Who would you save?

In certain spots in the world we encounter people who are nothing like us here. Tribal folks using folk medicine/shamans to treat an illness, cast off demons, etc.

Our technology is light years ahead of them, as is our understanding of a great many things.

They plant gardens, live off the land, their kids have no electricity, running water, they have no idea what condom means, etc and so on.

Back when Europeans were first interfacing with Indians they tried to 'save' those 'savages' from their ways. We had a written language, weapons they had never seen, medicine that was new to them, etc. We knew better than they did.

And now here we find ourselves far in the future. We have nukes, mri's, banking, manufacturing, etc and so on. And then we find groups like those mentioned here tonight: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5747821

Backwards by our standards, and we could offer them so much to help them.

These backward folks who live within their means. Don't pollute. Are not bent on being major consumers. Don't drive cars.

here in America we have those Amish folks - by no means 'perfect' as we define it. Living off the land, not getting in our business, just living their lives without cell phones, electric, cars. People not contributing to the downfall of so many things.

Slowly but surely we have become a society that is bent on saving others - whether they be smokers, overweight people, amish, third world folks, etc and so on. We offer something better?

Perhaps in trying to save ourselves and others we have gotten off track a tad, and did not learn some really important lessons.

In saving others perhaps we have ended up hurting ourselves.

I am not you, you are not me. Be yourself, trying to control me because you map my life to yours ends up as bad now as it has in the past.

In other words - thinking 'globally' now on so many issues is not a lot different than other groups in the past who thought the same way and tried to force their beliefs on others.

Controlling others or trying to en masse has a history of turning out poorly for all involved.

And yet people still do it and justify it because it is 'best' for people.

When will we learn?

Freedom and diversity. It used to be important to us. Now the fear peddlers have come in and decided if people don't all follow their religion...err I mean political ideals and beliefs...we are sinners and ignorant and need to be saved from ourselves.

The end of the world won't come from some third world tribe somewhere. It will come because a 'superior' society like ours brought about nuclear war or one of our viruses we developed for defense got out. Or our consumption and contribution to global warming made the planet uninhabitable.

those silly religious minded third world folks with all their superstitions...they won't be the ones who do the most damage.

In the end, we will save them all from their odd ways and beliefs.

Question is, who will save us from ours?

Sexual abuse and puppy mills!

What great "Christians!"

I'd trade puppy mills for wars and such most any day.

Does not make either right, but which has been a bigger impact.

not to mention us and our cars, internet, usage of fossil fuels...etc and so on.

who is worse, based on our values, us or the Amish? which has had a bigger impact on the world in a negative way?

And, I'm not Amish, but I don't contribute to wars, puppy mills, or sexual abuse.

I'm not sure what your "point" is there.

No, I think they have issues. But so do we.

And ours affect a lot more people than theirs do. How is it that we are so judgmental towards other groups, when we cannot see - and fix - the mote in our own eyes.

Was there sexual abuse among American Indian tribes? yes. Did it justify us killing them en masse and trying to convert them to our beliefs?

Christians saw them as savages and tried to convert and save them.

You up for doing something similar to the amish?

I just found it interesting that you didn't mention sexual abuse, but compared puppy mills to war.

I'm not saying we need to "convert and save" them Amish. I'm just saying that there needs to be a way to help the women and prosecute the hell out of the men who abuse them. To make it even worse, to fight back against it, involves leaving the "community" and if you leave, you are shunned. The victims basically become dead to everyone they know if they try to escape. Such a wonderful life.

I don't think killing Native Americans was justified. I have no clue why the hell you'd even bring that up.

Are you on drugs tonight, because your posts are like total non-sequitors. Worse than usual.

When the amish are mentioned that is one of the main issues brought up here.

Am all for helping the amish women as well (and kids). Still not my point (getting there).

On native Americans - well they had similar issues as the Amish, which is why I mentioned them.

I don't do drugs, unless you consider smoking a drug :)

Overall my point was quite simple - we judge others and want to fix them to make them more like us, and yet we condemn others who have so done in the past.

How much different are we than they? And looking at it from a broader perspective - we are doing more harm on a large scale than they are on a small scale. Amish and puppy mills and sexual abuse are more of a local issue, us and what we are doing is a global issue harming far more than they are.

But somehow we see ourselves as better?

Did all these backward folks with their odd ways we see as bad lead to global climate change, health care issues, etc and so on? Are they the ones threatening the world with nuclear annihilation?

They can learn from us, to be sure IMHO - but maybe we could also learn from them.

I don't know about you.

The larger group here in the US has supported folks in power who have funded new nuclear weapons, bio weapons, etc and so on - all in the name of defense. We have funded all these endeavors through our tax dollars. We go about our daily lives using tons of fossil fuels for our drives to work, internet access, tv's, phones, fast food, etc and so on.

