Insanity & Doom Update XII

So, Singapore is doing just fine. However, to argue good things came out of colonialism is to argue that good things come out of all acts of violence and aggression. It’s all in how you look at the situation.

Sure, that family was murdered, but didn’t the nurse and the firefighter marry because they met at the scene. How wonderful.

Such an argument doesn’t rise to a firing offense, in my opinion. Yet it has no justification in a moral or ethnical system — unless your morals and ethics are based on some form of utilitinarianism, where you determine the value of the utils.

The colonizing power killed 250,000 during its reign. So what? The country is now better off – based on my values. That families still mourn their dead — big deal. Their individual loss is far outweighed by the collective gains, in my opinion, anyway. And my opinion rules.

For what it’s worth, Professor Jordan B Peterson (brilliant fellow, by the way – check out his series of Biblical lectures if you haven’t yet) was talking recently about how young people today are often choosing podcasts – and often those with fairly serious content, and not thought suppression stuff.

So there’s still some hope 😉 .

England made out pretty well by being colonized by the Romans. Egypt not so well after being colonized by the Arabs. So, much depends on who colonizes whom and when.
When the British stumbled into control of “Nigeria” (actually, a gallimaufry of three different colonies that were conjoined for administrative convenience) some parts fared better than others. The Igbos and Yorubas set themselves to study the British and the modern state and learned how to manage it. The Hausa set themselves to resist all efforts to deprive them of their right to dominate and rule the Igbos and Yorubas, and the consequences can be seen in the differences today between the north and the south of that country. For that matter, the colonization efforts following the Fulani Jihad of Osman dan Fodio against the Hausa States converted those relatively relaxed city states to a rather more hidebound form of Islam.
A Telugu friend of mine in India told me once, “We are glad the British left; but we are also glad they came.” After all, the Mughal maharajahs were also colonizers and not nearly as benign and law-bound as their British successors.
After all, there is also a degree of suffering and death associated with corruption, squalor, and lack of sanitation.

YOS —

Of course you think that way — you are a collectivist. And collectivism of this sort is easy to swallow since none of your immediate family suffered. It’s the unwashed masses weighed against your vision of utopia.

Sometimes … sometimes … you have to think beyond yourself and your factual recitation of events and realize India does not speak through your singular Teluga friend. And not everyone agrees with your util valuation — the horror, I know.

Your view of the benefits reaped by the colonized due to the stabilizing, law-bound, and benign bayonets of the colonizers is the reason many in the US can feel proud and puffed up that the Levant was de-Christianized in the name of democracy. Just as they can feel proud the US has been a major colonial power for 120 years — the Manifest Destiny delusion.

I suggest you read Trotsky’s Their Morals and Ours to see who else champions your ends-justifies-the-means ideology. However, I do not expect to change your views. You have risen to the heights of the New Neocon Man — a man greater than those who suffer while being forced to bend and break in order to live your sublime vision of utopia.

The Turks and Caicos Islands actually want to become a colony of Canada! I wonder how many other places would happily hitch their wagon to a star in this manner. Meanwhile down at Tim Hortons we are planning to become the next great empire and superpower eh!

YOS —

I also want to point out your language to defend collectivism. England did not pretty much make out due to Roman conquest. England, in your sense, is a question-begging epithet and a collectivist tool, plus it is a meaningless counter factual argument and an hypostization of geography. I suggest you find England, shake his or her hand, and ask the question of the personal benefits of Roman colonialism. Let me know the response.

That cat in the picture reminds me that I want a cat. Triangle nine t y!

People don’t think they are God. Perhaps a truly insane individual does. It’s an unconvincing argument of the imbuing motive variety.

Jim doesn’t understand what the word England means and what the geography and the history means. The ignorant attitude that there’s some kind of conspiracy around the British isles and it’s various titles through time is just silly. The problem is the ignorance and the funny reluctance of only a few nations to use the ‘Great’ just displays both ignorance and churlishness. England in the not so distant past and more currently means the entire shebang. It is largely contextual which word is used.

By far the best example and most stark case of colonising powers acting in the interests of the people is the case of India and Pakistan. It is not only YOS’s friend who thinks this way.
It is by far the overriding attitude of the Indians who I met in the country. Strangers and those to whom I was introduced.

