Philosophy Now Forum

Belinda wrote: ↑Fri Nov 19, 2021 11:25 amI have been reading up on the colonial influences on tribal affiliations in sub-Saharan Africa, and the persistent colonialist origin of corruption there and abroad. Even IC's brand of Xianity rises above neo- tribalist affiliations.

It would help if you could describe what you have discovered and perhaps cite some sources. As it is, I have no idea what you are talking about.

uwot wrote: ↑Fri Nov 19, 2021 11:46 am

Belinda wrote: ↑Fri Nov 19, 2021 11:25 amI have been reading up on the colonial influences on tribal affiliations in sub-Saharan Africa, and the persistent colonialist origin of corruption there and abroad. Even IC's brand of Xianity rises above neo- tribalist affiliations.

It would help if you could describe what you have discovered and perhaps cite some sources. As it is, I have no idea what you are talking about.

IC and I had a conversation about foreign aid and how corruption in Africa made money for overseas development less effective. As I recall IC blamed tribalism for the corruption, and I had to read up on causes of corruption in Sub-Saharan Africa. I am not the best person to precis what I have read but here goes.

Colonists in Africa aimed to extract from the lands under occupation whatever riches were available. Labour relations were such that native Africans were in effect forced by taxation to work for wages instead of their own subsistence. Local controls were organised by the British colonists by devolving local control to actual chiefs or 'big men'. Portugal, France, and Germany used centralised control. King Leopold of Belgium used his territory like a private fiefdom. Generally the economy went from subsistence and traditional trading to money economies with inbuilt controls where native Africans were subservient to European colonial wealth extraction. After the colonies became independent some former African colonies could not shake off the corrupt dealings introduced during the colonial era, and a new breed of commercial colonists has cashed in on African natural resources, and exported the illegal deals notably to people in the USA.
Sorry I did not note my main reading material, but here is a good short overview from a reputable balanced source.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019 ... -in-africa

Belinda wrote: ↑Fri Nov 19, 2021 12:28 pmI am not the best person to precis what I have read but here goes.

Thank you for your effort. I'm not an expert on this either, but what I gather is that slavery has been ubiquitous. Even the bible has instructions on how to treat them. Human beings have until recently been considered legitimate wartime booty in the western world; think of the lyrics to Rule Britannia. Britons might never, never, never be slaves, but pretty well anyone else was fair game. To justify slavery, its victims are portrayed as 'foreign' or 'alien' if not outright subhuman. When European colonies, particularly in the Americas needed labour, African tribal leaders, or anyone who could shoot straight, were armed and paid by slave traders to do the capturing for them, exacerbating and frequently creating tribal divisions.
One of conditions of the Marshall Plan was that beneficiaries surrendered their colonies, at least the profitable ones, so that the USA could exploit them commercially, they being the new influx of commercial colonialists you mention. It is not in their interest to have the local population see them as the enemy; better for business for them to hate each other. What was divide and conquer is now more explicitly divide and rip off. It also helps to have useful idiots like Mr Can bleating about how constitutionally tribal Africans are.

Ah, and thank you for the link.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Fri Nov 19, 2021 8:37 am as much racism...much less than possible in the KKK.

You mean that organization that the Democrats created, after they lost all their slaves? That racism?

uwot wrote: ↑Fri Nov 19, 2021 1:38 pm... slavery has been ubiquitous.

Quite: indeed the peoples of what has become Europe were so used to capturing their eastern neighbours and putting them to menial work that "Slav" gave us the word we still use.

Yes, white people enslaved white people, and black people enslaved black people, long before White Americans enslaved Black Americans. So it is reasonable to insist that there is nothing inherently evil in the whiteness that white people inherit from their slave-owning ancestors. It doesn't take a special kind of evil to become a enslaving ethnicity.

The evil arises in those who collect together to deny the inhumanity of that ethnic-based slavery, or deny the harm its legacy continues to inflict on post-slavery communities, or to refuse to do what needs to be done to repair the damage. And one of the harms, perhaps the chief harm, is the vastly unequal life-chances granted to children of white people and children of colour.

mickthinks wrote: ↑Fri Nov 19, 2021 3:50 pm Yes, white people enslaved white people, and black people enslaved black people, long before White Americans enslaved Black Americans.

Don't forget the Arabs. The trans-Saharan slave trade was far bigger, nastier and longer than the relatively-short-lived Atlantic trade.

But yes, yours is a sane comment. Slavery is a ubiquitous human practice, one at least as old as, say, war or prostitution. And every culture has done it. It has no skin-colour privileges.

...the harm its legacy continues to inflict on post-slavery communities...

Speak about that. What is this "harm," how long does it last, and who is now responsible to deal with it?

...or to refuse to do what needs to be done to repair the damage.

That's not realistic. You can't "repair the damage" when real damage has been done. If a woman or child has been raped, you can't give her money to "make it right." You cannot repay Jews for the Holocaust...nothing we do will "make it go away," or "balance the account." Even in our own lives, the things that have hurt us are almost all beyond repair. There's no such thing as actual "restitution," only the providing of something better going forward.

