Europeans vain attempts to civilize the rest of the world in their own idealized image

LINK to Guardian article, The Commonwealth is a jamboree of repression, by Tom Porteous.

When will the WHITE MAN stop trying to civilize the rest of the world in his own idealized image?

Perhaps when we recognise the ego trip we are on in claiming the moral high ground for ourselves.

Only, it's not just an ego trip - no matter how well rationalized and disguised - but an expression of our unrecognized, but continuing Darwinian struggle for survival, advantage and "success", misplaced and perverted in the artificial environment of our own society.

We need to get ourselves sorted (by developing an understanding of our own Darwinian nature and how it is now driving us towards self-destruction), instead of distracting ourselves vainly trying to sort the rest of the world.

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gymnutkamal:

Whatever do you mean by that?!?! The whole world, from what I see, is headed for self destruction - why not share around the doom and gloom?

The answer to your question is that I identify myself as a "white man" (a native European), and would feel uncomfortable criticizing any other ethnic group. In addition, western civilization is synonymous with European civilization, the historical roots of which are "hideously white" (as the former Director-General of the BBC, Greg Dyke, might put it) and go back more than 2500 years to the ancient Greeks, and further back into prehistory. Europeans are responsible for the mess we are in - no one else. Native Africans, Americans, Australians, etc. were doing just fine, until us Europeans came along and screwed things up.

"What Darwinian nature?"

Have you not heard of Darwin and his book, On the Origin of Species?

In their arrogance, Europeans assume that they, or their political and academic elites, at least, are rational animals, when in fact, like everyone else, they are still very much a Darwinian animal, preoccupied with exploiting their environment to their own personal (or family) advantage, which now, perversely, includes human civilization itself. Notwithstanding their cleverness in rationalizing and disguising it from themselves, and others. I go into this in more detail on one of my BLOGS.

The insidious POWER of the "moral high ground" to censor

LINK to Guardian article, An insidious argument for censorship, by David Henshaw, the executive producer of Channel 4's Dispatches programme.

I haven't seen either documentary ("Undercover Mosque"  and "Inside Britain's Israel Lobby"), but agree very much with what David Henshaw writes.

I consider myself a judeophile and friend of Israel, but to suggest that British (and American) Jews don't represent a splintered, but nevertheless very powerful lobby for Israel is absurd. Of course they do, and generally I support them.

However, I prefer my friends (Jewish or otherwise) to be honest and open, and not to intimidate their critics with accusations of racism or anti-Semitism, which, as the author, says, is an underhand attempt at censorship, of suppressing unwelcome views, questions or criticism, rather than engaging with them.

It is a classic example of the POWER of an assumed "moral high ground" used to control and manipulate society to one's own perceived (ideological, religious, political and/or economic) advantage, and as important today (though much diversified) as it was when the Catholic Church had a monopoly over it.