Herero latest

[Joseph Tracy]

The systems of colonial exploitation, including the efficiencies of slave classes and the technologies of militarism seem to know little ethnic favoritism. In the words of the Marx brothers “All god’s children got guns” . In this I agree with Monte. But cultures can root themseves in mythos, values and practices that are ruthlessly competitive or they can grow out of and retain humane, inclusive values .  I see examples of this, too,  throughout human history and where nasty habits like caste get established there is usually a resistance ( Buddhism, Gandhi, abolitionism). Humane values are actually very resilient  locally but are often overthrown by militarized imperial ambition or people with too much power. Still, abuses of power breed resistance.  Many revolutions are fueled by an attempt to restore or start over with better, more fair, laws and values.  Still we can all see that the cycle of mass violence and exploitaion is too much with us and combned with abused and reckless technology threatens catastrophe.

My main argument in this discussion is the danger of the mindset and ingrained abuses that accompanies economic, cultural and military colonialism. Here I tend to have feelings similar to jody boy that westerners too easily make exceptions for themselves to ignore the savagery of western history and current hegemony. The main problem being the presumption that answers and positive changes lie with the powerful.( this presumption is basic to colonialism) .  One of the best things that is happening globally is the awareness of an interdependence that can only work if everyone is treated respectfully and has a stake in where we direct our wealth, intelligence and work.  We are also returning to a more humble reationship the biosphere. Environmentalism was not invented in western academia and is an increasingly global value. Nonviolent conflict resolution, introduced on a global scale as a foundational principle of sane community by people like Buddha, Jesus, Martin L King, Gandhi  feminism, and many others may be disorganized and still weak in dealing with the major purveyors of violence but most protestors and fighters for justice follow those precepts.  
         Caste?
I just saw a really inspiring French made movie called ‘Tomorrow’ which shows existing projects from non-chemical agriculture, to alternative banking, to active ground-up democracy, and renewable energy- existing models of new ways of living..  One segment was a look at a small agricultural village in India. The newly elected mayor turned out to really believe in democracy and got the whole village involed in making decisions and setting priorities. They started businesses, fixed the water system, started regular cleanup days  and then they took on the serious issue of untouchables, first they  funded a new sewer and water system for the untouchable area mostly with labor by the untouchables. Then they decided that there would be no more separation of castes. Many started living in shared houses( imagine a plaster duplex), even Brahmins and former untouchables lived in the same building and quickly came to see that they were all much the same.  Couldn't race in America have a similar solution?  The big question for those of good will is whether humans are doomed by bad habits or whether the dynamics that created the peaceful heroes of history,from Buddha to kind wise mothers, can lead us from a colonizing, controlling, dominating mindset to a a friendlier shared community of life.

Enough words, I’m going out to plant asparagus, strawberries and potatoes. 

