What is this poor white male garbage about Brad? I said they knew nothing but what they saw (visually) and then you demonstrated it. If I took the same rule to London with the body parts on the walls and stinking streets I would assume that they were useless good for nothings and miss Shakespeare completely.
The fact is that fewer people were killed in the Aztec nation than were killed in the coliseum in Rome for political entertainment. You could eat off the streets of Tenochtitlan when they were urinating and defacating in the streets of London. Cortez called it the most beautiful city in the world. But there was a cost and the Fascist Aztecs were very calculated at keeping that cost to a minimum. If you have to sacrifice someone, why not organize it so the rest of us can get on with life. If war is ever justified by the purity of the intent behind it then you must make the same abstract principles available to other things and see if they work. You make a blanket judgment knowing nothing but the end result but you then excuse, war, transportation rules that murder innocents, capitalism that enslaves the poor, and all of the other Western isms that have done far worse than anything the Aztecs would have dreamed of. It would help if you would study their philosophy. On an average they killed one person a day as a sacrifice and took that from wars. They didn't slaughter thousands for money nor did they slaughter millions for a economic, philosophical idea. I don't defend their fundamentalist literal reflex anymore than I do any of such huckapuck in the world. It is cheap, lazy and stupid but when compared to the stupidities of the modern world, they come off a lot better if you seriously examine their sophisticated presumptions than does the current world in many respects. Their wars of the flowers were nothing compared to the European War of the Roses. They didn't slaughter the thousands on the fields of battle as did the Europeans on a regular basis and although they had both hot air ballons and boats capable of reaching the rest of the world they didn't go out looking for other people to rape and pillage. Only when they were mistreated severely did they become genocidal. The puritans slaughtered Indians as vermin while their Indian allies couldn't believe that anyone would treat even an enemy in such a fashion. Read the Shakespeare in the Bush that I recommended to Keith and Harry. Get past your own assumptions. That's real science and nothing substitutes for knowing the ways of the other side. That is what keeps you human. Their differences gives you insight on your own limits. Thats what enemies should be for. Not for extermination. Also the use of the term "You" is rhetorical and not personal. Ray Evans Harrell ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Ray Evans Harrell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Keith Hudson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, June 15, 2003 7:34 AM Subject: Re: [Futurework] Why not God for all? On e-Bay? > Ray Evans Harrell wrote: > > In the first case, Religion USES Ritual process, it is not ritual process > > and in the second one, I don't know where you get these primitives. I > > never met one like that and they certainly weren't priests. > [snip] > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "Keith Hudson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Sent: Saturday, June 14, 2003 2:48 PM > > Subject: [Futurework] Why not God for all? > [snip] > Chimpanzees go in for a thing called a rain > >>dance. Usually the adult males perform it: they jump up and down, they > >>shout, tghey pull branches off trees, they go berserk. Nobody really knows > >>what the function is. > >> > >>There is one anecdote about a rain dance that really fascinates me. A > >>group is going through the forest and they come to a waterfall, and the > >>alpha male, and he only, proceeds to perform a rain dance. He splashes, he > >>shouts, he throws rocks -- it;s a big deal. What I think is going on is > >>that he is recruiting a force of nature to strengthen his own personal > >>position, increasing his own prestige by allying himself with something > >>"out there". Isn't that what priests do? > > [snip] > > I'm sorry but I am confused: Did the PreColumbians *not* sacrifice > many young persons and captives on their pyramid alters? Or, > are you arguing that what *we* un-understyanding benighted fools > (AKA "middle-class Westerners") > call "sacrificing young persons and captives on pyramid > alters" is really something very different? > Maybe those who we call the > "victims" were not victims at all but were rather > enjoying a gourmet meal together with the persons we call > the "priests", at a Mescalin 3-star restaurant? And they > did not die, but came back the next day to savor another > gourmet meal there? Please provide > me the background information so I can see how what I now take to > be murders are really happy meals! > > I know that the only thing that can possibly cause a person > to have mistaken ideas is to study THe Great Books of The Great > Dead Western Males. Elsewise there is only "the universal > peaceable kingdom". Westeern medicine created cancer. Right? > (I have argued that this is indeed in > an infelicitous way true, since > persons who do not know about cellular biology cannot > encounter a cancer cell no matter what they encounter > in life, including what we would call "cancer cells"). > > Just where did we get our false ideas about "primitives" from? > From our (no, Ray, not "your" -- I am talking > about white Europeans here...) > parents and teachers? And they were wrong? Well, > maybe they were both wrong and right. Maybe the attribution of > "primitive" qualities to primitives was not always > entirely accurate (maybe the truth is that the > pyramid victims were vivisected, but they > were given an opiate to make them > enjoy it anyway...). Naybe we believe these things > because the parents and teachers who taught us > about them themselves instantiate > them so much as to make us believers theough experience. > > \brad mccormick > > -- > Let your light so shine before men, > that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16) > > Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) > > <![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] > ----------------------------------------------------------------- > Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ > _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
