[Bad username or unknown identity: Scott Ruggels (ruggels)] What brings peace is trade. Unfortunately Africa can't buy computers and stereos, and are too caught up in tribalism to be stable enough to exploit their natural resources.
What brings peace is a lack of fear, the fulfillment of basic needs, and self respect.
Your suggestion that peace would come to Africa if they could afford computers and stereos is, at best, naïve and condescending. Given your "thesis" that trade==peace, the United States should be one of the most "peaceful" places on the planet. Considering the amount of poverty, crime, and general stress and unhappiness, I think you might want to reconsider your math.
I will also point out that "trade" and "exploitation" by white settlers certainly didn't bring peace to North America, during its "tribal" period...
The more the Dakota have to do with the white, the worse. The whites give him whiskey to get his furs and bimeby he don't want to trap so many furst but he want plenty more whiskey. The white traders take his girl, and all he get in swap is a disease. They take his land, and all he get is a leetle annuity so he don't do any work and starve slow. The Indian gets white man's gun an he is drunk and kill his own brother and they call him sinful. That's what he get from the white man -- fine kettle, fine gun, fine blanket, the big pox, the small pox and religion. -- Voyager in Minnesota, From The Godseeker, Chapter 20, pp. 128.129
[Bad username or unknown identity: Scott Ruggels (ruggels)] It basically comes down to "Life is not fair",and "Justice is an artificial concept".
I agree completely with you on this. ...but... isn't the height of human endeavor to struggle against the general unfairness of it all? Don't we celebrate as heroes those people who refuse to accept injustice and actually do something about situations they find intolerable? If we accept your argument that justice is an artificial concept, and life isn't fair, shouldn't "heroes" actually be considered dangerous lunatics and not role-models?
Your statements also might imply mistreatment by and of others should simply be accepted as an expected outcome of life's unfairness. Wouldn't this make it acceptable (perhaps even laudable) to treat every encounter as an opportunity to simply take as much as possible from those weaker than yourself? This doesn't seem to jibe with your "[belief] in the inherent good of Western Civilization."
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timeasmymeasure
Promote Western Civilization! Go forth and plunder! (2)
Date: 2004-08-17 10:20 pm (UTC)What brings peace is trade. Unfortunately Africa can't buy computers and stereos, and are too caught up in tribalism to be stable enough to exploit their natural resources.
What brings peace is a lack of fear, the fulfillment of basic needs, and self respect.
Your suggestion that peace would come to Africa if they could afford computers and stereos is, at best, naïve and condescending.
Given your "thesis" that trade==peace, the United States should be one of the most "peaceful" places on the planet.
Considering the amount of poverty, crime, and general stress and unhappiness, I think you might want to reconsider your math.
I will also point out that "trade" and "exploitation" by white settlers certainly didn't bring peace to North America, during its "tribal" period...
It basically comes down to "Life is not fair",and "Justice is an artificial concept".
I agree completely with you on this. ...but... isn't the height of human endeavor to struggle against the general unfairness of it all? Don't we celebrate as heroes those people who refuse to accept injustice and actually do something about situations they find intolerable? If we accept your argument that justice is an artificial concept, and life isn't fair, shouldn't "heroes" actually be considered dangerous lunatics and not role-models?
Your statements also might imply mistreatment by and of others should simply be accepted as an expected outcome of life's unfairness. Wouldn't this make it acceptable (perhaps even laudable) to treat every encounter as an opportunity to simply take as much as possible from those weaker than yourself? This doesn't seem to jibe with your "[belief] in the inherent good of Western Civilization."
Have I missed your point on this, Scott?