h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

PS:

>>..in all fairness I know next to nothing about Canadian history. <<

That's the way we prefer it.

Well if you must know it's mostly rugged individualism
of the kind celebrated by Hollywood but in a more stoic
manner (I almost said fashion but that would belie my
point).

Cap that off with long and personal struggles between
races and enthic minorities that have not always stopped
short of violence but have always been resolved as the
pain of conflict demands peace.

Happily, no race of new immigrants has been massacred
since the Inuit fell upon the Vikings - and that was 1,000
years ago in Newfoundland, well before The Rock joined
our Confederation after WW2 in 1949.

And so we are a peace-loving nation of collective minorities
who have learned to compromise and tolerantly make the best
of any situation. The climate demands this of us all and after
a generation or two they all get it.

~jwf~

I add my thanks, Mr X.
That 3/5 has niggled at me from time to time - but obviously not enough to cause a learning.

Rod

Mr X

"Rugged individualism"..and Imperialism.

David Stannard in "The Puritan Way of Death" in the 1970's researched the Puritan reality of the early settlers and its legacy..It seemed very clear that the whole idea was that each person is ultimately alone with God on a personal journey, and that even during the course of a life it is permissable to set the counter back at zero and make a New Start.

This was appropriate for an Adam and Eve mentality in which whap happens on Earth never builds up to more than can be achieved by one man in one lifetime. In other words this is wiping out the whole of history and the collective power of Humankind- as people tried to harness in Imperialism from Ancient times.

And in fairness the approach was suited to a period when seemingly infinite expansion was possible and there was plenty of space for "a man's got-to-do what a man's got to do".

But Empires were created in the Ancient World because this is not a practical model once a certain level of population density is achieved. Then the collective threat of barbarism calls for a collective organisation for those who believe in upholding certain moral and ethical standards. Moreover population density makes both possible and necessary more intensive farming involving group activity and coordination.

Empires happened- for example in China- when God-Kings came down from Heaven and lead people in these higher values to achieve those things that would make them admired by the whole world, and thus venerated and treated with respect- and engaged in peaceful trade, commerce and exchange.

In the Fifties once the USA was getting reconciled that it could no longer live in a world all of its own, because of M.A.D Kennedy grasped the potential of "Rocket thrust" that the USA had got from Nazi scientists to achieve "a giant leap for mankind".. But really the rest of the world could just see it as more American escapism "out of this world"- and the end of the Cold War was quite palpably seen by many Americans and an excuse to say "job done".

George Bush Junior was quite evidently interested in saying "What the Hell! Why should the USA carry on such a burden of international responsibility for the thanks we get?"

Then 9/11, as Naomi Klein explained in "No Logo" suddenly gave the USA back its Crusading excuse to flex all of its wealth and power to go off and destroy regimes in foreign lands.

But wealth and power, and the destructiveness it causes, are really all that America has to offer- along with the legacy of "brown-field sites" so that they can say "Look we have set the counter back at zero for you: and you can trust us to help you to build your new futures hopefully on an American basis of individualism in which in effect you have to start back in the Dark Ages".

A place like Iraq which was probably more Civilized five thousand years ago is left totally bemused.

Back in the days of M.A.D Curtis le May asked what he might consider to be a successful outcome should he ever actually be required to "push the button"- said it would be fine if all the Communists in the world were exterminated, and all the Capitalists too except one man and one woman, a new Adam and a new Eve. The ultimate New Start with the counter set at zero and all the sad learning curve to start all over again.

Cass

Mr X

I am as much of an American hater as American writers like Arthur Miller, John Steinbeck and J.K.Galbraith. Or for that matter people who have a high ideal of "The American Dream" like M.L.King.

Cass

Yeah, I'm a bit confused by what Cass said as well.

Was he being ironic? Was he saying folks like Miller,
Galbraith and Steinbeck were haters? Or is he saying
he is a hater? Or that he hates Steinbeck et al?

In any case, such an example of a clumsy sentence
structure either needs to be clarified or simply
ignored before we jump to judgment, eh wot!


~jwf~

Excuse me gents (or not)

My wife might put it down to my paranoia, but the stony silence that met my last post on this thread, which seemed possibly to have repeated my capacity for killing off threads, seemed to possibly chime in with this observation by Mr X on another thread.

"Also, if you happen to like America despite its flaws, and say so, people will sometimes get very angry with you. The worst part being that the "arguments" against are often just hate-filled rants which are completely divorced from reality".

While I stand by my post, I can see how it might look before "an unAmerican Activities Committee".

A lovely bit of guilt in a Steinbeck letter at having let "Artie" take on the Committee all alone.. My theory is that he was talking about this his summer in Somerset when he got to know Robert Bolt, and Bolt used that inspiration for "A Man For All Seasons".

Cass

Ah. No, it was just a coincidence, don't worry about it.

Mr X

Sorry.. I did not pick up on your post for some time with all the Pliny change etc..

Cass