From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Sat Jun 01 2002 - 00:14:52 MDT
At 09:53 AM 5/31/02 -0400, "Brian Phillips" <deepbluehalo@earthlink.net>
wrote:
>>> Speaking as
>>>an avowed ethnocentrist
> Do you enjoying spending quality time with people who
>you identify with?
This is rather circular, don't you think, and question-begging? Assuming
that `identify with' means `have considerable sympathy with, and common
shared interests and concerns', obviously. Does this mean that I *don't*
enjoy spending time with other people not yet in this favored set, or would
like to do them harm? It depends. Weirdly enough, I rather like the idea of
*extending* the range of people with whom I enjoy spending time.
>Do you detect patterns in those
>you identify with, whether behavioural or otherwise?
Yes, indeed; so far, they are humans, but I expect this to change
moderately soon. Most are literate and their intelligence is schooled in
ways I'm familiar with. But the long `patriotic'/crypto-white man's burden
list that followed this question strikes me as rather sad, and, you know,
un-extropian (for what that's worth). I just plain *don't* feel most of
these antique filiations, although in some ways maybe I'd be better off if
I did (if I'd been closer to my immediate family, say, when I was a
teenager). The nearest I get to it is a special warmth and friendliness
toward people who admire science, say, and to a lesser extent sf readers
who aren't ninnies; if that's an ethnos, then I suppose I'm a kind of
default ethnocentric too--but I reckon that's a big stretch. *Ethnic* is
apparently being used here as a (coff coff) PC or euphemistic way to avoid
more candid, frowned-upon words like `race' or `class' or `dirty stinking
[fill in disapproving term of choice]'.
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary
Etymology: Middle English, from Late Latin
ethnicus, from Greek ethnikos national,
gentile, from ethnos nation, people; akin to
Greek Ethos custom
Date: 15th century
1 : HEATHEN
2 a : of or relating to large groups of people
classed according to common racial, national,
tribal, religious, linguistic, or cultural origin
or background
But of course I would not choose to live in exile *exclusively* among
fundamentalist Muslim Arabs or fundamentalist white former-Rhodesians or
goat herding Africans or whale eating Inuit or motorhead Australians or
trailer trash white Americans with pointy white head gear. I don't regard
that as ethno*centrism*, though.
Damien Broderick
[a heathen]
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