They have a habit of being Leftists at a rate of thirty to one, if there is even one in the thirty. The framework of their scholarship is cultural relativism, which is moral relativism. The pattern seems to generally go like this: They try to be objective by being more like a data recording object. They exchange the objective, the pursuit of truth, for just being more like an object. (This is also what some journalists do as well.) The more they are like an inanimate object then the more dead in the head they are with respect to Good and Evil. You do not become good or generally do good scholarship that way, instead you become more evil. Yet the Leftists who are dead in the head in such a way are not actually inanimate, like an "objective" object. So they still have some sentience, some judgment hidden away in their attempted lack of judgment. Their judgment will be against judgment itself, as it typically is among those who lack judgment. That is the only way to try to hide their own lack of judgment. Thus you will hear about something called "ethnocentrism." That is to consider your culture superior to another. As with any relativism, one ought to turn things around and begin to set to Right the relations between things that the Left cannot.
What is right is quite simple, some cultures are superior to others. Yes, amazing but true, some views are superior to others. If you were put on an island with a whole group of people who wanted to kill you right now then you'd probably agree that inferior and superior views exist. All that anthropologists are really saying is, "Hey, some groups of people believe that. Hmmm, other groups of people believe this. Therefore, we can safely say that everyone is wrong. Yes, we are sure, as a group, that we are right about that....and this too!"
(Note that it is not really news that people disagree with each other, even groups of people. Why this causes some to go off and argue that disagreement means that no one is correct, is not apparent. )
Let's say it is relative, as they say. If it is relative, what is it relative to? If it is relational, what is it all related to? Their conclusions seem to be where they got tired of thinking, relatively. Do these anthropologists consider their own academic culture superior? It certainly seems that they do. They seem to consider what they say from inside their academic "cult"ure as superior, something worth considering true. But how ethnocentric such a cult would be! Anthropologists, on the whole, seem to have a habit of being moral degenerates. So perhaps their culture is inferior.
One example, from many:
"Mentorships are a much more common form of homosexual behavior than previously considered. These relationships usually form between a preadolescent and either an older adolescent or an adult. Adams (Adams, B.D. 1985. Age, Structure, and Sexuality. Journal of Homosexuality. 11:19-33) has summarized the ethnographic data for male mentorships.
.....Ethically this is a particularly touchy issue. There is an enormous ["]prejudice["] against similar kinds of patnerships in the United States (indeed they are typically illegal), and the older partner is usually defined as mentally ill or as a sexual criminal."
(Annual Review of Anthropology,Vol. 16, 1987,
The Cross-Cultural Study of Human Sexuality,
By D. L. Davis, R. G. Whitten :69-98)
I would not mind the use of the term prejudice if it was meant in a conservative sense of collected and collective experience and tradition that is most likely valid. But anthropologists are not conservatives and to them the term is just a buzzword for supposed injustice, often associated with racism.
________
A side note on that typical belief of Leftists about "prejudices" and associating all prejudice with racism in simplistic ways. If the Leftist argument is true and homophiles are just like blacks then so are pedophiles with prejudice being wrong in all instances. There are African Americans who get a little tired of this pattern of deviants latching on to their history to try to alter public policy through the guise of "civil rights." It is little wonder. Everyone seems to want to be in on the bandwagon now, even fat people. I'm not really writing satire much of the time. There actually are fat people who are talking about fat pride, etc., just like gay pride. There are already law reviews being written about discrimination based on facial symetry. I.e., a few ugly people may be talking about ugly rights or ugly pride next. That one is hard to believe, yet I would've said the same about fat pride a few years ago.
Anyway, it probably would be a little tiresome to have gluttons or hedonistic sexual deviants trying to compare themselves to you all the time. Why do so many seek to abuse civil rights? It's mainly from the American judiciary becoming politicized. They politicized themselves, then their nominating process is politicized. Of course it is, and that is the fault of Leftists.
End, side note.
___________
19 comments:
Webster changed the definition of ethnocentrism on me, years ago it was to consider one's own culture superior. That's pretty clear, a culture is tradition and views. But with "group" you may be able to include a more crass and physical tribalism, i.e. racism. But if you say that ethnocentrism is racism, then racism is the only word you need.
To be clear, ethnocentrism carries cultural connotations and not necessarily racial.
Hey, it's Ian. How's it going? I was wondering, could you do a little post on proofs for the existance of God, aside from the teleological argument or whatever. I am in a philosophy class and a lot of it is going to be on the existance of God (or his nonexistance) and I thought it might be helpful to me if you could write something philosophically supporting his existance.
Jerry
Simon
Ian
Whoever...
Hello Ian,
Here's a great piece by Michael J Behe called "Design for Living" in the New York Times about the scientific theory of intelligent design. It's very relevant to the teleological argument.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/07/opinion/07behe.html?
