That is the greatest post you have ever written on this forum, Zhao.
This post was so unexpected I've taken zhao off ignore (for now) to see what prompted it.
Right.
Zhao, I'm going to say a few things about you and your worldview, at least some of which I think you'll agree with. I suppose (though I could be wrong) that Craner said you were racist because your posts seem, at a superficial level, to display a conviction that there is something fundamentally and uniquely awful about white people, something not shared by people from other parts of the world, no matter how unpleasantly this or that non-European nation may have behaved towards its own people or another nation or race. You've said that this isn't the case and I'm prepared to believe you. I think what you have a problem with is what I might as well call 'modernity', although 'the West' is probably equally appropriate. Either way, it's a shorthand for a whole spectrum of things, including but not limited to: rationality, objectivity, science, materialism, atheism, capitalism and consumerism. Robert Pirsig, in
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, calls it 'a blind monster, a death force':
Other things fit in too. They talk once in a while in as few pained words as possible about "it" or "it all" as in the sentence, "There is just no escape from it." And if I asked, "From what?" the answer might be "The whole thing," or "The whole organized bit," or even "The system." Sylvia once said defensively, "Well, you know how to cope with it," which puffed me up so much at the time I was embarrassed to ask what "it" was and so remained somewhat puzzled. I thought it was something more mysterious than technology. But now I see that the "it" was mainly, if not entirely, technology. But, that doesn’t sound right either. The "it" is a kind of force that gives rise to technology, something undefined, but inhuman, mechanical, lifeless, a blind monster, a death force. Something hideous they are running from but know they can never escape. I’m putting it way too heavily here but in a less emphatic and less defined way this is what it is. Somewhere there are people who understand it and run it but those are technologists, and they speak an inhuman language when describing what they do. It’s all parts and relationships of unheard-of things that never make any sense no matter how often you hear about them. And their things, their monster keeps eating up land and polluting their air and lakes, and there is no way to strike back at it, and hardly any way to escape it.
Somewhere along the line, I apparently volunteered for the position of Avatar of Modernity, so I act as a grounding rod for your rage towards it. And you like to see everything you hate in the world neatly bundled together into modernity, so you decide, for example, that 'science' is part of the problem when it comes to modern-day racial inequality. It's true that, for a while, it was popular to misuse Darwinian evolution to attempt to justify white colonialism and imperialism, but this was very much a post-facto justification.
On the Origin of Species was published in 1859, 350 years after the trans-Atlantic slave trade was established and 50 years after slavery had been abolished in British territories and the United States. And it became universally taboo in mainstream scientific circles after WWII, less than 100 years later. Would there be any less racism in the world today if no-one had ever thought to use a scientific theory of evolution as a basis for a pseudoscientific theory of racial supremacy? Maybe, I don't know. But it certainly had nothing to do with millions of slaves being shipped across the Atlantic in the 17th and 18th centuries. (FWIW, I agree that this particular period of slavery has had more of an part in shaping the modern world than, say, the slavery of other European peoples by Romans. This is because of the extent of the trans-Atlantic trade, in both the number of people enslaved and the distance they were taken; the relative recency of it, ending around 200 years ago and only 150 years ago in the former Confederacy; and the fact that - unlike Italians vs. Germans, for example - people of mainly European and mainly African ancestry can be easily distinguished at a glance, which of course has made it easier for prejudice and inequality to be perpetuated.)
Now the reason I mentioned slavery by Arabs, Egyptians and others in pre-modern times is not - as you persist in claiming - to 'justify' anything at all, but just to point out that the European involvement was a continuation of an institution that had existed since antiquity. A tradition, you might say. Now you're a big fan of tradition because it exists in opposition to modernity, so to call something 'traditional' is the next thing to saying it's good. You project this prejudice onto me and end up concluding that I think slavery is 'good'! Or at worst, regrettable but basically unavoidable, and therefore not something worth getting too worked up about. I don't know how many more ways I can think of to say "that's bullshit" other than "that's bullshit", but it is. Just because a problem is very old does not mean it's not a problem worth fighting and it does not mean it can't be solved. Look at smallpox: it killed and maimed for thousands of years and then at some point in the 20th century, thanks to an enormous concerted effort, it was eradicated. Traditions change and can disappear; some traditions are good so when they disappear, it's sad, but others are shit and when they're finally ditched, it's a good thing.
And nowhere have I ever said, or even implied, that 'might is right'. Might is mighty, that's all. When it's wielded by people motivated only by personal gain, atrocities are bound to occur.
For some reason, any attempt on my part to provide some historical context on how and why Europeans in the early modern period did what they did is turned into an alleged 'justification', which seems to stem from your belief that modernist slavery is somehow qualitatively worse than any other kind of slavery. To me this sounds like a fallacy, like people who will seriously argue that when a fascist regime murders a million people it's a worse crime than when a communist regime murders a million people, or vice-versa. It's the modernity of the people doing it, rather than what was actually done, that makes it so particularly repugnant.
You also seem to have got the idea that I'm some sort of cheerleader for capitalism, which does make me wonder if you actually read any of my posts or just see the username 'Mr. Tea' and mentally replace all the text with 'yay, capitalism!'. It's perfectly fucking clear that the world is a shocking mess and that capitalism is playing a huge part in this, and that it's imperative that we try to find alternative ways of living. However I do not go as far as to say that the world we're living in is the worst possible world and therefore *any* alternative to capitalism is preferable (since, for example, I think feudalism, theocracy, national socialism and Stalinism are all self-evidently worse). This is of course not remotely the same thing as saying 'capitalism is the best system we have, so deal with it', although it may look like that to anyone who insists on viewing the world in an infantile monochrome. This with-us-or-against-us attitude leads to the fallacy of my-enemy's-enemy, which you demonstrate time and time again - like when you call Kat Bigelow a modern-day Riefenstahl, but want to read bin Laden's poetry. Hey, he may have murdered thousands in an attempt to drag the world back to his imaginary ideal of the 7th century, but he stood up to 'the West', to the Anglo-Euro-(Judeo)-American Great Satan, so credit where credit's due!
I could go on, though I'm not sure there'd be any point. All I'll say in closing is that it's remarkable, for someone who rails against modernity and everything to do with it, that you seem to be pretty happy being immersed in it and enjoying all the benefits it brings. You live in a secular, liberal society and take full advantage of all that that offers to the lifestyle hedonist, but constantly rail against those awful, soulless atheists. You approve of religion in a very general way without subscribing to any one particular faith, because all that praying looks a bit of a drag and anyway, most of them would require you to give up something you enjoy doing. You excoriate capitalism and consumerism while working as a commercial graphic designer...eh, I'm not even gonna go into that one. Maybe it's not so remarkable at all. Maybe that's what postmodernity is all about: retweeting a blog post about the evils of sweatshops on an iPhone made in a sweatshop...but plenty of people here could talk about this more articulately than me, so I'll leave it there.
Zhao, I think you owe me an apology for calling me a pro-slavery white supremacist. I hope I've managed to convince you why that was an unfair slander on me.