Christianity

[Belinda]

Wow.

Well, I can tell two things: one is that you've never been anywhere near a Developing World country, or met any evangelical missionaries. The second is that you don't wait for facts to trouble you, when you've got an opinion to offer.

Africans are pragmatic and welcome Christian and Muslim missionaries for the schools and hospitals they provide.

You'll find that the Christian missionaries "provide" very, very different things from what the Muslims do. You'll also find that the evangelical missionaries actually turned out to be a major reason why many tribes and ancient languages survived at all, as Lamin Sanneh as pointed out.

Missionary motive to colonise peoples

Missionaries and colonists are not the same people at all. Colonists are secular, and come either to claim territory or resources. The missionaries in Africa came to reach the people with the news of salvation. Consequently, the colonists did what colonists do, and the missionaries learned the languages, established peaceful relations with the people, pacified the tribal warfare, provided education and medicine, improved foodstocks, and cushioned the first contact between colonists and the local people. As Sanneh points out, those tribes that experienced evangelical missionaries still exist, and have their languages, and have survived the contact with the West; those that had none have mostly been eradicated -- if not by outright violence, by the disparity between the development level of their own technologies and those of the West.

Urbanised Africans who are to a significant degree separated from their rural roots are specially at risk from ideological missionary interference .

The opposite is actually true, you'll find. Those in tribal conditions are either cut off from civilization completely or under terrible stress from their interactions with it. Those in the cities have already capitulated to the collision between the tribal and the Western. But the missionaries are found in both places, and are the shock-absorbers that make that contact safe at all for tribal people.

The problem with anti-colonialism is that it has no idea of what the alternative is or was. If we assume (as we obviously must) that it was inevitable, because of globalization) that advanced Western societies were going to come into contact with tribal ones at some point, then we must ask under what conditions that was optimal -- with or without the compassionate intervention and provision of missionaries, particular evangelical ones. And the answer is clear: with.

Primitive tribes cannot survive contact with the secular West, if there is nobody to smooth the process. Nowhere have they been able to do so. It's far too radical, and the imbalance between their knowledge and technologies and the modern ones is truly vast. It inevitably disrupts and destroys the tribal culture, unless somebody cushions the transitions -- and secular colonists simply have no reason to care very much about that.

Moreover, now that contact between the West and ancient tribes has already taken place, there's the question of what is to be done now. There's absolutely no way for ancient tribes to "unknow" what they've come to experience, or to recover a language that was never written down by the missionaries, or to remember their stories when the TV and internet are yelling different stories in their ears. Unless you want to deny them all the benefits of modern medicine, education and commerce, and force them into a regressive state of anthropological fixation, then the only path now is forward; not refusing Western conditions, but adapting to them in cushioned, non-destructive ways.

Postcolonialism, therefore, turns out to be nothing more than a naive, impossible and unproductive hatred of modernity, a useless resentment of a cultural collision that was going to happen inevitably anyway, and an imaginary valourization of cultures that were always marked mostly by poverty, sickness, tribal xenophobia, ignorance, superstition, misogyny, cruelty and deficiency of resources.

And why would we want to return native peoples to that?

They did not need to be saved until missionaries told them they did. However if they had to 'be saved' quid pro quo medical care and schools that was okay with pragmatic Africans. I don't know anybody who thoroughly disapproved of missionaries and as far as I know colonial officials welcomed them for the good work they did.

Nobody wants to turn back the clock in Africa, as far as I know.

By the way, one does not use the expression "primitive" tribes.
I know of no politicians who "hate modernity" except perhaps the Taliban.

Newly urbanised African men formed associations in the towns to help keep in touch with their ethnic roots and families, and cooperate to help each other in an alien environment.

[Alexis Jacobi]

[Colonialism is deeply ingrained in this one. Love it or leave it!

