Today is Columbus Day, the celebration of the "official" European to discover America. Its also a good time to dig out a favorite essay http://muweb.millersville.edu/~columbus/data/art/ROYAL-03.ART
What's the difference between "reexamining the Genoese navigator", and denouncing western "Eurocentric" culture? They are the same. Any examination of Columbus will tell you that only a Eurocentric view could lead one to the idea that he "discovered" a land already populated with many sophisticated civilizations. And I don't know anyone except school children that celebrate the holiday. We all know it's a lie.
Well, if you had actually bothered to read the article you might understand that spidergoat. I don't hold the view that columbus "discovered" America for all mankind, but he certainly discovered it for Europeans.
Columbus Day is a sham! Although the State gave me off so I took the opportunity to uphold the spirit of Columbus. I raped and killed as many brown people as I could find and than stole their gold!
Yes indeed, Columbus day is a shame. That's why we should throw out our computers, our family, our house, and everything else we hold dear and go sail back to Africa, Europe, Asia, or wherever we are from.
Sham? I prefer Flim-Flam, its more fun to say. I just heard an estimate the other day that before disease killed a lot of American Indians, that there was roughly the population of Europe living here at the time. if some American Indian managed to get across to Europe, I don't think they would have made a holiday out of it.
That's Naive. The only reason Columbus' name is in connection with the discoveries of the Americas is because he was the first to openly exploit mass communication and turned a culture and region into a business venture and a violent period of genocide and many other unspeakable atrocities. Columbus industrialized a race and is in large part accountable for the destruction of the native americans of the time and region. He brought about enslavement and disease. His dominating actions put himself beside other evil men of this world's history. Columbus was not the first man to decide to sail west. His findings were accidental and warrant no gratitude. His existence apparently altered world history but my opinion on the necessity for our nation to condone his actions by recognizing a day in celebration of his excistence is sad. If only those 3rd graders knew better.
If we want to celebrate something about western expansion and exploration, why not have something like "Explorer's Day". It seems to me that Columbus is only one of many "important" explorers. If there is some importance in celebrating western culture, why not clebrate DeSoto, Magellan, Polo? These people are just as important in "spreading" western culture as Columbus, maybe more! I really think we should replace Columbus day with Captain Morgan Day. Now that's a fuckin' holiday! MARCO!
Unspeakable atrocities? So I suppose all of these native tribes lived here in America in complete harmony for thousands of years and never once enacted genocide on other tribes? None of these natives wanted european weapons to make hunting easier or european clothing that were more comfortable? None of them wanted to sell their land for large quantities of trade supplies? While I do not promote the native genocide, I think you are being a bit one sided.
Well, as Flip Wilson noted, had Columbus not discovered America, there would have been no Ray Charles. My life has been greatly enriched by Ray Charles, as have many other lives. So, sure, there was genocide and enslavement, but there was also Ray Charles.
Ray Charles, along with absolutely everything else in America. This is perhaps the point that nobody gets: we wouldn't even be here to complain about Columbus, in fact we may still be living under some absolutist monarchy.
The point is that when you destroy an entire CULTURE, the human race loses a piece of itself. The ideas that can only be expressed articulately in that language, the poetry and drama that only those circumstances would have produced, the particular way of looking at and trying to coexist with the universe: all gone, FOREVER. When that culture has ascended to the level of a civilization, the loss becomes incalculable. Civilization is by definition "the building of cities," but the building of cities is merely the most visible and enduring manifestation of an economic surplus that permits division of labor on a scale not otherwise possible. It permits music, poetry, science, philosophy--all creative and inventive endeavors as well as many more humble but nonetheless enriching ones--to become PROFESSIONS, full-time occupations for large numbers of people who can discuss and exchange ideas. Culture advances more rapidly and more richly after the achievement of civilization. The Aztec/Maya/Olmec civilization and the Inca civilization were something like two thousand years old when the European occupiers arrived. (Not their entire Neolithic cultural era, just their city-building period.) That puts them on a par with our root civilizations--Babylon, Egypt, India, and China--at a point so far back in our misty past that we have only hints and fragments of their history and artifacts. But we do know, just from looking at their most ancient histories that we CAN see, that they were no better or more noble than the Aztecs and Incas. Slavery, torture, war, despotism, and idiotic religions. A Babylonian from 4,000BCE would have felt right at home in Mexico in 1491, right before they cut his heart out and tossed his body into a volcano. What might the people of the Western Hemisphere have gone on to do if they'd been allowed to continue for another SIX THOUSAND YEARS? What discoveries, what inventions, what philosophies, what art? Or what if they had just not been annihiliated, but introduced to Europeans and Asians peacefully? Even with the culture clash, something of their own spirit would have survived and the world would be a richer place for it. Sure I'm glad there's an America and that I was lucky enough to be the one person out of thirteen in my generation who was born here. I love our culture. But the other five-point-something billion people on the planet might rather have saved the Aztec and Inca cultures. And it's really hard to agree with the person who said that the mixed-blood people who live in what is now Latin America--most of which easily qualifies as the "Third World"--are way better off than they would be living in a 21st Century Aztec or Inca empire. Slavery, torture, war, despotism and idiotic religions. We've very nearly done away with the first two and you have to admit that we've made great progress on number three. But despotism and idiotic religions? They are running rampant! Just how much better is our civilization than the ones the Europeans destroyed?
The discovery of America was a pivotal event in European history. If Europeans had never populated America, it is entirely possible that Europe never would have never advanced as well as it has. Today's technology, politics, and even peoples are a result of European's populating America. You can also look at this from a Social Darwinist perspective: European civilization was superior to American civilization. When European civilization conquered American civilization, the human race as a whole was given the opportunity to advance much further in areas of technology and politics than would have been previously possible. You may disagree [for PC reasons], but this fact remains.
Fraggle Rock, your reply is well formulated and I must agree with what you have put forward. These American civilizations were noted by Oswald Spengler to be incredibly powerful and worthy civilizations. I do not in any way praise their passing. I am not, however, in the business of being apologetic for their demise and although modern society may seem to betray the eyes, I believe the founding of the United States to be a step forward, not backwards.
yes, high population, low immunity he would have died of diseases, approx 90% did after "first contact" that's why I disagree with all the fringe &/or mormon theories that others helped develope Mesoamerican & Incan civ's, they all have theories, no proof if African, Chinese, Egyptian, Hebrew, &/or Phoenicians had any accidental or regular contact, they'd have exposed Native Peoples to these diseases long before Columbus, with enough time to have affected immunities, as is the case now (alien contact, is also out of the question, so far-out fringe, that they will need to show actual proof, before annyone believes them, they're kooks in my book)
