Imperialists Imperializing In the Indies

            Bartoleme De Las Casas' An Account, Much Abbreviated, Of The Destruction Of The Indies has several very interesting thematic discussions on faith and psychology. In particular, I’d like to focus this blog on the psychology of imperialism, historically and as it relates to the colonization of the Indies. Oftentimes we read accounts of American slavery, the Jewish holocaust, the Belgian Congo, or any number of atrocities in our history and we feel unable to understand how humans could be at the root of this degree of violence. However, this book seems to confirm a argument that several key psychological factors consistently allow this kind of oppression. The actions of the Spaniards and seemingly of all violent imperialism can be traced to the existence of a dominant group’s goal, warring superiority, and justification.

            To even begin on a conquest of imperialism, a nation needs some kind of incentive. In the case of the colonization of the Indies, the Spaniards were incentivized by the opportunity to convert the Indians and the potential to take their gold. De Las Casas explores the notion of whether these atrocities could really be done in the name of God. History points to the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, and countless other examples in which religion was an incentive to brutalize others. Yet, De Las Casas, an advent Catholic himself, implicitly suggests that religion is not the motivation for these atrocities in the Indies, but rather used as a justification for these atrocities—we will discuss this possibility in a moment. This leaves the notion that the incentive to colonize these Indians is to rob them of their treasures. This is the justification explicitly and extensively explored by the text. In almost every chapter, De Las Casas speaks to the process of murdering Indians and then taking their gold. In other instances, the Spanish commanders employ a variety of torturous techniques on Indian leaders to learn where stashes of gold are hidden. In one section, he mentions that there are Spanish boats loaded full of gold and treasure robbed from the Indians. In essence, these dealings make it clear that the Spaniards brutalize the Indians in pursuit of personal and national wealth; this is their goal.

            When one country invades another, the people of the nation under attack are compelled to fight back and if there is any consistency in fighting power between the two nations, the invaders will be repelled. However, in every instance found within the text, the Spanish swiftly dispatch of any Indian resistance. In one battle, the Spanish charge the Indians with their metal pikes and armor and with relative ease, they are able to defeat the Indians. In some instances, Spanish commanders are far outnumbered by their hundreds of slaves, yet the Indians don’t have the means to pose a legitimate threat to the Spanish reign. In essence, the Spanish have vastly superior weaponry, armor, and war tactics, so they have power over the Indians. With this established, the Spanish have both a reason and a way to colonize the Indians, yet there is still an ethical dilemma. How are they to enslave, torture, and slaughter the Indians without being driven mad by a guilty conscious, much less a horrified Spanish constituency?

            The third and absolutely necessary part of asymmetrical brutalization—the circumstances of all colonization—is an ideological justification. The Spanish need a way to explain away the Indians as categorically inferior. In the Holocaust, the Jews were responsible for the economic depression of Germany after World War One. For another example, in American slavery, blacks were, at best, three-fifths of a person and at worst, racist ideology robbed them of any humanity. In the colonization of the Indies, the Spaniards use xenophobia as a justification for their oppression. The attitudes of the Spanish are uncurious and impatient with the Indians and they casually torture them as if of a different species. Even the writing of De Las Casas reflect a sense of ethnocentrism; despite his general sympathy to their oppression, as he writes on the practices and shortcomings of the Indians, he barely managers to hide his own smug sense of ethnic superiority. This brings us back to the question of where religion plays a factor. The Spaniards have the word of the good lord on their side and these ignorant, hell-bound heathens are of no use, the imperialists might say. Throughout the text, De Las Casas ironically refers to these crusaders as Christians to remind the audience that they are everything but that; they use the practice of converting these Indians as a guise to mask their true intentions. To the Spanish public, the violence is justified as an unfortunate byproduct of their important missionary work. To the Spanish crusaders who understand this to be a fallacy, they are still able to justify their moral errs as unimportant, because the Indians are subhuman and need to be dominated.

            History is ripe with instances of brutal imperialism. We often find ourselves unequipped to understand how other humans could commit such atrocities. Bartoleme De Las Casas piece is his own account of a case study in humanity’s inhumanity—the colonization and genocide of the Indies. The Spanish brutalize the Indians for their national and personal desire for the Indian’s treasure. They are able to do this because of their unparalleled advances in warfare. And they are publicly and individually justified on the basis of religious and ethnic superiority. In all instances of imperialist violence and certainly in colonization of the Indies, three factors appear resoundingly clear: incentive, asymmetrical power, and a vindicating ideology.

