Re:Zapatistas -- culture not capitalism
Milo Gardner (gardnerm@gaia.ecs.csus.edu)
Tue, 6 Dec 1994 12:10:32 -0800 (PST)
James Benthall seem to agree on several points. That is good, but
which ones are they. A private email would be interesting.
Yet, James and I seem to disgree on three points.
1. Marxism never having been tried ---
What trash that is. It is like the ideal state of democracy has
not been tried. The bugs of Cuban or Hanoi Marxism are so great
that it should be clear that any system with no checks and
balances will eventually be run by a despot. QED
2. Pre-Columbian cultures never did exist, nor do they now.
More Marxist bull! All cultures exist, even when the peoples that
knew their inner workings have died. Look at teh Middle Kingdom
of Egypt. Hieratic writing and unit fractions was very different
--- intellectually and thus culturally -- than hieroglyphics
and Horus-Eye.
The same is true concerning Mesoamerica. Olmecan sense of time,
even though not proven to be sidereal, far exceeded the lowly
sense of Aztecan solar worship -- Aztecs even lose use of zero,
a fantastic pre-Aztec discovery, right?
3. james seems to say that truth only exists in the present,
another Marxian view that history is a step child of politics.
Truth, be it the application of zero in a base 20 positional
number system that calculated time within 6 seconds of our
atomic clocks, and 8 second better than Greporian calendars
is worth teaching in 1994.
Subcommandte Marcos should hold out for teaching Mayans in their
metaphor, as Hindus, Chinese, Japanese and Hellenized Western
traditions. Each reports aspects of truth as discovered by
human beings. Adding them altogether still finds us uneducated,
yet inspired.
Note my previous post. I still hold to its theme and major
points.
Milo Gardner
PREVIOUS POST - Dec. 5, 1994
The issue that faces Mexico is empowering native cultures.
Capitalism and sad and proven wrong Marxian economic
"solutions" replace one form of ills for another. Russia
proved that!
What Sub-commandant Marcos holding out for is a broad range
of political empowerments, beginning with the respect for
pre-Columbian cultures -- by stopping Ladinozation policies.
For sure economic aspects of Ladinoization needs to be
stopped, but replaced with educating native Mexicans in their
own culture -- a metaphor that far exceeded Spanish and European
culture of 1492 and even 1600!
For sure Mayans, for example, have slipped behind teh Western
Tradition, but Mayan math and astronomy are still trivialized
rather than respected and taught to the world.
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