Also, "Existence" has to "e's". That should help your grade!
Phil
uh, that would be "two e's." heh heh.
" I was wondering, could you do a little post on proofs for the existance of God, aside from the teleological argument or whatever."
Despite the nature of this blog, which has turned to a archive of all my thoughts, all the time, perhaps because of the structure of it, I usually do things by dialogue.
You say this about God's existence, then I say that. Etc. Someone says, "Hey man, God is invisible!" Then I say, "Yeah, and whatever meaning there supposedly is in the words you just wrote about that is invisible. Not to mention love, hope, duty, honor, intelligence, all things that are downright invisible!"
There are those who formalize all their arguments in philosophy, so much so that the form that is left is only dry, dry and boring bones. That may be objective, yet it misses the subject. The subject must still sit there, being subjective.
I'll file away that you're in a philosophy class. My attitude towards philosophy is a bit like Nietzsche's. It needs more creativity, more life! The sardonic Socrates drank the hemlock after all. (Probably scared of the circular circles and the tittles....But that's another story.)
Thanks for commenting, let me know how it goes.
Thanks Phil...yeah, that article really seemed to upset some Darwinists. They're in a bit of a tizzy, wishing they had a popularizer like Sagan.
A note to readers, make more comments, they inspire thought. I posted this about anthropologists for someone in an anthro class, and they don't reply.
Sheesh...some people.
Okay, okay...yeah I'm the one taking the class. Okay, so here's something to think about. My prof. was doing research for four years in Malaysia. The family she stayed with and observed for her research was very close to their very large extended family.
In the process of emersing herself in their culture and family life, she discovered that there was a father in this family molesting his eight year old daughter. Everyone in the family knew this was going on. Now, in this culture it is somehow always the girls fault if she gets raped, molested, or abused. So, my professor overheard comments from the little girl's extended family members that went something like, "I knew there was something about that little girl...you could just see it in her eyes; she had that LOOK!"
As an anthropoligist doing research, my professor felt it was her professional duty to ignore what was going on because she had to stay relative to the situation; she was only an observer. She did not call the police for the sake of her research and maintaining her distance from ethnocentrism. Hmmm...?
~Bertie
side note: why do you think my prof. would tell a story like that to her class? Maybe she is trying to shake off her guilt by convincing herself she did the right thing. She does this by telling her students why she did what she did, and by convincing them that scholarship as an anthropologist must be moraly objective (whatever that is) she convinces herself that she had some type of obligation to ignore this little girl's plight. What is ironic is that at the same time, she is teaching her students that this is an acceptable thing to do in the field of anthropology. I guess her form of ethnocentrism got the best of her after all if you think about it.
~Bertie
" I guess her form of ethnocentrism got the best of her after all...."
Good point.
Perhaps there is no worse form of ethnocentrism than to use your own group (In that case, the morally degenerate culture typical to anthropologists.) as an excuse to do something evil.
The interesting thing about violating the Conscience is that before it is seared away there will be rituals or some artifact of its existence accompanying the evil. So say in Japan abortion is a common practice and it is denied that it is evil. Yet for some reason Japanese woman are making little statues of their supposedly non-existent offspring and placing them at temples. Why is that their ritual? What needs to be reconciled, if there is nothing evil?
"The reconciliation need has a public dimension, too. Isolated from the community of moral judgment, transgressors strive to gather a substitute around themselves. They don’t sin privately; they recruit. The more ambitious among them go further. Refusing to go to the mountain, they require the mountain to come to them: society must be transformed so that it no longer stands in awful judgment. So it is that they change the laws, infiltrate the schools, and create intrusive social-welfare bureaucracies."
(The Revenge of Conscience, by J. Budziszewski)
The "former" feminist Tammy Bruce, in her book the Death of Right and Wrong, notes that there is some pattern of narcissim at work and a selfish need for self-soothing. That is, among those who deny the existence of Good and Evil. Among those who do not deny it, sometimes those who have been quite evil are the most humble and truly repentant people. It is remarkable.
But narcissists who keep on denying that Good and Evil exist are often the most febrile and radical activists.
Note,
"Isolated from the community of moral judgment, transgressors strive to gather a substitute around themselves."
Note, some anthropologist who does something wrong will want to begin to gather a substitute community around them. After all, if morality is relative to community/culture then the bigger the group of people that you have repeating the same lie is, will then supposedly make a difference as to its truth.
Well, I learned about Chinese culture in anthropology class today. Hmmm, they venerate/worship their dead ancestors and have a deep rooted fear of "hungry ghosts," ancestors who are unhappy because their offspring did not continue to give them respect, food, conversation, etc. They also keep close record of their patrilineages because where they came from, their roots, is what gives their lives meaning. If you don't have a patrilineage, you are nil in the Chinese culture.