You could put it like that and you’d not be wrong. England colonized the world and used both brute power and all the means of civilization to do so. Since I am in a thousand ways a beneficiary of that, I do not turn my back on the use of power to mold worlds. I have certain issues with the broadcasting of power, but I find that I am glad (if that is the right word) that American power won out when WWll ended. And the US created an entire structure that served billions. Simply put, there has to be some power-structure, even a hegemon. I accept this.

Your level of understanding and analysis is of an inexperienced child. A flower-child perhaps? It is infused with self-destructive self-directed resentment.

I would not say ‘ingrained’ since for many years I followed a Chomskian line. I reversed-course and became a Mearsheimer political realist.

[ThinkOfOne]

Not sure if I understand you correctly, but it seems that you are of the mind that "Christian morality" prescribes actually loving and helping one's neighbor. Nothing could be further from the truth.

While there are some Christians who actually believe in doing that, there seem to be many more who are either apathetic or dead set against it, especially Evangelical Christians. There's a distinction that needs to be made between the morality espoused by Jesus while He walked the Earth and "Christian morality". There's a wide gulf between the two.

Wow.

Well, I can tell two things: one is that you've never been anywhere near a Developing World country, or met any evangelical missionaries. The second is that you don't wait for facts to trouble you, when you've got an opinion to offer.

Note how IC created and attacked a straw man from what I wrote. For one, "evangelical missionaries" constitute a very small percentage of Christians as a whole. As such, "evanglical missionaries" come under the category of "some Christians...actually believe in doing that". Yet IC responded as if I had written, "no Christians...actually believe in doing that". For another, just because an individual has worked as an "evangelical missionary" does not necessarily mean that they truly believe in "actually loving and helping one's neighbor". Those who do actually believe in it would actually "live" those words in all other facets of their life as well. As an example, take an Evangelical Christian who had worked as a missionary, but is dead set against universal healthcare, dead set against measures to right the wrongs of discrimination against minorities (even worse actively participate in that discrimination), refused to mask during the pandemic, etc. They do NOT actually live it. They would be an example of the "white-washed tombs" that Jesus warned against.

Also note how IC makes the accusation that "[ I ] don't wait for facts to trouble [me], when [I've] got an opinion to offer", when the reality is that that is true of IC themself. Basically, falsely accusing others of doing what they themselves are doing. Unfortunately, this kind of deceit is all too typical IC and many other Christians - especially Evangelical Christians.

If IC remains true to form, we should see them repeatedly come back with more of the same.

[popeye1945]

[Colonialism is deeply ingrained in this one. Love it or leave it!

You could put it like that and you’d not be wrong. England colonized the world and used both brute power and all the means of civilization to do so. Since I am in a thousand ways a beneficiary of that, I do not turn my back on the use of power to mold worlds. I have certain issues with the broadcasting of power, but I find that I am glad (if that is the right word) that American power won out when WWll ended. And the US created an entire structure that served billions. Simply put, there has to be some power-structure, even a hegemon. I accept this.

Your level of understanding and analysis is of an inexperienced child. A flower-child perhaps? It is infused with self-destructive self-directed resentment.

I would not say ‘ingrained’ since for many years I followed a Chomskian line. I reversed-course and became a Mearsheimer political realist.

You are old school and on the wrong side of history, not a child, just evil.

[Immanuel Can]

Africans are pragmatic and welcome Christian and Muslim missionaries for the schools and hospitals they provide.

You'll find that the Christian missionaries "provide" very, very different things from what the Muslims do. You'll also find that the evangelical missionaries actually turned out to be a major reason why many tribes and ancient languages survived at all, as Lamin Sanneh as pointed out.

Missionary motive to colonise peoples

Missionaries and colonists are not the same people at all. Colonists are secular, and come either to claim territory or resources. The missionaries in Africa came to reach the people with the news of salvation. Consequently, the colonists did what colonists do, and the missionaries learned the languages, established peaceful relations with the people, pacified the tribal warfare, provided education and medicine, improved foodstocks, and cushioned the first contact between colonists and the local people. As Sanneh points out, those tribes that experienced evangelical missionaries still exist, and have their languages, and have survived the contact with the West; those that had none have mostly been eradicated -- if not by outright violence, by the disparity between the development level of their own technologies and those of the West.

