Re: The Myth of Equality Between Genders, Races and Peoples
Posted: October 3rd, 2016, 5:18 am
Right well I've almost finished the book of Guns, Germs and Steel. The author does talk a lot about New Guinea as that is his area of expertise. He was very ambitious to try and cover 14,000 years of world history in 400 pages. I'd say some of the chapters give their topics a very cursory treatment, such as "How China became Chinese."
Anyway his basic premise is that different people developed at different rates due to the their environment not due to their race...and that just about everybody was willing to take on new technology when the opportunity presents itself. He runs into a bit of trouble with the Australian Aborigines though, as they seemed not to have too been keen on adapting technology - but he then points out that some groups of Aborigines were more open to change (read development) than others. So that appears to be a hole in his argument - if groups within races could be more apt to develop than others - wouldn't that then lead to the conclusion that certain races/cultures were more apt than others?
For example the Maori in New Zealand were much more ready to adapt to the changes Europeans inevitably brought to their world than the Aborigines. But then you could go back to the fact that the Aborigines had been isolated for longer. Anyway, I'm not trying to say European Australian life was better than the Aborigine way. White Australia certainly treated the Aborigines barbarically. I just get the feeling that the author had his thesis and looked for evidence to support it, if anything came up against his ideas he would ignore it. His views fit in well with the PC views of our time and this must of been a factor in his book getting pushed by publishers, Nat Geo etc. I tend to agree with this book to a large extent - but I'm not completely with the PC brigade that European colonialism was all bad. In fact I think as an attempt to synthesize a large chunk of history into on book, the right-wing historian Neal Ferguson's book 'Empire' is a much better effort. Basically Ferguson tells us what was good about the British Empire.
Anyway his basic premise is that different people developed at different rates due to the their environment not due to their race...and that just about everybody was willing to take on new technology when the opportunity presents itself. He runs into a bit of trouble with the Australian Aborigines though, as they seemed not to have too been keen on adapting technology - but he then points out that some groups of Aborigines were more open to change (read development) than others. So that appears to be a hole in his argument - if groups within races could be more apt to develop than others - wouldn't that then lead to the conclusion that certain races/cultures were more apt than others?
For example the Maori in New Zealand were much more ready to adapt to the changes Europeans inevitably brought to their world than the Aborigines. But then you could go back to the fact that the Aborigines had been isolated for longer. Anyway, I'm not trying to say European Australian life was better than the Aborigine way. White Australia certainly treated the Aborigines barbarically. I just get the feeling that the author had his thesis and looked for evidence to support it, if anything came up against his ideas he would ignore it. His views fit in well with the PC views of our time and this must of been a factor in his book getting pushed by publishers, Nat Geo etc. I tend to agree with this book to a large extent - but I'm not completely with the PC brigade that European colonialism was all bad. In fact I think as an attempt to synthesize a large chunk of history into on book, the right-wing historian Neal Ferguson's book 'Empire' is a much better effort. Basically Ferguson tells us what was good about the British Empire.