Brian Ross wrote on Nov 23^rd, 2017 at 6:28pm:



Circumstantially lucky????? Is that one of your hallucinatory concepts?

Organising a society is not a matter of 'circumstantial luck', Bwian. It's not some invisible hand that makes someone purposeful and cooperative while others are slovenly and selfish. These are not matters of 'circumstantial luck'.

There is such a thing as social organisation, social solidarity, politics, shared culture and the rest of it. The better these are, the better a society is.
Very importantly, every society CAN mark a path for itself and act in a purposeful and organised way to follow it (after all, that is what progressive means, Bwian). No need for any 'circumstantial luck' for that.

Should we rename 'progressives' as the 'circumstantially lucky', Bwian??


Hmmm?      tsk, tsk.

John Smith wrote on Nov 24^th, 2017 at 5:26pm:



Why not? They eat them, don't they?
If whitey can do it in a strange land, why can't the natives?http://www.emufarm.iinet.net.au/


How did almost every other society get out of hunting gathering.

Nicole ~ Ricki-Lee Coulter has Maori blood in her but she never calls herself a Maori.

Frank wrote on Nov 24^th, 2017 at 5:21pm:


I recommend you read Jared Diamond's work, Guns, Germs, and Steel, Soren.  It is all laid out there, rationally and above all else, sensibly.   You can buck the trend of Anthropology/Ethnography if you like but you are the one who will perpetually be out there in the wilderness.   White people are circumstantially lucky they developed the thinking that allowed them to develop industrially, which in turn allowed them to build the ships, the guns and to use the germs to dominate the other continents.   Other Peoples could have developed those theories, that social organisation - indeed until the 16th century the world superpower was China, it had the technology, the thinking and the money but had no desire to rule what was over the horizon.   It was why European powers wanted to trade with China - to get that money, it was why the Europeans hooked the Chinese society on Opium - to get their silver.   

Lord Herbert wrote on Nov 24^th, 2017 at 8:45pm:


No it isn't compulsory you know.

Is there a point to your revelation ?

John Smith wrote on Nov 24^th, 2017 at 9:01pm:



Why didn't they? 

That's what we are discussion - why did they remain so wretched for so long?

The South American Indians - also occupying a continent, had vastly different stages of development. I can see how these differences can be attributed, to some extent to their ecological place. In the jungle you can't cultivate corn and llamas.

Australia also has a wide variety of ecologies, yet the Aborigines remained equally wretched from the tropics to the desert, from Tasmania to Victoria and all the way up and around the coast. 40 thousand years without any discernible change or improvement or developoment.

Frank wrote on Nov 25^th, 2017 at 12:02pm:


Really?  Name what he gets wrong, Soren?   I'm interested to see if you have read and understood his work.

Even if he gets detail wrong, the general thrust of his argument rings true to me.  White people were circumstantially lucky - there is no difference in Genetics or anything else between them and an Indigenous Australian, except circumstance.  Yes, they built on that circumstance but that is all, it was just luck that gave them the means to dominate the world. 

Quote:


It is one view that is becoming dominate in Anthropology and Ethnography, Soren.   Older views are being discarded.

Quote:


Circumstance, nothing more.  There is no reason to believe a New Guinea highlander could not have developed the same social organisation, the same technology, as white people if the circumstances had been similar.  To suggest so, shows your inherent racism, your believe in "racial" superiority/inferiority.  Tsk, tsk.  Old thinking, outmoded thinking.   

Quote:



Luck is just luck, Soren.  The lucky owes nothing to the unlucky, nor does the unlucky owe anything to the lucky.  Common decency, OTOH, would suggest that the lucky should not take undue advantage of the unlucky, ascribe to themselves anything other than luck and circumstance to their success.  There is nothing Genetic, there is nothing other than luck and circumstance.   No inherent superiority, no inherent inferiority.   A white person plunked down in the middle of the Australian desert would need luck and circumstance to survive.  An Indigenous Australian, plunked down in London would need luck and circumstance to survive.   Neither is born with the inherent ability, beyond their own inventiveness to survive.   

Whitey has shared his 'circumstantial luck' with Aborigines, Africans, the who world. Yet Africa and the Aboriginese are still living by their own 'culture in squalor and brutality.

The ones who have given away their old culture are thriving.. So 'lucky has nuffin to do wiv it, Bwian.