posted
Rudyard Kipling...his name crossed my path three times this week. The fist time it was tuesday, I guess...a local newspaper translated part of "the white man's burden" and used it as a parallel to what's happening in Iraq. Then, while reading Gore Vidal's "Empire", there it is: the same poem. Now, I stumble upon my good friend King of Men's thread "bells", where there is another of Kipling's poem. Then I think..."fiery quill", indeed. So, here it is: "The white man's burden". Do you think "The white man" still strive to carry such "burden"?
Take up the White Man's burden-- Send forth the best ye breed-- Go, bind your sons to exile To serve your captives' need; To wait, in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild-- Your new-caught sullen peoples, Half devil and half child.
Take up the White Man's burden-- In patience to abide, To veil the threat of terror And check the show of pride; By open speech and simple, An hundred times made plain, To seek another's profit And work another's gain.
Take up the White Man's burden-- The savage wars of peace-- Fill full the mouth of Famine, And bid the sickness cease; And when your goal is nearest (The end for others sought) Watch sloth and heathen folly Bring all your hope to nought.
Take up the White Man's burden-- No iron rule of kings, But toil of serf and sweeper-- The tale of common things. The ports ye shall not enter, The roads ye shall not tread, Go, make them with your living And mark them with your dead.
Take up the White Man's burden, And reap his old reward-- The blame of those ye better The hate of those ye guard-- The cry of hosts ye humour (Ah, slowly!) toward the light:-- "Why brought ye us from bondage, Our loved Egyptian night?"
Take up the White Man's burden-- Ye dare not stoop to less-- Nor call too loud on Freedom To cloak your weariness. By all ye will or whisper, By all ye leave or do, The silent sullen peoples Shall weigh your God and you.
Take up the White Man's burden! Have done with childish days-- The lightly-proffered laurel, The easy ungrudged praise: Comes now, to search your manhood Through all the thankless years, Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom, The judgment of your peers.
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posted
It is interesting to note that Kipling was not addressing that poem to his own countrymen, but rather to the US, the occasion being the entry into the Philippines. He was welcoming a new Great Power to the ranks. And, what do you know, a century later the mighty British Empire is a scattering of islands and a social club; while America retains its naval bases, its informal empire of influence, and its willingness to project power for the betterment of other peoples.
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posted
I know of these facts, KoM. That's why the poem is relevant indeed, in my oppinion. And I guess it's all a question of semantics: "betterment"...
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quote: And, what do you know, a century later the mighty British Empire is a scattering of islands and a social club; while America retains its naval bases, its informal empire of influence, and its willingness to project power for the betterment of other peoples.
::raises star-spangled banner and salutes::
::tears roll FREELY down cheeks::
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posted
I absolutely love Kipling. He's hard to read sometimes, since his outlook is nothing like the one I subscribe to and I don't like it, but even with that, Kipling is a wonderful writer and poet.
His poem "Two Separate Sides of My Head" is one of my all-time favorites, and I remember the heartbreak and shock of reading Beyond the Pale the first time.
posted
The US also made a reference to the native Filipinos as "our little brown brothers."
I don't think the attitude of "white man's burden" is true anymore - particularly since we have learned to appreciate another society's values without feeling the need to overwrite and superimpose our cultural values.
This is by no means an absolute and unconditionally accepting attitude, but the acknowledgement is there where, say 100 years ago, the notion would be deemed absurd.
posted
And yet, is it not a declared goal of the current administration to force Iraq to adopt Western-style democracy and American-style capitalism? Would they not view-with-alarm if the Iraqis elected a strongly religious regime, as Turkey and Iran did in their time? Would they not object if an Iraqi government forbade McDonalds and Coca-Cola entry to their market? Just because there is no formal paean of superiority doesn't mean there's no cultural imperialism.
Indeed, the appeal to market forces might be seen as the attitude of a culture which is not only willing to export itself, but also utterly convinced of its own sublimity. If Americans did not believe their culture could hold its own in any contest, would they be so eager to have an unregulated marketplace of ideas?
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posted
Yes, but did we invade Iraq for the sole purpose of displacing their government and wiping out their cultural values?
And yes, I am worried about the US administration's willingness to accept whatever the Iraqi vote may yield, but I will point out that a democracy is really the only thing that could be derived as a government form we didn't specifically install - short of withdrawing all US forces and letting the factions play Cleric of the Hill.
posted
I missed the Coca-Cola and McDonald's references.
I don't think the US government would object - and materialism tends to be the human default setting.
The money to be made peddling, say McDonald's and Coca-Cola would appeal to someone willing to make a buck.