Urbanised Africans who are to a significant degree separated from their rural roots are specially at risk from ideological missionary interference .

The opposite is actually true, you'll find. Those in tribal conditions are either cut off from civilization completely or under terrible stress from their interactions with it. Those in the cities have already capitulated to the collision between the tribal and the Western. But the missionaries are found in both places, and are the shock-absorbers that make that contact safe at all for tribal people.

The problem with anti-colonialism is that it has no idea of what the alternative is or was. If we assume (as we obviously must) that it was inevitable, because of globalization) that advanced Western societies were going to come into contact with tribal ones at some point, then we must ask under what conditions that was optimal -- with or without the compassionate intervention and provision of missionaries, particular evangelical ones. And the answer is clear: with.

Primitive tribes cannot survive contact with the secular West, if there is nobody to smooth the process. Nowhere have they been able to do so. It's far too radical, and the imbalance between their knowledge and technologies and the modern ones is truly vast. It inevitably disrupts and destroys the tribal culture, unless somebody cushions the transitions -- and secular colonists simply have no reason to care very much about that.

Moreover, now that contact between the West and ancient tribes has already taken place, there's the question of what is to be done now. There's absolutely no way for ancient tribes to "unknow" what they've come to experience, or to recover a language that was never written down by the missionaries, or to remember their stories when the TV and internet are yelling different stories in their ears. Unless you want to deny them all the benefits of modern medicine, education and commerce, and force them into a regressive state of anthropological fixation, then the only path now is forward; not refusing Western conditions, but adapting to them in cushioned, non-destructive ways.

Postcolonialism, therefore, turns out to be nothing more than a naive, impossible and unproductive hatred of modernity, a useless resentment of a cultural collision that was going to happen inevitably anyway, and an imaginary valourization of cultures that were always marked mostly by poverty, sickness, tribal xenophobia, ignorance, superstition, misogyny, cruelty and deficiency of resources.

And why would we want to return native peoples to that?

They did not need to be saved

Yes, they did. Spiritually first, of course: but also from ignorance, cruelty, poverty, tribalism, superstition, lack of resources and terrible health care, as well. And with the missionaries, they got the whole package, plus preservation of their language and culture. It was the best deal possible, since colonial forces were bound to be coming later anyway.

I don't know anybody who thoroughly disapproved of missionaries and as far as I know colonial officials welcomed them for the good work they did.

Quite right. And the people who benefitted the most, beyond question, were the natives themselves. The one group that hated the missionaries was the group of colonial merchants who wanted to exploit a given tribe, or quietly eradicate it. For them, there was nothing more inconvenient than discovering that the group had a Western missionary on their side already, because it tied their hands. They knew that whatever they tried to do, it would be resisted and reported. Very inconvenient indeed, if you want to abuse people.

Nobody wants to turn back the clock in Africa, as far as I know.

Lots do. They call themselves "Anticolonialists," and they have this absurd vision of returning Africa to some imaginary idyllic state they imagine existed prior to the arrival of the West. Of course, they're really just using the native population as an excuse to bash the West in the name of Socialism...which has been tried and tried in Africa, and failed miserably every time, just as it has in the rest of the world.

But Postcolonial theorists don't care about that. Their ambitions begin and end with badgering the West so as to introduce further Socialism. What happens to Africa? They don't care. And you can see it, because they've done nothing whatsoever good for Africa.

It's like BLM -- it means "black lives matter for the purposes of advocating Socialism." After that, no black life matters to them at all.

By the way, one does not use the expression "primitive" tribes.

Yes, one does, if one tells the truth. Those old tribal cultures, on the whole, were backward, undeveloped and truly awful. And anybody who imagines otherwise simply doesn't know anything about any of them. Life there was, to borrow the phrase, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." There will be no happy return to that state for anybody. But it doesn't stop the Lefties from campaigning for it, because they think it makes them virtuous.

