We Need New Words to Replace "Religion"

Debate Room
41

Sorry if I mischaracterized your statements.
However, I find it contradictory that you say

And then you state

So…conquered by the “more civilized”? I guess I have a different definition of civilized. If you mean more able and likely to annihilate perceived enemies, then ok…

Your selectivity in referring to Wiki is somewhat revealing.
Of course the captive narratives were always written by Europeans. While that does not imply that reports of brutality, etc. were entirely fabricated, it certainly indicates a clear bias.

I’m not sure where you came up with this or what you are trying to convey. To infer that social “evolution” is a linear “forward” process is stunningly over simplistic.
Any, even casual student of tribal histories, would never think in terms like:

A factor you may not have considered is that the overwhelming majority of captive narratives, as well as Ethnological reports, were produced well after many of the deleterious effects of the invasion, including in some cases, mass murder of innocent non-combatants by Europeans. When confronted with an adversary who subscribes to annihilation warfare, any level of brutality or cruelty needs to be viewed through that lens. I would never deny that atrocities were committed by various groups and individuals, including Indians. However, there are indicators of a widespread adoption of more peaceful interactions and attitudes among various tribes as evidenced by the Iroquois Confederacy etc.( In1988, the U.S. Senate paid tribute with a resolution3 that said, “The confederation of the original 13 colonies into one republic was influenced by the political system developed by the Iroquois Confederacy, as were many of the democratic principles which were incorporated into the constitution itself.”
A number of tribes had migrated to new areas and pressure on resources had been reduced to a point where conflicts had been greatly reduced. Their version of what you refer to as “social evolution”. Additionally, there is ample documentation by Europeans, of indians sharing food and other needed help in the early settlements. After this was rewarded with violence and death, attitudes began to change and continued to do so through the later events such as The Sand Creek Massacre.

As I mentioned in my first response, I have only intimate knowledge of some Cherokee history and culture, although I have many books concerning western tribes as well. Since history is always written by the victors, it is of great benefit to explore alternative narratives…

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42

Okay, a thoughtful response. It’s a pleasure – of a sort – to argue with an intelligent opponent – it makes one a better arguer, or … it gives one the opportunity to change one’s mind where proven wrong. I have been wrong in the past, and am no doubt wrong on some things now.

So, where do we agree? We can agree that human beings can be very very nasty to each other. In fact, it’s a problem in teach ing history to children … you have to shield them from some of the more horrible bits.

We agree that Europeans are humans, and therefore, etc. Their advanced technology has allowed them to destroy their enemies more effectively. Gunpowder beats flint-tipped spears, atom bombs beat gunpowder.

I judge the advance of civilization by its conquest of nature, the advance of science and technology. A society that can harness water-power to grind grain is more advanced than one where the grain is pounded with rocks.

But that’s just the central aspect of civilization. There is another aspect, which is tricky. I believe that, on average, with exceptions (some extreme exceptions), that societies which advance technically, also advance in their treatment of ordinary human beings. In fact, it’s the most common definition of ‘civilized’ – “You should act in a civilized way” doesn’t mean “Act like someone who has mastered finite element analysis” or someone who can build a flying machine.

The two go together. In a way, primitive societies cannot afford to be merciful, to protect the weak, to act in a ‘civilized’ way.

And in the first steps of civilization, ordinary men and women are so far below the rulers in terms of access to knowledge, that even where they are not enslaved, life can be pretty grim for them. (In fact, I think examination of skeletal remains has shown that hunter-gatherers were healthier than their more advanced descendants who had settled down to farm and herd.)

But the development of the market economy and the Enlightenment has changed everything. Marx was right to honor the bourgeosie, who started us on a steeply-sloping upward path. But only the average slope is upward, averaged out over time.

Neither technical advance, nor ‘social’ advance is linear, for sure. Three steps forward, two steps back, and so slow and uneven.

After the failure of the 1905 Revolution in Russia, and the terrible reaction against the revolutionaries which followed, Trotsky wrote a very moving piece – I can’t find the exact quote right now (I think it’s in Isaac Deutscher’s biography of him, Volume I), but it goes something like this: “History is a great machine in the service of our ideals. We believe in it. But sometimes, when this voracious monster sucks the very lifeblood of our hearts, we are moved to cry with all our strength, ‘What thou doest … do faster!’”

We progress, but slowly. And … it is possible for the strains and contradictions of modern society to result in a terrible regression socially, but without destroying the economic/technical base thereof. Someone called Stalin ‘Genghis Khan with a telephone’. But the real example were the Nazis: the most advanced science and technique, in the service of a new barbarism, with the danger that " the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science."
And contradictions avail! I am glad the US won the Cold War against the Soviet Union. But anyone studying the history of it, should be sure to see what kind of regimes we supported in Latin America for a while.

And how many Americans know about things like this: Rape during the occupation of Japan - Wikipedia

So, yes, nothing linear, automatic, much less divinely preordained, about progress.

And of course history, as you say, is written by the victors, and the victors in the Americas needed to justify their extermination/expropriation of the original inhabitants. Anyone studying history had better know that.

