Re: Arafat 'in critical condition'
From: Floyd L. Davidson (floyd_at_barrow.com)
Date: 11/01/04
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Date: Sun, 31 Oct 2004 19:02:13 -0900
"robert j. kolker" <nowhere@nowhere.net> wrote:
>Floyd L. Davidson wrote:
>>>Au Contraire. In such climes people had to track the
>>>seasons. Astronomy developed in Babylon and Egypt, not in the
>>>cold frozen North.
>
>> Are you sure? Or is that just more culture centric drivel...
>
>Read some history. Any records of Eskimo astronomers? Not that
>I know of. Do you have any other data in this regard.
Of course there are no records of such! Why would anyone want
to keep track of what some simple people who don't even have
any form of government did! Right?
"The Eskimo have no government and no leaders."
http://www.silkhouse.co.uk/tytv/html/worldaware/archive/archiveaug.shtm
In fact Europeans wrote in their silly history books for 225+
years that Eskimos were such a primitive society that they had
no government. Then they forced Eskimo kids to go to boarding
schools and their parents were no longer able to teach them at
home... so these "primitive" people hired an anthropologist to
write up, in a way that can be taught in Western schools, their
system of governance (the one that didn't exist).
Hence you can today go to a library and discover that there are
virtually *no* books written prior to about 1970 which say
anything other than "no governance", and almost none after about
1975 which make that claim. (I was astounded to find the
above cited web page that still makes that claim!)
I'll leave it to you to figure which form of governance is
more primitive, theirs or ours. But one of them is so slick
that the other didn't even know it existed for 225 years...
It happens that if you are very careful you can actually find
references in Western literature to the fact that when Europeans
first came into contact with Eskimos those Eskimos knew quite a
bit about astronomy, including apparently more about navigation
by stars than did the Europeans.
Of course it wasn't important, because they are primitive. And
what they knew has been lost because of the arrogance of Western
culture.
>Our intellectual heritage was shaped in Egypt, Babylon and
>especially Greece. This is where mathematics astronomy and
>science originated. It is a matter of historical record.
It is matter of *your* concept of history.
>While the men of the frozen north were invading Russia and
>Englad, cracking skulls, and collecting DanesGold, the peoples
>of Mediterrean where creating mathematics and science. And the
>Chinese also made a big contribution too. They invented
>gunpoweder and rockets.
So the only useful history is that which leads to *your*
culture? I think you've got a lot to learn.
For example, the concepts of Property Law and Environmental
Law as they exist today in the US are exceedingly primitive.
(Roughly about where Eskimos were maybe 2-3000 years ago...)
The concepts of individual freedom, human rights, and a
government based on liberty for the people are all things that
we like to think of as "American"... and indeed they are! And
that predates European discovery of America by several hundreds
of years!
It took 250 years of exposure, along the East Coast of the US
before people from Europe, steeped in Western Culture, were able
to quite understand it. But they did! And one day in Boston
they revolted against the King of England and threw tea into the
bay... all dressed up as Mohawk Indians!
Today we teach our children in grade school the the colonists
dressed as Mohawks to hide who they were... But the fact is
*everyone* knew exactly who they were. The dress was just
another message: Americans believe in individual liberty, and if
those "savage" Iroquois can have government based on that, so
can White people.
Here's a quote worth thinking about:
It would be a very strange thing if Six Nations of
Ignorant Savages should be capable of forming a Scheme
for such an Union and be able to execute it in such a
manner, as that it has subsisted Ages, and appears
indissoluble, and yet a like Union should be
impracticable for ten or a dozen English colonies.
-- Benjamin Franklin to James Parker, 1751
-- FloydL. Davidson <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson> Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) floyd@barrow.com
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