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Not sure if I'd lump all people together in their views of the Amish, or all Europeans together in their views of African indigenous people.
I find the resistance to modern progress seen in Amish country to be completely bizarre, and I don't admire rejections of modern technology.
Similarly, Europeans don't all "put...African people down"; to the contrary, just as in the US, it's a continent of hundreds of millions of people and opinions differ. Not everyone is racist, although I am the first to concede that racism, sadly, still is widespread.
Of course not all people of any group are the exact same in their thoughts and/or actions. There are always exceptions. I was speaking of people groups in the general sense.
Not sure if I'd lump all people together in their views of the Amish, or all Europeans together in their views of African indigenous people.
I find the resistance to modern progress seen in Amish country to be completely bizarre, and I don't admire rejections of modern technology.
Similarly, Europeans don't all "put...African people down"; to the contrary, just as in the US, it's a continent of hundreds of millions of people and opinions differ. Not everyone is racist, although I am the first to concede that racism, sadly, still is widespread.
The rejection of technology is curiously relative, because technological advances are relative.
Those appalled by smartphones are generally inured to the developments that preceding their introduction into the world. But everything was cutting edge once. Television. Air travel. Radio. Automobiles. Telephones. Electrification. Steamboats. Clocks. Iron. Worked stone. As long as they were habituated to it since birth, they don't see it as a threat. But the developments that happen when they're adults? Terrifying! And so they must be inherently bad. They can't see that the issue isn't the tech but their subjective discomfort with it.
The Amish take it a bit further, pushing the threshold of what is 'too modern' back a few generations. But the Amish live wildly more technologically advanced lives than all but a few generations of the countless generations of their ancestors.
I say this an as African-American, Sub-Saharan Africa may have never modernized without European colonization. So what? .
In a way I do think this matters to certain Black Americans. I'm referring to those Blacks who I see trying to cling to ancient Egypt or Kemet as they like to call Egypt. These people barely pay any attention to sub-Saharan African history and culture. When they do its about trying to connect sub-Saharan Black Africans to Egypt in some way. They seem to do all of this because sub-Saharan Africa doesn't have enough for them as far as written records and ancient structures etc.
The difference is that many Africans do not live this way voluntarily, but line up to get the services of food and medicine and financial help provided by the Westerners when they need them.
Also there is no such thing as the "Sub-Saharan African people" and it is careless, even racist, to lump them all together. Many of these nations of peoples were kept alive and given basic human rights by British colonizers and many, including some very prominent African writers, continue to extol the benefits of Western colonialism.
What an archaic notion. Colonization did something good? Seriously?
Would the Earth be running out of drinking water and food if Colonization had never happened?
Would there be global warming if technology had never spread?
Would the Earth be overpopulated without advancements in medicine?
There is more but, if you dont get the point by now - you never will.
"They didnt even have a road before we went there!" Nature creates its own roads.
The way many humans currently live isn’t environmentally sustainable, it’s true. But at the same time, it would be inhumane to go back to a world where almost everyone lives short lives full of suffering that is largely preventable with modern sanitation and medicine. We need a balance.
We could move away from consumerism and back towards building and living sustainably without rejecting all progress. Electricity and running water are important, but do people need to live in enormous houses? Do they need to work in large offices that have to be heated and cooled and powered when they could otherwise work from home? Do we need to hold everything indoors even when the weather is tolerable when we could save money by living outside more and shutting down wasteful uses of power? Do we need to drive gas-guzzling cars EVERYWHERE and replace them every 5-10 years? Of course not.
Worldwide, we could provide preventative healthcare and address systemic conditions that lead to poor health by focusing on clean water, clean air, healthy food, and low-cost health interventions like vaccination rather than spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a cancer drug for an 80-year-old. As a disabled person, my care is expensive, but I will be the first to tell you that it’s unreasonable. Not that I don’t deserve the care, but so much of it could be provided more cheaply. But health insurance companies and medical device manufacturers want to make a fortune and so they make everything more expensive than it would actually need to be. And on a global scale, you have so many people with disabilities who could work and help support their families, but they don’t have access to even the most basic medical devices like a prosthetic limb or manual wheelchair.