Our actions are having a global affect. It affects not just our lives, but those of groups like the Amish and tribes in third world countries. We can judge them easily on their actions when it comes to puppy mills/sex/etc and feel all progressive because we have advanced in those areas, but we are behind the times relative to them on some bigger issues.

We can readily point out to them how their sexist attitudes hurt some in their community and condemn them and rally for change (which I think we should) because we give a damn about the individual and their ability to have free choice (except when it comes to going to where to drink and smoking, in which case we believe people don't have choice).

And yet here we are doing far worse in most all these areas - we are hurting folks en masse with our wars, our consumption, and so on.

How is it we can condemn others so easily while letting ourselves off the hook?

How is it we can follow a party and make excuses for those with whom we have the same party name while we condemn those who do the same when it comes to a religion?

We are better than those we condemn how?

Ah, the simple ways.

Running your tv, internet, driving to work, etc and so on can all be seen as a terrible impact on the environment and the lives of so many others.

We justify it all though.

Imagine an advanced race someday coming here to visit us - how would we look to them?

Judge the Amish, fine. But before doing so, we should judge ourselves and our own actions.

They got puppy mills and sexual abuse - and we got what? War, death, poverty, letting our own people die for lack of health care, etc and so on.

yeah - we are better, maybe some day we can convert them to our ways.

And they can download rape porn and such into their homes on their several computers after they drive 50 miles to work and contribute to green house gases, etc and so on.

They are backwards and bad, we are advanced and good.

I'm simply pointing out that the popular caricature of the Amish is exactly that: a caricature.

They ride the bus. They shop at Wal*Mart. They eat sandwiches from Subway after roofing my neighbor's house using shingles and nails bought at Lowe's.


All you've done is cherry-picked the characteristics of the Amish that you identify as good and stacked them against "our" characteristics that you've cherry-picked and identified as bad.


The Amish haven't defeated measles or polio or small pox; they've produced very little (if any) lasting art; they've unlocked few (or no) secrets of the cosmos; they have little (if any) interaction with distant cultures. How many millions of lives have the Amish saved around the world? By that metric, "they" rate far below "us" on the good/bad meter.


The discussion is pointless because you've stacked the deck against Our Evil Culture, in what I can only describe as a variation on the theme of the Noble Savage.

The pain of what they did will take decades to fix, and for some Iraqis, that might never happen.

To live their lives as they see fit without impacting us all.

I hear all the time here, for example, how people who smoke impact us and our lives. Or how gun owners do, or how those who eat fast food impact us all - in a dollar amount.

We have become ruled by money, it has become our religion and a way to judge others who cost us that money as sinners.

I wonder how an advanced civilization from space or the future would see us.

Probably as savages.

What is it like to live without the internet, electricity, etc and so on? Without modern medicine?

I am sure it would suck for us to live such a life because we have known life with it.

But for those without it...well I would think we as progressives might see that some folk are happy without it.

One might ask for a report as to how the indians here were happy without living with the median income of the avg european.

Are they better off now since we came here and improved their lives?

The reason we don't live that way now deals mostly with military industrial dynamics. Some happy tribe in South America is just fine until industry decides they want to burn their rain forest for McDonalds Hamburgers, and comes in backed with superior military technology, and the tribe is done. So whoever is more advanced in military industrial tech wins. But this is only a pretty brief passing fad in the big stream of things, the fact is a time is coming when these old military tools become obsolete against new ones, as they always have. What I forsee is a time when military dominance doesn't require people for armies anymore, just resources, energy and human intelligence to fuel the machines of control. If a country moves to this stage, than the energy/resources consumed maintaining a high standard of living become threats to national security, direct competition to the military apparatus. So in a time of war, the national interest becomes in getting most people living agrarian sustainable lives, consuming as little of the core resources as possible. This stands in contrast to previous wars, where human labor was essential to the military apparatus, so in times of war people worked in factories as well as enlisting.

Or that's one theory of looking at it, may happen, may not. One this is for damn sure, things can't keep going as they are! :)

and his practice, oddly enough, includes a whole lot of Amish, who hire drivers to bring them to his office in Northern Virginia for their appointments - a very long drive for a doctor's appointment, all the way from Pennsylvania. So, they don't entirely do without cars, since they have no qualms about paying for one when they need to.

But they like him. Have had him into their homes as a guest, and welcomed him almost as one of their own.

He knows a whole lot about them, but one of the things I remember he told me was that they are plagued by autoimmune disorders - of all kinds. He has a great research background, and he theorized that there's a certain amount of inbreeding that goes on among these folks, and, consequently, the human systems begin to break down and malfunction.

His Amish patients take the drugs that all his non-Amish patients take, so they do avail themselves of the fruits of the modern technology they appear to eschew

They also lose teeth early in life, their diets being so horribly high in refined sugar.

