Bobover, wasn't my point that history has been re-written.
The US Government finally apologised to the American Indians this year but I see the perceptions are still alive and well. The British falsified history to marginalise a race of people, to enact eradication, Americanization and removal policies and again to avoid reparations. Museums and history books are no exception.
"History is a set of lies agreed upon" Napoleon Bonaparte
The Napoleon quote is apt. History is always written with a point of view about who and what is right and wrong. Modern historians freely acknowledge that. Whenever there is conflict, those sympathetic to a side will boast of its virtues and belittle its vices; those sympathetic to the other side will reverse the process. If a third party writes the history, then he will superimpose the values of his place and time on the history.
A truly objective account would be that two groups fought, and one side won, with neither being especially virtuous or vicious. Fighting is how humans often settle differences. The objective account will satisfy no one, because we want history to be a moral tale in which good triumphs over evil, when it is really only strength triumphing over weakness. (Though a Darwinian case can be made that what makes a group stronger is something worth preserving and spreading.)
When it comes to highly fraught histories, such as that of the American Indians and the European settlers, it's tempting to just reverse the usual polarities and say that the side once thought good was bad, and the side once thought bad was good. This just substitutes one distortion for another. The truth is that war is a nasty business for all parties. The Europeans were stronger, so they won. The end. As a European, I'm glad. Not because virtue triumphed, but because it's where my self-interest lies.
The same editing of history takes place everywhere. What's unusual about the US is that we've built counter-narratives to celebrate Indians, African Slaves, etc. It's a rare - and genuinely liberal - country that celebrates those it's defeated. It's good to celebrate everyone, but the aggressive promulgation of the counter-narratives by the left really does have as its goal the demoralization and discrediting of society so that it's easier for the left to take power. People who've lost faith in the value of their own history are more easily (mis)lead.
The Tarahumara are a peaceful tribe that remains almost untouched by modern civilisation. This fortune is owning soley to geographical location. If their society had been devastated too we could, using your 'objective account' hypothesis, allocate virtue and viciousness.
The industrial revolution was exactly that. A REVOLUTION in INDUSTRY to no ends. One only has to read Charles Dickens (David Copperfield) and others to understand what was going on in England at the time. The London fog at one time was a very deadly event. As the revolution reached out and touched people's lives it changed them. In many ways it was for the better and in other ways it was for the worse. Human greed was a major factor in making it for the worse. The work that one could accomplish before the revolution now only took less than a tenth of the effort. However there were opportunists trying to capitalize on the other "nine" leaving the worker with still only a tenth and all the much more misery for it.
In the western United States the industrial revolution which had been effecting other people's lives for generations ran right dead smack into the lives of groups of people who had no earthly idea what was going. And they paid dearly. Many Indians had converted into Hispanic cowboys but most had not and were actually escaping conditions back east where Europeans had taken over (helped by the industrial revolution). And many of those from back east were escaping conditions from further east (Europe). Certain mindsets after the industrial revolution are so vastly different than that of peoples who hadn't been touched by it. Remember that before the industrial revolution were the medieval times with folks having their own superstitions. But England itself before the revolution used to have commons areas which were not owned by individuals and where the poor could go to. After the industrial revolution many of those superstitions were swept aside but not at all competely. We still have them and are all still dealing with them.
Not all of the changes by industrial revolution were bad and not all were good either. They just were and we all have to deal with in our own ways (Indians included). We will NEVER be able to go back to how things were. Things before were NOT all good either before. Try working on a farm and doing everything by hand. In a few ways they were better but mostly they were not. What mostly is lacking after the industrial revolution and most tribes are lamenting is our "sense of community." I know I had once envied being in a community such as my mother's Hispanic community. But this was never to happen for me nor could it ever again at least not in the manner that it once was.
Bobover - some of your comments remind of a Seinfeld point. Which was that when we're watching animal documentaries we always go for the one (or side with) that the doco is highlighting! So if a lion is chasing a dear one week we will cheer for the lion to catch it, the next for the dear to escape!
In these cases there are no good guys or bad guys.
But you can't always JUST report history as being that 2 sides fought and one won because they were stronger. In your stance here you are going too far to one extreme - by totally ignoring the moral issues. Surely you can't think that Hitler's Germany were the moral equals of Churchills England? If the Germans had been stronger would have the Nazi ideals been worthwhile preserving and spreading???
Also, the Indians were in America first. Doesn't that give them some sort of moral right over the invading Europeans? Why couldn't the Europeans have been content with living in their own land/s (like the Indians were)?
loveableleopardy (imported) wrote: Sun Oct 24, 2010 5:46 pm
Bobover - some of your comments remind of a Seinfeld point. Which was that when we're watching animal documentaries we always go for the one (or side with) that the doco is highlighting! So if a lion is chasing a dear one week we will cheer for the lion to catch it, the next for the dear to escape!
In these cases there are no good guys or bad guys.
But you can't always JUST report history as being that 2 sides fought and one won because they were stronger. In your stance here you are going too far to one extreme - by totally ignoring the moral issues. Surely you can't think that Hitler's Germany were the moral equals of Churchills England? If the Germans had been stronger would have the Nazi ideals been worthwhile preserving and spreading???
Also, the Indians were in America first. Doesn't that give them some sort of moral right over the invading Europeans? Why couldn't the Europeans have been content with living in their own land/s (like the Indians were)?
Conquest has always been the way of mankind, and I suspect in many different forms, always will be. To the conqueror, morality is often a luxurious afterthought, if it is an afterthought.
Dev you are right we can't go back to being nomadic and everyone needs to deal with the past. I'm not defending American Indians just to prove a point either. There is a middle ground here.
The problem is that the pretentious British, overly proud of their utmost refinement, failed to see the sophistication of the American Indians. We are still no more intelligent. We build concrete cities on coastlines where the best climate and most fertile soil is while the world's arable land is running out. The food we do produce is completely lacking in nutritional value due to over-farming. Much of our food is also wasted and goes to landfill. This is just one example how upside down the world is comparatively to so-called unadvanced cultures.
I'll spare you the environmental speech for now but we do things in the most peculiar and inefficient ways.
Some Australian societies managed to live in deserts. That would have been much more difficult that farming. In Japan it was once the norm to have fully self-sufficient homes. Again this is all due to geography. Most societies learnt to adapt to their environment. Corporations don't.
Losing our sense of community, as you have pointed out, is perplexing and it is a human need for a healthy and happy life. I am of European descent and it is noticeable to me that there has been a steep decline in the last 30 years. Also as a transsexual, in this regard, the American Indians and many other indigenous cultures weren't as xenophobic as Europeans. There were the two-spirited people, the fa'afafine, the hijra, I can't recall what the Koori term is.
It behooves us to recognise the wisdom of indigenous peoples and incorporate this into our way of thinking.
