1491, or, Was Pre-European "White Man" America Really

[CANADIEN]

you mean you can't point out to a single instance... hence you PRESUME or wild guessing...

you're such a wretched little reprobate.. stop trolling and SHUT UP then... put up OR SHUT UP...

I mean nobody is fooled by your little charade here. And no, I do not plan to shot up.

[CANADIEN]

you're also the king of failing to rationally account for ideas and notions... and at debate in general...

No, I am merely the heir to the Throne. The Throne you have obviously no intention of relinquishing.

[CANADIEN]

So the only people who would be 'equal' in your world would be clones from the same person?

Indeed.

[CANADIEN]

human procreation a "crap shoot"? how vulgar and ugly..

No MDancer... you said that traits "happen" as a result of lottery like luck... now for what you said to have any reasonable meaning: we would need to see black Shaquille Oneill type persons born to two asian parents... or similar fantastic impossibilities..

of course you just pretend to not see the simpering idiocy of your argument...

It would indeed be idiotic to deny the role heredity plays in PHYSICAL characteristics of human beings, and if you had learned to read beyond what your hate-infected brain can process, you would notice that nobody here is making such a claim.

Equally idiotic is the notion that heredity, and therefore race, is a determinent factor of intellectual capacities, or morality. Surely, someone who claims to be the only around here capable of rational thoughts will admit to that.

[CANADIEN]

okay you've dropped the argument... you're all about ad hominem abusives now... model Egalitarian you are...

let me try... is that because daddy used to sneak in your sheets at night M.Dancer?

... anyone as far to the left as you and as filled with the hatred of common sense must have gone through some traumatic stuff...

its okay dancer... its not your fault... not your fault...

Traumatic stuff... must explain why you are so much of the realm of logic.

[CANADIEN]

when you're ready to actually logically debate and show through A and B why an assertion of mine is incorrect or correct, i'll respond...

so far all you do is SAY that my arguments are pooh pooh lies and nasty "fascism" ... without ever showing me HOW they are so... which amounts to ad hominem and is a logical fallacy.

ad hominem... I was wondering where I have seen writen every second posting before... Yep, your postings on that other site a few years back. I must though that you didn't use to be that vulgar. Must be the frustration from having been banned from other forums.

Edited April 24, 2009 by CANADIEN

[jbg]

That's not to say I think colonialism was good, but I'm a firm believe that if you break it, you must fix it, and Britain's pulling out of India (and seemingly intentionally breaking it in the process), and the way Africa was decolonized have lead to enormous human suffering. It could have been done much slower, with more long-term goals than "hand it off to the first local who managed to get an Oxford degree".

I'm glad someone else agrees with me. I was beginning to think that my similar beliefs were unique to the point of quirkiness.

That being said, WW II left all of the major colonial powers broke. The prior colonies that had positive cash flows, i.e. the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand were long independent. Britain had no more wherewithal to feed the remaining relatively unproductive colonies. Remember Africa was grabbed to protect the spice trade and once that was no longer a big deal, the Indian Subcontinent and Africa became a drain.

Europe had a profound period of intellectual and technological expansion beginning in particular in the 16th century, but coming to full fruition in the 18th. But as I continually have pointed out, that expansion owes a great deal to prior circumstances, geography and, yes, luck. It could, largely, wage even its most destructive wars, with much less danger than, say, the Chinese could, seeing as the European "peninsula" had natural barriers that made invasions much more difficult to mount and sustain (the Huns probably were the most successful, but didn't exactly last a long time). Everywhere else had to constantly worry about peoples from the massive Asian Steppe, and the Mongol invasions into Islamic areas most certainly marked the decline of that civilization (much as the Hun invasion a thousand years earlier had marked the decline in Rome).

What spelled the doom of European ascendancy was their own fratricidal nonesense. That gave the U.S. the ability to come "up the middle".

[jbg]

the Turks, destroying Byzantium, and seeing a sudden in-rush into Italy of what remained of Byzantine's artists and learned men, and you have a recipe for major advancement.

Why did the destruction of Byzantium by the Muslims assist the growth of civilization?

[CANADIEN]

NO NO: YOU SAID GENES ARE A PRODUCT OF "LOTTERY LUCK" and that genetic traits are impossible to cluster and predict..

Actually, M. Dancer claims that European societies got lucky towards the end of the medieval period, through events such as the fall of Constantinople, etc.

As I said, I do not agree that the word luck is a good describer. But nobody here has claimed theat genetic traits are a product of luck... NOBODY... And unlike your drivel, there is nothing in what anyone has posted here that would lead a rational person to conclude anyone said or insinuated or meant anything of the kind.

