The Fraud of Primitive Authenticity

Past and present. You can't make this stuff up.
Ibrahim
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Re: The Fraud of Primitive Authenticity

Post by Ibrahim »

noddy wrote:
Ibrahim wrote:
noddy wrote:re: jarod diamond, before i became aware of him it seemed quite obvious to me that people living in a season-less tropical environment can pretty much deal with every day as it comes, minimalist style and people living in an extreme season environment like the top of europe/asia need to be highly organised during the goodtimes to make sure they have enough stored for the bad times and this will have cultural effects.

part of me suspects that the modern workaholic madness is just the make-hay-while-the-sun-shines thing gone mad as those people moved away from the bad winter that used to give them a break :P
I've always thought this reasoning was sound enough, but then again civilization began in warm climates, in the river valleys of Mesopotamia, the Nile, the Indus, and the Yangtze and Yellow rivers. Places that seldom see snow. The coldest places in Europe and East Asia were some of the last places to be "civilized."
true - the extremes have very short fertile seasons and didnt allow for this model - i mis-used the word "extreme" in my dribble above, it should have been "variable" :)
They definitely don't have "variable" in the arctic. It always sucks. 8-)
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Taboo
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Re: The Fraud of Primitive Authenticity

Post by Taboo »

Hey Apollonius,

Can I get a reference on that Marvin Harris book you were talking about?
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Apollonius
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Re: The Fraud of Primitive Authenticity

Post by Apollonius »

Marvin Harris's opus magnum is:

Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture (Random House, 1980)




He also wrote some more popular treatments:

Our Kind: Who We Are, Where We Came From, Where We Are Going (HarperPerennial, 1989)

Cannibals and Kings: The Origins of Cultures (Random House, 1979)



Here's one that should inteterest students of demography:


Death, Sex, and Fertility: Population Regulation in Preindustrial and Developing Societies - Marvin Harris and Eric B. Ross (Columbia University Press, 1987)




Here's a (pretty basic and disappointingly non-inclusive) Wiki:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_determinism



And here's Spengler:

Spengler wrote:What I dislike about Diamond is that he takes perfectly reasonable premises and tries to use them to explain everything. Cultural issues simply do not exist for him, because his agenda is to proclaim the equal validity of all cultures, and to explain their different outcomes by the luck of the draw. The Aztecs fell not only because the Spanish had guns, germs, and steel, but also because they were an evil culture performing massive human sacrifices, such that their prospective victims allied with the Spanish against them, and their military organization was not competitive with the Europeans. On this Victor Davis Hanson is much better, for example. The Aztecs used the wheel for toys but not for carts. China was prostrate before European colonialists (and later the Japanese) until WWII -- was this for lack of technology, draft animals, and so forth? Taken to its logical conclusions the thesis is ridiculous.
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Apollonius
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Re: The Fraud of Primitive Authenticity

Post by Apollonius »

Ibrahim wrote:Though I've never read his most famous book so I can't speak to his theories in detail, I suspect that you're right about the reason for Spengler's hostility.



How typical. Never read the book, but you've got an opinion about it (though maybe not a "detailed" one) and an opinon about people who criticize it too. You "suspect"...

This is where I am tempted to insert a string of emoticons.
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Marcus
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Re: The Fraud of Primitive Authenticity

Post by Marcus »

Something I ran across in my reading years ago:



“Man, as an animal, is indeed, a tropical animal. But man, as distinguished from animals, is not at his best in the tropics or very near them. His fight upward in civilization has coincided in part at least with his march northward over the earth into a cooler, clearer, more bracing air....
“Men at every period of history have been generally of the opinion that the ultimate limit of the northward spread of civilization had then at length been reached.
“...Tacitus probably knew as much as any of his contemporaries about the lands beyond the Alps, and was merely voicing the general opinion of his time and countrymen when he said that nobody could conceive that any one, unless forced by the stern necessity of war, would willingly leave the fertile shore of Africa or the plains of Italy for the country north of the Alps where the climate is as disagreeable as the soil is sterile. This was undoubtedly a truism of his time; but it is a fact of our time that many people live Paris and other parts of France by choice....
“It is human nature that we undervalue the distant and exaggerate the difficulties of the unknown...
“To the peoples of the centers of civilization the uncolonized North has been more or less remote geographically and almost infinitely remote from a cultural and historical point of view...
“On the basis of distance and misinformation the North has always been supposed to be dreadful and devoid of resources...
“...Tacitus was wrong when he said people would never by choice live as far north as France; the Moors of the Middle Ages were short-sighted when they undervalued the possibilities of Britain; it is strange that as astute a man as Franklin thought a small tropic isle like Guadaloupe commercially more valuable than Canada; Seward was wise in buying Alaska and Gladstone a simpleton to want to renounce Spitzbergen. But surely there must be somewhere the limit to Northward progress...
“We have not come to the northward limit of commercial progress...Corner lots in Rome were precious when the banks of the Thames had no value; the products of Canada were little beyond furs and fish when the British and French agreed in preferring Guadaloupe. ...But...times have changed. ...There is no northern boundary beyond which productive enterprise cannot go till North meets North on opposite shores of the Arctic Ocean as East has met West on the Pacific.
“If the average American...has ten ideas about the North, nine of them are wrong.
“...the most fundamentally wrong idea about the North is that...the polar regions are far colder in the coldest part of winter than any countries that are now inhabited by the average civilized European or
American.
“A complement of the idea that the North is dreadfully cold in winter is the notion that it is also cold through the entire summer. It is possible to maintain that the winters are dreadfully cold, but only by agreeing that the winters of northern Vermont and Saranac Lake and Minnesota and Montana are also dreadfully cold. ...Five miles from the ocean at Point Barrow the temperature probably seldom if ever rises above 75º in the shade, which is ten degrees colder than the similar record for Fort Bragg, California, both places being at sea level and near the sea. But fifty miles inland in California gives you a temperature of 110º in the shade, and a hundred miles inland in Alaska will give a temperature approaching 100º in the shade....
“...we come next to a consideration of the length of the seasons. It is true, generally speaking, that the farther north you go in the northern hemisphere the longer the winter and the shorter the summer. ...A Sicilian may think that a winter of three months’ length is intolerable and if he insists that is is intolerable you can’t very well argue with him, but you can at least prove to him that numerous prosperous people live in a climate where there are three months of winter. ...in Winnipeg you will in turn meet people who say that while five or six months of winter is no serious handicap to economic development, nine months of winter would be...intolerable. ...The argument is of the same nature and is its essence no more tenable than that of the Sicilian who thinks that even the shortest winter is unbearable. ...
“That the ground in the polar regions is always covered with snow...is another of the widely-spread wrong notions. ... Even in the tropics there is permanent snow on the mountain tops if the mountains are high, and even in the remotest arctic regions the snow all disappears from the land in summer.
“A corollary of the idea that the North is covered with snow even in summer is the one that it is a region of heavy snowfall. This is far from being true.
“...In the development of the (north) country these (false notions) will prove a drawback... China’s wall of masonry was never a very efficient barrier. A wall of misinformation is more effective, more difficult to tear down.
“Whatever the general effeminacy of our time may be, we do still have among us a considerable number...with an inborn passion for the frontier.
“It is great good fortune that we still have our frontier land in which pioneers may struggle and build, where they may..eventually write...the story of...realized dreams.”

The Northward Course of Empire, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Macmillan, 1924
"The jawbone of an ass is just as dangerous a weapon today as in Sampson's time."
--- Richard Nixon
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Apollonius
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Re: The Fraud of Primitive Authenticity

Post by Apollonius »

Torchwood wrote:I am intrigued by Spengler's vituperative dislike of Jared Diamond, because he thinks that he is a geographical determinist, and for Spengler culture is all. That is not the case - all that Diamond does is make a plausible that case that settled agriculture was more likely to develop easily in the Eurasia than the Americas, because of the greater abundance of easily domesticated plants and the fact that such techniques can be transmitted on the same latitudes (impossible in the Americas). And the best place of all - hey presto, the Fertile Crescent! It doesn't say what sorts of culture would arise in these regions, just that they would get a head start.




The title is obviously what sold this book but his money-making rant against Europeans detracts from much of what the author has to say. Another author who writes with the same attitude published a silly little tract a few years earlier called Stolen Continents which plays to the same audience and makes even more exaggerated claims about the blameworthiness of Europeans and their imperialism for all the world's problems.

