Me:>>Let's turn the question around. Charles, are you saying that Western Europeans have a greater tendency to be violent than other ethnic groups? is this based in genetics? in the Western European interpretation of Christianity? or what? <<
CB: >Cultural and historically caused. Genes don't operate at this level. The concept of race is a Western , false biological category, wholly developed by these very "Westerners" as a big lie in conquering non-Westerneres. In the epoch of capitalism, the last 500 years, Westerners, as they call themselves, have had the highest tendency to use violence in their dealings with non-Westerners, especially those non-Westerners they colonialized and enslaved. This is relative. Relative especially to the peoples they conquered or "won", they had a higher use of violence. Agreed that "race" (as opposed to ethnicity) is a racist concept. Agreed about the relative use of violence (at least in terms of numbers of people killed), if such things can be measured. >As far as the historical roots, actually, I think this aspect of capitalism, colonialism and slavery, is a throwback, a "revival" of those aspects of Greece and Rome, also, the self-declared historical origin of the "West" or "Western Civilization". … The Middles Ages in Europe may have been "dark" , but they had thrown off slavery and colonialism. That was a step forward. Then capitalism comes along and takes one step forward with free labor, and two steps backward with slavery and colonialism. So, I'm thinking the slavery and colonial aspect where the capitalist violence was concentrated … was not rooted in Christian ideology and culture, but more in the conscious links to the classical Western civilizations. Capitalism has more of a Pagan than Christian ideology. < It's nice to trash the pagans, since the big "New Age" trend these days is to favor paganism over Christianity. But this history is totally incomplete. There are lots of non-"Western" and non-capitalist cultures that have had colonies and slavery. Ancient Persia, the Incan and Aztec empires, and the Chinese empire, for example. Further, until the introduction of Islam and Christianity, most of Africa was "pagan." Was it like the "West" in terms of conquest? And for a long time paganism was the religion of the common people in W. Europe, in opposition to Imperial Catholicism (after Constantine) and the various other Christian state-religions that followed. My feeling is that we should blame various modes of production (capitalism, the tributary mode, etc.) for imperialism, slavery and the like. Blaming culture and religion seems a theoretical dead end. Jim Devine