Because you are under the delusion that intellectual capacities are determined by race, you are under another illusion... that we all know it but just will like about it. Nope. What we know is that the idea is horse m*nure.

Edited April 24, 2009 by CANADIEN

[CANADIEN]

To come back to the original issue of the thread (sort of).

British attempt to spread smallpox through First Nations: Correspondence between General Amherst (commander-in-chief of the British troops in North America), Colonel Bouquest (commander of a mercenary corps) and colonial officials during the Pontiac War of 1763 show that Bouquet recommended spreading the desease through infected blankets, and that an attempt had already been made at Fort Pitts. That it didn't work does not mean it was not tried.

First Nations oral history is confirmed by the written record (not the first time).

[tango]

Canadien said: Because you are under the delusion that intellectual capacities are determined by race, you are under another illusion... that we all know it but just will like about it. Nope. What we know is that the idea is horse m*nure.

What we know is education in ... education out ... and if we don't adequately support child development and education, we undermine growth in our human capacity, and we support dependency instead.

Differences among groups of human beings on say international achievement by country or otherwise, are mostly explainable and amenable to change.

Not to say genetics doesn't play a role, but the physical environment of the child begins before conception, and includes quality of education too, and can have a huge influence.

And lictor is not well schooled.

Edited April 24, 2009 by tango

[benny]

so then equality is a fictive "value" or "idea" that we're all precisely the same...

and this should be applied to the FACT of genetic diversity (and hence to the inherent and manifest INEQUALITY and DIFFERENCES that exist between groups of humans (races or clines) and individuals INSIDE these groups)

in essence we should accept the theory of evolution but NOT its implications... how mature.. .

The hypocrisy of the professed devotion to scientific knowledge here could scarcely be more dramatic.... the obviously innate differences between the different human races and between the individuals of any given cline is a fact... and no amount of verbiage or values will change that...

The fact is that we are able to manipulate genes so that genetic differences can be either put to increase inequality or equality.

[jbg]

I'm not here to answer questions, I'm here to moralize politics.

I can tell. But part of discussion is answering questions. Not answering them shows that you cannot defend your statements as true. If I wanted that I'd read a novel.

[jbg]

And everybody with an IQ above 20 can easily see that he didn't state or argued there was a sub-Saharian race and a non-sub-saharian race.

My IQ is 85. What's yours?

Benny's is about 79 I guess.

[CANADIEN]

Canadien said: Because you are under the delusion that intellectual capacities are determined by race, you are under another illusion... that we all know it but just will like about it. Nope. What we know is that the idea is horse m*nure.

What we know is education in ... education out ... and if we don't adequately support child development and education, we undermine growth in our human capacity, and we support dependency instead.

Differences among groups of human beings on say international achievement by country or otherwise, are mostly explainable and amenable to change.

Not to say genetics doesn't play a role, but the physical environment of the child begins before conception, and includes quality of education too, and can have a huge influence.

And lictor is not well schooled.

Genetics can influence intellectual capacities at an individual level.

But at the level of an entire culture, or group of culture sharing a skin pigmentation? To believe that is to believe that Western Europeans in general were geniuses at the time of Christ, had intellectual dsabilities at the time of Charlemagne, were a little below average when the Black Plague struck, and back to be geniuses again by the time of Luther.

[jbg]

I don't care about racial differences. Because, they are of no importance when it comes to the essential TRUTH, which that we are all equal in the only one thing that matter... being human.

Which means that you are no less human that I am... only more stupid.

Besides, the argument that some humans are more or less intelligent than other because of their race is a racist fraud, and you would know it if you were not conpensating your own shortcomings with that non-sense.

"the essential truth"

you talk like a possessed Raelien or cult member...

we're all human we all bleed red, we all have hearts... etc etc... I've all heard these lamentable excuses for equality... thats some pretty lame soft headed stuff but whatever..

This is a fascinating and scintillating discussion no doubt. But what does it have to do with pre-Columbian Western Hemisphere? Or for that matter what does the discussion about the effect of the Alps, the destruction of Byzantium or the Huns have to do with the subject of the thread (which I started)? Excerpt of opening post below:

Some time ago, Charles Mann wrote an article in Atlantic Magazine destroying many myths about aboriginals. Among those myths that he effectively demolished are:

1. That the Europeans deliberately killed or subjugated many of the aboriginals;
   
2. That there were many thriving and viable aboriginal cultures destroyed by Europeans;
   
3. That the aboriginals were "light on the land" and did not effect the "balance of nature" very much; and
   
4. That super-abundant numbers of buffalo, wolves and passenger pigeons (now extinct) were the natural state of affairs.
   

Now that 1491 has come out in book form, I decided that it was time to post the entire Atlantic Magazine preview, from, I believe, the April 2002 issue. It is fascinating and definitely worth the read, even if you have to pay some money to the Atlantic Magazine website for the excerpt.

