From: Michael Wiik (mwiik@messagenet.com)
Date: Tue Aug 13 2002 - 11:59:17 MDT
michael_f_dickey@groton.pfizer.com wrote:
> Most people rank freedom, tolerance, independance, market economies,
> etc. into 'western' ideals (while these traits are not perfect, they are
> better than non-western idealogies, such as fundamentalist islamic regimes).
> Communism had none of these, no freedom, no respect for the individual, etc.
> therefore I do not consider it 'western', but I suppose it all depends on
> what you mean when you say 'western'.
I think all the things you mention are positive aspects of western
civilization. I have no disagreements there. (Though I note that western
institutionalized killing began long before the 20th or even the 19th
century).
But, also part of western, and perhaps especially Christian
civilization, is the search for a new Jerusalem, a utopia. Technocracy
fits in here, and technocracy I think is considered to be at least
somewhat responsible for socialism, which I would think leads to both
fascism and communism.
But I also understand that the west borrowed techniques from the east.
>From my current reading (John Gatto's _Underground History of American
Education_)
<<How Hindu schooling came to America, England, Germany, and France at
just about the same time is a story which has never been told. A full
treatment is beyond the scope of this book, but I’ll tell you enough to
set you wondering how an Asiatic device specifically intended to
preserve a caste system came to reproduce itself in the early republic,
protected by influentials of the magnitude of Clinton and Eddy. Even a
brief dusting off of schooling’s Hindu provenance should warn you that
what you know about American schooling isn’t much.>>
--http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/1m.htm
<<Andrew Bell, the gentleman in question, used to be described in old
editions of the Britannica as "cold, shrewd, self-seeking." He might not
have been the most pious cleric. Perhaps like his contemporary, Parson
Malthus, he didn’t really believe in God at all, but as a young man
following the flag he had an eye out for the main chance. Bell found his
opportunity when he studied the structure Hindus arranged for training
the lower castes, about 95 percent of the Indian population. It might
well serve a Britain which had driven its peasantry into ruin in order
to create an industrial proletariat for coal-driven industry.
Bell was fascinated by the purposeful nature of Hindu schooling. It
seemed eminently compatible with the goals of the English state church.
So as many another ambitious young man has done throughout history when
he stumbles upon a little-known novelty, he swiped it.>>
[...]
<<The entire purpose of Hindu schooling was to preserve the caste
system. Only the lucky 5 percent received an education which gave
perspective on the whole, a key to understanding. In actual practice,
warriors, administrators, and most of the other leaders were given much
diluted insight into the driving engines of the culture, so that policy
could be kept in the hands of Brahmins. But what of the others, the
"masses" as Western socialist tradition would come to call them in an
echoing tribute to the Hindu class idea? The answer to that vital
question launched factory schooling in the West.
Which brings us back to Andrew Bell. Bell noticed that in some places
Hinduism had created a mass schooling institution for children of the
ordinary, one inculcating a curriculum of self-abnegation and willing
servility. In these places hundreds of children were gathered in a
single gigantic room, divided into phalanxes of ten under the direction
of student leaders with the whole ensemble directed by a Brahmin. In the
Roman manner, paid pedagogues drilled underlings in the memorization and
imitation of desired attitudes and these underlings drilled the rest.
Here was a social technology made in heaven for the factories and mines
of Britain, still uncomfortably saturated in older yeoman legends of
liberty and dignity, one not yet possessing the perfect proletarian
attitudes mass production must have for maximum efficiency.>>
--http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/1n.htm
-Mike
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