The National Geographic made-for-television documentary based on Diamond's thesis and hosted by him was actually considerably worse than the book. It continually posed racially loaded questions, starting with a New Guinean ghost from Jared Diamond's past appearing as the Angry Man of Colour who repeatedly asks "Why does the White Man have so much cargo and we so little?" If whoever played that role were a real New Guinean he might well have asked the same question about the ancestors of the Polynesians who came to New Guinea two thousand years before and were also comparatively much more successful than the natives, or indeed of the Javanese settlers who are encroaching on Papuan lands as I write, doing to them more or less exactly what Europeans did to the Indians in North America.




Guns, Germs, and Steel is extremely unbalanced in its treatment of imperialism throughout. There is lots of coverage of European colonial enterprises, though without an ounce of nuance. There's also no discussion of the Aztecs, the extremely warlike and predatory peoples of the Caribbean, or any of the numerous other Native peoples who considered the Conquistadors to be saviours from slavery and genocide. In the National Geographic special there is actually not one single reference in the entire show to non-European imperialism.

Diamond is very selective in his telling of history. For example, Harris was comfortable with reminding people of the tens of thousands of captured enemy combatants that were slaughtered by the Aztecs to supply the citizenry with meat (since other large animals were not available). Diamond is too wrapped up in Western guilt to mention anyone besides Europeans committing atrocities. This is why in over five hundred pages dedicated to explaining population movements and demographics, there is not one single word about of the Arab and Turkish / Mongol expansions, though they encompassed the largest land mass on earth and struck at the heart of humanity's oldest and most populous civilizations! The chapter on Africa is shameful in its omisions.* He does have a few pages about China, possibly feeling that he couldn't completely ignore the largest nation on earth, but his coverage of South, East, and Southeast Asia is unbelievably sloppy. It goes without saying that he won't touch the fact that "European" diseases were actually Asian ones, or else African.

This is just a long-winded way of saying that it's really too bad that some of the good ideas of the cultural materialists were not emphasized more and the political correctness (a better description would be ethnocentrism, or maybe Jared Diamond's "reverse" (sic) racism) less. The book is scarcely "revolutionary", as the write-ups from admirers claim. Jared Diamond is one in a long line of cultural materialists. Ethnographers have been compiling the data for literally millennia and this approach was popular in the Victorian Age. People like Marvin Harris were analysing and describing the findings in a comprehensive way from at least as early as the 1970s. Harris himself got some notoriety but generally bad reviews in the popular press because the Left didn't like his descriptions of bloodthirsty Natives and the Right didn't like the way he held religion in such low regard.




Jared Diamond doesn't always write like this. Actually, this book is a little exceptional for him and in some of his work he contradicts himself. His worst failing is not following through on his ideas. He gets an idea, cites a few unrepresentative examples, but before he brings things to a logical conclusion, which would leave his readers feeling very uncomfortable, moves back to the main theme of his sermon. Guns, Germs, and Steel is awfully condescending, even for general readers.




* The segment on Africa does mention the Bantu expansion "starting about 5000 years ago". I suppose in an effort to legitimize their conquests the dates have been pushed back to over twice as far in the past as I have ever heard of from anyone from anywhere before. Based on a great deal of archaeological and linguistic evidence, the date is usually given as about 2000 years ago, with the Bantus reaching what is now northern South Africa about 500 years ago. In any case after having gone on for quite some time about how the Dutch overran the territory of the Xhoi-San in Cape Province, there is no mention, much less moral outrage, at the way the Bantus drove the very same people from well over ninety percent of their lands which had extended the whole breadth of eastern and southern Africa. Jared Diamond does remind us that the Bantu languages are all very similar (more evidence of their recent occupation of the countries they now live in) but then goes on to brag on behalf of the school children he meets with in Zambia who know three or four languages whereas American kids generally speak only one. It's like saying a Dane who also understands Norwegian and Swedish is a linguist. I would suggest that a better measure might be to add up all the words from all the languages that a person knows and then see who has the greater vocabulary. Not that I'm such a firm believer that skill at languages should be a measure of everything, but since Diamond brought it up I wonder who scores better on those tests, a Zambian with three "languages" or an American with one?





Torchwood wrote:In any case, Spengler's beloved YHWH seems to agree with Diamond - he placed his Chosen People in the Fertile Crescent (removes tongue from cheek).

YHWH seems to have favoured a select few tribes. Out of at least 6,000 of them, within a century there will only be a handful left.



Torchwood wrote:I do miss Spengler's nutty but imaginative ideas which you could lay into. He never goes to the ATOL forum any more, sic transit etc

Spengler can still write, and even offers a good laugh every so often, but the situation in the Middle East has deteriorated to the point that he hasn't got much time for fun anymore. He's even gotten so insecure that he's started to worry about same-sex marriage.

He's an object lesson in how ideas can focus the opposition. As far as that goes, he's always had more critics than friends. Personally, I can forgive him a lot for having brought a lot of interesting people together, however, I just cannot forgive anyone who supports the drug wars. I've said several times already that I think he's as likely to alienate as many people at PJ Media as on the old ATol forum.
Ibrahim
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Re: The Fraud of Primitive Authenticity

Post by Ibrahim »

I'll never get these pro-imperialist types. I guess its an attempt to mark yourself as "different" and a "free thinker" by holding an obsolete opinion of a given historical event.

Because most people are still shy about making overt white supremacist statements and saying "we're superior to these people, we can do as we like to them" the only justification becomes a moral equivalency argument. There's nothing wrong with a group like the English killing, conquering, and enslaving an unprecedented number of technologically inferior peoples because those peoples also warred with one another. That's the argument that Appo applies above, and which he's applied elsewhere. Spengler actually makes a version of the white supremacist argument, but replaces race with religion and "culture" to mask the essentially tribal nature of his theories.

What Appo has been unable to address is why be believes that governments hold the right to forcibly relocate or otherwise abuse surviving members of those tribal groups down to the present day. He's been coy on this, and it would be unkind to draw any conclusions without further data. Spengler is more open about people outside of his tribal group. They will all die, and that's a good thing.
Ibrahim
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Re: The Fraud of Primitive Authenticity

Post by Ibrahim »

Apollonius wrote:
Ibrahim wrote:Though I've never read his most famous book so I can't speak to his theories in detail, I suspect that you're right about the reason for Spengler's hostility.

How typical. Never read the book, but you've got an opinion about it (though maybe not a "detailed" one) and an opinon about people who criticize it too. You "suspect"...
Perhaps you would prefer I spoke to someone on the bus? On the whole I'm quite sure I've read some hundreds more volumes than you have in your entire lifetime, so my apologies if I didn't read one pop-history bestseller from ten years ago.
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Taboo
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Re: The Fraud of Primitive Authenticity

Post by Taboo »

Ibrahim wrote:I'll never get these pro-imperialist types. I guess its an attempt to mark yourself as "different" and a "free thinker" by holding an obsolete opinion of a given historical event.
I can't speak for Apollonius, but I'm not sure the label "pro-imperialist" is actually accurate. In my case, I may come across as pro-imperialist because of sheer annoyance with the decades old cultural practice in the US and Western Europe of attributing everything that is bad to the "dreaded colonial legacy." Africa is poor not just because it was conquered by German-Anglo-Belgo-Franco-Portuguese imperialists, but also because it had been poor and organizationally and technologically backward for many centuries even before colonialism, which explains why the Western Europeans were able to conquer it so easily.

What irks me is the simplistic black-and-white approach to things that singles out Western Euros and their descendants as particularly evil (source of all that's wrong) and renders them somehow indelibly guilty, while the rest of the world are just hapless victims. It's as if Euros invented war and genocide.

It's not just Africa or the Native Americans. People in SE Europe do the exact same, except they talk of the "Ottoman yoke." I mean, how long are you going to play the victim card? Hello, Romania and Bulgaria, it's been over a century. Isn't it perhaps time to stop bitching and actually getting around to, you know, fixing things?

I'm not western myself in origin, but I cannot ignore the myriad cultural, organizational and technological achievements, as well as the increasing inclusive moral awareness that is developing there. If it weren't for the ideas developed in the West, the two of us* would probably still be riding steppe ponies and throwing various pointy things at people.

