In my previous post I suggested that just as birds of different feathers can learn to love & respect one another, so too can people overcome their prejudices if they are adequately motivated.\u00a0\u00a0Thus the question is:\u00a0what motivated our ancestors to see American cultures as inferior to those of Europe?<\/p>\n
Our ancestors were motivated by many things\u2014money, religion, social upheavals, a lust for power, a call to adventure, stupidity.\u00a0\u00a0Yes, I said stupidity.\u00a0\u00a0Look, I respect our ancestors, I’m sorry for their sufferings, and I’m immensely grateful for the sacrifices they made on my behalf, but, let\u2019s face it\u2014they were, at best, bumbling fools.\u00a0\u00a0They started out calling the Natives \u201cIndians\u201d because they thought they were somewhere near India, and then a high percentage of people in the first several generations of European immigration died of starvation in the most fertile, food-filled land on earth.\u00a0\u00a0How could anyone starve when surrounded by rivers teeming with fish and skies darkened by flocks of delicious pigeons?\u00a0\u00a0Obviously our ancestors were motivated to try new things mostly because they kept making so many stupid mistakes.<\/p>\n
But to err is human and no one can blame our ancestors for being human; their other motivations, however, are less forgivable.\u00a0\u00a0Their main motivation was very simple: they believed their culture was the best in the world because they enjoyed an immediate personal benefit from that belief.\u00a0\u00a0Because their prejudices enabled them to get rich, to spread their religion, to improve their social standing, to increase their power, and to stave off boredom, they had no motivation whatsoever to see the world in any other way.<\/p>\n
So what about us?\u00a0\u00a0We still have all the same motivations our ancestors did.\u00a0\u00a0We still take it for granted that \u201cOld World\u201d cultures were superior to upstart \u201cNew Worlds\u201d cultures because that belief still gives us many immediate personal benefits.\u00a0\u00a0What could possibly motivate us to abandon our heritage of seeing our culture as the apex of evolution, the supreme manifestation of everything humans can and should be?\u00a0\u00a0Who wants to give up their smartphone to wear a loin cloth and live in a grass hut?<\/p>\n
Um, look, I respect our culture, I enjoy lots of personal benefits from it, and I am truly grateful for clothes, houses, phones, and all the rest, but there\u2019s something that really worries me, one nagging possibility that keeps snapping me awake in a cold sweat:\u00a0\u00a0what if we\u2019re still bumbling fools?<\/i><\/p>\n
Ah, but this post is already way too long, so I\u2019ll have to wait for next time to offer some solid motivation for us to see Native cultures as true equals at long last.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In my previous post I suggested that just as birds of different feathers can learn to love & respect one another, so too can people overcome their prejudices if they are adequately motivated.\u00a0\u00a0Thus the question is:\u00a0what motivated our ancestors to see American cultures as inferior to those of Europe? Our ancestors were motivated by many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":280,"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278\/revisions\/280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}