In ten years, counter-fast food chains (sorry) may spring up, home-grown and owned as well as rival soft drink manufacturers - I would imagine a successful bar/tavern/restaraunt owner would be quite interested in opening other establishments to better his bottom line.
quote:Yes, but did we invade Iraq for the sole purpose of displacing their government and wiping out their cultural values?
Iraq, possibly not; Germany and Japan, well. (Note, I'm not saying this was a bad idea.) Even in the case of Iraq, 'regime change' was the avowed aim of the invasion.
As for culture : American troops have on several occasions been rather destructive of the relics of Iraq's past. And this is, indeed, how cultures are destroyed : Not from any particular desire to shatter them, but from sheer carelessness and ignorance of their value. Like the British in India, the Americans will try to change what they find repugnant about Iraqi culture, and retain what they find useful. But the larger part will be neither repugnant nor useful, and that part can be haphazardly destroyed, because no-one will speak up to defend it.
One shouldn't exaggerate, of course. Middle Eastern culture is hardly a fragile flower, to shatter at the first breath of winter. It has survived Assyria, Rome, Islam, the Ottoman Empire, and oil; it will survive the USA. But nevertheless, the cultural imperialism of the West is a fact of life.
Lest I be misconstrued, let me say here that I do not think this a bad thing. I believe Western culture and thought is the best this species has produced. I believe democracy is better than theocracy or dictatorship. I believe women should be free to walk down the street. I just think we should be honest about what we are trying to do : We are imposing our own culture on others, and irrevocably changing their way of life. That our own culture is better does not mean we cannot be aware of the good points in what we are destroying, even if it has more bad points.
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posted
I don't think our (western) culture is better, KoM. It just happends to be better armed at this time. "Might makes right"... it may be an universal imperative. Who knows?
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posted
I'm not sure that American culture has to be swallowed whole in order to get the essential nutrients.
I suspect the best values you wish to inflict on far-flung cultures are not American, but simply human values.
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posted
Well, if nothing else, Western culture has been consistently better armed for the past 500 years. From a purely Darwinian viewpoint, then, wthe West is by definition superior : It produces better weapons.
However, I think that, as far as these things can be measured, European cultures also produce the happiest, and certainly the richest, people in the world.
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posted
Ed...what specifically do you see in their culture that is better than ours? I speak of "ours" but lets not lose sight of the fact that we are all spread across the globe discussing this.
I am not blind to our flaws, at least not all of them... ....but I DO think that a lot of what we are trying to accomplish there is better for the people living there in the long run.
I think that allowing women education and rights might have been worth it, to be honest.
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posted
Of all the possible stuff to object to I chose Darwin. Survival of the fittest is not necessarily survival of the strongest or the most heavily armed.
In an environment of asymmetrical warfare and weapons of mass destruction, being the strongest is not good at all. America is target number one, my friend, and our survival is very much in question.
posted
Yeah, Kwea, I know that we're spread across the globe discussing this . But since we're talking about western culture, I guess it's pretty much inclusive. I also believe in democracy and equal rights for both genders. See...I'm from a country where the people went from 1964 to 1989 without choosing a president because of a military dictatorship. In the particular case of Brazil, the said dictatorship was U.S. endorsed (no discussion here. It was. Cold war standard strategy in South America to avoid the spread of communism). So, western culture only encourage freedom and equality in fringe countries when it is desireble (not always). Even if other societies hold different values than me, I do believe changes come from within. Changes forced upon other cultures equals to aculturation: culture death. In my opinion, when westerners say "hey, it's not OUR values we're upholding, but HUMAN values", there it is... if the other do not uphold our values, they're less then human. "half-demon" or "half-child", who knows? I guess we continue carrying the white man's burden, although we loathe to name it so.
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posted
has anyone noticed that, when dealing with popular science fiction, the presumed attitudes of "Earth culture" are very "Western"?
Humans are always pictured as improvisational upstart underdogs whose unconventionality makes them too unpredictable for other civilizations to conquer or even understand (A smattering: Battlefield Earth, David Brin's Uplift Saga, Star Trek, etc.). The individualism and ingenuity of humanity is always emphasized and championed, yet these are actually rather ethnocentric values.
Any thoughts as to why? I'm guessing writers are drawn to certain aspects of humanity and individualism is one, ironically, that they all have in common so it shows up.
The possible exceptions I can think of are Starship Troopers and Snow Crash, but many people I know consider Heinlein to be satirizing military service rather than lauding it. As he was an Annapolis grad, I think he might have been serious. Stephenson appears to have just been taking today's franchise-dominated economy to an extreme political conclusion... and for that reason alone, I knew Snow Crash would be fresh and entertaining within a few pages of opening it.
Just a fun tangent that has always bugged me a little... anxious to see what you all think.
