From: Olga Bourlin (fauxever@sprynet.com)
Date: Sun Jun 02 2002 - 09:54:29 MDT
From: "Damien Broderick" <d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au>
> At 10:18 AM 6/1/02 -0400, "Brian Phillips"
>
> >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...:
That was a great example, Damien. That particular Kipling poem was one of
the main literary examples featured in a tome of a book I read a few years
ago entitled: "The Arrogance of Faith" by Forrest G. Wood. The lines that
etched themselves into my brain were: "Half devil and half child." Wow,
what an incredibly arrogant perspective. For those who may be interested,
I've reproduced the entire poem below. Read it and weep.
Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captive's need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.
Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain,
To seek another's profit
And work another's gain.
Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine,
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
(The end for others sought)
Watch sloth and heathen folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
Take up the White Man's burden--
No iron rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go, make them with your living
And mark them with your dead.
Take up the White Man's burden,
And reap his old reward--
The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of those ye humor
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought ye us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"
Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness.
By all ye will or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent sullen peoples
Shall weigh your God and you.
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.
> 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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