The ones in the Northern Hill country which is admittedly a more civilised part, is very much that they have the comedy and humour bone, maybe from the British or just when they are surrounded by them. They see their past in realistic terms and were thrilled to discover that one of their colleagues was being awarded a British Empire medal of the order of the Garter. . They joked that this might mean they were about to be colonised again. Hooray!

There are very large Christian populations with strong ties to Britain, Hindus who have strong business ties with other nations thanks to their past associations. As a Brit, and probably and American you receive nothing but smiles in India from the people. To a person in my experience.
The Indians are mad and charming and hard working, disciplined and sociable. They are generous They are, (outside of more ignorant and untouched areas where some bad practices persist) lovely people. Every day on the roads make whacky races look tame. People should visit before it alters and becomes like the modern cynical west.

Mark Steyn covered this topic a few weeks ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u558KQ6cUqQ&list=LLch-XCggk_RvUeco4RmdIVQ&index=39
I love Mark Steyn! Am I allowed to say that without getting into trouble? I don’t care.

Joy —

Sorry. I tried reading your comment to the end but I kept thinking I was rereading the introduction to Dianetics. And once was enough.

A hypostization? OMG! Of course, everyone understood what region was meant, even if the Angles hadn’t gotten there yet. It’s like “Ur of the Chaldees” in the Bible. And the de-Christianization of the Levant began 14 centuries before the Americans ever thought to look into the place.

Conquest is never fun for the conquered, but not all colonization proceeds by military conquest — as when the arabs conquered north Africa and the Sudan. Sometimes, as in the Bantu colonization of central and southern Africa in the 1st cent. AD, it comes when a technologically more accomplished people moves in and pushes the indigenous people aside — the pygmies into the forest, the bushmen into the scrublands.

We could poll the individual Britons whose heads used to decorate the rims of the chariots of their tribal enemies, but certain practical difficulties suggest themselves. When Huayana Capac Inca conquered the Carangues, he beheaded all of the men of fighting age and threw their bodies into the lake, declaring, “Now you are all boys.” I’m sure the Carangues, were there any left, would express disapproval; yet Inca culture is generally considered to have been a high point in the history of South America and we wag the bony finger at the Spaniards because they were better at it.

It should not be necessary to point out that all such actions are dependent on the receptiveness of individuals. Not every Igbo was an eager adopter of modern ways. The same goes acceptance by Britons of Roman ways. Hellenic culture was largely resisted in the Levant, to the extent that many people there were living at the same technological level even down to the present day. “Benign” ain’t in it. No one supposes that the Han and their spears were “benign” simply because their colonization of Chu and the rest of the South ultimately wrought greater prosperity. That was not the Han intention.

Naturally, those who must forego their blood feuds, honor killings, head-hunting, suttee, or other cherished customs will regard the colonial power with horror, especially after they have forgotten what things were like before and have settled down in the glow of nostalgia for a Golden Age. They will sing sentimental songs about the IRA, perhaps, or darkies strumming banjos on the old plantation. But a study of post-Roman Britain would be instructive regarding the technical skills that were lost and the mass production that was reduced to poorly-made hand-crafts.

It is equally painful for those at an advanced level to give up their ways when conquered by more primitive peoples — cf. China under the Mongols. Ibn Khaldûn, who was a proud Egyptian, took note that arab colonization was the greatest catastrophe that Egypt and North Africa ever suffered: what was once the breadbasket of Rome had been turned into a howling desert. And a Persian friend of mine, for all that his family possessed a sheepskin tracing their pedigree to Mohammad himself, told me that the arabs brought Persia only two things: their alphabet and their religion “and we would have been better off without either one.”

Reflexive anti-colonialism would be more convincing were it not restricted to anti-Western colonialism. About muslim colonialism or Han colonialism or Mughal colonialism, or even the Drang nach Osten or the Bantu colonization of central and southern Africa, one hears very little mention, let alone disapproval.

https://www.amazon.com/Conquests-Cultures-International-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465014003

YOS —

The “region” is not under question. Unless, of course, you have issues.

The hypostatization is your implicit proposition that England is an acting agent, separate and above its constituent members — sometime called citizens. An agent that has its own preference scale, which it uses to judge actions ex ante and ex post. That is the essence of collectivism.

