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Date Posted: 12:22:51 12/08/10 Wed
Author: Stewart
Subject: Re: ignorance
In reply to:
Valerie
's message, "Re: ignorance" on 11:01:00 12/08/10 Wed
Some interesting points have been added here since I last posted. Firstly I do firmly believe that nationalism misplaced can most definitely be the cause of huge human suffering. I cite the Germans and the Japanese in World War two as prime examples of countries who were incited into aggression because of this. If fact if you are willing tg put tribalism and religion in the mix you have the catalyst for pretty much every human conflict since the dawn of mankind. Exploiting mans desire for commonness has been a political weapon forever. Us against them is an easy sell especially if those with the ability to propagandize issues are in charge of public information. We are responsible for our forefathers wrong doings and progressive societies such as this one usually attempt to right those wrongs. I cite Aboriginal land rights in Australia, Tribal Land Rghts in America and Affirmative Action as examples of society coming to terms with its history and working to heal it. It's really too easy for anyone to claim nationality or ethnic background as a reason to hate.
There is never such a thing as the "greatest" this or that if you believe in god's higher power. Perhaps we should use the term "most fortunate". Greatest implies the best ever. Perhaps there is better yet to come? Perhaps we could be better if we were less accepting of the greatest label ?. The separation of God and State is a necessary thing because I believe once a nation believes it, and only it, is acting on behalf of god, man has overstepped his humility . After all those hyjacking those planes on 9/11 truly believed God was on their side. Jingoism is a very dangerous thing and should be kept in the stands at football matches etc. To continue a football analogy teams who are at the top are wise if they don't underestimate their opponents of assume they'll win every game because they are that good. We are ALL products of a higher power. Age and wisdom hopefully brings us closer to our true spirit, one which belongs to god and which I truly believe is borderless, nationless and belongs to no ethnicity. Our need for companionship and sharing here on earth is too often exploited by those who would have us in one group or another. We need support however we don't need to use that support to deny others our humanity. Love on ya Stewart
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Re: ignorance -- En Pointe, 18:55:47 12/10/10 Fri
Citing Germany and Japan as examples of nationalism gone astray is an interesting point, but again, I think that it generalizes over the historical context a bit and seems to imply that every German and every Japanese invdividual subscribed to the notion of national superiority, which of course isn't true. There were a number of underground movements and 'innocents' in both nations whose voices were suppressed by military force. Looking specifically at Japan, nationalism started there in response to colonialism, and their involvement in WWII was in part motivated by the desire to be seen as equals in world affairs, rather than as the 'little Asian siblings' in foreign policy. (Interestingly, as an aside, a similar circumstance also led to the rise of communism in Vietnam...Pol Pot was actually a firm believer in democracy and was enamored with the French and American Revolutions... When he requested assistance in democratizing Vietnam, Pol Pot was rejected by both the US and French governments...leading to the implementation of policies leading to basically cultural and human massacre.)
Both tribe level forms of 'governance' and religion refer to forms of large, organized cultural concepts not present during the 'dawn of mankind,' which I will preferably refer to as humankind, as mankind is a bit sexist. Due to low population density, humans existed largely as nomadic groups which utilized migration within defined territories in order to hunt and gather for sustenance. These types of hunter-gatherer population which characterize early humanity are largely defined as being egalitarian in nature, due to the need to rely upon each other for mutual survival. Incidentally, these forms of hunter-gatherer populations still exist today, though in dwindling numbers, and they do exist without the conflict and warfare which you ascribe to humanity in general. Therefore it is not, as many would presuppose, an inherent trait or characteristic of human existence.
I don't deny that nationalism can be used as a reason for hate, but so can any other number of concepts... skin color, religion, place of abode, the car you drive, etc. I am merely stating that nationalism isn't the only reason for human conflict, and to say that it is the main reason is a gross generalization.
In terms of being responsible for the past, that is the role of government, but is not the role of individuals. Neither I, nor the members of my family, were either alive or had immigrated to the United States during slavery, oppression of Native Americans, etc. Therefore I hold no personal responsibility for 'making up for the sins of my ancestors.' My ancestors would perhaps have claim for retribution from Germany, Great Britain, France, Burma, etc. for instances of colonialism, 'racism,' forced migration, enforced changes in cultural mores, which they were forced to endure. I don't go around asking for retribution from every person of Western European ancestry that I meet... it would be perceived as ridiculous. Being an anthropologist, I am well aware of governmental attempts to provide retribution for past atrocities against minority populations. NAGPRA, for example, was enacted as a means to repatriate archeaological remains to those Native American tribes for which cultural connections can be made between the artifacts and the tribe. This has resulted in the emptying of museums of collections and in the near absence of meaningful archaeological and paleoanthropological research on Native American origins and culture. I am not insensitive to the need for returning artifacts illegally stolen from graves, etc., but in the case of many recent finds in paleoanthropology, i.e. Kennewick Man, the attempt to use NAGPRA to repatriate skeletal remains has become ridiculously convoluted, to involve skeletal remains greater than 10-15kya for which there are no cultural connections to extant Native American tribes. Interestingly, in South America, where colonialism was equally harsh, there are no laws requiring repatriation of artifacts and remains, and there is no conflict between indigenous tribes and researchers.