The "better thing going forward," for the great-great-great grandchilden of one-time slaves in the US has been "affirmative action." But nothing's really going to fix things if the beneficiaries don't seize the opportunity. If they remain mired in resentment and self-pity, and will not accept what can be done for them, then there still is no possibility of restitution. There's only the prospect of everlasting resentment and a bottomless pit of demands for a crime which is both ancient and only of a definite size, however bad it was.

The way forward for minorities that were once historically disadvantaged or abused is FORWARD. There is no hope, merit or future in a continual state of resentment, inaction and entitlement, let alone the fomenting of the kind of racist sentiments that made slavery possible in the first place.

Look at the Chinese. At one time, they were used as railroad workers, and worked to death. Or look at the Japanese, interned in camps and treated as enemies while the Germans were not. But how are the Chinese and Japanese faring now? Are they standing around whining about "restitution," or are they manfully getting on with making their own lives successful? And how did many African Americans manage to become hugely successful in the US? They are not just millionaire basketball and football players, but successful scholars, businessspeople, educators, workmen and yes...even President of the United States itself.

How does that happen, if "being black" makes one automatically a victim and takes away one's options?

The evidence on that is really in: a person can have a very dark historical past, belong to a historically abused minority, and in a generation or two, can be a member of the most affluent, educated and successful subculture. All he has to do is want to take the opportunities available.

But sitting around whining about what long-dead people did to one's great-great-great grandparents, however horrible, is a recipe for nothing.

uwot wrote: ↑Fri Nov 19, 2021 1:38 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Fri Nov 19, 2021 12:28 pmI am not the best person to precis what I have read but here goes.

Thank you for your effort. I'm not an expert on this either, but what I gather is that slavery has been ubiquitous. Even the bible has instructions on how to treat them. Human beings have until recently been considered legitimate wartime booty in the western world; think of the lyrics to Rule Britannia. Britons might never, never, never be slaves, but pretty well anyone else was fair game. To justify slavery, its victims are portrayed as 'foreign' or 'alien' if not outright subhuman. When European colonies, particularly in the Americas needed labour, African tribal leaders, or anyone who could shoot straight, were armed and paid by slave traders to do the capturing for them, exacerbating and frequently creating tribal divisions.
One of conditions of the Marshall Plan was that beneficiaries surrendered their colonies, at least the profitable ones, so that the USA could exploit them commercially, they being the new influx of commercial colonialists you mention. It is not in their interest to have the local population see them as the enemy; better for business for them to hate each other. What was divide and conquer is now more explicitly divide and rip off. It also helps to have useful idiots like Mr Can bleating about how constitutionally tribal Africans are.

I really don't think most Americans like corruption among multinational enterprises either. Time the US tightened up its controls against these international criminals.

Time the US tightened up its controls against these international criminals.

Time to cripple the gov: without its Big Stick, international criminals got no protection.

-----

you can't give her money to "make it right."

And even if that worked: whose money?

Before Joe, the supposed descendant of slaves, gets a check, we ought put his claims to the test.

Gonna need evidence Joe is a descendant of slaves; gonna need evidence that Joe himself has somehow been inconvenienced by the enslavement of his ancestors (none of this, cultural/institutional/systemic discrimination manure...real evidence, demonstratin' how Joe's life woulda been better if his great great grandpappy hadn't been treated as property, is needed).

What else?

Joe has to identify the descendants of the slavers who treated his great great grandpappy so terribly (cuz any claim he has is only, can only be, against them). No, the blanket condemnation of whites won't do (Stan's family line includes no slavers, no claim can be laid against him). Then Joe must pony up the evidence that these descendants of slavers benefited from their ancestor's slavin' ways.

Pretty much: as in any criminal trial, Joe has to prove his claims, prove he's a victim, prove the accused is guilty (by way of lineage and actual benefit by way of lineage). Only then can the talks start about how many 0s mebbe ought to follow the 1 on that check.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Fri Nov 19, 2021 5:44 pm Gonna need evidence Joe is a descendant of slaves; gonna need evidence that Joe himself has somehow been inconvenienced by the enslavement of his ancestors (none of this, cultural/institutional/systemic discrimination manure...real evidence, demonstratin' how Joe's life woulda been better if his great great grandpappy hadn't been treated as property, is needed).

Not only that...more than half of the people in the Civil War fought against slavery. They didn't have to, but they did.

Many men gave up their lives to end it. What do their wives, children, fathers, mothers and descendents get? Or are they excluded because their skin was the wrong colour, even though one of their family members even died to defeat the slavery the Democrats had established? What are those over 110,000 soldiers and their families? What about the owners of the lands the south destroyed in the war? What about the civilians they killed?

What about their cut of the reparations?

And what is the final number owed? No evil is infinite. It must have a total. What is the total the Southern Democrats' descendents allegedly owe to both slaves and the children of Union soldiers? When will we reach the point where none of the South's victims and none of their descendents any longer have any claim at all against the post-bellum South?

It can't be infinite, so what is it?