*or our closest equivalents :)
Because most people are still shy about making overt white supremacist statements and saying "we're superior to these people, we can do as we like to them" the only justification becomes a moral equivalency argument.
I have to break this down in parts, before I can attempt to answer it: "we're superior to these people"

Dunno. I don't see Euros as superior across the spectrum. To the extent that show superior outcomes, it is not so much a biological inherent quality as a cultural one. For instance, it is undeniable that the Nordic European countries consistently top out all the quality of life, education and health-care charts. Cultures can change, however. Sociologists and political scientists once decried "catholic" culture as incapable of supporting democratic institutions -- a patently absurd view now, but 70 years ago, catholic countries actually were illiterate backwaters full of bigotry and superstition, bastions of fascism and reactionary thought.

"we can do as we like to them"
I vehemently reject this idea, of course. I think it is apparent that the current organizational arrangements of western societies are the best performers on metrics such as freedom and protection of rights for all. In so far as the members of other societies desire the same outcomes, they are obviously free to model their societies on those of the West to the extent that they are able given their societies' cultural and political constraints. In so far as those in the West desire to see the kinds of freedoms and prosperity they enjoy spread to the rest of the world, I think they should be free to use all influence to further that goal.
Within reason, limited, clearly circumscribed military intervention can be justified on this basis. For instance, sending a few hundred special ops to forestall a bloody coup by reactionaries would be ok. Spies handing out bundles of cash to help speed the passing of a particularly nasty dictator ditto. But I would not (and did not) condone ham-fisted "nation-building" a la GW Bush. That is costly in terms of money and men for both the intervener and the victim of said intervention, and most importantly more likely to antagonize rather than persuade.
So, almost without exception, I would prefer my cultural influence via soft means like Coca Cola and "Dr. House" rather than via Black Hawks and Predator Drones.
moral equivalency argument
No. But it's unfair to judge 17th century Britons or 16th century Spaniards by 21st century standards, while giving the non-Westerners a free pass, but this is what most current Western history books and curricula seem to be doing. Everywhere you look, it's Pandora, Winnetou-style evil Anglos and Dances with Wolves.

(PS in terms of challenging cultural stereotypes, I particularly loved "Inglorious Basterds", where the audience is implicitly directed to approve of gory inhumane slaughter of WWII Germans by American-Jews, only to be treated later in the movie to a hilarious representation of themselves as a Nazi theatre-going audience applauding equally gory Nazi slaughter of Americans -- but I should rewatch that and a discussion of it, and of similarly-themed Django probably belongs in another thread)
There's nothing wrong with a group like the English killing, conquering, and enslaving an unprecedented number of technologically inferior peoples because those peoples also warred with one another. That's the argument that Appo applies above, and which he's applied elsewhere. Spengler actually makes a version of the white supremacist argument, but replaces race with religion and "culture" to mask the essentially tribal nature of his theories.
I doubt that anyone except for a few weirdos on Stormfront would ever agree with that statement above. If a majority of Americans thought like that, America would've probably tried to conquer and exterminate the rest of the world by now.
What Appo has been unable to address is why be believes that governments hold the right to forcibly relocate or otherwise abuse surviving members of those tribal groups down to the present day. He's been coy on this, and it would be unkind to draw any conclusions without further data. Spengler is more open about people outside of his tribal group. They will all die, and that's a good thing.
I have no context on this discussion, so I leave it to Apollonious to speak for himself here.
Ibrahim
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Re: The Fraud of Primitive Authenticity

Post by Ibrahim »

Taboo wrote:
Ibrahim wrote:I'll never get these pro-imperialist types. I guess its an attempt to mark yourself as "different" and a "free thinker" by holding an obsolete opinion of a given historical event.
I can't speak for Apollonius, but I'm not sure the label "pro-imperialist" is actually accurate. In my case, I may come across as pro-imperialist because of sheer annoyance with the decades old cultural practice in the US and Western Europe of attributing everything that is bad to the "dreaded colonial legacy."
This seems like a straw man. Nobody is blaming everything on colonialism, and even if they were this wouldn't justify the attempted rehabilitation of the colonial era. If anything it was worse than the average person is aware of, as recently produced research on events as diverse as residential schooling in Canada and Australia to the aftermath of the Mau-Mau rebellion in Kenya suggests. So if we are talking about academic research, based on primary sources, being produced by present-day scholars, then this will require talking about unpleasant things committed by colonial powers. Is that on its face objectionable? Where does the need to say "yeah but!" come from?


Africa is poor not just because it was conquered by German-Anglo-Belgo-Franco-Portuguese imperialists, but also because it had been poor and organizationally and technologically backward for many centuries even before colonialism, which explains why the Western Europeans were able to conquer it so easily.
The need to repeat this over and over non sequitur is what baffles me. Obviously their relative lack of organization and military technology caused them to lose the military contest, that's a matter of fact. What relevance can it have for a modern discussion of, say, how the colonial government playing tribes off against one another helped lead to intertribal genocide in Rwanda? It just seems lazy. "Well, they were disorganized then and they are disorganized now." Nothing is explained ot contributed by the statement.


What irks me is the simplistic black-and-white approach to things that singles out Western Euros and their descendants as particularly evil (source of all that's wrong) and renders them somehow indelibly guilty, while the rest of the world are just hapless victims. It's as if Euros invented war and genocide.
This is the moral equivocation I was referring to earlier. If somebody starts talking about the historical record of European slavery or murder in a given context somebody has to pipe up with "well other people did it too," which isn't even relevant, and certainly not informative. It should be sufficient to talk about a given event without needing to do this. No part of stating the fact that European power X subjugated people Y in place Z implies that the victims of that subjugation had previously been saints.

It's not just Africa or the Native Americans. People in SE Europe do the exact same, except they talk of the "Ottoman yoke." I mean, how long are you going to play the victim card?
Its not "playing the victim card" to talk about history. I pointed out new research about deaths caused by the residential school system in Canada, in the Canadian thread, and Appo started arguing about the pointlessness of such recriminations, and besides they probably would have froze to death anyways so what's the big deal. In what way is that a reasonable response to historical research?



I'm not western myself in origin, but I cannot ignore the myriad cultural, organizational and technological achievements, as well as the increasing inclusive moral awareness that is developing there.
Technological achievements are a given, cultural is relative (maybe somebody likes Hindi music more than opera), and while the inclusiveness of, say, modern Swedish society is nice I don't see how that relates to a discussion of a colonial war 200 years ago.


If it weren't for the ideas developed in the West, the two of us* would probably still be riding steppe ponies and throwing various pointy things at people.
Or participating in a Mandarin tea ceremony or studying philosophy in the House of Wisdom. The idea that European culture is the only advanced culture in the world is also something which I reject out of hand as factually inaccurate. The only unique thing about it is the scale of its military success since 1700, and the level of social egalitarianism achieved in the last fifty years or so (and many people in the West are mad about those advances, so you can never please everybody).




Because most people are still shy about making overt white supremacist statements and saying "we're superior to these people, we can do as we like to them" the only justification becomes a moral equivalency argument.
I have to break this down in parts, before I can attempt to answer it: "we're superior to these people"

Dunno. I don't see Euros as superior across the spectrum. To the extent that show superior outcomes, it is not so much a biological inherent quality as a cultural one. For instance, it is undeniable that the Nordic European countries...
To argue cultural superiority is the same as arguing biological superiority. This is what SpengFor could never understand. No racist hates melanin, he hates what he thinks is black behavior. But as for "superior outcomes" they are the product of the military advantages which allowed them to dominate and disrupt other societies. A close look at European history clearly shows that the egalitarianism comes at the very end of the story. It starts with the military turning point around 1700, then the economic turning point in around 1750. We don't get an enviable society until 1960, just more material comfort throughout the Victorian era. Dominating other cultures makes you richer, and perhaps being rich for a long time makes you more tolerant.



"we can do as we like to them"
I vehemently reject this idea, of course. I think it is apparent that the current organizational arrangements of western societies are the best performers on metrics such as freedom and protection of rights for all. In so far as the members of other societies desire the same outcomes, they are obviously free to model their societies on those of the West to the extent that they are able given their societies' cultural and political constraints. In so far as those in the West desire to see the kinds of freedoms and prosperity they enjoy spread to the rest of the world, I think they should be free to use all influence to further that goal.
As those conditions were created in the aftermath of unprecedented exploitation of other peoples this is a hollow gesture. E.g. the democratic capitalist culture of England was built in no small part on wealth taken directly from India, and they were machinegunning Indians agitating for home rule as recently as 65-70 years ago, now they are going to lecture other nations in how to behave? Nobody but Europeans can take that seriously. Europeans and apologists for colonialism are always the ones campaigning for short memories and letting bygones be bygones because they were the ones f***ing with people most recently. If Tony Blair wants to lecture the CCP on their human rights record then certainly he wants people to think about the "New London," not the Opium Wars. And naturally all English people want to think their bourgeois class was created entirely from industriousness and a superior political culture. Other people aren't going to see it that way.

