From: casper@vxcrna.cern.ch (CASPER,DAVI./PPE)
Subject: the late unpleasantness subsides (?)
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 17:34:00 GMT

[note: after following up the rhetorical sniping, this post *actually* refers
to the Civil War!  Read on!]

[I wrote:]
>>Cultures of the Mediterranean littoral, including the Greeks and Judeans, are
>>commonly considered part of Western civilization.
[Jones wrote:] 
>By Eurocentrists, surely. By your definition, Egypt, which is certainly on
>the Mediterranean littoral, is part of Western Civilization! How stupid can you
>get?

(sigh).  ANCIENT Egypt was a part of Western Civilization, Jones.  ANCIENT
Greece was part of Western Civilization.  ANCIENT Babylon was part of Western
Civilization.  Look, I never said Western Civ. started in Western Europe.  All
these cultures make up the foundation of what is commonly called Western
Civilization.  I also never said it was started by people with white skin.
But I think there is continuity from the Mesopotamians through the Egyptians,
Greeks, and then the Romans.

[Jones claimed to have perfect SATs a few volleys back...]
>OK, how's this.  I don't believe you.  If you, Jones Murphy, will mail me proof
>that your SAT scores were 800/800, I, Dave Casper, will mail you $100 and a
>signed letter affirming that you are smarter than me.  Deal?  (I won't be
>expecting that letter anytime soon, of course).

>Not for $100, that's for sure.You'll have to pony up a great deal more than
>that to feast your eyes on my full intellectual penis length. 

Translation:"My SATs were ah, perfect, yeah perfect, that's the ticket...
what?  Well, ah, no, I don't have them *with* me..."

>And how much will you pay to see my U.S. Chess Federation National Master's
>certificate? 

I'll pass on that one thanks.  Geez, it's too bad we're _not_ arguing about who
is the better chess player.  At least that we could resolve.

Since you won't be a good sport, I'm not sending you the picture of me doing
a reverse slam-dunk over Michael Jordan, or a copy of the album I cut with
the Beatles either, so there.

>In any event, since you're the one who started making claims about relative
>SAT scores why don't you tell us your pitiful totals?

I made no claims.  You started by saying your grasp of English "far exceeds"
mine. I then asked how we could decide.  780V/740M, since you asked.  I was
a little disappointed with the math.  Now will _you_ post your salary?  (and
for credibility's sake, why not keep it somewhere below the US GNP?)

[topical discussion getting closer...]

>>  A whole lot of the trouble in the world is caused by extremists who
>>ideologically simplify things into neat and tidy packages instead of dealing
>>with the complexity of the problems.  I think it is you who are more cynical
>>about Africa's troubles.  You seem to be saying Africans didn't, don't, and
>>won't ever have the ability to deal with their own problems, since they will
>>eternally be helpless victims.

>Now where the hell did that come from? Africans will hardly eternally be 
>helpless victims. I for one am no one's helpless victim, as those who've tried
>to victimize me have learned to their chagrin.

Well you said the condition of Africa today was the fault of the Europeans, and
that African leaders bore none of the responsibility because they simply
inherited a fucked up mess.  That sounds like a prescription for perpetuating
the problems.  I'm not trying to minimize the responsibility of the colonizers.
I just mean, again, that there are very few things in the world that have one
sole, easily-identifiable, unqualified cause.

[here it is...the question: how much guilt for a society's collective evils,
built-up over a long history, do individuals bear?]

>>If we are extremely generous
>>we give 5 or 10% of what we earn to the needy.  Does this make everyone
>>fortunate enough to be born into a wealthier society "criminals"?  That just
>>seems to naive and too simple.  There is just no way to change the past, even
>>if there we as a society decided to do it at this moment.

>People are criminal if they participate in organized crime. That's been less
>and less an overt preoccupation of Europe with respect to Africans, but there's
>a long way to go to undo the suffering of people *now* due to the past. Look,
>I accept that my slavemaster ancestors were crooks and scoundrels. Now why won't
>you simply take my word for it?

Alright, but who exactly are the criminals today and in the south of 1860?
Some are pretty easily identifiable, but you seem to have said in the past that
everyone who fought for the South was a capital offender, since the entire
Confederate effort was single-mindedly and solely aimed at preservation of
slavery.  Can this transferrence of guilt be applied today on everyone who eats
fruit picked by 8-year old migrant laborers, or grown on a slashed-and-burnt
rain forest, or buys a product made with raw materials or labor swindled from
some underdeveloped country or another?  Surely each of these actions carries a
certain amount of guilt with it, but I think you have to look at the
motivations expressed by the people involved *as they saw them*, the extent to
which they understand and are aware of the wrong they are doing, and the extent
to which they would be capable of doing anything about it if they chose to.
Someone who willingly and knowingly does wrong directly to another when he has
other alternatives is a lot more culpable than someone who indirectly
participates in a social system which is doing evil he can't well see or
understand, much less change.

Is today's world economy "organized crime", and if so, are we all criminals
for participating in it?

>>I said then, and I still say, that colonialism and slavery were much more a
>>_result_ of industrialization and the differential advantage it gave the
>>Europeans to impose their will on other parts of the world, rather than the
>>other way around.  History is replete with other examples of economic and
>>structural advantages fueling expansion and aggression.

>History is also replete with examples of aggression and expansion fueling
>economic advantages. I disagree with you.

Great.  "I disagree with you" sounds a lot better than "I disagree with you,
you ignorant fool."

[discussion about modern medicine being invented in the West]

>The most seminal university in Western Civ was in Africa! It was in the city
>later renamed Alexandria, and that was where the early Greek philosophers and
>mathematicians studied.

No argument here.  But they weren't really doing a lot of modern medicine and
agriculture in Plato's day.


>Jones M Murphy, Jr
>Associate, Derivative Products Group

Wow, things are that bad on Wall Street that the investment bankers are being
retooled into software engineers?  Hard times indeed.  Hope the mortgage on
that Caribbean home is paid up already Jones...


Dave Casper
CERN - Geneva
casper@vxcrna.cern.ch

Newsgroups: alt.war.civil.usa