Edit to add: Not saying that Heinlein or Stephenson are any less "Western", they just paint background politics that are a little different from the stereotypical utopian free society or dystopian oppressive society that seem to dominate Sci Fi... Heinlein's being a little more authoritarian and Stephenson's a little more nihilistic than the "ideal".
posted
Heinlein stated in an essay about Starship Troopers that he meant it as a tribute to infantry soldiers. So he was completely serious about his militarism.
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posted
He was, but that didn't stop him from going over the top with it deliberately. The uses of satire are pretty evident to me when reading it. Then again, he wasn't exactly a normal person, and his writing reflect that....try reading Farnham's Freehold, and you might see what I mean.
I was in the Army, and have a healthy respect for military culture..it does some things incredibly well....but that doesn't mean I think it is perfect, or that parts of it aren't completely out of line with reality sometimes.
posted
I have to confess, though, to a certain allure in tying proven responsibility to the state (military service) and citizenship together, regardless of the issue that you would have a tendency towards a certain homogeneity of political thought.... and BTW, that would be less of a problem than you might think.. but probably still enough to skew a democracy
posted
Jim-me, the problem is: and if someone simply can't (because of health problems, for example) or won't (for religious beliefs, for example) be in the military? These people will be alienated from citzenship rights? So, yeah...I guess it would disrupt any concept of modern democracy pretty much.
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posted
Heinlein didn't actually intend to make voting contingent on military service, though it comes across as such in the book - naturally, since it follows a war. But if you look at Rico's medical exam, where he asks the doctor if he passed, he is told that it is impossible to fail the medical. All it does is establish what you can do. "If a blind, wheelchair-bound man wanted to volunteer, we'd find him something to do - counting the hairs of a caterpillar by touch, perhaps." (I may have gotten the quote slightly wrong, it's years since I read the book, but that was the sense of it.)
Later, in an essay, he said that the service in ST was civil service; you volunteered for two years doing whatever you were told, but that wasn't solely or even predominantly the military. Healthy males in their twenties could expect to be assigned infantry duties, but there were lots of jobs in civil service, government, etc. He claimed to have made this quite clear in the book, which may be a bit of revisionist history, or maybe it was clear only to him; but at any rate he didn't mean to limit the franchise to the healthy.
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posted
It has been a while since I read the book also, but I seem to recall that there was more than one way to earn citizenship.
And mandatory military service may be offensive to some, but I have to admit a thing given has no value.
It is a marked contrast in people who are simply given their citizenship in comparison to people who must earn their citizenship and rights commensurate with their new standing.
posted
I think the everyday American is less "White Men's Burden" oriented and more isolationist really. They don't really want America's hand involved in every nation on the planet, they want to be strong, and trade, but for the most part don't want trouble. Americans have always been content to know that our nation was the best (not saying it is per se, just that its a mainstream American thought), and that's usually been enough.
I think that is a lot of why we never really got into empire on the same scale as the European powers, nowhere near that scale. The few times we did try to go out and do some conquerin, we got our hand bit off, and that soured Americans to the idea.
I don't think however many Americans want to supplant any non western culture with our own. Japan, Korea and others who have been rebuilt by us have not seen their cultural identities totally wiped away, but rather formed a mix of the new and the old.
As far as the middle east goes, it's hard to say they have a culture from a historical perspective. Mesopotamia has been conquered more than any other place on earth. To say that they survived Assyrians, Romans, Islam, etc is really a misstatement. The Assyrians conquered the ME when there was no unified ME culture, the Romans never conquered it, the reunified Persian Empire held them at bay. Alexander did conquer them, but that didn't last long, and the Persians regained control after the Seleucid empire fell.
The greatest claim to a unified culture the ME could claim until the 3rd century AD was Persian Culture. But this was entirely transformed by the birth of Islam, which remade ME culture in its image. The Seljuq and Ottoman Turks screwed around with it a little, but the Seljuqs were devastated by not one but two Mongol invasions that reduced most of the biggest ME cities to rubble. They conquered like crazy until a brief flowering of Christian uprising gave them pause for a little bit. But the Crusades had little impact on their greater empire, it was like swatting flies to them.
When the decline of the islamic empire started, they had what you might call a real culture cemented, and that stuck around until today. But they've been screwed with more than any other peoples on earth. I honestly don't mind them having to put up with a Western/Christian influence. The West had to deal with their imperialism for centuries, and I never hear them apologize for that, why should the West feel bad?
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....but I DO think that a lot of what we are trying to accomplish there is better for the people living there in the long run.![[Smile]](smile.gif)
. But since we're talking about western culture, I guess it's pretty much inclusive.