Within reason, limited, clearly circumscribed military intervention can be justified on this basis. For instance, sending a few hundred special ops to forestall a bloody coup by reactionaries would be ok.Spies handing out bundles of cash to help speed the passing of a particularly nasty dictator ditto. But I would not (and did not) condone ham-fisted "nation-building" a la GW Bush. That is costly in terms of money and men for both the intervener and the victim of said intervention, and most importantly more likely to antagonize rather than persuade.
So based on your belief in the superior outcomes of Western culture you think some degree of killing or bribing of other peoples is acceptable. You only hesitate about the degree.


So, almost without exception, I would prefer my cultural influence via soft means like Coca Cola and "Dr. House" rather than via Black Hawks and Predator Drones.
Certainly the people being attacked would agree.


moral equivalency argument
No. But it's unfair to judge 17th century Britons or 16th century Spaniards by 21st century standards,
First, reporting history doesn't necessarily include judgment. Second, there is nothing inherently wrong with judging historical events anyway, you can only say that the moralizing would be anachronistic. But I have no problem looking back at Tamerlane making towers of skulls and saying "that's wrong. In my judgment that is not a cool way to behave."

while giving the non-Westerners a free pass,
Again, this seems like a straw man. Its not a case of giving anybody a "free pass." And Spengler and others falsely claim that there is some revisionist tidal wave that they need to battle against be reasserting white (or Judeo-Christian) supremacy.


but this is what most current Western history books and curricula seem to be doing. Everywhere you look, it's Pandora, Winnetou-style evil Anglos and Dances with Wolves.
I never really found this to be true in modern history departments. If you do believe it to be true what would you prefer to see? Everybody portrayed as evil? Try to show the good side of colonialism more often?



There's nothing wrong with a group like the English killing, conquering, and enslaving an unprecedented number of technologically inferior peoples because those peoples also warred with one another. That's the argument that Appo applies above, and which he's applied elsewhere. Spengler actually makes a version of the white supremacist argument, but replaces race with religion and "culture" to mask the essentially tribal nature of his theories.
I doubt that anyone except for a few weirdos on Stormfront would ever agree with that statement above. If a majority of Americans thought like that, America would've probably tried to conquer and exterminate the rest of the world by now.
They opted for attempted economic dominations backed by the threat of military force and assumed unassailable superiority. The difference, as imperial apologists like Hitchens and Ferguson complain, is that Americans don't want to live anywhere else. So they try to organize the economic exploitation without having to live there. Tinker with foreign governments, arm preferred factions, occasional interventions, but no long term occupation. We've seen the results throughout and since the Cold War. Oh, and they also took over and all but exterminated the population of a large and resource-rich continent to begin with.

There is no question that Americans, as a whole, tend to believe in the superiority of America and Americans, with sometimes dire consequences for other peoples. Now, most if not all nations think the same way but e.g. Finland is not in a position to cause as many problems for people in Afghanistan. Larger, more powerful countries are in a position to act on their national mythology. I honestly think a lot of people from ex-imperial or ex-colonial countries (and not exclusively Europeans) get a charge out of their history of oppression. "Ha ha, we enslaved or murdered you back in 1914, or 1514, or 814, or 314BC, etc." Its the sports fan mentality that you can never really get away from.

What Appo has been unable to address is why be believes that governments hold the right to forcibly relocate or otherwise abuse surviving members of those tribal groups down to the present day. He's been coy on this, and it would be unkind to draw any conclusions without further data. Spengler is more open about people outside of his tribal group. They will all die, and that's a good thing.
I have no context on this discussion, so I leave it to Apollonious to speak for himself here.
Check the Canada thread in the North America subforum.
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Re: The Fraud of Primitive Authenticity

Post by Taboo »

To argue cultural superiority is the same as arguing biological superiority.
Enormously wrong.
This is what SpengFor could never understand. No racist hates melanin, he hates what he thinks is black behavior.
Absolutely not the same thing. A racist hates a group because he thinks the behaviors he sees (or rather imagines) are an inherent biological and immutable characteristic of each individual of the group he is racist against.

I do not think it's racist to point out that certain behaviour of certain groups are making their (and other's) lives difficult in the modern world. For instance, American "ain't-no-better-n-me" anti-intellectualism, African-American cultural condemnation of "acting white", Romani early marriages and so forth. Obviously, not all or even necessarily a majority of each group actually engage in this behaviours or hold these beliefs.
Dominating other cultures makes you richer, and perhaps being rich for a long time makes you more tolerant.
Well perhaps, but it is not clear that all colonial power were actually getting more money out of their colonies than they were putting in. I'm pretty sure that Germany, for one, sank far more money into the colonies than they were extracting from them. A net cost. I think the position that the Western countries got rich because of their colonies is not tenable for all Western colonialist powers. Countries like Switzerland and Sweden got rich with no colonies, and countries like Spain and Portugal long remained backward backwaters despite a long history of colonialism.
So if we are talking about academic research
I think the level of discourse Apollonius was talking about is more along the lines of stuff politicians feel they can say and whatever's in Sally's 4th grade history book. Facts are more or less, facts. It's the spin that is put on that that is of interest.
The need to repeat this {Africa was poor and disorganized before} over and over non sequitur is what baffles me.
It does? If you were to listen to the rhetoric coming from many African politicians and to what people believe, the thought that Africa was a-ok before the bad westerners came by is prevalent. You yourself seem to think that the West got rich simply because it had colonies to exploit, rather than due to its own industrial revolution. You can probably argue that the triangular trade might have helped build up the mass of capital needed for early industrial growth in the UK, but Africa, even 10 years ago, was only a few percent of global trade.
a discussion of a colonial war 200 years ago
I hadn't realized you guys were talking about a colonial war 200 years ago.
So based on your belief in the superior outcomes of Western culture you think some degree of killing or bribing of other peoples is acceptable. You only hesitate about the degree.
I did not say of "peoples", but aside from that minor but significant word twist, yes, of course. The richer and the more democratic the world, the safer we all are. If a bloody civil war and 20 years of stagnation can be avoided by a few hundred special troops, should our politicians stay out? Even if it means that 2 million more will die of preventable diseases?
Do you think that the West should avoid trying to spread its political and economic practices at all costs?
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Re: The Fraud of Primitive Authenticity

Post by Ibrahim »

Taboo wrote:
To argue cultural superiority is the same as arguing biological superiority.
Enormously wrong.
No, exactly correct. The imaginary distinction is just a cover for the new vogue in racism.

This is what SpengFor could never understand. No racist hates melanin, he hates what he thinks is black behavior.
Absolutely not the same thing. A racist hates a group because he thinks the behaviors he sees (or rather imagines) are an inherent biological and immutable characteristic of each individual of the group he is racist against.
No distinction in their actions or the outcomes. It still results in discrimination or worse against the target group.

I do not think it's racist to point out that certain behaviour of certain groups are making their (and other's) lives difficult in the modern world.
Depends how its loaded. For Spengler, or various apologists for colonialism, its a signal of inferiority and a justification for any action against the "inferior" group up to and including genocide.


Dominating other cultures makes you richer, and perhaps being rich for a long time makes you more tolerant.
Well perhaps, but it is not clear that all colonial power were actually getting more money out of their colonies than they were putting in. I'm pretty sure that Germany, for one, sank far more money into the colonies than they were extracting from them.


Granted. But the successful empires throughout history all profited from their colonies, and profitable colonies of the British empire offset the unprofitable ones. German imperialism was a failed copycat of British imperialism in order to gain status. In any case wealth from colonial exploitation flooded into the European world in general.
A net cost. I think the position that the Western countries got rich because of their colonies is not tenable for all Western colonialist powers. Countries like Switzerland and Sweden got rich with no colonies, and countries like Spain and Portugal long remained backward backwaters despite a long history of colonialism.
Spain and Portugal extracted immense wealth from overseas empires and trade, their subsequent decline was a matter of failures at home despite overseas successes. Sweden had a brief Baltic empire, Switzerland became a banking center, wealthy off of other peoples money, sometimes ill-gotten.

