BrianW
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- 6 Mar 2006
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It seems to me that the roots of stuff we are ashamed of now are:
1. Religion. It is not generally appreciated how 'tolerance' was seen as a bad thing, even in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Believe it or not, Oliver Cromwell was relatively tolerant for his time as he was prepared to accept almost any form of Protestant Christianity plus Judaism. Most people were total bigots and the only version of religion they would accept was their own. The German Wars of Religion in the 17th Century makes our Civil War, or War of The Three Kingdoms or whatever you want to call it, look like a vicarage tea party. Christian rulers saw it as their duty to suppress 'heresy' and to do all they could to stop Islam spreading - hence the Crusades. Note that the rulers of Islam were not any better, and were busting a gut to force their religion into Western Europe. Charles Martel stopped their invasion of France at Tours (732) while the siege of Vienna by the Ottomans was as late as 1683.
2. Royal pretensions. Kings thought they could inherit countries like we might inherit a house from Dad. To give but a couple of examples, Edward III started the Hundred Years War because he believed, or purported to believe, that he had been cheated out of inheriting the French throne. (His mother was a French princess, but the throne went to her male cousins.) All the problems in Ireland began because the Plantagenet kings all thought they had inherited it from Henry II, who was made Lord of Ireland by the Pope.
3. Commerce. Our takeover of India began as a trading mission, which gradually converted itself into political domination. (See the East India Company.) There was so much brass to be made out of India that it 'had' to be controlled at all costs. Slavery only became a thing because traders made profits from it. There was an attitude that we 'civilised' Europeans had a right, if not a duty, to exploit 'lesser' peoples. There were even those who defended slavery on the basis that it took pagans and gave them the benefits of Jesus. (There was a sort of vague concept that the Africans were children who needed to be 'guided' and taught 'proper ways' that in some undefined future point would make them suitably civilised to be accepted.)
I suppose the bottom line is that the leaders of humanity are almost invariably cunts, and don't care about the suffering they cause if in return they get more power and money. You can still see this fundamental attitude today, it's just a bit more subtle. How we get away from this I don't know, because people seem happy to elect cunts to power and to support them. Most people see the 'system' as natural, like the weather, and don't believe it can be fundamentally changed. They may even be right.
1. Religion. It is not generally appreciated how 'tolerance' was seen as a bad thing, even in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Believe it or not, Oliver Cromwell was relatively tolerant for his time as he was prepared to accept almost any form of Protestant Christianity plus Judaism. Most people were total bigots and the only version of religion they would accept was their own. The German Wars of Religion in the 17th Century makes our Civil War, or War of The Three Kingdoms or whatever you want to call it, look like a vicarage tea party. Christian rulers saw it as their duty to suppress 'heresy' and to do all they could to stop Islam spreading - hence the Crusades. Note that the rulers of Islam were not any better, and were busting a gut to force their religion into Western Europe. Charles Martel stopped their invasion of France at Tours (732) while the siege of Vienna by the Ottomans was as late as 1683.
2. Royal pretensions. Kings thought they could inherit countries like we might inherit a house from Dad. To give but a couple of examples, Edward III started the Hundred Years War because he believed, or purported to believe, that he had been cheated out of inheriting the French throne. (His mother was a French princess, but the throne went to her male cousins.) All the problems in Ireland began because the Plantagenet kings all thought they had inherited it from Henry II, who was made Lord of Ireland by the Pope.
3. Commerce. Our takeover of India began as a trading mission, which gradually converted itself into political domination. (See the East India Company.) There was so much brass to be made out of India that it 'had' to be controlled at all costs. Slavery only became a thing because traders made profits from it. There was an attitude that we 'civilised' Europeans had a right, if not a duty, to exploit 'lesser' peoples. There were even those who defended slavery on the basis that it took pagans and gave them the benefits of Jesus. (There was a sort of vague concept that the Africans were children who needed to be 'guided' and taught 'proper ways' that in some undefined future point would make them suitably civilised to be accepted.)
I suppose the bottom line is that the leaders of humanity are almost invariably cunts, and don't care about the suffering they cause if in return they get more power and money. You can still see this fundamental attitude today, it's just a bit more subtle. How we get away from this I don't know, because people seem happy to elect cunts to power and to support them. Most people see the 'system' as natural, like the weather, and don't believe it can be fundamentally changed. They may even be right.