> On May 21, 2017, at 12:52 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Agreed. There *are* deep connections between the European rise(s) of capitalism, of imperial expansion, of technology, and of organizational complexity. That's the brilliance of GR's use of the Hereros (onstage) and the Holocaust (offstage): it's "bringing the colonial war home," not chasing victims across the Kalahari but using the the careful parsing of ancestry and tIfe efficient train system and the triplicate Zyklon B procurement contracts to feed the ovens at Belsen. It's making us smell in in Dresden and Weimar and Gottingen the death-stink of what were supposed to be far-away outhouses.
> Of *course* the West, because it had an edge in wealth and geographic reach and technology for 500 years, was able to "modernize" and industrialize domination and exploitation both abroad and at home. We should understand that; we should feel the shame of that; we should be wary of its continuation in new guises.
> 
> But we should also be wary of "virtue Othering," aka the flip side of Said's Orientalism. For example: I'm no scholar of South Asian religion and history, but I do know enough about the 2000- to 3000-year-old caste systems, from reading and from many conversations with South Asians over the years, to believe they have been a titanic human tragedy. They have constrained literally billions of lives -- marriage, occupation, status, social interaction -- and crushed countless "untouchables" (a Hindu innovation, AFAIK) and shudras from birth to death.  
> It's fine with me if my Western peers want to idealize Eastern spirituality; I've long had some Buddhist leanings and practices myself. But I'm damned if I'll see the evil of caste handwaved away -- 'hey, it's all OK because knowing your place in life is so much better  than materialistic status-seeking, and because reincarnation anyway.' Fuck that: I thank the Trimurti that brahmins and kshatriyas in the 1400s didn't take the lead with banking and joint-stock companies, galleons and cannons, and plant *their* banners around the shores of the world ocean. Because as badly as we've fucked up, things could have been a lot worse.  
> 
> On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 11:35 AM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is a fascinating discussion, with interesting viewpoints contributed by all. I'm listening to the GR audio, and just heard, "the real business of the war is buying and selling". What struck me, Monte, is the distinction between colonialism and the tribalism (?) displayed by the native North Americans after their acquisition (re-acquisition?) of horses. 
> It seems to me that, though the impulses may be traced to the same source, what is different is the degree of complexity, and the distance traveled from one to the other. The level of technology involved in colonialism, the self-justification, the duplicity...
> 
> Www.innergroovemusic.com
> 
> On May 21, 2017, at 10:40 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>>> And, of course, why should we confine ourselves to genocide perpetrated against humans?
>> 
>> Why, indeed? Do you know why the Europeans' horses were so startling to Native Americans in the early 1500s? Because their fucking ancestors -- not a Protestant among them -- had spent millennia hunting and eating and driving to extinction the horses that had EVOLVED in North America (some of whom had earlier migrated across the land bridge to Eurasia).
>> 
>> Once the Spaniards' horses had spread northward tribe by tribe, they transformed the Southwest and Great Plains. The sedentary tribes of the 17th to 19th century, from pueblo-dwellers to the Chippewa near the Great Lakes, saw and suffered what the Comanche and Kiowa and Lakota Sioux became: not just mounted buffalo hunters but mounted raiders (very much like Aryans and Dorians, Scythians and Mongols had been in Eurasia), descending bloodily on their villages, departing with food stores and scalps, captive women and children.
>> 
>> I'm sure it must have been that malign European influence. As you've just provided a fine example of the "all Africa's problems trace to colonialism" view I cited, no doubt you can connect the dots.      
>> 
>> On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 9:02 AM, jody boy <jodys.gone2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Your sarcasm aside, an argument can be made, and I think with some
>> merit, that Western colonialism set the stages for those tragic
>> examples you've listed, especially their magnitude, by directly or
>> indirectly disrupting those cultures.
>> 
>> Let's not forget the role of slavery and capitalism, symbolized by the
>> "twin gallows" in M&D, silhouetted in the clear freshening breeze of
>> St. Helena, as it wafted over from the African coast.
>> 
>> Nor the role of Western science and technology, among which I- perhaps
>> uniquely- include Protestantism, as a form of social engineering, all
>> of which dovetailed with slavery and capitalism to engender a new and
>> exponentially more efficient means of chronic genocide, at
>> controllable rates and with predictable rates of return.
>> 
>> And, of course, why should we confine ourselves to genocide
>> perpetrated against humans? The extinction of the Dodo as portrayed in
>> GR, seems to me more than just a metaphor for man's inhumanity to man,
>> but against the totality of nature and the environment we all depend
>> on.
>> 
>> How does it go, the opening of GR?   "It's happened before, but
>> nothing like this..."  something to that effect.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Sat, May 20, 2017 at 9:40 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> I think the uniqueness of the European (Western) example is unique
>>> 
>>> Can't argue with that
>>> 
>>>> Scale matters, and so does the belief system that undergirds and justifies
>>>> the implementation of
>>> systematic genocide.
>>> 
>>> I
>>> t was doubtless a great comfort to 2 million Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs in
>>> 1947, 30 million Chinese in 1959-61, 1 million Indonesian Chinese in
>>> 1965-66, 2 million Cambodians in 1975-1979, 800,000 Rwandan Tutsi in 1994,
>>> and 5 million Congolese in 2003-2008 that their deaths were small-scale,