Again, you make armchair arguments and assign values based on your personal scale — ’cause any rational actor has to share your value scale. These you assign to a region you hypostatize as an acting agent. And then you argue as if the agent is the thing, not it’s constituents, with losses and gains accruing the agent.

That you can’t see beyond the collective is a symptom of … well … collectivism.

The rest of your post is … ah … lengthy. But not to the point.

Note: Instead of engaging in counterfactual history, address ethics and morality. You will see things differently.

your implicit proposition that England is an acting agent, separate and above its constituent members — sometime called citizens.

I do not suggest that England is an “acting agent,” only that the Britons by and large made better use of the opportunities presented to them by the Roman conquest than others have when faced with other conquests. That does not mean that every Briton did so, nor even that they did so presciently at the first sight of advanced Roman science and technology. See Boadicea for details.

I’m not sure what you mean by “counterfactual” history, since the histories I’ve mentioned are in fact factual so far as I know. In the course of the first century AD, the Bantu speakers did erupt out of West Africa and spread across central and southern Africa with their cattle and iron and plows, driving off the pygmies and bushmen who were natives of those regions. This is not counterfactual at all. I know of no benefit to either the Pygmies or the Bushmen following the Bantu colonization of their land.

Similarly, the development of a distinctly Romano-British culture that raised cities (Londinium was built by the Romans, not by the British) and had mass production of commodities shows the fruitful hybridization that took place on the island. When the legions were withdrawn, there was a distinct decline in material culture: documents were less well-written, goods were less well-made for a while. Some industries were lost entirely. (But compare that to Ireland, where the Romans never landed and no stone bridges, let alone cities, were built until the vikings came along.)

Of course, what constituted ethics and morality in those times and places varied as to time and place and once must be careful of committing chronocentrism. They were not, in many cases, Christians, and ought not be held to Christian standards. Yet, people will suffer and die regardless. Does it make so much difference whether they suffer and die by their own hands and the aboriginal squalor and low material culture?

YOS —

Is the initiation of force ever justified? If, as you are want to claim, the ends justify the means, the initiation of force is justified as long as you can argue the results left the others, so to speak, better off in your judgement. That is a very slippery slope.

You hypostatize England as an acting agent when you appeal to the region in a collective sense — as if England fared better due to Rome.

And you also engage in counterfactual argumentation when you imply England pretty much made out due to Roman occupation. You imply those who lived on the British Isles over the intervening years fared better than they would have lived if Rome had not crossed the Channel (ignoring those who perished by the sword, of course).

You are not being overt, but you never recognize the suffering and deaths that occurred. You simply imply that such ills are easily balanced by the results, as seen by you a few millennia later.

The views your espouse are the reason many Americans, especially many of those in power, champion our endless wars and colonialism. Only drones and bombs can allow the unwashed to see our city shining on the hill — after the clouds of cordite clear their air, of course).

If, as you are want to claim, the ends justify the means, the initiation of force is justified as long as you can argue the results left the others, so to speak, better off in your judgement.

But I do not claim that the end justifies the means. It is only you that claims that I want to claim that. Because no one can foresee the future, no one can make that argument a priori.

All I have said is a posteriori: the factual observation that in particular cases, not all instances of colonialism were as unremitingly as evil as the leftists reflexively claim. And in fact, much of it did not involve the initiation of force, but the peaceful settlement of vacant land.

You hypostatize England as an acting agent when you appeal to the region in a collective sense

Well, no. I am only appealing to statistics.

And you also engage in counterfactual argumentation when you imply England pretty much made out due to Roman occupation. You imply those who lived on the British Isles over the intervening years fared better than they would have lived if Rome had not crossed the Channel

That would seem pretty much a no-brainer. They did not even have cities before the Romans came and built them.

ignoring those who perished by the sword, of course

I assume by this that those who perished by British swords were somehow OK to you?

Apparently, you wish to discuss moral philosophy rather than history because you keep trying to frame things in religious terms rather than in historical terms. Evidently, the better lives lived in Roman Britain means nothing to you because Trump.

YOS —

Re. The sword. The question is the initiation of violence. You seem to always justify aggression you favor by claiming others do it, or would have done it, as well. Not much of a moral defense, don’t you agree?