As far as population goes, making birth control cheap and readily available works wonders but unfortunately, there's political opposition that holds it back, even though birth control prevents abortions.
We need to focus more on getting basic safety and comfort to the world instead of luxury. But that would require the rich not having so much power, and the relatively privileged wastefully emulating them by buying fancy cars and McMansions, so I’m not optimistic that it will ever happen in my lifetime.
Good points, and it makes me think of the Amish and how we respect their choice to live without modernizations, even in a nation where it's readily available, yet we seem incapable of thinking that maybe some cultures in other parts of the world might also choose not to modernize. Is it because they aren't white like the Amish are? As though white people are smart enough to make that choice for themselves but these primitive indigenous populations just aren't smart enough to know what's best for them?
Like before, I've got to ask, who is we?
There are about 2,000 people in my hometown. Amish moved in about 25 years ago. There are now about 2,000 different opinions of the amish and MANY of them are not positive.
There are a lot of ugly aspects of their culture. People who think amish is some beautiful lifestyle where everything is pure and good are probably the same ones who live in fantasyland in regards to the First Nations.
As far as the racial aspect, many people look at amish as backwards living fools and think they're even dumber than the Africans you speak of because the amish have a choice. This is whites looking at other whites.
Yes, I said even dumber. It's how they are often viewed. And before the hunt for racism starts, let's be honest here, plenty of african Americans look at Africans as dumb.
My personal views are that all people in undeveloped countries should be left alone. Bringing china into the 21st century has been the worst human folly in a long time. The destruction this has caused will go on for generations and reach every corner of the earth.
Last edited by madison999; 08-16-2021 at 03:55 AM..
You also bring up a good point PA2UK. Yes the Amish (non-progressive) are ADMIRED for resisting progress and modernization of the 21st century. The "if it's White it's right" mentality is why they're admired for doing it. While Africans (as well as other indigenous people) do the same thing but are the subject of many books, studies, research projects, brain size studies, IQ rates studies, and comparative studies showing how far Europeans are ahead of them.
Traveling by foot for miles through forests/the woods/the plains and sleeping outdoors in a makeshift shelter is held in high regard when it's done by Whites (hiking and camping) but looked down as uncivilized when done by Africans (indigenous who've lived that way for millennia).
Keeping animals (dogs, cats, rabbits, rodents, snakes, birds, monkeys) in one's home and even allowing them to sleep in the same space with you is cute when done by Whites but looked down as backwards when done by Africans with animals (goats).
Catching animals for fun to eat, kill, or show their dead carcass off as a trophy (game hunters of deer, elk, moose, bear, wild hogs) is cute when done by Whites but looked at a backwards when done by Africans (who didn't kill for sport or fun but only for food and used every part of the animal as to not waste).
Cooking food outdoors over a fire is a treat when done by Whites but the same act done by Africans is considered a backward tribal behavior.
Eating meals outdoors is called an enjoyable picnic when done by Whites but Africans eat outdoors and it's considered a backward tribal behavior.
As I said earlier, what the Europeans have accomplished is admirable. It's why people from all other continents and people groups around the world, including people of African descent, want to live in the European countries or highly European-influences cities/towns. However, the fact that Europeans in spite of the progress they've made in modernizing, do the same things that African indigenous people do while simultaneously putting African people down for doing it, is mind-boggling.
A bunch of racist vomit. ^^^
No shortage of whites in America looking down at other whites in America for every example you gave. Millions upon millions, actually. Probably the same in most other developed European countries as well.
Never colonized: Liberia, China, Thailand, Turkey, Ethiopia
Colonized late, had tried to reform before: Madagascar, Iran, Egypt and other parts of the Middle East.
The outcomes are pretty varied, but most of the modernizing efforts studied had only limited success.
Looks like autocrat-initiated modernizing efforts never go far enough to make enough difference.
Russia might be an exception but it took Stalin's genocidal policies for the country to fully industrialize.
The only non-Western country to reach parity without being taken over was Japan. In their case the reformers seized power and gave the entire society a make-over.
The Cherokees were ready to do that but they're too small and too close to settlers for us to see results.
So the answer is, it's definitely possible to modernize but you have to thread many needles. It's also only been done if you're only a couple of centuries behind.
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