Injustice Is Abound In Uruk!

Within the first eight tablets of The Epic of Gilgamesh, several key themes become apparent. In particular, events which question whether the notion of justice exists in Uruk are abundant throughout these sections. With our sense of justice being, naturally, a human notion, this matter is even further complicated because of the existence of gods and demigods. Is the will of the gods justice? What about when certain gods disagree on a matter, how can it be decided who is just? Although they are worshipped, do the gods and demigods ever err and act unjustly, to the detriment of others? As one gets further into the story, it becomes clear that justice does not exist in Uruk, primarily because of the existence of an unequal power dynamic between the gods, demigods, and humans.

            The most unfair of these relationships exists between the supernatural—the demigods and the gods—and the normal humans. At one point, Ishtaar sends down a Bull of destruction to ultimately kill Gilgamesh for failing to reciprocate her love. Yet, as one would presume a godly animal of destruction might act, the Bull wreaks havoc all around Uruk. Within a short few lines, the book nonchalantly includes that the Bull has created a number massive holes in the earth and killed hundreds of regular citizens on its path of doom. These humans had nothing to do with the already unjust punishment imposed by Ishtaar, yet their deaths are regarded as of little consequence to the storyteller or the gods. A similar display of how the infinitely unequal power dynamic between the gods and the humans ends poorly for the humans appears when Gilgamesh tells of Ishtaar’s past lovers. He recounts how many of the past humans she had loved, like her gardener, were cursed, killed, or crippled for arbitrary transgressions.

            These abusive relationships also exist between the demigods and the humans. Enkidu is originally created because Gilgamesh was such a tyrant to his people that they would pray to the gods asking for relief. Yet, because Gilgamesh was a demigod and they were merely human, they could not match his power or challenge his cruelty. Moreover, another section describes how Gilgamesh would come to weddings in Uruk and would rape the bride before she could spend the night with her groom.

            The abuse of a naturally unfair power dynamic is not exclusive to the relationships between the godly and the normal. This injustice is seen even in the interactions between the gods and the demigods. To refer to a previously mentioned example, Ishtaar decides on an emotionally-tainted whim to send a godly Bull to kill Gilgamesh. Moreover, when Gilgamesh and Enkidu go to kill Humbaba, instead of a fair battle between the two parties, a god intervenes and takes any element of fairness that could have existed out of the battle. The god blinds Humbaba with 13 winds and allows Gilgamesh to simply walk up to Humbaba and slaughter him. Finally, towards the end of this section, the gods decide to take advantage of their superiority and curse Enkidu with a fatal illness. All of these show how justice cannot exist between in Uruk because of the unequal power between the parties which inhabit the lands. However, it is interesting to note that in the last instance, the killing of Enkidu by the gods, he has been sentenced to death for his part in murdering Humbaba.

            Which brings the critical reader to a final unjust dynamic in Uruk, that between demigods of unequal strength or reputation. When Enkidu is struck down by a fatal curse, it is a punishment from the gods for his part in murdering Humbaba and the Bull. Yet, the reality is that murdering Humbaba was Gilgamesh’s idea and Enkidu actually tried to speak out against it and the Bull was sent solely for how Gilgamesh interacted with Ishtaar. In essence, the gods decided that Gilgamesh was more reputable or important and that they would instead condemn Enkidu to death for his actions. Moreover, both Humbaba and Gilgamesh were demigods, yet Gilgamesh was still able to unjustly killed Humbaba for glory because he had a better reputation in the eyes of the god who helped him blind Humbaba.

            Although the existence of the gods might suggest otherwise, injustice is prevalent through the lands of Uruk. The gods abuse the demigods and the humans. Meanwhile, the demigods abuse the humans, and in some situations where there is an inequality in godly reputation or strength, the demigods kill one another. The presence of this inherently unequal power dynamic between the groups is much to blame for why injustice exists and is not challenged. 

On Bad Scholars, Being a Wannabe Lawyer, and Weird Stuff in America

            I’m not exactly sure what the class consensus was about Horace Miner’s intent on writing The Body Ritual of the Nacerima. If it was that it was written as any kind of critique of American society, I strong disagree. If Miner was half the scholar a collegiate professor should be, there is absolutely no way that this piece was a serious criticism of American culture. If it was, the egregious logical fallacies and erroneous examples he proposes warrant a serious scholarly demerit. Rather, I am as sure as one can be that this allegory was meant to show how easy it is to be ethnocentric and swiftly condemn a foreign culture.

