THE WORLD IN
DISCORDER-CONTINUING THE EXCHANGE
James R. Fisher, Jr.,
© September 13, 2014
REFERENCE:
A number of exchanges have been between Klaus and me. Previously, I mentioned some of the “sins of
the West,” which were tellingly illustrated in Arundhati Roy’s “Capitalism: A
Ghost Story” (2014), a slender volume that deals with the industrial West’s
exploitation of a village in India.
There have been many instances of Western industrial malfeasance
in India in the last half century, duly reported, but Roy concentrates here on rivers
being poisoned and polluted, wells laying barren, mudslides common occurrences
of clear-cut forests with thousands of farmer escaping debt through suicide.
Roy points out that hundreds of millions earn two dollars a
day in a population of 1.2 billion where 100 of the richest people own assets
of one-fourth of India’s gross domestic product, making capitalism, a ghost story.
As other writers point out, correctly, we have similar if
not as pronounced disparities in the United States and other parts of the
world.
CAVEAT:
I enjoy the comments of Klaus and all other responders. These comments are well thought out,
stimulating and have merit. I only
publish a few of them.
You will see we don't always agree, but that is not the
point. People of different perspectives
and differing views help me better understand issues from a different
perspective, which is what is often missing today. My purpose in these missives has never been consensus
much less agreement, but to stimulate thought.
A READER WRITES:
Jim,
From what I read the people of South Africa are not much better off,
but the current president has built himself a beautiful house for his
wives. In most of the other African countries
corruption is very prevalent. Then I
look at Haiti. They fought and won their
freedom I think in the 17 hundreds, and they have gone downhill ever
since. The Spanish conquered much of
South America, but the Inca, Mayans, and Aztecs used religion to control the
population and were no better morally than their
Spanish conquers. Many people
want to portray N. and S. America as a paradise before the white man showed
up. They also want to blame all the
problems in Africa on the white man.
Black males in this country who produce children and accept no
responsibility along with the co-operating females who are satisfied living on
the dole blame white people. The events
in Ferguson brought this out. The
majority who live there are black. Many
of them are felons and can’t vote, but the ones who can don’t. But all their problems are caused by
whites. I had black students who worked
hard and others who did not. There are people at every economic level that are
corrupt.
I knew nothing of Islam before 9/11.
After, I read up on its history.
They spread Islam by violence.
You had the choice to convert, die or pay a special tax and be a second
class citizens. They also were
interested in science until 1200 AD when the religious side of the culture put
a stop to thinking in these areas. The desire on the part of politicians and
others to call Islam a religion of peace is like calling Hitler a nice but
misunderstood guy. Most of the world has lived under authoritarian rule for the
last ten thousand years. That is why all
the gods that have been invented are authoritarian. The idea of democracy arose with the Magna Carta. It evolved in England and continued here in
the US. When I look around the world and
see how people are treated in other cultures, I think we are lucky to be living
here. The best proof of that is that
more people want to come here than want to leave. THE WEST IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE PROBLEMS
OF THE WORLD. But that you say it may account for your larger readership
abroad. As usual people want to blame
others for their failure, and they like to hear someone from the US who agrees
with this misguided interpretation of history.
Klaus
DR. FISHER RESPONDS:
Klaus,
From my perspective, I appreciate what you are saying but
find it selective with a Western bias.
Everything you say, and I am not questioning its accuracy, could be just
as passionately argued from the perspective of nonwhites or non-Europeans.
We call Greece the cradle of Western civilization for its
democracy and admirable scholarship, much of which was imitated by the Romans
minus the democracy, yet Greece had slaves, and most Greeks of that Golden
Period never knew freedom or equality.
Mohamed was a warrior but so were many emperors and monarchs
of the West. Yes, Islam has had the brutality of caliphates of the religious extreme, but so has Catholicism. The Moors came out of Africa and gave Spain culture
and science, and the Spanish Inquisition came into play with Moors or Jews converting
to Christianity or going on the rack or worse.
Civilizations of North and South America, Africa and the
Middle East were all creatures of power and control, as you point out correctly
about religion with terrible practices, practices that kept them in power and
were abominable from a Western perspective.