On the other hand, one of the good things about civilization, in its current stage, is that it allows pluralism, and free speech. So you, and others, are able to teach some uncomfortable truths about what happened to Native Americans. [Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - Wikipedia]

And of course, Americans can afford to tell the truth to themselves here because not a single one of them would even consider, for one second, returning the land they stole to the original inhabitants. Some Politically Correct virtue-signalling is about it.

This is long enough, so I think I’ll stop here and re-read your response and see if there is anything I’ve missed and if so, respond later.

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43

Such a measure is only of technology, not automatically the humanities or treatment of others.

The indigenous population reached a level of stability because of their practices. And your ignorance is they were “primitive”. They had enough technology to easily sustain their population, and did not have a need to go any further. Their level of technology, culture and humanity allowed them to be merciful and protect the weak. Your knowledge on such a topic is biased and incomplete.

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44

Boy, are you misinformed! Primitive societies were merciful and protected the weak??? Did you bother to read the material above, about how Native Americans had very refined methods of torture for their captives?

Have a look at Robert Edgerton’s
Robert B. Edgerton Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony https://www.amazon.com/Sick-Societies-Challenging-Primitive-Harmony/dp/0029089255

And here: Constant Battles: Why We Fight by
Steven A. LeBlanc & Katherine E. Register

We’re intelligent chimpanzees, and a nasty bunch. There never was an Eden. We’re slowly getting better. We needn’t re-invent religious myths about a past ‘Golden Age’.

45

That depends on one’s source of information. You lean on books written by others who have an agenda to sell books by dramatizing and exaggerating, while I listen to first-hand accounts.

46

Okay. Explain further. What ‘first-hand accounts’?

I don’t think we have any first-hand account of how primitive peoples lived before the white man got to them. We have myths and legends. And probably not even the myths and legends that were passed down before the white man got there. We have the myths and legends that have been influenced by the ‘observer effect’.

The people I reference, if you look at their footnotes, have lots of primary sources. And some of them are academics, not popularizers. This doesn’t automatically make them trustworthy, of course. American academia is thoroughl corrupted by leftwing Poltiical Correctness and postmodernist lunacy.

Today, if you want to popularize, you would write Politically Correct romanticizations of Native Americans, whitewashing away the horrible tortures, their incessant warfare among each other, etc. You would portray them as living in harmony with nature, instead of the truth, which was that they were too backward to have much of an impact on nature, although there is evidence that they hunted some species to extinction.

Please understand: I don’t think our ancestors, when they were living in the stone age, were any better. It’s just how homo sapiens is.

Which tribes advanced, and which didn’t, was a question of historic accident. The Mayas were well on their way to civilization, when something happened to them. The Aztecs and Incas as well, although here the ‘something’ was a more advanced civilization, which destroyed theirs. Why were these infant civilizations all in Central and South America, and not in North America? Beats me.

Anyway, we must hope that all peoples, all over the globe, advance into modernity.

We should look forward to the time when a Navajo wins the Fields Medal in Mathematics, or a Lakota gets a Nobel Prize in Physics. Speed the day!

47

You live far away from ground zero, read books written by academics who read books written by other academics who referenced other books by other academics. And despite their credentials and sincere intent, they are many times removed from the bare facts.

My sources are first nations people, whom I have close contact with and have direct conversations.

And their culture lives on, and that is a direct indicator on how (as you intimate) barbaric and cruel they may be. But because of your ignorance you do not see the other side, the compassion and tolerance that was also part of their culture.

Have you ever heard of the Massacre at Wounded Knee?

from Native American Rituals and Ceremonies – Legends of America

These attempts to suppress the traditions of Native Americans eventually led to the Massacre at Wounded Knee on December 29, 1890, when the government attempted to stop the practice of the “Ghost Dance,” a far-reaching movement that prophesied a peaceful end to white American expansion and preached goals of clean living, an honest life, and cross-cultural cooperation by Native Americans.

Which culture was more “advanced”?

Who were the barbaric ones, the ones with rifles or the ones with bows and arrows?

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48

Exactly. I learned in school that it was “the white man” that killed off whole Indian tribes. Look at Andrew Jackson. He murdered a lot of natives.

49

Although you seem to be unable to not make comments which are either deliberately antagonistic, staggeringly ignorant, simply crass, or just an inability to express oneself in a non-offending manner, I will attempt to avoid stooping to the level of “left-handed” or smarmy retorts…

[quote=“Doug1943, post:42, topic:3103”]
I judge the advance of civilization by its conquest of nature, the advance of science and technology.

This is one of the roots of the poisonous tree of ethnocentrism. The blatant manifestation of an attitude of domination is obvious in your language. There is no “conquest of nature”. At best there is a cooperation with nature, but without due consideration, unforeseen mechanisms result in difficult, if not horrific, outcomes. It appears that you consider the “techno-mechanical-industrialized-nature dominating paradigm” to be superior or “advanced”, even without the tempering effects of outcome considerations.

