Subject: Re: Dinosaurs and Job
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 13:17:22 +1100
From: Richard Kerr
Newsgroups: aus.religion.christian

Graeme Hunt wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 18 Nov 1999 12:11:17 +1100, Richard Kerr
> < > wrote:
> 
> >> We’re almost back in the African jungle.
[snip]
> >[This sentence] falsely characterises African cultures with our
> >”Tarzan” stereotype.
> >It ignores the advanced African cultures that were overwhelmed by
> >European imperialism.
> 
> Balderdash!  That is straight out of socialist/communist propaganda.

What is communist about recognising that African 
civilisations were devasted by European imperialism?

> European “imperialism”, as you call it, brought Africa out of the
> superstition and stone age animism of the bush.

Another stereotype. Some parts of Africa were 
animist, some were Islamic and some, believe it 
or not, were Christian. Some parts were stone age, 
just as some parts of Europe were still barely 
agrarian, but some parts Africa had highly 
developed urban civilisations.

They were not expansionist and war-like to the 
same degree as European civilisation, though.

> Never was Africa as
> well off as it was under colonial rule.

You mean never were the ruling whites as well off 
as when they subjugated the blacks? Did the whole 
apartheid thing fail to register with you? _That_ 
was what Africa was like under white occupation. 
Lots of wealthy white people in mansions with 
black servants living in slums.

> Since the colonial powers left
> Africa after the second world war Africa has degenerated.

...in some places. Especially in places were 
whites encouraged tribal divisions to divide 
and rule. Rwanda was not the scene of Hutu vs 
Tutsi conflict until the whites artficially 
imposed national boundaries and encouraged 
conflict to strengthen their own rule.

In some places, such as South Africa and its 
neighbours, GDP has actually gone up since the 
end of white rule. The process of gaining 
independence and adapting to globalisation is 
not easy but that does not mean we can blame it 
on Africans. That’s racism. Germany is 
still struggling with it and the process of 
integration there is being managed by one of the 
most thoroughly western governments in the world, 
not just the shreds left behind after years of 
foreign rule.

> Communist/socialist propaganda world-wide made “colonialism” a dirty
> word. African nations were given “freedom” which turned out in many
> cases to be tyranny under dictators.

Such as Idi Amin who was installed and supported 
by the West because of cold war paranoia? the 
international community is only now begining to 
unravel the mess we left behind. We need to accept 
that self determination is the correct principle 
for the basis of government. That means that the 
communists were wrong in Czeckoslovakia, the 
Indonesians were wrong in East Timor and we were 
wrong just about everywhere else.

> >It implies that our culture is (or was) intrinsicaly superior to native African cultures.
> 
> It was, and what is left of our culture still is superior.

The mythical golden age. You’re pitting a 
stereotype of our own past against a stereotype 
of other people’s past. The world is a much 
more complex place than that.

> > It implies a social hierarchy
> >in which one form of dance is intrinsically superior to another... and
> >on, and on.
> 
> The implication is also correct.

Oh gawd. Was the Pavanne superior to the 
Charleston. Why?

> Nothing ever has come out of African culture that has advanced
> anything in civilisation, yet today liberalism and socialism glorifies
> it.

Nothing came out Poland under Hitler, either. 
Whose fault was that?

If nothing came out of Africa under colonial 
rule it’s because the rule stifled innovation 
in the interests of foreign government. Nothing 
of much value came out of South Africa until Nelson 
Mandela and the new popular government gave us a 
whole new model of resolving national conflict that 
is now being imported around the whole world.

> African culture has always been a slave culture, one where the
> population was held under by the chief with the most power.

Another one of those pearl sentences. There’s 
so much wrong with that that I don’t know 
where to start.

> You give a very strong impression that you are a socialist yourself
> and a well-indoctrinated one.

Only in the sense that Jesus was a socialist. I am
 a political realist.  I understand that democracy 
and capitalism are responsible for my standard of 
living. I do not, however, think that that means that 
European culture, in particular its dances, should 
be confused with these things, or that evil things, 
such as the subjugation of other nations, have not 
been done in their name.

-- 
Regards,

Richard Kerr