India and surrounding states have had little peace over many
millenniums, and were left in the lurch pretty much when British rule
ended. Poverty is not pretty wherever it
exists, and when tens of millions of people have known nothing else, it is
close to a nightmare.
In my lifetime, I have seen microcosms of poverty being
sustained in places around the world by design with a combination of cruelty
and greed, and then justify exploitation by drawing attentions to the indolence
of the people or the toxic character of their religions.
Man has survived despite our selective biases, but sometimes
only barely.
When the Dark Middle Ages came into being in the second
millennium with the defeat of Rome, for the next 500 years, were it not for the
monks copying learning acquired to that point, God knows where man would be
today. The High Middle Ages followed
with the Renaissance which we have been feeding off of ever since, as you know,
you being an artist and teacher of that discipline.
It is speculation, to be sure, but I have often wondered where
North America, South America and Africa would be were Europeans in their
narcissistic altruism never to have invaded their sanctuaries, destroyed their
cultures, imposed their cultures and biases, and then subjugated these respective
peoples to Europe's will.
Today, I look back on my privileged life where I was able to
excel in athletics without having to compete against Negroes because there were
few Negroes in my community, and they were essentially not invited to play or
compete with me for positions in sport.
Today, African Americans excel in sport, and were they to
have had that opportunity in my day in my community I would have had a very
different life because I would have rode the bench or not even made the
squad.
Why do blacks so excel in sport? Some would say because natural athleticism,
which cannot be denied. But the bigger
reason, in my view, is because they have been given the opportunity.
Likewise, there were very few Jews in my community, even
less Jews than Negroes. The few Jews
that I knew in high school and college were not athletic, not big and powerful,
no competition for me in sport, but great competition for me in the
classroom. I was a grind as a college
student, going to the library every day during Christmas vacation to get a running
start on the next semester. One time my
mother asked me, "Do you find any of your friends at the library? I answered, "Only my Jewish
friends."
Today, most authors I read are Jews as they paid attention
in school. Are Jews innately brighter
than gentiles? No. Are African Americans more talented athletes
than whites? I don't actually think so.
Albert Schweitzer was disgusted with Europe and went to
Africa to set up a hospital and bring European culture to Africa. I've asked the question: why did he not turn
that altruism on his own culture that so disgust him?
We have just completed the twentieth century, so called
"the American century," and the bloodiest century in terms of the
actual human carnage in the history of man.
We Americans take pride in winning WWII and having a role in WWI, but we
don't seem to have any regret that we are the only nation on earth to devastate
civilian populations with the atomic bomb at Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
Nor do we shed tears for British leveling of Dresden in WWII
that also was not a military target and the war was all but won.
My point is that man, Western man, Middle Eastern man,
Eastern man is irrational, vengeful, brutal and throughout history has shown a
capacity for genocide.
You mention South Africa.
I experienced South Africa. I saw
what apartheid did to people. I saw fear
in behavior, and it was not pretty. I
saw the arrogance and self-indulgence of the colonial Brit's, and the obdurate
denial of the Afrikaners when it came to the Bantu.
Nelson Mandela was only a few years in prison when I was
there, but it was a name I learned from my Bantu servants. Like our George Washington, he had balance if
not brilliance, and did the right thing when he came to power. America would be a very different nation
without Washington, and sad to say, Mandela's perspective has not been able to
overcome apartheid in South Africa.
The Brit's have essentially left or remained on the
sidelines, while the Afrikaners are trying to make swift of what they knew
was inevitable. I had high regard for
Afrikaners when I was there, which is reflected in my novel, A GREEN ISLAND IN
A BLACK SEA, and that has not diminished in the new era.
As for the current South African president, he was duly
elected like we duly elect our do nothing presidents over the past half
century, and like South Africans we all suffer for our poor voting
preferences.
You cannot change humanity, but you can come to understand
it if you aren't selective of who is good and who is bad, who is right and who
is wrong, what religions are humanitarian and what religions are not. The problem, and I'm revising an ancient tome i.e., my "Search for the Real Parents of My Soul") to show that, what they all hold in common is that they all reflect their
cultural DNA.
Jim
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