So if we are talking about academic research
I think the level of discourse Apollonius was talking about is more along the lines of stuff politicians feel they can say and whatever's in Sally's 4th grade history book. Facts are more or less, facts. It's the spin that is put on that that is of interest.
I cited academic research and that set him off. There are never any direct examples of this dreaded spin, just the assertion that it exists, and thus colonialism must be defended and justified.

The need to repeat this {Africa was poor and disorganized before} over and over non sequitur is what baffles me.
It does? If you were to listen to the rhetoric coming from many African politicians and to what people believe, the thought that Africa was a-ok before the bad westerners came by is prevalent.
I've never seen this. I see them complain about the colonial period, not claim that their previous culture was utopian.


You yourself seem to think that the West got rich simply because it had colonies to exploit, rather than due to its own industrial revolution.
The looting of India provided the capital that funded the industrial revolution. The perpetuated myth that it was entirely a product of native ingenuity is a post-facto justification for colonialism.

You can probably argue that the triangular trade might have helped build up the mass of capital needed for early industrial growth in the UK, but Africa, even 10 years ago, was only a few percent of global trade.


The slave trade was a moral nadir, but the wealth flow was mostly from East and South Asia to Western Europe. That's the significant trade, and why e.g. England took so many foolish and expensive actions to "secure India" that were losses in and of themselves.
a discussion of a colonial war 200 years ago
I hadn't realized you guys were talking about a colonial war 200 years ago.
It was an example, and we were talking about it at one point.

So based on your belief in the superior outcomes of Western culture you think some degree of killing or bribing of other peoples is acceptable. You only hesitate about the degree.
I did not say of "peoples", but aside from that minor but significant word twist, yes, of course. The richer and the more democratic the world, the safer we all are.
This claim is proven wrong in front of our eyes as we speak. Western efforts to "civilize" Afghanistan has in fact created more hatred for the West, destabilized the region more than it was previously (most importantly Pakistan), placed the world close to nuclear war and nuclear terrorism, and reduced the prestige of Western power.

If a bloody civil war and 20 years of stagnation can be avoided by a few hundred special troops, should our politicians stay out?
It never has been avoided this way. At best we've seen civilian elections subverted and leaders replaced with repressive Western-friendly dictators. Lately we see local dictators or theocracies replaced with chaos, and unlike British colonialism, the looting isn't from the locals, who have little or nothing, but an excuse for private interests to loot the public treasury of their own country. That's what you're actually getting with Western interventionism today.

And anyway "stagnation" from what? Some people want to live in the dark ages. The solution is to invade and kill them until they see the light?

Even if it means that 2 million more will die of preventable diseases?
This is the material benefit argument I was explaining earlier. Appo made the same one to justify the death of children at the hands of the Canadian government. "They would have frozen to death anyway." Likewise, what are a few raped or blown up Afghan children when more would have died of preventable disease anyway? Its a justification for anything you inflict in "inferior" peoples as long as your casualty counts don't exceed the hypothetical number of people who "would have died anyway." And, miraculously, the hypothetical number is always large enough. Immorality masquerading as utilitarianism.

Do you think that the West should avoid trying to spread its political and economic practices at all costs?
I don't know about all costs, but killing people and subverting elections should probably be off the table. It would be in e.g. American self-interest not to intervene so much, let alone the dubious benefits to the locals.
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Re: The Fraud of Primitive Authenticity

Post by Marcus »

If the Christian story is true—that man is charged with dominion over and the development of creation—then there is a certain, inexorable direction to human history, and those who don't or won't adapt are swept into the dustbin of time.
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Re: The Fraud of Primitive Authenticity

Post by Apollonius »

Taboo wrote:Everywhere you look, it's Pandora, Winnetou-style evil Anglos and Dances with Wolves.




There have been one or two good attempts at evenhandedness: Black Robe, a Canadian film set in 17th century New France, is one excellent example.




The book I led off the discussion with could be a turning point in this discussion, but I suspect that it will take more than a Canadian film about the cultural shock or compilation of ethnographies by some distinguished archaeologists to turn the discussion around.



The book is interesting, though. After having read through it forwards, backwards, and from the middle (yes, it's that good), I have to wonder if the authors weren't being a little sly with the title. While many people, including the authors, aspire to a more equal society, the ethnologies contained in this volume work as a perfect antidote to those who complain that we haven't attained perfection.



As I indicated in an earlier post, there isn't that much material here on really primitive societies, that is, people who have only attained a level of organization as complex as the extended family. There just aren't that many examples to draw upon. The overwhelming majority of cultures, both those known from history, and those we've examined chiefly through archaeological evidence, represent lifestyles that indulged in slavery, cannibalism, and warfare on a scale that, certainly relative to their populations, exceeds anything present in the modern world, and make Western Civilization look like the best of the lot, and certainly everyone here is breathing a sigh of relief that they didn't live in any of these bygone cultures.
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Re: The Fraud of Primitive Authenticity

Post by Ibrahim »

Marcus wrote:If the Christian story is true—that man is charged with dominion over and the development of creation—then there is a certain, inexorable direction to human history, and those who don't or won't adapt are swept into the dustbin of time.
Arguably true of how most religions view history, which is why among a mixed group non-confessional historiography is probably a better way of looking at things.
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Re: The Fraud of Primitive Authenticity

Post by Ibrahim »

Apollonius wrote:
Taboo wrote:Everywhere you look, it's Pandora, Winnetou-style evil Anglos and Dances with Wolves.


There have been one or two good attempts at evenhandedness: Black Robe, a Canadian film set in 17th century New France, is one excellent example.
The film is based on a novel, if you prefer reading.

What is interesting about the earlier colonial period in North America, as opposed to the 19th century, is how primitive both the natives and Europeans appear to modern sensibilities. Our modern view of "the West vs the rest" is largely Victorian, and modern advocates for it (e.g. Ferguson) are essentially neo-Victorians in their outlook.
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Re: The Fraud of Primitive Authenticity

Post by Marcus »

Ibrahim wrote:
Marcus wrote:If the Christian story is true—that man is charged with dominion over and the development of creation—then there is a certain, inexorable direction to human history, and those who don't or won't adapt are swept into the dustbin of time.
Arguably true of how most religions view history, which is why among a mixed group non-confessional historiography is probably a better way of looking at things.

Just in case, the Dominion Mandate does not mean "by the sword" as is advocated by at least one religion.

Second, I was not aware that any other religion views human history in terms of developing creation. Most other religions that I know of are quite stagnant in that regard, and impetus toward cultural improvement and progress has been borrowed from the Christian West. With perhaps the lone exception being Persian civilization.
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Re: The Fraud of Primitive Authenticity

Post by Ibrahim »

Marcus wrote:
Ibrahim wrote:
Marcus wrote:If the Christian story is true—that man is charged with dominion over and the development of creation—then there is a certain, inexorable direction to human history, and those who don't or won't adapt are swept into the dustbin of time.
Arguably true of how most religions view history, which is why among a mixed group non-confessional historiography is probably a better way of looking at things.

Just in case, the Dominion Mandate does not mean "by the sword" as is advocated by at least one religion.
What religion is that? Islam prohibits conversion by force, and in any case conversion by force is philosophically incoherent as a policy. Though some misguided members of all religions have attempted it anyway at different times in history.

Second, I was not aware that any other religion views human history in terms of developing creation. Most other religions that I know of are quite stagnant in that regard, and impetus toward cultural improvement and progress has been borrowed from the Christian West. With perhaps the lone exception being Persian civilization.
Several problems with this. First, cultural advances by non-Western civilizations and so numerous as to be uncountable, and most of the civilizations improvements of the "Christian West" are predicated on advances made by previous civilizations centuries or even millenia previous to the existence of Christianity. Second, in the present culture of the West some of the biggest impediments to equality are devout Christians compared to the largely secular, permissive civil society and popular culture. Third, adherents of many different religions have tried to improve both technology and learning/wisdom.knowledge generally in the name of their religion. Fourth, I was talking about the view of history that terminates in a given culture/religion being elect and history "ending" with their triumph over all other religions and cultures. Christianity, Islam, and Judaism have that in common, as does Buddhism, though in a different way, and I think perhaps Sikhism but I'm not certain on that one. That covers are great deal of the religious adherents in the world, so suffice to say that most confessional historiography will include as an a priori assumption that not only is the religion of the historian in question correct, but it will eventually be the only surviving religion/culture.

