Louis Proyect wrote: > From part three [of the PBS series]: > > The show ends with about as much of a political prescription from > Diamond as can be found anywhere. Until the publication of “Collapse,” > he has studiously stayed above the fray when it comes to the question of > how the victims of colonialism can finally enjoy equality with those who > colonized them.
Right. I was only talking about Diamond's GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL book. His later stuff seems inferior to me. COLLAPSE, for example, was interesting but not very illuminating. BTW, I see no point in choosing among scholars, deciding that Diamond is better or worse than some other thinker who addresses this or any other question. Rather than a focus on individual thinkers, I think that we should choose between individual theories (and even those we choose should be treated critically) Thus, we might choose Diamond's GGS theory as being better than some other theory (and perhaps inferior to a third) even if he's an axe murderer or whatever. An emphasis on individual personalities encourages the sectarianism that infects much of academia (of all political stripes) and political groups. (I discovered a long time ago that sectarianism was encouraged when personal differences interacted with and reinforced political differences -- and vice-versa -- forming a vicious circle.) -- Jim Devine / "When truth is nothing but the truth, it's unnatural, it's an abstraction that resembles nothing in the real world. In nature there are always so many other irrelevant things mixed up with the essential truth." -- Aldous Huxley _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
