permaculture

[Tom Berthold <berthold@radiks.net>]

WARNING: OFF TOPIC  
PRESS DELETE NOW TO MOVE ON

Jack,  

Regarding the “I hate white people” comment:  

Perhaps I’m overly sensitive but I keep seeing references to how whites,
and specifically white men are disgusting, malevolent beings who have
raped, pillaged, and otherwise exploited other races and their cultures,
and even have spoiled nature herself.  Sadly, much of this is true.  But
that is only part of the picture.  What is often left out of such
remarks, and what is completely relevant, is that the white culture is
not morally any worse that any other culture.  

For whatever reason, the vast majority of technological innovations from
the beginning of the industrial revolution to the present have been
developed by white people.  Did other cultures refrain from exploiting
these technologies because they knew they were dangerous and that they
could not trust themselves to use them wisely?  Of course not. 
Unfortunately, humans in general will use any tool they can invent,
borrow, buy, or steal to further empower themselves.  If others or the
environment are harmed by this - well, too bad.  The white culture is by
no means unique in this aspect.  This exploitive bent surely derives
from the same primitive survival instincts that kept our ancestors alive
and propagating their genes long before they were even walking upright. 
No, perhaps white people may be blamed for being too clever, but not for
being less ethical than other cultures.  Perhaps this was what you were
alluding to when you jokingly suggested you might opt for a lobotomy to
remove the last vestiges of your whiteness.  See my point?  Non-white
cultures are NOT more gentle or more benevolent or more environmentally
responsible than white cultures.

I know your closing remarks blaming white people were by no means the
central point of your diatribe against the careless launch of
radioactive poison to Saturn (or wherever Cassini is headed off to), but
I guess it hit a nerve with me.  I keep seeing this thing popping up-
this portrayal of whites and their culture as rotten and monstrous.  It
is the technology that we need to focus on, that has to be treated with
lethal respect.  For good or ill the genie is out of the bottle, but
please don’t blame the guy who opened the bottle and looked inside.

Tom Berthold    


Jack Rowe wrote:
> 
> Well, dangit, I’ve gone from insulting individuals to entire classes of
> people (I used the term white people as a class, and not a race, term... to
> paraphrase a friend of mine -- who was talking about fishing at the time --
>  “whiteness is a state of mind”). Probably I should stick to the
> definitions for words that everyone else uses... nah. This language is
> badly in need of overhaul, top to bottom... we’re still using an
> “either-or”, Euclidean language in an “all-of-the-above”
> quantum-relativistic World. It’s time, perhaps, to suffer through the
> seemingly-obligatory intermediary period of confusion. Well, I can
> definitely contribute there.
> 
> As a kid growing up in the US’s South during the civil rights battles, I
> never claimed Caucasian on those forms which asked (true, I was offended by
> the very question back then, so my recent remark was probably a little “out
> there”). I always claimed to be black-skinned, or on those few occasions
> when that more-exotic alternative was offered, Mongolian. Occasionally
> Amerindian. I still claim them all -- as classes, or “states of mind”.
> 
> I didn’t mean to actually offend persons of ecological, humane sensibility
> ("humane"... another class/racist/species-ist term -- an ironic one which
> obviously has its etymological origins rooted in narcissistic fantasy)... I
> do believe that the class of humans we might in poor taste refer to as
> “white people” have excelled at the anarchic, indiscriminate, destructive
> use of technology in a way that is so frightening and appalling that the
> ethical sense fails to suffice in its capacity for dismay. Well, we all
> know that.
> 
> Sorry, folks, I’ll leave my skin with its present pigmentation and work on
> the deeper tarnish on the species.
> 
> Jack
> 
> ADDENDUMB: “a pre-frontal lobotomy (another one?!?) to remove all traces of
> Caucasian Western “Civilization”... a step in the wrong direction?