[Immanuel Can]

For one, "evangelical missionaries" constitute a very small percentage of Christians as a whole.

Actually, they're disproportionately a large group. And you have to add in that they're almost entirely supported by individual Western evangelical churches. And the work they do is phenomenal, even according to some Atheists. See, for example, http://www.rootedinjesus.net/docs/Parris.pdf

But please...if you think otherwise, go and find all the Atheist hospitals, water projects, medical missions, relief agencies, literacy, business and agricultural projects in the Developing World. Atheists don't help anybody. They just criticize what Christians do.

[iambiguous]

Excusing God
Raymond Tallis highlights the problem of evil

The Imbalance of Good & Evil

More to the point, however, is that in the absence of a God, the God, good and evil themselves are largely existential constructs rooted historically, culturally and experientially in dasein. After all, it's not for nothing those like IC here will insist that in the absence of a God, the God, their God, Good and Evil are beyond the reach of mere mortals. Instead, they are derived largely from one or another sacred text. Moral commandments that then revolve around immortality and salvation. In other words, depending on which One True Path you are on, these commandments might pertain to any number of ofttimes contradictory assessments of conflicting goods.

Goff’s ‘God of limited power’ is at least benign. But then there is Steven Law’s ‘The Evil God Challenge’ (Religious Studies, 2010, 46:3). Law reminds us that there are, after all, good things in the world – beauty, wonder, love, nobility, pleasure, happiness – which may allay the suspicion that the universe has been created by an ‘all-evil’ omnipotent God.

Again, however, back to the part where any number of these folks...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_philosophies

...will insist that only their own assessments actually count.

And really what are the odds that of all these assessments of "beauty, wonder, love, nobility, pleasure, happiness" etc., your own is always going to be the one smack dab in the bullseye?
 

As Law points out, however, it does not support the notion of a god who is all-good. In general, any attempt to rest the answer to the question of the benevolence of God on a ‘felicific calculus’ performed to determine whether the sum total of goodness or happiness exceeds that of evil or suffering, must fail.

As I [and other moral nihilists] point out, however, any number of moral objectivists [God and No God] will insist that, on the contrary, you are either "one of us" or...

..."or else"? 

Thus this part...

Firstly, we cannot add up the quantity of happiness and the quantity of suffering over the history of the universe in order to see which is the greater. To put it mildly, we lack the data. And in any case, happiness and suffering cannot be quantified on a single scale, so the relevant sums cannot be performed.

...is no less problematic.

Still, "in reality" they are performed all the time. The objectivists' "calculations" are derived from the assumption that their own One True Path to Good and Evil had better be the one that others choose. It's then only a matter of just how fiercely dogmatic they are in insisting on it. And here we can go all the way to...to the reeducation camps, the gulags or the gas chambers.

Go ahead and ask them to explain that.

[Belinda]

You'll find that the Christian missionaries "provide" very, very different things from what the Muslims do. You'll also find that the evangelical missionaries actually turned out to be a major reason why many tribes and ancient languages survived at all, as Lamin Sanneh as pointed out.


Missionaries and colonists are not the same people at all. Colonists are secular, and come either to claim territory or resources. The missionaries in Africa came to reach the people with the news of salvation. Consequently, the colonists did what colonists do, and the missionaries learned the languages, established peaceful relations with the people, pacified the tribal warfare, provided education and medicine, improved foodstocks, and cushioned the first contact between colonists and the local people. As Sanneh points out, those tribes that experienced evangelical missionaries still exist, and have their languages, and have survived the contact with the West; those that had none have mostly been eradicated -- if not by outright violence, by the disparity between the development level of their own technologies and those of the West.

The opposite is actually true, you'll find. Those in tribal conditions are either cut off from civilization completely or under terrible stress from their interactions with it. Those in the cities have already capitulated to the collision between the tribal and the Western. But the missionaries are found in both places, and are the shock-absorbers that make that contact safe at all for tribal people.

