goes that way, since the only history most people have looked at is from 1914 on, then stick to methods, tank design, whatever you might know about.
I have personally found that few Americans no anything about American History. However, people from actual organic nations tend to care much more for their history. If you demonstrate an understanding of your nations deep, not recent, history, and take the time to read Balkan history, for instance, then you are in a position to cultivate a higher level of trust. So long as you can avoid the Modern plague of debate, of truth finding through squabbling, then asking questions about their history, family, whatever they know of recent Bosnian history, can be interesting and friendly. I have noted that people from Serbia, Greece, Macedonia and Albania, the only Balkan nations whose members I have met, care more about their history than we do ours. What is more, they wish they knew more than they do!
I call the Twilight of Modernity, beginning in about 1913, the Age of Acrimony. Concerning Balkan History, do not bring up anything from that era. Concerning their national history in this Age of Acrimony, let their understanding of history be all there is and do not argue over it. In the mean time, read about that region’s history from the Stone Age through to the Eve of WWI. That war is still a huge deal to those nations. Tread carefully in the Middle Ages. Dig deep in Antiquity.
In Joliet, last year, I had a nice conversation with an Albanian man about Alexander the Great. He was thrilled that I knew who Scanderbeg, the rebel prince of 1400s Epirus, was. A discussion of the Agrianes had him curious about that ancient tribe and me asking questions about the climate and terrain of his homeland, where they once campaigned.
Those historical discussion ideas should not be the go to, but a place to gain balance. These men and their fathers and grandfathers have already expressed the ultimate interest in your country by moving there. So, speaking of recent history in your country, could bring up a sense of friction, in that something you might say about crime, law, economics, might be taken as an indictment of their presence. Many people have very few friends outside of closely aligned ideological comrades. These conditional comrades will drop you as soon as you decide to alter your belief system. Having expanding circles of friends has helped me:
-1. Unconditional Brotherhood, usually based on shared experience. For me these are fellow fighters, hosts, men I have worked for and have supported my work when family did not.
-2. Honor Code Society is a tricky border land between brotherhood and conditional loyalty. I find this in spots, in instances, at a glance, recently with an Amish youth who befriended me after seeing me interrogated by State Troopers. The conditions here are only that you uphold the code of behavior and that you qualify to do so, based on, blood, manhood or deed, or some intrinsic condition not subject to you changing your mind. This is a rare to none existent type of association in this age. Some families, in some ethnic strains, still possess such a code.
-3. “Comrades” who share you belief or faith and will usually turn on you if you fail to meet belief conditions.
-4. Hobby friends can develop into closer association better than the following.
-5. Neighbors, another conditional associate
-6. Allies, based on mutual enemies
-7. Coworkers, usually the most traitorous
-8. Government functionaries is the circle where that requires no betrayal as these are already enemies dedicated to your gradual or abrupt demise.
I have left out family, because, depending on cultural, religious, political, personal factors, family members, even the closest, have, since the dawning of the Age of Acrimony, rarely been unconditional supporters. A hundred and fifty years ago, if I went on a crime spree, my family would not have given me up. If I broke the law today, even before the trial, my family, most families, would support my apprehension by law enforcement. I know many families that still remain divided over the 2016 American Election!
So, this was a long way around to say, show respect for these men of another kind, as well as for your kind of person and your self. Be wary, as you cannot be sure where in their circles of association, maybe even in their blood, that you must be, under certain circumstances, deemed a devil, monster, chattel or even enemy. In this Age of Acrimony, nothing is more fraught with uncertainty than the conditions under which a friend, associate, parent, child, wife or fellow in faith might be activated by mass mesmerism to transform into an NPC and call you enemy. One need only look back to 2020 and you will recall friends, family and other associates who turned upon you for failure to believe or disbelieve in one or other of the mass mind attacks launched upon us by our eternal foes, whoever they may be.
In closing, being a man that can be counted upon to keep his word, grant respect and get things done without breaking trust or doing harm to those who are not his enemies, goes a long way still, in means of masculine association.