>>> unsystematic, non-genocidal, and not in the service of the Western belief
>>> system.
>>> 
>>> On Sat, May 20, 2017 at 6:17 PM, jody boy <jodys.gone2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Couple, three points:
>>>> 
>>>> I am not in competition with you to cite evidence of "the overwhelming
>>>> edge in power and organized aggression of the European expansion over
>>>> nearly all the indigenous people it encountered in Africa, Asia, and
>>>> the New World." I don't claim to be an historian.
>>>> 
>>>> Secondly, I am not convinced that all human cultures are equivalently
>>>> predisposed to "eat the apple," etc. I think the uniqueness of the
>>>> European (Western) example is unique and it is precisely that
>>>> uniqueness that Pynchon is concerned with. Scale matters, and so does
>>>> the belief system that undergirds and justifies the implementation of
>>>> systematic genocide.
>>>> 
>>>> Lastly, it seems obvious to point out, that all human societies are
>>>> capable, push to shove, of atrocity, but that gives short shrift to
>>>> the uniqueness of the Western version. There are hints in the texts of
>>>> another type of uniqueness- perhaps the flip side of the same coin,
>>>> that there is something special- especially good- about "us," that we
>>>> have something unique to offer the rest of the planet that may yet
>>>> turn out to be decisive. In order for that to happen, "we" need to be
>>>> especially honest.
>>>> 
>>>> On Sat, May 20, 2017 at 11:52 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> "False equivalence"? I don't question for one second -- and venture that
>>>>> I
>>>>> could cite a lot more evidence than you could for -- the overwhelming
>>>>> edge
>>>>> in power and organized aggression of the European expansion over nearly
>>>>> all
>>>>> the indigenous people it encountered in Africa, Asia, and the New World.
>>>>> 
>>>>> But I don't agree that it "rubs salt in the wounds of the victims" to
>>>>> acknowledge that there *were* many indigenous, warlike, expansionist,
>>>>> slave-taking empires -- Chinese, Indian, Mongol, Central and West
>>>>> African,
>>>>> Mexica (Aztec), Inca, Five Nations -- before the Europeans arrived. Or
>>>>> that
>>>>> their interactions with Europeans got complicated:
>>>>> 
>>>>> - the Huron and Mohicans playing English and French for guns in their
>>>>> own
>>>>> immemorial war, while the English and French were playing them
>>>>> - Indian rajahs and sultans doing the same against each other with --
>>>>> and
>>>>> typically marching with -- troops of the British East India Company,
>>>>> French,
>>>>> and Portuguese
>>>>> - Cortes taking Tenochtitlan with 750 Spaniards -- and 80,000 or more
>>>>> Tlaxcalan and other allies he'd recruited, who cheerfully slaughtered
>>>>> their
>>>>> erstwhile Mexica overlords
>>>>> 
>>>>> You call these "unique"; I call them ubiquitous. It's the Herero "war,"
>>>>> the
>>>>> Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, that are more nearly unique precisely
>>>>> because they were so one-sided; the victims had *no* state, allies or
>>>>> organized military power of their own. That doesn't mean everything that
>>>>> happened from 1450 to 1950 was the same story writ large.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Nor does it mean that other, less helplessly "pure" victims, deserved or
>>>>> asked for what imperialism/colonialism did to them. It doesn't exculpate
>>>>> Europeans from any of their bloody 500-year spree. It just means that
>>>>> *all*
>>>>> humans are liable to eat the apple (drink the Kool-aid?) of power and
>>>>> domination when they can.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Pynchon spends a lot of time exploring the specifically European and
>>>>> USAn
>>>>> expressions of that, and it leaves a mark -- as it should. But he also
>>>>> dips
>>>>> via Calvinism to Adam's fall and other mythologies, visits ancient ruins
>>>>> and
>>>>> legends, zooms out to millennia rather than centuries -- and those are
>>>>> reminders (I think deliberate) that it's not *all* about us.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Sat, May 20, 2017 at 9:55 AM, jody boy <jodys.gone2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I think it is pretty clear, and that bringing up the divisions,
>>>>>> infighting and betrayal among the Herero amounts to a false
>>>>>> equivalence.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I'm not insinuating that you endorse or excuse the genocide in any
>>>>>> way, but each of those examples you listed are unique. Lumping them
>>>>>> together rubs salt in the wounds of the victims.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Sat, May 20, 2017 at 7:29 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>> Gotcha. All clear now.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On Fri, May 19, 2017 at 8:42 PM, jody boy <jodys.gone2 at gmail.com>
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> This is an example of white European Christians travelling thousands
>>>>>>>> of miles to the homeland of native Africans, colonizing it, and then
>>>>>>>> rounding up the natives and systematically exterminating them. The
>>>>>>>> only complexity about this is the twisted, convoluted arguments
>>>>>>>> about
>>>>>>>> why they did it, and why they should not be held accountable.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> "Oh, but it's more complicated than that..."  I'm reminded of
>>>>>>>> Archduke Ferdinand playing the dozens. Oh, and his trophy's- if he
>>>>>>>> even bothered to have the carcasses stuffed- littering the plains.
>>>>>>>> Or,
>>>>>>>> those brave "souls" riding along
>>>>>>>> on the first transcontinental railroad shooting the buffalo until
>>>>>>>> their fingers got tired.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Let's get real here, and not obfuscate like the ink of a white
>>>>>>>> octopus.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> On Wed, May 17, 2017 at 9:55 AM, e tb <eburns at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>> Salt in old wounds: What Germany owes Namibia | The Economist
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> 
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