To say that nationalism or any other form of differentiating ourselves should not exist because of the potential for that concept to be used for ill is a bit of hyperbole for me. Humans have used various methods for millennia to differentiate themselves from others, and have managed to do so without inevitably resorting to conflict or warfare. I do not recall if it was you or another poster, but there was a question about the human need for classifying things. According to linguists like Chomsky, the need for classifying things based upon the emic perspective is wired into the human brain. I do not subscribe to many of the concepts of evolutionary psychology or sociobiology, since they attribute all human personality and motivation to genetics rather than to environment, but it is true that the human brain is subdivided into physiological regions which each have distinct, yet overlapping, fields of function (cerebellum-proprioreception and movement, occipital region- vision, etc.). And from the perspective of actual language development in humans, a common feature of the acquisition and learning of language regardless of culture is the need to make categories of like and unlike items in order to ascribe meaning to objects. The acquisition of language, at the very least, seems to have a genetic basis, and therefore it implies a need for systems of classification in order to develop linguistic skills.
The homogenization of culture has been an unfortunate consequence of globalization, and the result of this homogenization has been the endangerment or extinction of many languages, the loss of biodiversity, and the loss of traditional forms of knowledge which have constituted the important differences among populations. To aspire to the type of homogenization you describe as an effort to rid the world of atrocities and human warfare would be a bit of a hollow achievement, given the substantial loss of culture and knowledge which would accompany such an ethnicity-less, culture-less, and border-less world, and would invariably ignore the natural borders already created by geography, language and culture.
Joanna
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Re: ignorance -- stewart, 11:29:44 12/13/10 Mon
I appreciate your response and believe me I don't disagree that the loss of cultural diversity is problematic in terms of well derived and valuable traditions art, music and pharmacopeia being lost to mankind in general. Perhaps you misunderstand me . The nationalism/ethnic argument is, I believe, definitely not hyperbole as it pertains to many conflicts and their beginnings. That some dissent from the common view is always the case. You misunderstand me if you feel I don't appreciate diversity and want for the globalization of the world. That couldn't be further from the truth . What I ultimately desire is that we celebrate those differences but look beyond them when it comes to accepting one another. That if we accept one another on gods spiritual level the diversity becomes the patchwork of the glorious quilt that is man/womankind as opposed to the reason for conflict. Acceptance of our sameness doesn't mean we cannot be diverse. If I can go back to the quilt analogy then each piece may be made from different threads, different colours and different patterns. Yet all pieces have the same basic DNA of the quilt. We will never be truly us or them because genetically we are all woven from the same cloth. Genetic science as it moves forward is bearing the vast majority of this out. I believe nature's selected randomness is God's way to make this world an interesting place.
Man's need for power and control over his environment have precipitated much good but also much suffering. Unfortunately the urbanization of mankind has made the simple a nomadic life all but impossible except in the most remote places. What may become the future is we will return to that nomadic existence based on a transitory culture driven by climate change social unrest etc.
If you take the former Yugoslavia for example you will find peoples religious and ethnic backgrounds were exploited to the point where neighbour turned against neighbour. Suddenly enthicity and religious diversity became the reason to commit attrocities against those who you once called friends. That's mankind's folly, not the diversity of man, but his inability to see his pathetic humanness and his gullibility in accepting otherwise.
As a student of the Cambodian conflict let me say that Pol Pot's Kmer Rouge were anything but democratic. They practiced a form of nationalistic nihilism and anti intellectualism that knew no bounds. America supported them because, for a time, we thought it better to support anything that was anti Chinese and in doing so could establish a secret front in a country bordering Vietnam. Vietnam being the country in which were entangled in a proxy war against the communists who were being supported by Chinese and Russians. That some at the time were advocating nukes in that conflict or that we "bomb them back to the stone age" speaks loudly to power run amok. I have ultimate respect for those who became, for whatever reason, a part of that conflict and who fought there. That war will always for me be about losing a neighbour and older friend on my block who, being called up, went and did his duty for his country. He lost his life in the jungle ,he, like most at the time, knew nothing of the inner workings of that conflict.His number was picked out of a raffle cage and he proudly went . Now his cross stands next to all those who died along with him .To me he was a hero, to some he was a victim, to god he was a soul lost. Whatever your opinions about that war it's end came too late for him and too many like him.Love on Ya Stewart
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Re: ignorance -- En Pointe, 15:28:53 12/13/10 Mon
Stewart:
I actually agree with you about seeing our differences and moving beyond them... I just disagree about nationalism being the root cause for human conflict. There are so many other causative factors which are equally, and in some cases, much more implicit in human conflict than nationalism. For example, you mentioned religion in an earlier post... Aside from religion, there is ethnicity, perceived biological differences arising from the belief in 'racial' distinctions among humans, etc.
With regards to my post on Pol Pot, it was NOT to imply that he was a great person... quite the opposite. Merely that non-Western nations such as Cambodia, Thailand, Japan, Vietnam, etc. have been construed by the West as diplomatically and humanly inferior to those countries whose governments are derived from a Western European democratic tradition. Ironically, the foreign policies of many Western nations influenced many of these non-Western nations to implement antagonistic policies towards the United States, for example (i.e. Japan's involvement in WWII, Pol Pot's turn towards mass-genocide after an initial enamor of democracy, etc.). One of my professor's at uni here was a 'friend' of Pol Pot, and he described Pol Pot as 'misunderstood' and that his policies were an 'experiment' gone awry. I intensely debated these issues with this particular professor... mainly on the point that experiments are not conducted on a population at large and that he could have ended his policies of mass relocation, forced enslavement and genocide when realizing the errors of this 'experiment.' Although I was the only one in class to question this professor's fondness for Pol Pot, I for one do not share in his romanticism of Cambodia in the 1970s and 1980s, nor for his romanticism of Pol Pot's days in Paris during the 1950s.
I'm a military brat, and certainly appreciate the sacrifices made my servicemen and servicewomen overseas... I certainly respect the sacrifices made by your friend.
Take care y'all! (It's super cold and super snowy here in Michigan)
Joanna -- GO BLUE!!
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