So when we talk about history amongst people with different religious views it stands to reason that we should attempt to be objective rather than confessional.
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Re: The Fraud of Primitive Authenticity

Post by Marcus »

Ibrahim wrote:. . Islam prohibits conversion by force,

. . most confessional historiography will include as an a priori assumption that not only is the religion of the historian in question correct, but it will eventually be the only surviving religion/culture.

So when we talk about history amongst people with different religious views it stands to reason that we should attempt to be objective rather than confessional.
First, you need to type "the persecuted church" into Google.

Second, there is no way any historian can be anything but confessional whether their religion is Islam, Christianity, Materialism, etc.

To each his own . .
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Re: The Fraud of Primitive Authenticity

Post by Ibrahim »

Marcus wrote:
Ibrahim wrote:What religion is that? Islam prohibits conversion by force, and in any case conversion by force is philosophically incoherent as a policy. Though some misguided members of all religions have attempted it anyway at different times in history.

Several problems with this. First, cultural advances by non-Western civilizations and so numerous as to be uncountable, and most of the civilizations improvements of the "Christian West" are predicated on advances made by previous civilizations centuries or even millenia previous to the existence of Christianity. Second, in the present culture of the West some of the biggest impediments to equality are devout Christians compared to the largely secular, permissive civil society and popular culture. Third, adherents of many different religions have tried to improve both technology and learning/wisdom.knowledge generally in the name of their religion. Fourth, I was talking about the view of history that terminates in a given culture/religion being elect and history "ending" with their triumph over all other religions and cultures. Christianity, Islam, and Judaism have that in common, as does Buddhism, though in a different way, and I think perhaps Sikhism but I'm not certain on that one. That covers are great deal of the religious adherents in the world, so suffice to say that most confessional historiography will include as an a priori assumption that not only is the religion of the historian in question correct, but it will eventually be the only surviving religion/culture.

So when we talk about history amongst people with different religious views it stands to reason that we should attempt to be objective rather than confessional.
First, you need to type "the persecuted church" into Google.
This changes nothing about the statements made thus far in the thread.



Second, there is no way any historian can be anything but confessional whether their religion is Islam, Christianity, Materialism, etc.
This is incorrect. Various formal historiographical approaches include comparative, economic, Marxist, social, etc. Confessional history is just one approach, and plenty of e.g. Christian historians produce historical works that are not confessional.
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Re: The Fraud of Primitive Authenticity

Post by Taboo »

Ibrahim wrote: No, exactly correct. The imaginary distinction is just a cover for the new vogue in racism.
...
Depends how its loaded. For Spengler, or various apologists for colonialism, its a signal of inferiority and a justification for any action against the "inferior" group up to and including genocide.
So not exactly correct, actually. :) Depends on how it's loaded. Racists will use anything, I guess, but not everything that racists use in inherently racist.
Spain and Portugal extracted immense wealth from overseas empires and trade, their subsequent decline was a matter of failures at home despite overseas successes. Sweden had a brief Baltic empire, Switzerland became a banking center, wealthy off of other peoples money, sometimes ill-gotten.

The looting of India provided the capital that funded the industrial revolution. The perpetuated myth that it was entirely a product of native ingenuity is a post-facto justification for colonialism.
The looting of unbelievable wealth from MezoAmerica did not trigger an industrial revolution in the Hispanic peninsula, but was squandered on wars and luxury. There was obviously something different about the UK. As I said before, I don't deny that the private companies and trading houses of the UK did profit from their activities (kind of the point of them being commercial), but it was the legal and institutional capital, not the gold, that brought about industrialization. This comes out quite clearly from works such as Landes' well-researched "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations" or Ian Morris' "Why the West Rules - For Now."

After all, both the Ming and the Mughals were fabulously wealthy by Western standards of the time, and the wealth alone did not trigger a wave of industrialization.
That's the significant trade, and why e.g. England took so many foolish and expensive actions to "secure India" that were losses in and of themselves.
Your seem to be going back again and again to this plunder of India as the cause of industrialization and stuff. I am willing to be persuaded. Any sources you care to share?
This claim is proven wrong in front of our eyes as we speak. Western efforts to "civilize" Afghanistan has in fact created more hatred for the West, destabilized the region more than it was previously (most importantly Pakistan), placed the world close to nuclear war and nuclear terrorism, and reduced the prestige of Western power.
Limited. Circumscribed. Invading a landlocked country 6,000 miles away, putting 100,000 soldiers on the ground and shipping fuel to them at 100$/gallon does not exactly match my definition of a limited, circumscribed intervention.
It never has been avoided this way. At best we've seen civilian elections subverted and leaders replaced with repressive Western-friendly dictators.
As we speak, a few hundred French special forces guys are chasing and butchering Jihadi overflow from Libya in Mali, preventing the arm-chopping style of Sharia law from becoming the standard in that particular sub-Saharan corner, much to the relief of the local population, it seems.
Lately we see local dictators or theocracies replaced with chaos,
One could argue that the US has been actually too stadoffish in terms of promoting its values. The Saudis are putting tens of billions into funding Madrasa schools. The US could fund secular schools, instead of invading Iraqs and Afghanistans, for instance. It's doesn't, and that's a terrible pity.
And anyway "stagnation" from what? Some people want to live in the dark ages. The solution is to invade and kill them until they see the light?
I've never met a man who answered yes to the question of whether they would like 3 out of 10 children to die before the age of 5. I must not have been travelling enough. The Amish in the US are perfectly free to practice their backward ways.

The US would not be in Afghanistan were it not for the 9/11 attacks, so the US was perfectly willing to leave them to their middle ages before. After they were in, they didn't know how to get out without leaving the place prepped for a total bloodbath. So they stayed for twelve years, hoping it'd get better. Apparently, they're leaving next year regardless.
This is the material benefit argument I was explaining earlier. Appo made the same one to justify the death of children at the hands of the Canadian government. "They would have frozen to death anyway." Likewise, what are a few raped or blown up Afghan children when more would have died of preventable disease anyway? Its a justification for anything you inflict in "inferior" peoples as long as your casualty counts don't exceed the hypothetical number of people who "would have died anyway." And, miraculously, the hypothetical number is always large enough. Immorality masquerading as utilitarianism.
Well, I am not drawn to the Western world for its high culture and its careful preservation of its verbal and historical heritage. It is the political and social freedom and the prosperity that drew me there.
Like moths before fire, all other civilizations look in fascination at the glittering towers of the West and its eastern emulators. There is, ultimately, no escape.
I don't know about all costs, but killing people and subverting elections should probably be off the table. It would be in e.g. American self-interest not to intervene so much, let alone the dubious benefits to the locals.
I didn't condone subverting elections, although I think trying to influence them is only fair game (countries like Iran, China, Russia and the Saudis have no qualms about backing their favorites).
And again, I don't think it'd be ok to go around shooting opposition leaders, but a missile slamming into the car of a fanatical insurgent leader on a lonely road is not always a bad thing.
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Re: The Fraud of Primitive Authenticity

Post by Ibrahim »

Taboo wrote:
Ibrahim wrote: No, exactly correct. The imaginary distinction is just a cover for the new vogue in racism.
...
Depends how its loaded. For Spengler, or various apologists for colonialism, its a signal of inferiority and a justification for any action against the "inferior" group up to and including genocide.
So not exactly correct, actually. :) Depends on how it's loaded. Racists will use anything, I guess, but not everything that racists use in inherently racist.
I think the main takeaway is that some people use the assumed "superiority" of their group to justify any action against the "inferior" group. I can think of lots of things to call that, but what concerns us here is the mechanism. Its what you are defending here, and what Appo embraces as a matter of course.


Spain and Portugal extracted immense wealth from overseas empires and trade, their subsequent decline was a matter of failures at home despite overseas successes. Sweden had a brief Baltic empire, Switzerland became a banking center, wealthy off of other peoples money, sometimes ill-gotten.

