The Rhenish Missionary Society ( is Re: GRGR (15): Good & Evil (was Enzian...)

[Michael Perez]

rj wrote:
"But the alternatives for Enzian (well, make that *alternative* --
death, like pretty much everyone else in the tribe), as for the
Untouchables, the "poorest of the poor" in Calcutta, were pretty
horrific too. If the boy/people have *already* been corrupted or
ostracised (by the Rhenish Missionary Society, or the Raj, or the Hindu
caste system or whoever)then are you advocating that they should be
just left in Limbo, to go away to their aardvark holes and godless
slums and die because they have absolutely no access to any means of
production or sustenance? The stuff I've read of Theresa's life make
what she was doing seem pretty selfless to me, even be it under the
banner of the papacy."

I don't know that at the time the Rhenish missionaries arrived that the
only alternative for Hereros was death.  After their arrival and
carpetbagging, which culminated in full-blown colonial slavery, there
was only death, no alternative.  Many indigenous cultures were doing
just fine until the missionaries arrived.  As for India, it had already
been siphillised and colonized.  I am not an advocate of what is called
"Deep Ecology," which advocates a laizzez faire attitude toward major
disasters, famines, pestilence, and the like.  However, making life
better for overpopulated areas instead of offering family planning
assistance makes the problem worse not better.  It only delays and
worsens the inevitable "big one."  That is what comes of the utterly
evil arrogance of Theresa and the papacy.  As for her being "selfless,"
I'm sure there were Nazis who would do anything for the Fuhrer. 
Kamakazis were pretty selfless, too.  Selflessness is not necessarily
noble or good.

Terrance wrote:
"Cultural carpetbaggers, oh that will be fun to talk about at
my family Christmas dinner, yes they just the people we need
to stop, those nuns, who the hell do they think they are,
trying to feed people and teach them how to read, why the
hell don't they stay home and really put their Phds to work,
maybe teach the poor in the Bronx, oh yes, they do that
already, well why don't those priest and nuns go into Iraq
and protest the U.S. bombings, oh yes they are doing that
already, well why don't they run when all the others run and
abandon those people when the shit hits the fan, oh yes, I
forgot, they are cultural carpetbaggers,  but those guys on
the Tube, now those guys are the best of the bunch, worthy
of Sainthood."

It's doubtful that anyone will be talking about the "Baby Jesus con
game," as Pynchon calls it, at holiday mealtime either.  No one is
elevating televangelists, for goodness sake.  They rob the poor in
their own countries and THEN go about their carpetbagging.  They also
build schools and do all the other seemingly innocent good deeds you
mention, but only to subvert entire cultures to make way for still more
squalor after they move on to their next victims.  The photo ops are
temporary.  


Michael

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