“Evidently, the better lives lived in Roman Britain means nothing to you because Trump.”

Again, you only reference the lives of those who lived. What about those who died? And how are you justified in deciding which was better for England, however you frame that hypostatization.

By the way, you stump’d me when you Trump’d me. I don’t even know how to respond. Is that some sort of argument by Trump?

Why do I suspect the editorial position of the Third World Quarterly will be distinctly more rational following the departure of those particular fifteen?

Re. The sword. The question is the initiation of violence. You seem to always justify aggression you favor by claiming others do it, or would have done it, as well. Not much of a moral defense, don’t you agree?

So if British pirates have been raiding the coasts of Gaul and Roman authorities decide that occupying Britain is necessary to suppress the piracy, who has initiated the violence? The Britons, to whom the raiding and slave-catching is just business as usual? Or the Romans, who seem to come out of nowhere with a grievance than makes no sense to the Britons? The opening of Herodotus’ History of the Greek and Persian Wars traces the origin back to a series of Greece-said/Asia-said initiations of violence. Who initiated a violence may depend on when the initial point is pegged.

Case in point: The Virginia Company sent its settlers to Jamestown with strict orders to maintain peaceful relations with the Indians and trade for furs. But the Powhatan Confederacy launched an unprovoked attack on the settlers that triggered many long years of Euro-Indian wars. (I take it you have no objection to violence waged in defense, unless waged by Westerners.)

Again, you only reference the lives of those who lived. What about those who died?

Again, you only reference those who died in the course of colonialist-initiated violence. What about those who died in the course of never-ending blood feuds or as a result of poor sanitation or inadequate agricultural practices? Or are those OK because they died quietly “off the books”?

Again, what about colonialism accomplished without initiating violence? Or when native people initiate the violence? What about the case of Natal Colony?

Not much of a moral defense, don’t you agree?

Who’s making a moral defense? I’ve not brought religion into matters at all. I do think that the Powhatan was wrong to attack Jamestown, but they had what they thought was sufficient provocation. In their culture, any all-male group was clearly a war party, so they acted pre-emptively against the Virginia Company traders. (To the Company, of course, an all-male party was clearly prudent until a safe refuge was built. Given the choice, you don’t send women and children into unknown and possibly dangerous circumstances.)

how are you justified in deciding which was better for England, however you frame that hypostatization.

See how hard it is to discuss such things without referring to “England,” as if it were an actor?

One is “justified” ex post facto simply by observation of the consequences: better material culture, less internecine warfare, rule of law rather than endless blood feud, expansion of industry and trade, freedom of the individual from clan collectivism. One is not justified a priori because the clansman does not know beforehand whether the colonizer will make things better or not. And the colonizer has no such explicit intention. The Romans were simply looking for borders that were most easily defensible.

History is replete with such examples in which a subjugated people split into those who embrace the new and those who resist it: the modernizers and the traditionalists. Flavius Josephus was a Hellenizing Jew, for example; but the Maccabees resisted Hellenization with the sword. The Lower Creek towns accepted Anglo-American ways took up farming and the rest; but the Upper Creek towns raised the Red Stick and initiated violence by attacking the White Stick towns and by the massacre at Ft. Mims. Similarly, we find a split among muslims who adopt Western ways and those who want to adhere to supposed traditional ways.

A good comparison might be the Japanese, some of whom thought to shut out the Westerners and some of whom wished to open up to them, which is why the then-daimyo of the Satsuma han said that the most dangerous thing the white man brought was his cloth. Yet, after Meiji, Satsuma became a stronghold of reactionary thinking.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Battle_of_Taharazaka.JPG

By the way, you stump’d me when you Trump’d me. I don’t even know how to respond.

You had written:

The views your espouse are the reason many Americans, especially many of those in power, champion our endless wars and colonialism. Only drones and bombs can allow the unwashed to see our city shining on the hill — after the clouds of cordite clear their air, of course).

I took the reference to “those in power” to refer to Trump rather than for example to those not in power. The remainder is the usual histrionic pearl-clutching typical of the Late Modern when Reality fails to fall into line with Theory.

hypostatization

I think you mean “reification.” The word ????????? (hypo-stasis) is cognate with the Latin sub-stantia and originally designated a substance, the underlying reality of a thing. But it was recruited to mean a Person in the Trinity in Basil’s phrase, “Three hypostases in one ousia” or “Three Persons in one Being.” So I could not understand what you were getting at and wondered if it was a dog-whistle attack on trinitarianism. Go figure.