This is an unsupported assertion. While I recognize the benefits of various technological advances, it is disingenuous to omit the fact that any adopted technology carries with it the resultant interplay with the concerned society and often has negative unforeseen outcomes. Often, the new technology is more of a refinement or alteration of a previously adopted technology, and rather than being a naked benefit, is constructed to benefit a particular societal segment. While there may be evidence of minor improvements in the lives of individual members, the long-term effects may grossly outweigh those improvements.

So here is the shape-shifting, employed to validate a previously adopted conclusion. Although you differentiate between these two definitions, you modulate between them for the purpose of denigrating and demeaning what you have decided are inferior “primitives”. Then, as if to justify this inappropriate juxtaposition;

Your ancestor Mushulatubbee would be really proud of you, I’m sure. This is indicative of how woefully inadequate, is your understanding of “primitive societies”. There are words, terms, myths, stories, dances, expressions and the like, which are ubiquitous to cultures such as your relative’s, that are clearly indicative of a society which not only values individual well being, but declares it incumbent upon the members to practice manifesting these lessons.

Ah…the religion of the “free market”. spoken like a true predatory capitalist.

Ha ha ha…wait, I fell out of my chair on that one… My friends in Cuba are laughing too…
Uh…question for you: can you name any country in Central or South America which has not been affected by U.S. interventionist policies?

While I want to show you appreciation for trying by using Dee Brown’s book to illustrate your sincerity, that narrative is just one of many, many, MANY factual accounts of barbarism on a level that even the most brutal of Natives would find reprehensible. The stories your own ancestors could have told you would have left you with lifelong nightmares.

See, this is that mess I was referring to. “Politically Correct virtue-signalling” ? WTF?
Can you speak without spewing some politically biased jibber-jabber?

Personally, I take umbrage at your enthusiasm for accepting clearly questionable, singularly characterized, second-hand accounts of Indian barbarity while ignoring the campaign of genocide which can clearly be cited as the cause for a majority of depredations, etc…
Similarly, it is insulting that you suggest that after all of which has been done to the American Indian tribes that, “boy won’t it be great when”:

Yeah…here we go again…Their contributions only count if they are what I regard as contributory…
Never mind that many of our food stuffs were developed by Natives including the hybridization and selection of individual Maise plants, resulting in that ear of corn you just ate. Along with beans, squash, potatoes, peanuts, various medicines, etc.
According to USO.org : Native Americans serve in the United States military at a higher rate than any demographic in the entire country.
Have you ever heard of Jim Thorpe?
I’m done. You cannot in any seriousness think that you can understand the issue(s) from reading Wikipedia articles. If you really want to understand, you need to listen to the descendants of those who experienced the events. Hearing one of my old friends from Oklahoma talk about being sent to the indoctrination schools and being punished for speaking Cherokee, but hiding where he and his friends could practice speaking it anyway, had a profound effect on me. So did the accounts from another of my oldest friends whose ancestor was Doublehead, a brutal Cherokee who was murdered by his own people for selling land for his own benefit after he had signed a blood law prohibiting such. These are just a couple of examples of real events, not glamorized, not “politically correct” just real…

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50

That bold part displays your complete ignorance on the native north Americans. Newsflash … they did not have a written language, just oral stories and traditions. And those many oral stories describe a rich history.

But as soon as first contact, the early invaders personally witnessed the settlements and peoples there. They built out of lumber and unfortunately, almost every settlement was destroyed by the invaders or time. Modern archaeologists have been able to reconstruct many settlements and fill in many gaps in our knowledge.

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51

Well, it’s certainly lucky President Biden put you in charge of the Division of Vocabulary Refinement. At least now we have some proper definitions.

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52

Poor old President Biden can’t even use the vocabulary he has, much less think about refining it. But at least he has the excuse of having biologically-caused dementia, unlike his followers, who imitate being demented without having an excuse.

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As in contrast to the Orange? :thinking:

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54

So, your saying you were one of the top students? Yeah… I can see that.

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55

Spoken like a white nationalist who fears immigrants coming in and replacing his fellow whites.

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56

Glad I’m not the only one getting 1930s German socialist party vibes here.

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57

No, no, no. In the 1930s, the ‘German socialist party’ was the SDP, the Social Democratic Party. You’re probably trying to reference the NSDAP, the National Socialist German Workers Party. (And that Party’s triumph, by the way, was in large part due to another Party, the KPD, the Communist Party of Germany.)

But, you raise an interesting question: should the US have Open Borders, or not?

What’s your position? (And all the other Virtue Signallers here are invited to state what they think about Open Borders. If you’re not for them, then … what are you for? What numbers would you admit, and what would your criteria for admission be?

Or are you part of the crowd that chants “No Borders, No Wall, No USA At All!”

58

Lol nah I’m good, you want keep trying to bait people in with insults, and act like a crybaby victim go play by yourself lil Douglas.

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59

I intended to delete all of his posts post-ban. But he got in. I shall leave this one up as a reminder and training aid.

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60

No worries, figured he was just trying to get in his last jabs.