I was wondering where the roots of this come from. It will be interesting to hear about Confucianism this next Thursday and to see the links between that and their culture; how it manifests itself in their culture and the way they relate to their families and ancestry.
But for now, if you have some interesting things that you could tell me which link the two, please tell. Or if you want me to first tell you more about their obsession with patrilineage and how it affects every aspect of their lives, let me know.
~B.
"I was wondering where the roots of this come from."
All cultures respect their dead and in genocides, the rejection of the prejudice reveals tell tale signs. I.e., treating dead bodies with a lack of respect or as if they are just mere physical garbage, instead of retaining some sanctity by virtue of being the former home of a spirit. That is the prejudice and it seems universal. Anthropologists tend to miss the universality of things because they focus on the physical, rather than the metaphysical. Therefore, they can only see (by sight) people treating dead bodies differently. They lack the insight to recognize the general pattern that people believe they are treating the dead bodies with some form of respect.
An anthropologist would come to a culture which embalms their dead and say, "Wow! It's so different. Why, just look at it."
They would see it as very different from Christian culture. Or, as they would put it because of their crass and crude physical focus, the culture of "conservative white men." (That is not even really true, either.)
Yet the Christian culture and the other culture will almost invariably have the same prejudice at the root of their venerable institutions. The anthropologist focuses on the physical and also tends to focus on the "different," instead of looking at what is the same.
In Christian culture there is the cemetery, (koimEtErion, sleeping place, as they are only sleeping). That is the venerable institution based on a prejudice about the dead.
In Asian cultures there are the shrines. That is the institution there.
It's more interesting to me how similar they are. Anthropologists tend to have little or no imagination, so it is not as if it occurs to them that there could be cultures or civilizations where the dead are not treated with respect at all. Indeed, if the Darwinian mythological narratives of naturalism are true then why should there be any such prejudice?
In that case, dead bodies really are like garbage, as those who commit Darwinian genocides tend to try to believe. (Although as I noted, there are tell tale signs that they live with the same prejudice in their Conscience. I would cite some history with respect to Nazism as an example of people struggling against Conscience, but it is rather gruesome.)
"I was wondering where the roots of this come from."
All cultures respect their dead and in genocides, the rejection of the prejudice reveals tell tale signs. I.e., treating dead bodies with a lack of respect or as if they are just mere physical garbage, instead of retaining some sanctity by virtue of being the former home of a spirit. That is the prejudice and it seems universal. Anthropologists tend to miss the universality of things because they focus on the physical, rather than the metaphysical. Therefore, they can only see (by sight) people treating dead bodies differently. They lack the insight to recognize the general pattern that people believe they are treating the dead bodies with some form of respect.
An anthropologist would come to a culture which embalms their dead and say, "Wow! It's so different. Why, just look at it."
They would see it as very different from Christian culture. Or, as they would put it because of their crass and crude physical focus, the culture of "conservative white men." (That is not even really true, either.)
Yet the Christian culture and the other culture will almost invariably have the same prejudice at the root of their venerable institutions. The anthropologist focuses on the physical and also tends to focus on the "different," instead of looking at what is the same.
In Christian culture there is the cemetery, (koimEtErion, sleeping place, as they are only sleeping). That is the venerable institution based on a prejudice about the dead.
In Asian cultures there are the shrines. That is the institution there.
It's more interesting to me how similar they are. Anthropologists tend to have little or no imagination, so it is not as if it occurs to them that there could be cultures or civilizations where the dead are not treated with respect at all. Indeed, if the Darwinian mythological narratives of naturalism are true then why should there be any such prejudice?
In that case, dead bodies really are like garbage, as those who commit Darwinian genocides tend to try to believe. (Although as I noted, there are tell tale signs that they live with the same prejudice in their Conscience. I would cite some history with respect to Nazism as an example of people struggling against Conscience, but it is rather gruesome.)
Yes, you are right, I didn't think about the similarities of their shrines and our cemetaries; dumb me. Guess I'm not above an anthropologist's influence. I thought about what you said about seeing the similarities instead of the differences. And it occured to me how flawed the anthropologists view of looking at things really is. Like you said, they attempt to be 'objective' and thus look at mainly the physical aspects of a culture instead of spiritual. It seems to me that instead of creating an empathy for a certain culture this would create a prejudice.
Yes, we can look at the similarities, but you do have to admit there are differences spiritualy. (and I'm comparing it to our christian philosophies more than culture to culture now) The dead are not thought to still be among us, and we do not worship them in order that they help us in this life by bringing good luck. Rather, we focus on the dead being either with God or without Him when dead.
We learned about Confucius today and his influence on Chinese thought and culture. I'll write more later, it's really really fascinating.