            Let me start by explaining why I feel certain that this was not an allegoric criticism of American society in the 1950s. Once you realize that this piece is an allegory, you see that he is comparing the ‘rituals’ of two societies. He pairs together the brutish practices of the Nacerima to the practices of Americans. In essence, he is comparing two similar proposals on body practices; two similar arguments. Once this becomes clear, it is easy to recognize that in almost every instance, Miner is making a straw man argument. In one instance, he takes the safe and practical activity of shaving and compares it to “…the rite involves scraping and lacerating the surface of the face with a sharp instrument,” a process which he describes as barbaric and masochistic. In another example of his increasingly fallacious straw man comparisons, he criticizes modern dental practices by comparing them to the “…almost unbelievable ritual torture…” of having "…an awl [stabbed] into an exposed nerve.” The reality is that this ‘magic’ is not magical at all nor is it torturous; in reality, it is science backed up by empirical data. Dental science has improved all of our lives vastly in many ways that we often neglect to notice, like the addition of not-so-magical fluoride to our water system half a century ago—since then, cavities in children have decreased by almost to 40%. Finally, in the most upsetting example, Miner criticizes the advent of condoms and contraception by comparing them to “magical materials.” Of course, all of this is only upsetting if this essay was written to criticize American society. Which is my point: it wasn’t.

            Rather, it is clear that Miner wrote The Body Ritual of the Nacirema to show us how quick we are to judge other cultures and to trick us into understanding how naturally trusting we are in authorities on such subjects. Unfortunately, I must admit that when I first read through it, I thought it was a serious anthropological report and I didn’t realize otherwise until I got into class the next day. It shocked me how ready I was to condemn another culture without trying to understand the more genuine reasons behind their practices or having any desire to dig deeper into the evidence. Rather, I took Miner’s word at face value and because I didn’t feel the need to escape, nor did I even realize that I was in, my ethnocentric mindset, I didn’t consider the possibility that Miner could have been making fallacious arguments, biasing our views, and only telling half the story. To me, the point of making it an allegory was so that we would have to watch ourselves judge and criticize this culture, only to realize that it was mocking our own and only then could we realize the true extent and damage that our preconceived and ignorant notions can cause.

            Now onto something more agreeable. My name is William Kelly and I’m from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I’m not Amish nor do I know any Amish people; I actually went to an urban public school in Lancaster City, where Amish were almost never seen. Through taking this course I hope to achieve a number of important things. I’d like to become more self-aware by being exposed to a diversity of thought and culture and I’m excited to read the books on our syllabus, some of which I’ve heard of and am really interested in reading—particularly Dubois’ Souls of Black Folks and Paine’s Age of Reason. Oh, and most importantly, I’d like to fulfill my existential search for my IH GenEd requirement.

            When I grow up, if you can do such a thing, I’d like to be a criminal defense attorney. It’s a mixture of my innate contrarianism and a genuine belief that there are a number of unjust practices in our justice system. In particular, how disproportionately difficult it is for racial minorities to receive equal treatment in all parts of our justice system. Regardless of race or any other kind of status, being arrested, charged, and having you liberty held in the hands of twelve angry men is an overwhelming task—especially when you consider the power and resources that the State has at its hands to try to put you behind bars. Oftentimes people ask me if I’d have any stain on my conscious for helping a guilty person escape the claws of justice; or even a step further, what if they murder somebody again. But as preeminent legal and ethical scholar Alan Dershowitz, a professor at Harvard Law School, explains: a lawyer should be no more guilt ridden by saving the life of a client that goes free and murders somebody, than a surgeon should feel bad for successfully saving the life of a patient that goes out and murders a person [paraphrased]. It’s all part of the system and if the government doesn’t have proof beyond a reasonable doubt, it’s essential that there is someone there to oppose them and make sure the system stays intact and as fair as possible.

            Now onto something less agreeable. Tasked with choosing the most Miner-esque thing about our contemporary society, I’d have to admit that I find religion pretty strange. It bewilders me how prevalent superstition is in our society, even among the ranks of intellectuals. To keep it simple, I’d like to just refer to the metaphor that Clarence Darrow used to explain his own atheism: “I don’t believe in god for the same reason that I don’t believe in Mother Goose.” Feel free to comment on this below, I'd enjoy having a respectful conversation on the matter.