The problem with anti-colonialism is that it has no idea of what the alternative is or was. If we assume (as we obviously must) that it was inevitable, because of globalization) that advanced Western societies were going to come into contact with tribal ones at some point, then we must ask under what conditions that was optimal -- with or without the compassionate intervention and provision of missionaries, particular evangelical ones. And the answer is clear: with.

Primitive tribes cannot survive contact with the secular West, if there is nobody to smooth the process. Nowhere have they been able to do so. It's far too radical, and the imbalance between their knowledge and technologies and the modern ones is truly vast. It inevitably disrupts and destroys the tribal culture, unless somebody cushions the transitions -- and secular colonists simply have no reason to care very much about that.

Moreover, now that contact between the West and ancient tribes has already taken place, there's the question of what is to be done now. There's absolutely no way for ancient tribes to "unknow" what they've come to experience, or to recover a language that was never written down by the missionaries, or to remember their stories when the TV and internet are yelling different stories in their ears. Unless you want to deny them all the benefits of modern medicine, education and commerce, and force them into a regressive state of anthropological fixation, then the only path now is forward; not refusing Western conditions, but adapting to them in cushioned, non-destructive ways.

Postcolonialism, therefore, turns out to be nothing more than a naive, impossible and unproductive hatred of modernity, a useless resentment of a cultural collision that was going to happen inevitably anyway, and an imaginary valourization of cultures that were always marked mostly by poverty, sickness, tribal xenophobia, ignorance, superstition, misogyny, cruelty and deficiency of resources.

And why would we want to return native peoples to that?

They did not need to be saved

Yes, they did. Spiritually first, of course: but also from ignorance, cruelty, poverty, tribalism, superstition, lack of resources and terrible health care, as well. And with the missionaries, they got the whole package, plus preservation of their language and culture. It was the best deal possible, since colonial forces were bound to be coming later anyway.

I don't know anybody who thoroughly disapproved of missionaries and as far as I know colonial officials welcomed them for the good work they did.

Quite right. And the people who benefitted the most, beyond question, were the natives themselves. The one group that hated the missionaries was the group of colonial merchants who wanted to exploit a given tribe, or quietly eradicate it. For them, there was nothing more inconvenient than discovering that the group had a Western missionary on their side already, because it tied their hands. They knew that whatever they tried to do, it would be resisted and reported. Very inconvenient indeed, if you want to abuse people.

Nobody wants to turn back the clock in Africa, as far as I know.

Lots do. They call themselves "Anticolonialists," and they have this absurd vision of returning Africa to some imaginary idyllic state they imagine existed prior to the arrival of the West. Of course, they're really just using the native population as an excuse to bash the West in the name of Socialism...which has been tried and tried in Africa, and failed miserably every time, just as it has in the rest of the world.

But Postcolonial theorists don't care about that. Their ambitions begin and end with badgering the West so as to introduce further Socialism. What happens to Africa? They don't care. And you can see it, because they've done nothing whatsoever good for Africa.

It's like BLM -- it means "black lives matter for the purposes of advocating Socialism." After that, no black life matters to them at all.

By the way, one does not use the expression "primitive" tribes.

Yes, one does, if one tells the truth. Those old tribal cultures, on the whole, were backward, undeveloped and truly awful. And anybody who imagines otherwise simply doesn't know anything about any of them. Life there was, to borrow the phrase, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." There will be no happy return to that state for anybody. But it doesn't stop the Lefties from campaigning for it, because they think it makes them virtuous.

It’s true that many African socialist experiments faced big challenges, but it’s not really accurate to say they all ‘failed miserably.’ Some produced lasting gains in health and education, and leaders like Sankara left important legacies. And anticolonial thought wasn’t just about nostalgia — it was about ending exploitative systems and finding space for African societies to define their own futures.

Anthropologists now avoid terms like primitive . This avoids imposing an evolutionary ranking system.

[Immanuel Can]

It’s true that many African socialist experiments faced big challenges,

You mean "a 100% rate of disastrous failure, culminating in death."

Some produced lasting gains in health and education,...