And how do we know that total hasn't been reached already?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Nov 20, 2021 4:00 am

henry quirk wrote: ↑Fri Nov 19, 2021 5:44 pm Gonna need evidence Joe is a descendant of slaves; gonna need evidence that Joe himself has somehow been inconvenienced by the enslavement of his ancestors (none of this, cultural/institutional/systemic discrimination manure...real evidence, demonstratin' how Joe's life woulda been better if his great great grandpappy hadn't been treated as property, is needed).

Not only that...more than half of the people in the Civil War fought against slavery. They didn't have to, but they did.

Many men gave up their lives to end it. What do their wives, children, fathers, mothers and descendents get? Or are they excluded because their skin was the wrong colour, even though one of their family members even died to defeat the slavery the Democrats had established? What are those over 110,000 soldiers and their families? What about the owners of the lands the south destroyed in the war? What about the civilians they killed?

What about their cut of the reparations?

And what is the final number owed? No evil is infinite. It must have a total. What is the total the Southern Democrats' descendents allegedly owe to both slaves and the children of Union soldiers? When will we reach the point where none of the South's victims and none of their descendents any longer have any claim at all against the post-bellum South?

It can't be infinite, so what is it?

And how do we know that total hasn't been reached already?

And what about the descendants of Africans who sold their brothers to Europeans? And what about the descendants of Europeans who sold and bought men?

And, yes, what of the descendants of those who opposed slavery?

If we're gonna go institutional/systemic/cultural with all this manure, then then everybody today is a victim and a victimizer: everyone deserves reparations and ought to pay reparations.

We need a Blue Ribbon Committee to study this thorny problem.

Interesting that it's the 'right leaning' who are always blithering on about 'freedom', yet they are the ones who are anti 'freedom' in anything that doesn't conform with their twisted view of 'morality'. 'Freedom' is fine, unless it's the 'freedom' of anyone they don't like...

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: ↑Sat Nov 20, 2021 5:56 am Interesting that it's the 'right leaning' who are always blithering on about 'freedom', yet they are the ones who are anti 'freedom' in anything that doesn't conform with their twisted view of 'morality'. 'Freedom' is fine, unless it's the 'freedom' of anyone they don't like...

So bein' anti-reparations is bein' anti-freedom?

How are reparations moral?

Which is moral: makin' the truly aggrieved whole, or, throwin' a bone to anyone who just claims injury?

Which is moral: holdin' accountable the actual offender, or, blindly condemnin' anyone just becuz they happen to be alive?

henry quirk wrote: ↑Sat Nov 20, 2021 6:22 am

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: ↑Sat Nov 20, 2021 5:56 am Interesting that it's the 'right leaning' who are always blithering on about 'freedom', yet they are the ones who are anti 'freedom' in anything that doesn't conform with their twisted view of 'morality'. 'Freedom' is fine, unless it's the 'freedom' of anyone they don't like...

So bein' anti-reparations is bein' anti-freedom?

How are reparations moral?

Which is moral: makin' the truly aggrieved whole, or, throwin' a bone to anyone who just claims injury?

Which is moral: holdin' accountable the actual offender, or, blindly condemnin' anyone just becuz they happen to be alive?

Reparations would come in handy for the land the English stole off my ancestors in Ireland

simplicity wrote: ↑Tue Nov 02, 2021 1:33 am

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Mon Nov 01, 2021 9:34 pm

simplicity wrote: ↑Mon Nov 01, 2021 8:42 pm
It's not about feelings.

How can that be true? Your OP is a series of unrelated screeches, some stuff about the USSR and some stuff about Biden but no sign of them having anything to do with each other. There's some stuff about top down things but no sign of any reason why top down organisation is some exclusively left wing policy and thus none of what you wrote can be attributed to anything but feels.

simplicity wrote: ↑Mon Nov 01, 2021 8:42 pm I'd actually prefer to have moderate people in charge. Political systems work best with compromise between liberal and conservative and highly functional checks and balances. The corruption must be rooted-out.

There is reason to be suspicious about what your idea of moderate might refer to. For all of your FoxNews howlings, nobody sane considers Biden a trotskyite firebrand, he's boring, he'll be dead in a few years, and he won't really do much of anything between now and then.

Your checks and balances have been out of balance for decades, if not centuries. Now you even have a constitutional court that has been filled up with partisan hacks, which in itself is only important because you quite absurdly send virtually all your laws there to be thrown out. You have allowed your electoral system to be so thoroughly jerrymandered that now your political parties are hostage to total psychopaths and most of your elected officials are only afraid of losing primaries to the lunatic wings of their own party because they will never face a meaningful election against the other party.

If you wanted to fix shit, you would need to make the right wing parties give up their electoral advantages that allow them to win state and federal power with mere pluralities of the vote so that they had to appeal to a broad range of voters again. But if you just want to rant that it's all the fault of THE LEFT like the other half baked shitwits on this forum, then I guess you can knock yourself out.

Perhaps you can answer this question. Why are left leaning folks so incredibly nasty?

It sort of sounds like you may have had a run-in with some of the "woke" crowd. Yes, some can be outright nasty at times but I think your rant in the OP is just that. I can empathize with your sentiment to a degree but the overgeneralizations don't represent political reality very well. There are good and bad aspects to almost everyone and some people can be overzealous about political issues at times in just about every political flavor. Just be patient and hang in there.