And they always pay him in cash.

Odd stuff, but just enough to assure me that they're hardly exemplary.......................

As we do based on theirs.

Which one has affected the other more?

that encourages inbreeding..................

Convert them to your way of thinking because it is better?

My whole OP, my posts about it, are about one main theme - context.

Back in the day, with what little knowledge they had, Folks from Europe came here and imposed their beliefs because they felt they were right and good and would save people from themselves and their decisions.

We have the benefit of history on our side now - but back then they were in the same boat we are now.

Our beliefs, science, ideals, are better than yours.

listen to us, live our way, it is the right one.

And now we know better.

And yet we are making the same mistakes as back then.

Our way is better, we can save you, your ways are bad, our ways are good.

Nothing has changed, still the same as always.

your message is muddy, and I have to wonder what you're talking about.

Is "system of beliefs" fancy code for "tradition"?

I just don't understand what you're trying to say, sorry ..................

basically I am trying to explain that what we see as good and right for us may not be for others. And that in trying to convert others to our belief system we are doing something which we on the left condemn here on a regular basis.

To wit - we rail against the past of those we deem to be on the 'right' for trying to force their beliefs down the throats of others, and yet we are doing the very same thing.

'System of beliefs' refers not only to religion but also to politics/philosophy.

We set up a system of value judgments based on our own ideals (belief system - does not have include a god, bible, etc) and then we justify our actions based on those beliefs while at the same time railing against others who have done the same.

In the case of our own history we have erased those who did not believe as we do, and we on the left wing have decried those actions. And yet now we find often we are doing the same thing, but for different reasons - ie we are justifying it - same as the priests back in the day did.

You are Amish and have puppy mills, keep women down, you are bad and need to change (and I would agree with that ideal because I want us all to be free) - problem is we are no better in the long run on so many issues and we are doing the very thing we have railed against. We are telling others their beliefs are wrong and ours are right.

We fund wars, contribute to global warming, etc and so on - and those same groups we rail against for X are not doing Y.

And maybe they can learn as much from us as we can them.

Which one is better? Which one is right?

Their actions affect some locally, ours are affecting people globally.

Before we condemn them and theirs for their beliefs, maybe we should take care of our own issues first.

To me, that's a big "Duh."

That's why wars are fought - to make someone or something over in our image. It's part of what humans are - to try to extend our own wonderfulness as far as we can. Darwinian in its execution, since it also helps weed out to weakest among us. Even the American Indians you cite were brutal in their assaults of rival tribes. They knew all about killing before our forefathers got here.

This is hardly new, and, no, it's never going to change. Sometimes it's done under the guise of religion or bringing democracy or preventing the domino effect, but it goes on.

And sometimes we fight because someone else is doing exactly that - ethnic cleansing, the Holocaust, Pearl Harbor - and, in that defensive assault, we are doing the best we can to protect others at the same time preserving what we believe - i.e., that it's wrong to murder people because of their religion or their place of birth.

It's the human condition, and, if we're lucky, the best of the best will prevail. Watching those Amish patients arrive in a big black Lincoln Town Car gave me a good laugh, because the "beliefs" are only good while they're serving a specific purpose; as soon as something else is required, a big old V-8 engine doesn't look so bad.

You're stating an obvious, which was why I found it hard to understand, so thanks for the clarification....................

Was us coming here progress when it comes to the Indians? We were, after all, more progressed than they were on some things.

Compared to today, we were not, but for that time Europeans were.

Did we help the Indians with our progress in science and writing or such, or hurt them?

First off, to say that they lived off the land, and didn't pollute, and lived within their means, and on and on.
There were lots of Stone Age societies at the time of European expansion, a date which is useful mostly because of the record keeping. Each one was different, but none of them were the noble man in nature that some folks wax poetic about. If they didn't destory the world, it was because of their numbers, but they did destroy some of it.

Some cleared land by burning. Some featured ritual sacrifice. Some didn't live within their means, and they all died. They had wars. Surely they had what we would consider rape. They had slavery. They had aristocracy and monarchy. They had injustice. They had racism. Surely they had homophobia, male chauvinism, child abuse, and domestic violence.

Tenochtitlán had more people than some European cities. They tell us that it had garbage and sewage removal, but it did have garbage and sewage. It would have had as much garbage and sewage as any other city its size. It had slavery too. It had draw bridges for defenses, before the Europeans got here- so those defenses had to be there for a reason. Really all it didn't have was wheeled vehicle, gunpowder, and steel. But we like to think of it as a magical place that was ruined by invaders, instead of a military stronghold of an aristocracy that was built on wetlands.

Not that there is anything wrong with that. Folklore is what makes people feel good about their history. Somewhere, someone decided that Americans aren't entitled to that.

http://www.amishdeception.com/Chapter1.htm

They are hardly a utopia.