I'm at the Univeristy of Delaware, professor Sloane-White. And I also want to answer you, Jason, just haven't had time! :)
~Bertie
" It seems to me that instead of creating an empathy for a certain culture this would create a prejudice. "
In the history of ideas in anthropology it certainly has created physically based prejudices. And despite the, "We learned our lesson now." sort of impact that the rise of Nazism had based on a similar pattern of naturalistic and physically focused prejudices has had, there are still those who write about the negroids, etc., privately. Such views are kept private now for the sake of political correctness, not a concern for a spiritual type of moral correctness. In their view, such a concern is not "science."
"The dead are not thought to still be among us...."
Yet note the notion of a cloud of witnesses in Christianity and the similarity in dualism, the belief in the human spirit that seems typical to all peoples.
"...we do not worship them in order that they help us in this life by bringing good luck."
True. As far as I know, the notion that any spirit of the dead remains in this world or could be active in it (As it once was when it lived in its body.) is not to be found in Christianity. Instead, the spirit is always of the spiritual realm and any inhabiting of the physical by breaking down that barrier is a perversion in Christianity, e.g. demon possesion. I.e., only God is to put the breath of life in dust.
Interesting to note that the creation of life by procreation does not break that dualistic barrier. The two shall become one flesh, what is meant to be an incarnation of love.
Yet the barrier was broken, as the Word became flesh and dwelt among all the incarnate. Then he compares himself to a snake, which is interesting. Maybe everything can be broken for the sake of love, all the Logos broken apart.
Well, that has little to do with anthropology, etc. I'm just writing now to see what some concepts look like. It's too bad that every conception of the conceptual is not as an immaculate conception.
Sometimes I'll let the concepts of my words do my talking for me, to see what they have to say.
"Yet note the notion of a cloud of witnesses in Christianity and the similarity in dualism, the belief in the human spirit that seems typical to all peoples."
Yes, the dualism is similar, but also different. A cloud of 'witnesses'; here inlies the difference. They are witnesses. The cloud of witnesses does not have power in themselves to bring good luck to a person, although they have the power of prayer which is, in a sense, helping us along. Interesting...but this power does not reside in the spirits themselves, but in God.
Confucias believed that there were three relationship bonds that held society together. Two of these included the relationship between father and son, which was the most important, and the relationship between a husband and wife. The success of a society depended upon the success of these relationships. The son is to be submissive to the father, and in order to be an ideal son, must live his life for his father because his father gave him life. Sounds similar, eh?
There are many ancient stories passed down which talk about this relationship (i.e. a son who carried his blind father on his back his whole life, a daughter who cut flesh off of herself in order to feed her starving mother, a son who slept naked in order to draw mosquitos away from his parents, etc.). These stories are seen as ideal sacrifices and serve as an example for all of society. This concept is deeply engrained in society.
So, a son's duty is to his father, and one way this is carried out is by keeping the memory of his father alive, and thus the shrines and patrilineages.
All right, that's all I have time for. I'll be gone this weekend...
~Bertie
"Hmmm. .. if that anthropologist was put into a jail where the "prison culture" was such as to expect rape of new inmates, would he/she want passive observation, or intervention on the part of those who could affect change? I think the veneration of passive observation would probably end."
I believe that my professor, if you said that to her, would say, "As an anthropologist, it is necessary to study cultures as objective beings, just like any other science. That does not mean that in animal studies, in order to study lions you have to go out and let them eat you. Just like in studying diseases you can study them objectively without the need to actualy experience having one. Then, when one fully understands the culture objectively, one can effect change."
?
~Bertie
Understanding
The cynical have their say-so,
Suggesting that only suckers
Believe in the fact that love and kindness make sense.
Such put-upon people
Have no idea of value;
They think that protecting themselves from harm is better
Than thinking of others.
It’s a backwards idea, for
If we do not protect our brother and our sister,
We cannot ever expect them to protect us.
There are borderline lunatics out there,
Far more insane than I,
Who suggest that retribution
Is a much better way of living life than is the acceptance
Of the most stranger methods of love.
I can love Nazis.
I can believe that they were mislead.
I can believe that anyone who hates
Is mislead.
I must believe that people are trying to be good,
No matter how evil their actions prove to be,
No matter how misguided their hate.
It’s simple, really, if you ask me how to be good.
Be kind; put yourself in your enemy’s shoes;
Don’t be a proliferate of hate or vengeance;
Be the guy or gal who loves and who never
Would tear down a stranger or friend because
You were ignorant of the niceties,
The common sense,
The simple fairness
That would lead our nation to well-being.
If you had formed a decent thought in the ‘40's,
You might have lead the Nazis
To forever understand humanity
And to never, ever assume
That evil and anger and judgment
Are where we should be.
Curb your anger, Baby.
Try to learn from your crib, Baby.
Try to believe that love might rule the world
If you would be less angry
And more helpful.
Anger, tears, or helpfulness.
Which do you choose?
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