[umanwizard]

Continents are not objective reality, they are semi-arbitrary groupings vaguely correlated with geography, culture, etc.

If British people don’t feel like they’re part of “the Continent”, there’s little objective reason to say they are.

[SahAssar]

But I'm guessing we can agree that any major landmass is generally belonging to a continent? Like we all agree that greenland, new zealand, japan, etc generally belong to a continent?

So to what continent do those british people think they belong?

[mkl]

New Zealand is not part of a continent (unless you consider Zealandia [1] one, which few do). It's a bunch of islands in the middle of the sea, far from other land. It is part of named regions which sometimes substitute for continents when people want to divide up the world for some purpose like sports or economics, including Oceania and Australasia.

Great Britain (the island) is very close to mainland Europe, and was directly part of it a few thousand years ago. The situation is totally different.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zealandia

[SahAssar]

> when people want to divide up the world

That's pretty much the definition of continent, right? The term continent is not scientifically based unless you want to argue that there are 16-ish continents and that South Georgia is it's own continent (and even tectonically its arbitrary since what we consider to be major, minor, micro are arbitrary).

[umanwizard]

If you asked someone directly “what continent is Britain part of”, they would surely say Europe, even if they would be unlikely to describe themselves as European. Language is funny that way.

[SahAssar]

So you agree (and think that most people would) that the UK is part of Europe?

[umanwizard]

I would agree that in some, but not all, of the contexts where the word “Europe” is used, it includes the UK.

[wsintra2022]

British people don’t think anything, there are British individuals who may think but collectively the “British” do not have a thought.

[SahAssar]

I specifically asked what "those british people" think in response to a post saying "If British people don’t feel like they’re part of “the Continent”".

I was clearly asking what those specific british people think.

[wsintra2022]

But how could anyone possibly ever answer such a question? To know what a group of people truly think… seems beyond my mind to understand