Cultures and wars

[Murthy Yenamandra]

Too many posts with the same points to individually respond to, so here
is a generic response:

I detect a great urge on this list to say: we europeans are not the only
ones, others did it too. But I'm not saying otherwise - I referred to
our common culture, but I've never said that this culture is unique to
european/white/anglo-saxon groups - in fact, I've explicitly said that
the major cultures of the east and the west share large enough chunks of
this culture to be a little indistinguishable to an outsider.  There's
no reason to feel particularly defensive about being white or european
(well, may be just a little bit, for taking it to new, unprecedented and
planet-torching heights in just one or two centuries) - so keep those
knees tucked in. I am perfectly aware that other groups have done
similar things (whether they've come up with them on their own or
learned from others) and that some other cultures are bloodthirsty
enough to carry on the torch. There is enough guilt to go around. But
this is exactly my point - that our culture (meaning the current global
culture that most of the planet now belongs to whether they had a choice
in the matter or not) makes it impossible to survive for any other
culture that doesn't share our tendencies.

My original point that led to all this was that there are other
cultures, which existed and continue to exist (as long as they don't get
wiped out or assimilated by us who insist on it), which didn't share
these tendencies. So calling this wiping-asses-off-the-planet tendency
human nature is a highly misleading stance because it implies that it's
just the way we are and no other culture can be different or not be
maniacs like us. Not that it matters at this point, because I suspect,
despite hopes to the contrary, that the cancer has spread too far and
wide and it's perhaps too late to save the patient.

Murthy

-- 
Murthy Yenamandra, Dept of CompSci, U of Minnesota. mailto:yenamand at cs.umn.edu
    "I'm stubborn as those garbage bags that time can not decay
     I'm junk, but I'm holding up this little wild bouquet
     Democracy is coming to the USA" - Leonard Cohen