[ExI] "an aboriginal human from 70,000 B.C."

Stefano Vaj stefano.vaj at gmail.com
Tue Mar 25 00:01:14 UTC 2008


On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 4:38 AM, PJ Manney <pjmanney at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 23, 2008 at 3:25 PM, hkhenson <hkhenson at rogers.com> wrote:
> > I don't think there are any such groups left.
> > The big problem is to avoid it happening to us.
>
> The key is empathy.  When I read about the stolen generations, all I
> could think of was what it would be like to be the mother of a child,
> or the child herself, literally ripped from their mother's arms by
> armed men, never to see their family again.  I can guarantee that
> those who implemented the policy couldn't have imagined nor cared less
> what the Aborigines were thinking or feeling, because they were not
> regarded as fully human and therefore not capable of the same thoughts
> and feelings.  The few in power who did empathize at the time were the
> few who protested the policy.
>

Mmhhh. I wonder if is enough. That is, not just for "feeling good" or
propaganda purposes, but for things to go any differently.

As far as cultural genocide is concerned, the hell is very typically paved
with good intentions. "Salvation" from one's community, customs, "barbarian"
ways-of-life, perceived inferior ethical or political standards, etc., since
we obviously "know what is best for them", is one. See for the best ever
fictionalised analysis of this mechanism M. Resnick's Inferno. A Chronicle
of a Distant World<http://www.amazon.com/Inferno-Chronicle-Distant-Mike-Resnick/dp/0812523458/sr=1-1/qid=1160308109/ref=sr_1_1/104-4776371-6692742?ie=UTF8&s=books>,
Tor Books, 1995, ISBN 0812523458.

Cultures, races, populations, nations are born, grow, evolve,
cross-pollinate, split, segregate, merge, sometimes decline and die. But to
kill them "for their own good" always seemed to me the supreme insult and
irony. Whenever one goes down the road of "it is better to spare the people
[actually, the individual] than to spare their culture", neither usually end
up having been spared.

Stefano Vaj
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