Last edited Thu Mar 19, 2015, 07:22 AM - Edit history (7)
'.... I wish I was black so I could get a free pass all the time and pull the race card.'
He forgot to add:
'.... assuming I lived long enough, and didn't have to face a 'life or death' situation, such as being addressed in conversation by a melanin-challenged policeman', though unarmed and going about my lawful business.'
Imagine if an albino copper came across a Klu Klux Klanner:
'Stop right where you are, you dirty g..dd..ed SOB! You **** darkies haven taken over the g..dd..ed country. (Calling out to a colleague: 'Hey come and have a look at this 'schwarzer, posing as a whiter than white, white guy!' Empty your pockets! etc, etc. Don't bother! Bang! Bang!
I'm sure I do a grave injustice to people who suffer from albinism, comparing them to their more swarthy brothers and sisters, but you get the idea...
Incidentally, on a more serious note, there are two basic reasons for the disparity between the technological development of various peoples, that has nothing to do with a disparity in native intelligence, which is entirely mythical.
The main one is: INTEREST: The Mayan Indians were doing amazing things, such as advanced mathematics, calculating calendars, inventing the concept of zero a thousand years before the rest of the world (the Arabs, and, I believe, the Indo-Europeans, before them), inventing a written language, building cities, while we were running around, daubed in wode. The video at this link gives a good summary:
http://www.history.com/topics/maya
The point is that, before even the Middle Ages, in that wonderfully poetic, American expression, they 'checked out'! Lost interest.
The other basic reason is that, while other religions believed that the material world was largely illusory, Christians believed that it could be increasingly understood by the use of our human reason and logic, because they believed in a rational God; that Nature was subject to laws, because they believed in a divine Law-Maker. Other civilizations, such as the Chinese, were themselves, in some ways, extremely enlightened, and made great sporadic breakthroughs, from time to time, such as printing, but it was never a continuous ongoing process with other civilizations.
The missionary contacts of the Jesuit priest, Matteo Ricci with the Mandarins of China, and Ricci's correlation of much of the wisdom of Confucianism, encouraged the former to investigate Christianity - especially, when they were shown examples of our technology. recently, I read history repeating itself to some extent, although the Chinese are extremely advanced technologically, today. A Chinese politician was suggesting that Christianity might be beneficial to the country, on the basis, I believe, of that curiously relentless, technological progress of the West - even post-Christian. Far from holding science back, the truth quite the reverse.
As regards the intellectual brilliance of the Jews, they were writing the continuous history of their people, long before any other people, and were a cohesive bunch in Old Testament times, due to their submission, albeit erratic, to the Judaeo-Christian God, Yahweh. The law of God handed down to them by Moses included commands that could be construed as the first glimmer of a welfare-state: leaving the gleanings from the harvest, the grapes that had fallen to the ground - in short, leaving this and that for the stranger, the wayfarer, the poor man.
But enough of my missionary zeal, as this is not the most welcoming forum for formal Christian catechesis! I hope some of you find it interesting though.
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<--- just in case its not obvious