Where? Let's see your shining examples of Socialist achievement in postcolonial Africa.

And anticolonial thought wasn’t just about nostalgia — it was about ending exploitative systems and finding space for African societies to define their own futures.

No, it was cranky rubbish. It's convinced whole generations of Africans to waste their time on resentment, instead of building countries. It also waltzed them into Socialist experiments, not one of which has been successful. Socialists are whiners -- that's why they call what they do "critical theory." They have absolutely no idea of how to build anything positive, after they've finished destroying the status quo.

Anthropologists now avoid terms like primitive .

That's their problem. It's a very useful term.

[Belinda]

It’s true that many African socialist experiments faced big challenges,

You mean "a 100% rate of disastrous failure, culminating in death."

Some produced lasting gains in health and education,...

Where? Let's see your shining examples of Socialist achievement in postcolonial Africa.

And anticolonial thought wasn’t just about nostalgia — it was about ending exploitative systems and finding space for African societies to define their own futures.

No, it was cranky rubbish. It's convinced whole generations of Africans to waste their time on resentment, instead of building countries. It also waltzed them into Socialist experiments, not one of which has been successful. Socialists are whiners -- that's why they call what they do "critical theory." They have absolutely no idea of how to build anything positive, after they've finished destroying the status quo.

Anthropologists now avoid terms like primitive .

That's their problem. It's a very useful term.

ChatGPT researched as follows:-

1. Tanzania (Julius Nyerere’s Ujamaa socialism)

Education expansion: Literacy rates rose from about 17% at independence (1961) to over 70% by the late 1980s.

Health gains: Rural clinics were spread widely, reducing child mortality and increasing life expectancy.

National identity: Despite 120+ ethnic groups, Tanzania avoided large-scale ethnic conflict, in part due to Nyerere’s egalitarian nation-building policies and Swahili promotion.

2. Mozambique (FRELIMO government after 1975)

Mass literacy campaigns: Within a few years of independence, adult literacy was raised significantly through socialist “brigades.”

Women’s emancipation: Policies encouraged female education, health access, and participation in politics, relatively progressive for the time.

3. Guinea (Ahmed Sékou Touré, 1958–1984)

Cultural independence: Rejected French neocolonial control and promoted African languages, music, and literature, helping foster national pride.

Industrial start: Though often troubled, Guinea was one of the first to push for independent industrial development (alumina processing) under socialist principles.

4. Burkina Faso (Thomas Sankara, 1983–1987)

Public health revolution: Nationwide vaccination campaigns immunized 2.5 million children against meningitis, yellow fever, and measles in just a few weeks.

Women’s rights: Outlawed female genital mutilation, forced marriage, and polygamy; promoted women into leadership roles.

Food self-sufficiency: Promoted local production and reduced reliance on food aid.

5. Ethiopia (Derg and later Mengistu, 1974–1991 — “Ethiopian socialism”)

Land reform: Abolished feudal landlordism, redistributing land to peasants, one of the most radical redistributions in Africa.

Education: Literacy campaigns brought basic schooling to millions.

6. South Africa (ANC’s socialist currents, post-1994)

Though more social-democratic than hard socialist, post-apartheid policies expanded housing, electricity, water, and welfare access to millions, influenced by socialist traditions in the ANC and SACP.

Overall pattern:
African socialist experiments often succeeded most in education, health, national identity, and women’s rights rather than in industrial or economic self-sufficiency. External pressures (Cold War geopolitics, IMF/World Bank, resource dependency) and internal authoritarianism often undercut their economic sustainability.

[Will Bouwman]

Anthropologists now avoid terms like primitive .

That's their problem. It's a very useful term.

Indeed. How else could we describe your thinking?

[Belinda]

It’s true that many African socialist experiments faced big challenges,

You mean "a 100% rate of disastrous failure, culminating in death."

Some produced lasting gains in health and education,...

Where? Let's see your shining examples of Socialist achievement in postcolonial Africa.