Better yet, buy the book.

===========================================

1491

Before it became the New World, the Western Hemisphere was vastly more populous and sophisticated than has been thought—an altogether more salubrious place to live at the time than, say, Europe. New evidence of both the extent of the population and its agricultural advancement leads to a remarkable conjecture: the Amazon rain forest may be largely a human artifact

[jbg]

To come back to the original issue of the thread (sort of).

British attempt to spread smallpox through First Nations: Correspondence between General Amherst (commander-in-chief of the British troops in North America), Colonel Bouquest (commander of a mercenary corps) and colonial officials during the Pontiac War of 1763 show that Bouquet recommended spreading the desease through infected blankets, and that an attempt had already been made at Fort Pitts. That it didn't work does not mean it was not tried.

First Nations oral history is confirmed by the written record (not the first time).

I'm sure the spreader would bear at least some risk of death in the process. I highly doubt the stories.

[benny]

I can tell. But part of discussion is answering questions. Not answering them shows that you cannot defend your statements as true. If I wanted that I'd read a novel.

Forum is not a school.

[CANADIEN]

I'm sure the spreader would bear at least some risk of death in the process. I highly doubt the stories.

Yet, the correspondence exists.

[CANADIEN]

Forum is not a school.

More importantly. There are questions that do not warrant an answer.

[CANADIEN]

Some time ago, Charles Mann wrote an article in Atlantic Magazine destroying many myths about aboriginals. Among those myths that he effectively demolished are:

[*]That the Europeans deliberately killed or subjugated many of the aboriginals;

[*]That there were many thriving and viable aboriginal cultures destroyed by Europeans;

[*]That the aboriginals were "light on the land" and did not effect the "balance of nature" very much; and

[*]That super-abundant numbers of buffalo, wolves and passenger pigeons (now extinct) were the natural state of affairs.

There is no denying that epidemics, some of them preceding actual contact between Europeans and individual cultures, were by far the biggest killer. But it doesn't change the reality of wars of conquest, wilful destructions of cultures, enslavement, attempts at assimilation. Epidemics killed the bodies. Too often man completed the job of killing the soul.

As for the third point. First Nations were comprised of human beings... that says it all. That they for the most part less harmful to the environment that some other culture was a result of their level of technology.

Edited April 24, 2009 by CANADIEN

[benny]

There is no denying that epidemics, some of them preceding actual contact between Europeans and individual cultures, were by far the biggest killer. But it doesn't change the reality of wars of conquest, wilful destructions of cultures, enslavement, attempts at assimilation. Epidemics killed the bodies. Too often man completed the job of killing the soul.

As for the third point. First Nations were comprised of human beings... that says it all. That they for the most part less harmful to the environment that some other culture was a result of their level of technology.

Potlatch was the economic system of indigenous populations; many social scientists today are suggesting that reviving this institution is the best way to avoid a global capitalistic nightmare.

[jbg]

There is no denying that epidemics, some of them preceding actual contact between Europeans and individual cultures, were by far the biggest killer. But it doesn't change the reality of wars of conquest, wilful destructions of cultures, enslavement, attempts at assimilation. Epidemics killed the bodies. Too often man completed the job of killing the soul.

My point is not that there weren't white atrocities. There were. But there were plenty going the other way.

My more significant point, addressed earlier in the thread, is that in no way is 5% of the population (all that remained) entitled to 100% of the land. Also, human migrations are a constant, as is the displacement or even death of the displaced. I don't think anyone rationally wishes that history be frozen at a point 5769 years ago.

That they for the most part less harmful to the environment that some other culture was a result of their level of technology.

Not necessarily. Deliberately set fires and wasteful hunting techniques such as stampeding buffalo over cliffs did damage. In fact, Kyoto was badly needed back in the day.

[benny]

My more significant point, addressed earlier in the thread, is that in no way is 5% of the population (all that remained) entitled to 100% of the land.

As I said higher, the lockean proviso can do a lot to settle this point.

[jbg]

As I said higher, the lockean proviso can do a lot to settle this point.

Huh?