Posted by pancho from pool0056.cvx20-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.250.56) on Monday, December 02, 2002 at 7:32AM :
In Reply to: Re: Whacki Rabi From Iraqi posted by Mosadegh from dsc04-lai-ca-5-104.rasserver.net (206.217.11.104) on Monday, December 02, 2002 at 0:36AM :
+++I don't think you can train people to think. I agree that demanding subservience to god and parents and country can stunt a person in some ways...make people wary of going against the norm for fear of offending the status quo...but that's been everyone's challenge since the first witch doctor stuck a bone in his nose and declared the Gods spoke to him...and he would tell us what they said...which either convinces people they were unworthy themselves of being addressed by a diety, and the witch doctor has some special standing with the lord...or that he's a charlatan whose enough of a scoundrel to make such a thing up...even if he wants to do "good" by it...it is never "good" to encourage ignorance and superstition...never better to scare your children into compliance rather than enlighten them and encourage them to seek boldly after meaning and goodness.
It isn't that these people are ignorant or lack imagination...they are full of tricks and devious ways when they are threatened. There was no reason for Homer Simpson to interject himself into a debate about horns on Sargon's helmet...especially as he was wrong anyway. These people could have simply minded their own business and let me get on with my work...which wasn't being funded by them anyway...or if it was in part...they were receiving plenty back for their "gift" already...no need to impose their will on the project as well, and ruin it.
They think well enough when it's a question of wrecking things or lying. They know what they're doing...they know that these monuments were intended to appeal to a higher place in us than they themselves were able or willing to speak to. They knew that well enough and that's why they worked harder to block than to build...because their little corner of a mediocre Assyria would be challenged...we would need more and demand more of them from that day forward than what they could give...what they had it in them to give...or what they wanted to give.
A barefoot and pregnant Assyrian community is much easier to control...and this was in the end mostly about who controls the franchise they've made of Assyria.
-- pancho
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