Posted on 01/30/2007 6:35:52 AM PST by Tolik
But, to work with your paradigm:
I think the issue with most scientific types, which includes engineers and that it, is not so much a matter of courage (though there is that), but a matter of what excites their curiosity. They're interested in the physical world, what makes it tick in one way or another, and/or how to affect it. Temperamentally, they're not inclined to be curious about things spiritual, so to speak. Hence, they keep in truckin' doing their scientific thing.
Humanities types, on the other hand, are interested in things other than the physical world, they're interested in the life of the mind, spirituality, etc. Problem there, for most of them, traditional religion is not an option and their need for certainly -- which may spur their interest in spirit to begin with -- overwhelms them and leads them to embrace alternative orthodox eschatologies such as Marxism, Political Correctness/Multiculturalism, etc.
The Africans had a suplus of slaves, and, until they started selling them to Europeans, disposed of this surplus by killing them.
They were not very curious what we doing with the slaves either; they suspected we might be eating them - and didn't care.
Much as I hate liberal socialist regimes, I could point out that Sweden hasn't been up to much since it went socialist.
The code of Hammurabi may have had some vague influence on Western civilization but it can hardly be called a part of that civilization.
Carolyn
Most Indian tribes did. Some slaves were eventually adopted into the tribe. Some weren't.
They also meant it when they said, "Share your heart with me.".
Devoted all its time and energy to neutering its males?
bump
"The Native American Indians didn't enslave others?.........or did they just kill the men?........"
I thought they kept slaves myself.
Dunno. More likely spinalectomies. But they've been fairly peaceful...
I call it original sin.
An underlying assumption of Gandhi's type of passive resistence is that the opposition has a conscience and a sense of shame. The British had it; Hitler did not. The Brits bowed to public outcry; Hitler wanted to still the outcry through world domination.
By 1860, the Cherokees had 4,600 slaves; the Choctaws, 2,344; the Creeks, 1,532; the Chickasaws, 975; and the Seminoles, 500. Some Indian slave owners were as harsh and cruel as any white slave master. Indians were often hired to catch runaway slaves; in fact, slave-catching was a lucrative way of life for some Indians, especially the Chickasaws.
Seminoles attitudes toward slavery were different than those of other tribes. Never practicing chattel slavery, they took in fugitive slaves and claimed them as their own 'property' to protect the blacks from slave-catchers. In return, the blacks, who lived in separate villages in the Seminole country, gave livestock and crop tributes to the Indians. The blacks and Seminoles also formed a military alliance, with the blacks serving the Indians as warriors and strategists. In some instances, the blacks would intermarry into the Seminole community.
All of the tribes except the Seminoles had slave codes. Even after their removal to Indian Territory, the Seminoles allowed their slaves to carry weapons and own horses and other property. Until a treaty in 1845 provided for their relocation to the western area of the Creek Nation, the Seminoles lived in the Cherokee country around Fort Gibson, Indian Territory. Before that, Cherokee and Creek slaveholders complained about the influence of Seminole slaves on their own slave populations."
Another misconception is that the War Between the States was about slavery - it never was - it was about tariffs unfairly imposed on the South. Northerners owned slaves as well however; those slaves were never emancipated at the time southern slaves supposedly were. The North had what some described as Negro-phobia, people were afraid of them and with few exceptions, showed them little hospitality. Slavery was never just a ‘Southern’ thing. I find it interesting that Katrina exposed modern day slavery – it’s called Welfare.
The professionals have known it as well. Some of the currents in the academic history community in particular seem to me representative of the battle in academia in general. One of my favorites, Gertrude Himmelfarb, wrote of this in The New History And The Old, which I just learned is being published in a revised edition.
The single most corrupting influence in all intellectual disciplines is a sense of what should be true as opposed to what the bare facts state. It is, after all, the business of academics to work overall theories around such facts but a fondness for a particular theory tends to make it work the other way. The academics associated with the sciences know to avoid this because sooner or later an inconvenient but undeniable fact brings the whole house of cards down. "But it does move."
Where, however, the underlying discipline has been altered to declare facts malleable, entirely subjective, and important only insofar as they advance a particular "narrative," then we have a serious challenge to the credibility of the subject field in any minds other than true-believing insiders. Postmodernism in the American academy is one example of this - an intellectual curiosity that has assumed cult status and produced a mountain of unusable intellectual rubbish.
And it does matter. Where such disciplines exist in a vacuum they are academic curiosities - at some point there must have been a last chair of Alchemy somewhere. But where they pretend to be normative and attempt to drive social policy they may prove very harmful indeed. To a great extent the institutional multiculturalism that is gripping certain governments in Europe at the moment (and is attempting to do so in America as well) is an offshoot of an academic cult of wishful thinking. It is not in the least harmless as it is laying its host societies open to prostration before a determined cultural enemy.
Government will be influenced by academia and I thank God for it. But we cannot be so afraid of a chorus of derision that we are unable to tell its wilder inhabitants "No, we don't want to live like that." There are worse things than being called stupid.
Humanities types, on the other hand, are interested in things other than the physical world, they're interested in the life of the mind, spirituality, etc. Problem there, for most of them, traditional religion is not an option and their need for certainly -- which may spur their interest in spirit to begin with -- overwhelms them and leads them to embrace alternative orthodox eschatologies such as Marxism, Political Correctness/Multiculturalism, etc.
It's a simple fact that the post-modernists in the humanities departments and the enlightenment rationalists of the science departments never seem to have any conflict with each other, while each regularly bashes "Bible-thumpers"--perhaps as a way of dealing with their cowardice in facing each other.
Of course, it's quite possible that post-modernism is based on the scientism that got rid of G-d and they don't fight for that reason.
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