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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SirRealist who wrote (15075)	12/29/2001 11:36:40 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

SirR, <we'd lack baseball today if the Brits had not given us that raw root of cricket for us to refine> Therefore Japan would not have adopted baseball, which was established by the USA post WWII. Once things get rolling, they end up all over the place. <The Western concepts of charity, for example, had British roots > I'm just guessing, but even if the British developed charity to a cultural norm with institutional support, surely it derived from the Jesus-style concepts of universality and humanity in harmonious love and forgiveness, splitting loaves, caring and sharing. All that stuff. In political terms, England seems to have been the earliest exponent of parliamentary, electoral-style rule of the proletariat [even if women, young people and unlanded people didn't initially make the cut]. They were early into the idea that human politics should not be determined on alpha-male dominance hierarchy power-based fight-to-the-death rules of conquest. The popularity of democracy and Christianity show the attraction of these ideas to most people around the world [maybe General Dostum could learn to love and forgive]. There is an arrogance among many westerners, suggesting that more backward races or countries are unfit for democracy, with the implication that the great and excellent westerners have special auras which make them suitable for civilization, whereas the barbaric, illiterate Aghans are unfit for voting. This is similar to the ideas, that are not so much expressed these days, that China is 100 years behind. My position is that each human born is only 15 years away from being the leading light of the world. They are born with a blank slate, ready to adopt anything they are offered right up to the latest and greatest. Not surprisingly, they insist on hunting it down for themselves, even if their parents prefer them to maintain the great cultural traditions of antiquity. Hence, hip hop, nose rings, cellphones, Britney Spears, DVD and cyberspace wend their way around the global youth culture while the dozy oldies are figuring out the VCR. There's no stopping them! China is going to be ahead of the USA on 1xRTT for example. Korea is already ahead. Mqurice PS: Cricket is an absurd game! Thank goodness the British Empire ended before they spread the game further. I didn't claim that everything the British exported was good. Karl Marx, British unionists, neck-ties, gorse, socks and sandals, melanin deficiencies, punk rock, soccer fans, Nick Leeson [Barings Bank], snobbery and the Titanic were not the best efforts of humanity.

To: SirRealist who wrote (15075)	12/30/2001 10:15:14 AM
From: arun gera	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

>whose colonization did introduce positives to the natives left behind all over the world.> Time, trade, and technology might have introduced those positives in India even without the British. You have to remember that India had such strong roots in its own culture and civilization that British were unable to influence in the two centuries that they were in India. Almost every part of the regional Indian culture (for there are many) from clothes, music, language, architecture, handicrafts, religion, cuisine, and customs; the things that matter more to the lives of ordinary people, pre-date the British. There were a variety of rulers in India, each with different level of administrative and military capabilities. Some were patrons of the arts (the weak Nabobs of Avadh)and some of science (Raja Jaisingh). The regional culture is so strong that even 200 years of British influence and 50 years of Indian democracy have not made a dent. The British did introduce a more representative form of govornment which gradually (over 80 years) approached democracy. And they did provide some of the institutions that are pillars of democracy. >And some Americans read Howard Zinn, openly question authority of any stripe, and can still maintain sufficient objectivity to acknowledge that Gandhi's methods would be useless against, say, Hitler or Pol Pot, but were very effective against a reasonably civilized UK, whose colonization did introduce positives to the natives left behind all over the world.>