Christiaan Briggs wrote:
On 27 Aug 2004, at 10:40 pm, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Western Civilization to me really relates to Western Europe plus key members of its former colonial empires. It does promote certain ideals, but that does not mean that it has been uniformly successful in implementing those ideals. This distinction is difficult for the person who has not yet grasped the concept of irony.
Actually this distinction was part of my argument. You seem to miss the point that the evidence (the millions who have died and suffered) suggests these ideals to be not much more than propaganda in a system that has historically implemented the opposite of such ideals.
This is a breathtaking oversimplification promoted by various 20th-c. groups for their own sordid purposes. It's a really lazy approach to history, because instead of trying to evaluate actions from a contemporaneous perspective, we evaluate them using our much greater body of available information and viewpoints.
For instance, it was not possible for 19th-century people to consider ecological consequences of clearcutting forests, since there was no science to inform them. Some writers blame Europeans for bringing diseases to the New World - centuries before anybody even had any idea how diseases got around.
This is all relevant to Wikipedia because there are more than a few articles that thoughtlessly apply 20th-century standards to events of the distant past. Leopold in the Congo can be criticized because his actions did not conform to the standards of his own society, but it requires much more care to identify the ideals and realities of Columbus' time.
Stan