From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Sun Jun 02 2002 - 06:34:35 MDT
At 10:18 AM 6/1/02 -0400, "Brian Phillips" <deepbluehalo@earthlink.net> wrote:
>>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).
>Had to get in a nazi crack didn't you eh Doc?
Kipling died in 1936, at the age of 71. He was 24 years old when Adolf
Hitler was *born*. It's extraordinarily difficult to conduct a reasoned
discussion on this list sometimes.
What Kipling's imperialist poem *The White Man's Burden* (1899) said was
this sort of thing:
Take up the White Man's burden,
And reap his old reward--
The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard--
Kipling, in other words, was an old tub-thumping ethnocentrist. I imagine
he would have thrashed you with his horse whip, even at the age of 70, if
you'd had the stupid temerity to call him a Nazi.
>I'm no fucking patriot,
>which should have been real clear from the terms I was using.
Okay. I misunderstood your references to honor, and
< a specific cultural
background, [...] a scource of strength, honor,
and integrity you can use to help make difficult decisions
when your own abilities seem inadequate to the tasks
before you...
the ideal of family relationships, extend[ed]
outwards in a manner consistent with the other
larger groups relationship to those family bonds... >
I assumed that the heart of this honor was military service, which is
usually in the *service* of a *nation*--even if it's often a family
tradition and one creating its own internal bonds of `elective family'.
This sort of thing:
Take up the White Man's burden!
Have done with childish days--
The lightly-proffered laurel,
The easy ungrudged praise:
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers.
>And as for *un-extropian*... well perhaps you should muster
>a meeting of the Committee! :P
Not me, sport. I'm not an extropian, just an interested bystander. But I'd
be surprised if those who are would declare ethnocentrism an extropian virtue.
>I like people who
>like science as well, but it's not like I'd call them to help bury a
>body :)
When I have occasion to bury my father's body (I hold his power of
attorney) sometime in the next few years, I'll call his funeral directors.
Incredible as it might seem, I don't expect to have to kill anyone and
dispose of the body furtively with the help of kin. I know it sounds a bit
bizarre, but here in Melbourne that's how conditions are.
Damien Broderick
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