YOS —

Regarding your appeal to moral equivalence, read https://www.lewrockwell.com/2012/06/gene-callahan/moral-equivalence/

Regarding hypostatization, I have a coyote call and a thermal camera for evening hikes in the cold winter months, but no dog whistle. I suggest you read a real Maverick Philosopher, http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2013/01/reification-and-hypostatization-.html

Trump is one of those in power. But that equally applied to Obama, Bush, et al., as well those lesser — though, maybe greater — than Trump.

Finally, your ex post analysis is full of counterfactual arguments.

Just for fun:

1. Are drone attacks on Yemenis by agents of the US government justified under your moral code?
2. What is reality in Syria? And how are you certain that you know the truth?

As we get closer to Christmas, contrast the season of hope and peace with your usual histrionic pearl-clutching typical of the Neocon when the message of Christ fails to fall in line with the Neocon worldview.

1. Are drone attacks on Yemenis by agents of the US government justified under your moral code?

I would say it depends on who is being attacked and why. My personal opinion is that we should stay out of primitive hell-holes, period; especially, Sunni-Shi’ite conflicts that are proxy fights between Arabia and Iran. In any case, what has it to do with the question of whether colonization is always wholly detrimental to the colonized?

2. What is reality in Syria? And how are you certain that you know the truth?

a) Fairly complex. b) I have had only one first-person channel into the facts on the ground and one at second hand (He was in the Jordanian special forces.) And there is a sizable Syrian community in the Valley here — Eastern Orthodox, Antiochene Orthodox, Eastern Catholic, and muslim — whose opinions show up in the local press. But what has that to do with the question of whether colonization is always wholly detrimental to the colonized? Who exactly is supposed to be colonizing Syria? Surely not the Assad regime. They are Syrians. The Russians would like to protect their client state from overthrow by ISIS, but that is not strictly speaking colonization by Russia. Perhaps ISIS may be regarded as colonizers since many of them are from elsewhere; but the stance of many Islamists is precisely that there is no such a thing as a Syrian over against a Lebanese, an Arab, an ‘Iraqi, a Jordanian, et al., but all are simply muslims.

As we get closer to Christmas, contrast the season of hope and peace with your usual histrionic pearl-clutching typical of the Neocon when the message of Christ fails to fall in line with the Neocon worldview.

I’m not sure the season of Christmas is especially relevant in the Yemen. You keep trying to inject moral issues into a question of historical fact. But you cannot derive an “ought” from an “is.” And it is generally hard to say whether it is better to abandon a people to starvation or to intervene and feed them, knowing that their oppressors will resist. (Can we say, “Somalia”?) An ‘Iraqi nuclear inspector told me in Vienna one time just before the overthrow of the fascists in ‘Iraq: “We don’t want you to leave too soon; but we don’t want you to stay too long, either.” Naturally, our clueless State Department managed to do both.

I’m not sure where you get the “neocon” stuff. I have only made the historical observation that not all instances of colonization have been in retrospect unmitigated disasters. That does not mean that every instance has been good or that it has been known as good beforehand, or that every conflict is one of colonization at all. None of it has any more to do with the message of Christ than rainfall.

Jim, sometimes I write how I speak!
The point is there is a lot of ignorance around geography and history of the British isles and the British Empire and it’s various names in different context. One example which you are not interested in but I am going to tell you anyway is in the song,
Rule Britannia. It is an order or a proclamation not a claim or a boast. Notes the lack of the ‘s’ on the word Rule. People sing it wrong.

If the reading was too hard for you just listen to Mark Steyn’s take regarding colonialism and the paper which was part of the topic of this post.
The point is that the British colonies, ex and current territories are still our friends with almost no exception.
Despite years of propaganda, sour grapes, history warping and misinformation.

Your watch is still “exactly two days slow! That’s what it is…”

YOS —

“You keep trying to inject moral issues into a question of historical fact.”

Huh?!? Reread the original post from the top, I injected nothing. It is the point at hand.