The looting of India provided the capital that funded the industrial revolution. The perpetuated myth that it was entirely a product of native ingenuity is a post-facto justification for colonialism.
The looting of unbelievable wealth from MezoAmerica did not trigger an industrial revolution in the Hispanic peninsula, but was squandered on wars and luxury.
True but there is a crucial distinction there. Mesoamerica was looted once. They plundered the indigenous states for their gold and that was that. Afterwards it was a grinding slave economy which cost more to run for lower returns. India was a more developed economy which could be, and was, exploited over the long term by the British. So it allowed for more substantial long-term investment at home. We could contrast the myriad differences between the Spanish and British empires for ages, but I think its sufficient to say that the British were "better at" colonialism, and thus reaped greater rewards.

There was obviously something different about the UK. As I said before, I don't deny that the private companies and trading houses of the UK did profit from their activities (kind of the point of them being commercial), but it was the legal and institutional capital, not the gold, that brought about industrialization. This comes out quite clearly from works such as Landes' well-researched "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations" or Ian Morris' "Why the West Rules - For Now."
Opening up conquered territories to private exploitation rather than everything being centralized through a monarchical bureaucracy was certainly an initial advantage of British colonialism. Critiques of that method would turn into a critique of capitalism generally, and I'm happy to file it under the British being "better at colonialism" again.

After all, both the Ming and the Mughals were fabulously wealthy by Western standards of the time, and the wealth alone did not trigger a wave of industrialization.
Indeed, the timing of everything was crucial both in terms of the British empire compared to other European empires or non-European empires. There is also a bit of luck involved. Napoleon famously scoffed when presented with a model steamship, but I doubt you would argue that France is as radically different from England as you might argue Ming China was. There is also the specific demands of each culture. Recent scholarship (e.g. Rowe) on Qing China suggests that its economic output exceeded that of any European nation well into the 19th century. There was a domestic market, a large population of workers, agricultural surplus, so there was no immediate need for mechanization. British imperialism relied on technical innovation both economically and militarily more than any (near-)contemporary land-based empires.

That's the significant trade, and why e.g. England took so many foolish and expensive actions to "secure India" that were losses in and of themselves.
Your seem to be going back again and again to this plunder of India as the cause of industrialization and stuff. I am willing to be persuaded. Any sources you care to share?
On which detail, that India was the most profitable imperial possession? Or some of the pratfalls I was referring to with this line above? I thought the role of India as most profitable colonial possession was pretty much the standard view, but recent works I've read discussing colonial rule there included A. N. Wilson's The Victorians and Abraham Eraly's The Jewel and the Lotus. Books discussing some of the adventurism to protect India include Peter Hopkirk's The Great Game and Diana Preston's The Dark Defile. Peripherally related but a good read is Patwant Singh's The Sikhs, which I was inspired to finally read after the temple shooting last year.


This claim is proven wrong in front of our eyes as we speak. Western efforts to "civilize" Afghanistan has in fact created more hatred for the West, destabilized the region more than it was previously (most importantly Pakistan), placed the world close to nuclear war and nuclear terrorism, and reduced the prestige of Western power.
Limited. Circumscribed. Invading a landlocked country 6,000 miles away, putting 100,000 soldiers on the ground and shipping fuel to them at 100$/gallon does not exactly match my definition of a limited, circumscribed intervention.


It was expressly a civilizing mission, as initially sold to the public, so I think its relevant. That it was ill-conceived is something I'm happy to agree with.

It never has been avoided this way. At best we've seen civilian elections subverted and leaders replaced with repressive Western-friendly dictators.
As we speak, a few hundred French special forces guys are chasing and butchering Jihadi overflow from Libya in Mali, preventing the arm-chopping style of Sharia law from becoming the standard in that particular sub-Saharan corner, much to the relief of the local population, it seems.
So far so good, though we'll see how it looks in the long run. That entire conflict is largely a spillover from the limited intervention in Libya, which I supported but it seems like the Sahara is a game of whack-a-mole, so eventually the interventions will have to stop or no longer be limited and circumscribed.

Interventions are also famously erratic. Mali in weeks, Libya in months, Darfur never. The variable is always commercial interests (French companies have vested interests in Mali) so we're back to a colonial model, not a civilizing one. If you're benefiting people erratically then there is no difference between the archetypical "Asiatic despot."

Lately we see local dictators or theocracies replaced with chaos,
One could argue that the US has been actually too stadoffish in terms of promoting its values. The Saudis are putting tens of billions into funding Madrasa schools. The US could fund secular schools, instead of invading Iraqs and Afghanistans, for instance. It's doesn't, and that's a terrible pity.
Things like this sound good in theory but the locals tend not to want American social mores. What confuses observers who can't distinguish between parts of a monolithic group called "Muslims" is that they don't want the Wahhabi/Taliban system either.

And anyway "stagnation" from what? Some people want to live in the dark ages. The solution is to invade and kill them until they see the light?
I've never met a man who answered yes to the question of whether they would like 3 out of 10 children to die before the age of 5.
Then you haven't met the Taliban. "Many sons and many guns" is the Pashtun motto, and if you want to invade them to try and reduce infant mortality rates all that is going to stick with the locals is the murdered and raped children and the various real and imagined "insults to Islam," and the actual Taliban fighters are psyched to have a high-status opponent to fight/die against.


The US would not be in Afghanistan were it not for the 9/11 attacks, so the US was perfectly willing to leave them to their middle ages before.
Killing all those Pashtun peasants in response to some Saudis and Egyptians blowing up a building in New York seemed like a sensible idea at the time.


After they were in, they didn't know how to get out without leaving the place prepped for a total bloodbath.
No, they wanted to stay and "civilize" the place. Bloodbaths are inevitable there anyway, and the US brought one with them.

So they stayed for twelve years, hoping it'd get better. Apparently, they're leaving next year regardless.
And I'm sure the tribal fighters are torn. On the one hand they get to fairly claim the defeated the US/NATO military, but on the other they have to go back to fighting the guys in the next valley. I guess they'll get a kick out of killing/looting all the "collaborators" in Kabul.



This is the material benefit argument I was explaining earlier. Appo made the same one to justify the death of children at the hands of the Canadian government. "They would have frozen to death anyway." Likewise, what are a few raped or blown up Afghan children when more would have died of preventable disease anyway? Its a justification for anything you inflict in "inferior" peoples as long as your casualty counts don't exceed the hypothetical number of people who "would have died anyway." And, miraculously, the hypothetical number is always large enough. Immorality masquerading as utilitarianism.
Well, I am not drawn to the Western world for its high culture and its careful preservation of its verbal and historical heritage. It is the political and social freedom and the prosperity that drew me there.
Like moths before fire, all other civilizations look in fascination at the glittering towers of the West and its eastern emulators. There is, ultimately, no escape.
People are drawn to wealth, and when they wealth moves somewhere else they will emulate that. This Western supremacist argument hinges on the artificial assumption that the wealth of the Western world is somehow unique, and moreover that it is predicated on some special characteristic that makes it more fairly earned and indicative of greater virtue than other people's wealth, or wealthy peoples in history. This is far from unprecedented, the Romans could be quite tiresome on this same subject. But its entirely illusory.

I don't know about all costs, but killing people and subverting elections should probably be off the table. It would be in e.g. American self-interest not to intervene so much, let alone the dubious benefits to the locals.
I didn't condone subverting elections, although I think trying to influence them is only fair game (countries like Iran, China, Russia and the Saudis have no qualms about backing their favorites).
And again, I don't think it'd be ok to go around shooting opposition leaders, but a missile slamming into the car of a fanatical insurgent leader on a lonely road is not always a bad thing.

You kill more children than insurgent leaders. The legacy of the "war on terror" is that America stopped being "the good guys" and the nation that beat the Nazis and Imperial Japan, and became the nation that murders children by remote control like cowards, and tortures innocent people like monsters. Is America really any different than it was before? Probably not, and if anything Americans are better behaved than the used to be. Is all the moral equivalency whining about other people being just as bad true? Again, almost certainly it is. But this is the new perception that has been created, and I don't see that it benefits the US long term, so strictly from a self-interest point of view new methods might be in order.

