Yesterday I talked about a foundation of logic for society, which might make my reliance on emotion today seem somewhat ironic. Life demands balance, though, and to dogmatically adhere to either logic or emotion would be a mistake. For instance, I recently read an article about a nineteen year old male who killed his four year old sister and only received forty years. I felt indignation at that, especially after the article described how the child implicitly trusted her murderer right until the last moments. I then had to ask myself, however, if such indignation at the sentence was warranted. I am, after all, a strict opponent of the death penalty, and have argued that it is not the place of the government to validate desires for vengeance. Given that, I had to evaluate whether or not similar urges were driving me. I concluded that no, my indignation was valid and my desire to see the young man receive a life sentence was based as much in logic as in emotion. Not only did he take a life, but the life of someone who trusted him unconditionally, who followed him to the proverbial chair and let him throw the switch. I see no reason why such a person should avoid a life sentence, there is no possibility of complete rehabilitation and separation from the rest of society is a fitting punishment.
Here we see the synthesis of logic and emotion, one complementing the other. More importantly, it is an argument based on logic, using the methodology of the scientific method. I do not proceed on the validity of my opinion, I subject my hypothesis to testing and then arrive at a conclusion. This is how society should proceed, on the basis of logic and reliance on the scientific method, while not ignoring personal feelings and emotion.
This story serves another purpose, though. I am currently reading A People's History of the United States, and in the first chapter author Howard Zinn describes Colombus' first foray into the Americas. The natives, he said, swam out to meet Columbus, and when he reached ground gave whatever he asked for freely. Similarly, when Cortés first encountered the Aztecs they had the same hospitality, 'they even thought of him as a god, and for it Cortés sacked Tenochtitlan, a city far more advanced than any that could be found in Europe at the time. Columbus enslaved the people who did not hesitate to shower with him with gifts, and settlers on the mainland slaughtered the natives over minor disputes and burned their crops. All of this amounts to a total cultural genocide of the native peoples of this continent.
To the Europeans, these were inferior civilizations, yet as Zinn points out, the evidence says otherwise. The Iroquois had organized a league of individual tribes, forming a central government that allowed for tribal autonomy long before the ideas that inspired the founders of the United States ever entered western minds. These people achieved gender equality centuries ago, and yet today misogynistic law developed by a European conqueror still governs New Orleans. Tenochtitlan itself was a marvel of engineering in its own right, not to mention compared to the cities of Europe at the time. Perhaps most striking, though, are the economies many of the tribes used. It was nearly a perfect example of Marx's "utopia," with people producing what they could and taking what they needed (from each according to his ability, to each according to his need). At the same time, these explorers were seeking gold and silver to perpetuate a grossly flawed economic theory that would eventually collapse. Still, these cultures were deemed inferior.
The reason that such determinations were made was because the one area where Europeans were more advanced, principally because the Americans didn't have the same natural resources used in developing weapons, was in warfare. They were more adept at killing the natives, and therefore they deemed themselves superior. It was not a new idea, however, years before that the religious had used the same measures to deem which gods were superior. This does bring up an important point, though, that the state of western culture is not simply natural. Karl Marx, in fact, posited the theory that society's conditioning factor is economy. This deserves some examination in this discussion.
In the spirit of Mill, I shall examine the arguments of my opponents. Capitalist theory is full of this social-Darwinist outlook. Our current discussion on taxation asks how much each group deserves, and the conservatives argue that the rich are entitled to what they have, but why? Their answer is because they earned it, but is that necessarily true? Most conservatives I talk to would not say that everyone who owns wealth necessarily earned that wealth, yet the people who they say have not earned it are the exceptions, subjectively categorized of course. The answer is never clarified, though, how do you determine what someone deserves? Not do you think this person deserves what they have or not, what principles do you use to make such a determination. The truth is that they have no standard, which leads us to the conclusion that you tell if someone deserves what they have by merit of having it.
This is strangely similar to the logic employed by the early settlers of the American continent, they deserved the land more than the natives because they could take it. We can thus see how this is endemic to capitalist thought, and the juxtaposition of natives living in egalitarian communist societies quickly debunks any claims that the capitalist outlook is the natural outlook. This then brings us to the cultural genocide, the enslavement, the destruction of livelihoods. Europeans were not content to simply drive the natives away from the coast, they had to push them continuously into the interior until they were finally reduced to living on reservations decades later. Why could the European capitalists not simply be content to remain in their settlements and live alongside the communist natives? Marx writes, "The dominion of material property bulks so large that it wants to destroy everything which is not capable of being possessed by all as private property." Not only is capitalism not the natural position, it seeks to destroy anything that would expose this truth.
Now let us switch to the emotional side of things. As i was reading about the natives showering the Europeans with gifts and adulation, I could not help but think of that older brother staring at his sister with a knife in hand, while she looked back up at him with complete trust. These natives knew nothing of capital, of greed. They gave and took freely, and the Europeans certainly took without question. Then they went even farther, they took what was not offered and killed anyone who protested. Just like the brother who killed his sister, they took advantage of a trust that was offered without thought. Here we have the right to indignation, to outrage even. That is not always the best agent of change, though, as the entities at whom the outrage is directed often have harsh responses. A majority of Americans are European-descended Caucasians, and many take offense that their ancestors would be slandered in this manner. Now we come to a crossroads of emotion, a question of whose is more valid, and I will soon endeavor to answer such a question by employing thorough logic.
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