And anticolonial thought wasn’t just about nostalgia — it was about ending exploitative systems and finding space for African societies to define their own futures.

No, it was cranky rubbish. It's convinced whole generations of Africans to waste their time on resentment, instead of building countries. It also waltzed them into Socialist experiments, not one of which has been successful. Socialists are whiners -- that's why they call what they do "critical theory." They have absolutely no idea of how to build anything positive, after they've finished destroying the status quo.

Anthropologists now avoid terms like primitive .

That's their problem. It's a very useful term.

Evolutionary ranking systems are useful for colonial propagandists, and for closing borders against refugees from minority ethnic groups. Evolutionary rank is a fallacy.
Evangelical Protestantism is uncharming if I were to believe you as its spokesman.

[Immanuel Can]

It’s true that many African socialist experiments faced big challenges,

You mean "a 100% rate of disastrous failure, culminating in death."

Some produced lasting gains in health and education,...

Where? Let's see your shining examples of Socialist achievement in postcolonial Africa.

And anticolonial thought wasn’t just about nostalgia — it was about ending exploitative systems and finding space for African societies to define their own futures.

No, it was cranky rubbish. It's convinced whole generations of Africans to waste their time on resentment, instead of building countries. It also waltzed them into Socialist experiments, not one of which has been successful. Socialists are whiners -- that's why they call what they do "critical theory." They have absolutely no idea of how to build anything positive, after they've finished destroying the status quo.

Anthropologists now avoid terms like primitive .

That's their problem. It's a very useful term.

ChatGPT researched as follows:-

The minute somebody does that, I know they knew nothing at had to outsource their brain.

Compare whatever you can find to the disaster of Congo, Zimbabwe, or South Africa, and then get back to me.

[Immanuel Can]

It’s true that many African socialist experiments faced big challenges,

You mean "a 100% rate of disastrous failure, culminating in death."

Some produced lasting gains in health and education,...

Where? Let's see your shining examples of Socialist achievement in postcolonial Africa.

And anticolonial thought wasn’t just about nostalgia — it was about ending exploitative systems and finding space for African societies to define their own futures.

No, it was cranky rubbish. It's convinced whole generations of Africans to waste their time on resentment, instead of building countries. It also waltzed them into Socialist experiments, not one of which has been successful. Socialists are whiners -- that's why they call what they do "critical theory." They have absolutely no idea of how to build anything positive, after they've finished destroying the status quo.

Anthropologists now avoid terms like primitive .

That's their problem. It's a very useful term.

Evolutionary ranking systems are useful for colonial propagandists, and for closing borders against refugees from minority ethnic groups. Evolutionary rank is a fallacy.

Well, evolutionism is certainly a fallacy, so you got one thing right.

But tribal societies certainly are primitive...as well as underdeveloped, misogynistic, xenophobic, backward, limiting, unhiegenic, poorly-fed, undersupplied, basic in technology, autocratic, uncomfortable and generally unpleasant to live in. If you think they're nice, go and live in one for a bit. I guarantee you'll change your mind. How would you like to live in a society that hasn't even invented the wheel? That's pretty much every tribal society.

Today's anthropologists may be subject to the new political-correctness that prevents them from reporting what they know to be true, but you and I are not. "Primitive" suits.

[seeds]

Alexis confuses nationalism with patriotism. You may even be a Jingoist, Alexis, what say you?

I tend to “political realism” and people like John Mearsheimer make sense to me. I certainly link patriotism with nationalism, but I encourage a critical posture to the existing power-structure — again Steve Bannon is a sensible model. Nothing good or productive could come from M. Popeye’s resentment (and hatred) of the Occident. So his attitude must be condemned.

Colonialism is deeply ingrained in this one. Love it or leave it!

Apparently, by living in Colombia, South America, Alexis is able to do both without directly experiencing the consequences of the unrest he helps to stir-up by praising and supporting Donald Trump.

Alexis, just curious, were you able to ¿Votar por el señor Trump desde Colombia mediante el proceso de envío por correo?
_______