So it makes it hard to argue for superiority to the point that neo-colonialism is justifiable. Western supremacists are reduced to "yeah we murder and torture people in failed military actions, but....." and then talking about luxury goods or how free they are compared to North Korea, even if they are less free than they were 20 years ago. Paradoxically the arguments for exceptionalism and supremacism will only increase and become more emphatic as the actual sense of superiority declines. We've seen it in past empires as well.
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Taboo
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Re: The Fraud of Primitive Authenticity

Post by Taboo »

You kill more children than insurgent leaders. The legacy of the "war on terror" is that America stopped being "the good guys" and the nation that beat the Nazis and Imperial Japan, and became the nation that murders children by remote control like cowards, and tortures innocent people like monsters. Is America really any different than it was before? Probably not, and if anything Americans are better behaved than the used to be. Is all the moral equivalency whining about other people being just as bad true? Again, almost certainly it is. But this is the new perception that has been created, and I don't see that it benefits the US long term, so strictly from a self-interest point of view new methods might be in order.
There's nothing you wrote that I disagree with here.

I could question the "cowards" aspect of drone strikes, since we've all read Patton and his "having the other bastard die for his country." I don't think I'd be persuaded that going around with machetes would be more valiant, somehow. Moreover, IEDs and having people blow themselves up in schools does not strike me as exactly noble. But that's just a distraction from the main point, that America isn't doing itself any PR favors by blowing up people from a grim-sounding "disposition matrix" that Obama checks off between morning coffee and NSC briefings. I agree with you on that.
So it makes it hard to argue for superiority to the point that neo-colonialism is justifiable. Western supremacists are reduced to "yeah we murder and torture people in failed military actions, but....." and then talking about luxury goods or how free they are compared to North Korea, even if they are less free than they were 20 years ago.
I'm not a fan of neocolonialism at all. In fact, the sooner the US gets its oil and gas fracking up and above domestic demand, I honestly don't think I'll even have a reason to glance at SW Asia on the map. Let the Euros, Indians, Chinese, Iranianas, Israelis and the Turks figure it out. The whole place will be one big Darfur to the Americans: sad but compeletely irrelevant. We may post a few things on facebook, and adorn our cars and college backpacks with compassionate stickers. Oh, and after every bloody civil war, the US will magnanimously take in the fleeing intellectual elites, and put them to work.
Paradoxically the arguments for exceptionalism and supremacism will only increase and become more emphatic as the actual sense of superiority declines. We've seen it in past empires as well.
I'm re-reading M Jaques' "When China Rules" -- may start a thread on it later, if I magically find the time.
Ibrahim
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Re: The Fraud of Primitive Authenticity

Post by Ibrahim »

Taboo wrote:
You kill more children than insurgent leaders. The legacy of the "war on terror" is that America stopped being "the good guys" and the nation that beat the Nazis and Imperial Japan, and became the nation that murders children by remote control like cowards, and tortures innocent people like monsters. Is America really any different than it was before? Probably not, and if anything Americans are better behaved than the used to be. Is all the moral equivalency whining about other people being just as bad true? Again, almost certainly it is. But this is the new perception that has been created, and I don't see that it benefits the US long term, so strictly from a self-interest point of view new methods might be in order.
There's nothing you wrote that I disagree with here.

I could question the "cowards" aspect of drone strikes, since we've all read Patton and his "having the other bastard die for his country." I don't think I'd be persuaded that going around with machetes would be more valiant, somehow.
ANother subject, but I would submit that any kind of killing in which the killer is not subject to any personal risk is the definition of cowardice. If we both have clubs you can club me and I can club you. If we both have ranged weapons you can shoot me I can shoot you, and so on up to cutting-edge MBTs and fighter aircraft. Drones are clearly outside of that tradition of human conflict, regardless of their utility.


Moreover, IEDs and having people blow themselves up in schools does not strike me as exactly noble.
Setting up IEDs is far riskier than drone strikes, and indeed they are occasionally struck by drones setting up the IEDs. But, and a slight nod to the second part of this statement, the targets are significant. If you're targeting civilians then this is inherently bad/against the rules/dishonorable/however you want to put it. But trying to blow up military vehicles with IEDs is not only militarily acceptable, it requires far more personal courage than operating a drone.

But that's just a distraction from the main point, that America isn't doing itself any PR favors by blowing up people from a grim-sounding "disposition matrix" that Obama checks off between morning coffee and NSC briefings. I agree with you on that.
This is what is relevant for our discussion here. I would further argue that is runs contrary to any perceived moral superiority (though it is but one example that could be brought).
So it makes it hard to argue for superiority to the point that neo-colonialism is justifiable. Western supremacists are reduced to "yeah we murder and torture people in failed military actions, but....." and then talking about luxury goods or how free they are compared to North Korea, even if they are less free than they were 20 years ago.
I'm not a fan of neocolonialism at all. In fact, the sooner the US gets its oil and gas fracking up and above domestic demand, I honestly don't think I'll even have a reason to glance at SW Asia on the map. Let the Euros, Indians, Chinese, Iranianas, Israelis and the Turks figure it out. The whole place will be one big Darfur to the Americans: sad but compeletely irrelevant. We may post a few things on facebook, and adorn our cars and college backpacks with compassionate stickers. Oh, and after every bloody civil war, the US will magnanimously take in the fleeing intellectual elites, and put them to work.
So keep the cultural supremacist thing, just without risking participation.

Paradoxically the arguments for exceptionalism and supremacism will only increase and become more emphatic as the actual sense of superiority declines. We've seen it in past empires as well.
I'm re-reading M Jaques' "When China Rules" -- may start a thread on it later, if I magically find the time.
I'm dubious on most predictions for Chinese ascendancy. They are returning to their status as a world power - their relative weakness was the aberration, not their return to importance - but there's no reason to assume they would be dominant. Still, I could be inferring the wrong thing from Jaques' title.
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Apollonius
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Re: The Fraud of Primitive Authenticity

Post by Apollonius »

Crops, towns, government - James C. Scott, London Review of Books, 21 November 2013
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n22/james-c-sc ... government




Review of:

The World until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? by Jared Diamond (Penguin, 2013)

The commonest contemporary cause of [language] death is cultural and economic engulfment: the majority language so dominates the public sphere, media, schools and government that mastering it is the sole route to employment, social status and cultural citizenship. Diamond pauses to consider the argument that the consolidation of languages might be a fine thing. After all, eliminating language barriers makes for better mutual understanding. Why would one prefer a world in which hill peoples navigate through a linguistic thicket in which they must operate in five or more languages, as his informants do in the New Guinea Highlands?

Here, Diamond, as evolutionary biologist, has two choices. He could claim that the extinction of languages is the process of natural selection at work, just as the scientific racists of the late 19th century claimed that the extermination of backward tribal peoples like the Herero was a tragic but inevitable result of the expansion of superior races. But instead, he takes up a position not unlike that held by E.O. Wilson on the disappearance of species. He argues that just as natural diversity is a treasury of variation and resilience, so linguistic diversity represents a cultural treasury of expression, thought-ways and cosmology that, once lost, is gone for ever.
Literature, culture and much knowledge are encoded in languages: lose the language and you lose much of the literature, culture and knowledge … Traditional peoples have local-language names for hundreds of animal and plant species around them; those encyclopedias of ethnobiological information vanish when their languages vanish … Tribal peoples also have their own oral literatures, and losses of those literatures also represent losses to humanity.
It is undeniable that we are in danger of irrecoverably losing a large part of mankind’s cultural, linguistic and aesthetic heritage from the effects of ‘steamroller’ languages and states. But what a disappointment it is, after nearly five hundred pages of anecdotes, assertions, snippets of scientific studies, observations, detours into the evolution of religion, reports of near-death experiences – Diamond can be a gripping storyteller – to hear the lessons he has distilled for us. We should learn more languages; we should practise more intimate and permissive child-rearing; we should spend more time socialising and talking face to face; we should utilise the wisdom and knowledge of our elders; we should learn to assess the dangers in our environment more realistically. And, when it comes to daily health tips, you have to imagine Diamond putting on his white coat and stethoscope as he recommends ‘not smoking; exercising regularly; limiting our intake of total calories, alcohol, salt and salty foods, sugar and sugared soft drinks, saturated and trans fats, processed foods, butter, cream and red meat; and increasing our intake of fibre, fruits and vegetables, calcium and complex carbohydrates. Another simple change is to eat more slowly.’ Perhaps wary of resistance to a fully fledged hunter-gatherer diet, he recommends the Mediterranean diet. Those who have trekked all this way with him, through the history of the species and the New Guinea Highlands, must have expected something more substantial awaiting them at the end of the trail.


:o
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