The Rhenish Missionary Society

[Seb Thirlway]

From: Evan Abla <EAbla at nazarene.org>

>Jerky <tib at apollo-ent.com> said:
>
><<But they don't always do that, do they? Also, what charity
they provide is
>offered up with ulterior motives which, when followed to their
logical
>conclusions, would amount to nothing less than a form of
cultural genocide.>>

>Do we complain about missionaries (who,  by the way, I don't
think were always good or >best, but those >cases were the
exceptions not the norm) because we try to justify the fact that
WE can't seem >to get rid of >the ulterior motives in our own
minds.  Are we jealous?  Or are we just trying to justify our own
>selfishness >and ignorance?  I don't know.  I wish I had all the
answers, then I could undermine my own ulterior >motives.

>respectfully,
>evan


Great point, my feelings exactly.  Where exactly do the "ulterior
motives" come in?  As established facts in the missionary's
psychological history, as thoughts he/she had?  It seems more as
if side-effects are noticed after the event e.g. such and such a
tribe, after being "civilised", let's say provided with
education, improvement in overt standard of living, have _in
fact_, it's now noticed, been brought under the hegemony of the
evil Painted Whore of Rome/Electric Hooker of televangelism which
suits that whore very well thank you very much, and incidentally
makes them good mine/factory-fodder, dislocates them so that
their general mood is something more or less approaching the
Herero's mass race suicide.

Maybe I'm confusing two issues here: a) what revisionists notice
when they take a good hard look at missionary efforts, and b) the
intentions of the missionaries at the time.

I don't think so: I think the missionaries' intentions/ ulterior
motives are not relevant, if even knowable. I think the starting
point is the revisionist re-evaluation of what the missionaries
_did_.  It throws up some nasty side-effects of their efforts,
and raises the question, were they aware?  Which puts them in a
tails I win heads you lose situation, by projecting the
revisionist evaluation back to their time.  Either they weren't
aware, they sincerely believed they were doing good: from the
re-evaluation it's a very easy slide to the assertion that they
_should_ have been aware - then they look foolish, they were
dupes.  Or they were aware, in which case it's easy, they were
cynically doing wrong.  What difference does it make?  Awareness
of base ulterior motives surely only matters if it results in a
different action - if so, then judgment can be read off the
actions, and there's no need for speculation on ulterior motives.
Diana is a good example: well was she a saint or a neurotic
attention-seeker (with a few eating disorders thrown in for good
measure)?  Doesn't matter: as a matter of psychological history,
she may have had her mind focused exclusively on herself, the
attention she was getting, her own needs, while she was in
Africa - what the hell, she went out there and _did_ that against
land-mines, which to me was a good thing to do.  If it later
turns out that what she did was actually counter-productive, then
someone is bound to focus on her "ulterior motives" as part of
the re-evaluation.  But this to my mind is a mistake: the
effectiveness of what she did, whether it was good or not, and
her motivations, are completely separate issues.

IMO tying these two issues together - hyper-awareness of possible
base ulterior motives, together with the inescapable fact that
whatever you do will have side-effects, whose full extent you can
never know (so that ANY action is a "long hard look, saying come
on and fuck me" at future revisionists, and the more significant,
the more effective the action, the longer and harder the look)
results in a very compelling argument to sit there and do nothing
at all.  A revisionist's judgment that, in an ideal world, you
should have been aware of the evil side effects of your actions
and taken them into account, is fair I suppose.  What doesn't
seem fair is that motivation is also up for judgment: scruples or
no scruples, you can't win: if you have scruples then you're a
cynic, if you don't  then you're a dupe.  only way out is to do
nothing.

just my thoughts.  Hope to read someone knocking them about a
bit.

"Outside of a dog a book is your best friend
   and inside a dog, it's too dark to read."
                                         --Groucho Marx


and BTW this is..... (hysterical laughter).



seb