From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology
Subject: Cultural Appropriation and the New Age
Distribution: world
Date: Thu, 07 Jan 93 02:37:39 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <LEET.93Jan6081657@ibis.ims.com> leet@ims.com writes:

 > Gil> If Usenet is anything at all like Australia, the reason we no longer
 > Gil> want to listen to such "Good News" is because we had it rammed down
 > Gil> our throats all the way through school, accompanied by canings when we
 > Gil> failed to sit straight and pay strict attention to the preacher.
 >  
 > CANINGS??!?!!  I'm aghast.  Speechless.  Appalled.  They did this in
 > the name of Christ, did they?

Appalled by canings? Perhaps because we are "whites" and supposed to
be able to understand better we were caned and lectured upon. All over
Australia the Aboriginal people were relocated unto "missions" and the
children separated from their parents to be kept in dormitories, each
sex separated into separate buildings and beaten repeatedly until they
"repented" of their pagan ways and became civilised. Other people had
their children kidnapped during night and early morning raids, and
taken away to be given a "decent Christian upbringing".

That is nowhere near the end of the story.

 > The only ones doing this on a large scale in America, to my knowledge,
 > are ones who do not believe in the same Jesus I do.  (And yes,
 > campers, there's more than one!!)  You're saying that in Oz the
 > Baptists, Presbyterians, Catholics et. al. are going door-to-door?

Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and other churches were
all integrated into the Uniting Church during the 1970s. They do not
go door-to-door as an organisation, but are actively a political lobby
on behalf of something they see apparently as "Social Justice".

The Catholics and Anglicans are also politically active.

 > I can sympathize, and the only thing which keeps me from reacting in
 > like manner is the anguish in my heart for a person caught in a cult.
 > Frankly, there are times when I'd like to break their nose with the
 > door, but that's not an option for me to actually carry out.

Your reaction here is typically Christian, proposing a temptation to
violence as a response to some emotional pain you feel. Why don't you
learn to control those emotions, and go about your own business more
calmly respecting the rights of other people.

The whole box and dice operation might just back off, yes?

 > Ahem.  That should read "Christians have repeatedly demonstrated
 > throughout history that they can be a cruel, vengeful, intolerant
 > people, totally ignoring their system of belief."  Otherwise, how can
 > you account for the Mother Teresas of the world?

The entire Christian world system in all its various "denominations"
*actively* recruits proselytes and subjects them to indoctrination
into a single, absolute and universal world-view predicated on faith,
*not* facts or substantiated reality in all its variety.

The "Mother Teresas" of this world are found among all cultures and
societies. Kindness and common decency are not the exclusive provence
of Christianity, while others simply accept such behaviour as normal
and proper. Why do you people feel such a need to create an icon of
one particular women behaving decently as an exemplar of the Christian
ethic, as you ignore the many first-class, brutal, inhumane arseholes
who run the Churches and punish people for speaking freely?

In presenting Mother Teresa as you do within that context, you in fact
create a covert, evil dimension to her mission in life which causes me
to want to avoid her completely. I repeat, there are *many* others of
whom I hold no such fear, whom I can relax and accept warts and all
without ever having any doubts about how I stand with them enter my
mind whatever.

We have Matthew Fox visiting here again this summer, to participate in
the University of Western Australia Summer School once more. The fact
that he is quite happy to be working with Starhawk allows me to relax
with him, whether I agree with him on his "Creation Spirituality" or
views on human ecology, or not. I may not even agree with Starhawk,
but the point is that there are no grounds for suspicion between us
either.

On the other hand, The Pope and his mate Ratzinger who run the show
with their lists of heretics under scrutiny and being subject to
punishment for their views, are something of a worry, yes?

 > By the 1960's the influence of Christianity on American policy had
 > been declining for twenty years.  In 1963 it basically vanished from
 > the public sphere altogether.

Until the Reagan/Bush era when it re-emerged in the form of your
fundamentalist "born-again" revival. We got those cranks here too,
although recruiting from among the unemployed in poor suburbs and
demanding that they pay their tythes (10% literally of their income)
to build "community centres". What the "poor" got were simply more of
the same pretentious edifices to Christianity with modern and lavish
accommodation for the Pastor attached.

Those poor, I gather, are now blessed for their "gifts" while still
battling to pay the rent, feed their kids, and whatnot.

 > People protesting against the establishment is not necessarily the
 > same as people protesting against Christianity.  If you care to
 > continue this thread, please explain how Christianity was at fault for
 > the lack of suffrage.  Also, I can't speak for the other two
 > countries, but I know from South African missionaries (both native and
 > American-born) that in that country the bloodshed comes primarily from
 > Marxist blacks killing blacks who refuse to become Marxists.

We have run this thread through already. You propose here something of
an object, called "Christianity", somehow separate and distinct and
therefore blameless, from the subjective behaviour of those who pursue
it, called "Christians", who are well-known and documented to behave
so egregiously as they do toward others.

Again, I wonder about your Christianity which seeks to protect the
Church while blaming its members. Isn't that something against the
teaching of your putative founder?

In South Africa, *all* the black people are typically kept suppressed,
dislocated and impoverished by an overtly Christian Government with a
legislated racist domestic policy. The record stands now, further, on
covert government financing of violence and terror against blacks as
part of their propaganda war against the ANC.

Or has it nothing to do with their being black? Just because they are
Marxist, perhaps? Wonderful tolerance and forgiveness exhibited there
as well.

 > I would think that an entire generation being given a false picture of
 > its country's foundation and heritage by its instructors, and the
 > study of the subsequent decay of that generation's culture, would be
 > of great interest.  However, I'm not an Anthropologist (rather, I'm an
 > apologist :-) ), so I'll have to defer to your judgement.

What on earth is a "false picture"? Who is someone to say to another
that their views are false? We have standard criteria here in this
discipline for establishing the validity and reliability of any given
report, and while I have no particular comment on what you yourself
may or may not prefer to believe personally, I certainly do not have
to accept it.

 > As I have no ready access to recent anthropological research results,
 > much less any academic training in the field, this means either 1) you
 > have voluminous data with which to enlighten me, provided I'll digest
 > it - and I'd be utterly delighted to do so; or 2) since I'm not
 > competent in this field, I can't post here.

Being obliged to choose between one extreme and another, where you
expect that I do all the work while you choose to remain ignorant else
you have no rights here, is not quite my preferred scenario. I expect
we will be here for some time to come, and you might like to go and
do some homework of your own in this discipline, and then come back as
an active participant in the group. Then we would be able to pursue a
substantial debate.

                                             If the latter, I must ask
 > if you would allow to go unchallenged a statement on some other
 > newsgroup to the effect that (not that I believe *any* of this, it's
 > simply pedagogy) "anthropology is a pseudo-science founded by
 > charlatans and promoted to the populace by frauds like Margaret Mead",
 > especially when the poster was a well-acknowledged authority within
 > the realm of the newsgroup?  Even if you were totally incompetent in
 > the domain of discourse for that group, would you let such a statement
 > pass without comment?

How I respond to any material posted on the Internet depends on my
assessment of the situation. I have been known to engage egregiously
insulting posters, but also probably far more frequently to just let
it pass.

If the critique of Mead interests you, you might like to read

        Freeman D.  1983
        Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an
           Anthropological Myth
        Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UP

The volume I have, significantly, is dedicated to Karl Popper.

Gil