The Influence of Culture on Sexual Activity and Practices

15 Aug 2021 1 Comment

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

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In my opening treatise on sex, (Sex from a 75 year old perspective) I used a metaphor in which I described sex as a continent that had two regions.  The Region of Permissions and the Region of Prohibitions.  There are three seasons for each region:  A Cultural Season, A Political Season and A Religious Season.  In my second blog on Sex:  The Region of Permissions and the Region of Prohibitions, I described the influence of religion on our sex lives in respect to what is permitted and what is prohibited.  I will now discuss the Cultural Season of Sex and what impact it has on Permissions and Prohibitions relating to sexual activities.

The Cultural Season of Sex:

The Cultural Season brings influences on sex based on traditions and beliefs about what sex should be like, who we should have sex with and how sex may be performed.  Cultural practices have the over arching purpose of keeping a community viable and safe.  Throughout history whether a culture sanctioned monogamy, polygamy, abstinence until marriage or free love, the major reason for any practice was to align the goals and desires of the community.

There are two important cultural factors that one must understand about sex.  Beyond individual notions of what is proper and what is not, the cultural diversity in relationship to sex dictates that what one culture may accept as legitimate may be rejected by another culture.  Thus, in the early days of Islam, multiple wives were acceptable.  This was not the case in Judaism.  “In Judaism the Law tolerated though it did not enact polygamy; but custom stood higher than the Law. From the period of the return from the Babylonian Exile, monogamy became the ideal and the custom of Jewish married life.” — Jewish Encyclopedia.

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In Islam, polygamy was the norm for centuries if a man could afford it.  “Traditional Sunni and Shia Islamic marital jurisprudence allows Muslim men to be married to multiple women (a practice known as polygyny and polygamy)—up to four at any point in time.” — Wikipedia.  Many a follower of Christianity might envy the Muslim man but given the traditions in Christianity, one can only imagine the problems of multiple wives or multiple husbands.  In the early 18th Century, there were a number of experimental communities in the United States where open relationships were practiced.  In these communities’ men and women could choose who they wanted to sleep with even if they were married.  Most of these communities eventually died out both for economic and psychological reasons.

0996E9F5-F96D-4F32-B12E-0C7772CF1AE7-e1623525310665The second major factor that one studying cultural sex practices must understand is the changing notion of what is acceptable over time.  Not more than a hundred years ago in parts of the USA and even today in some cultures, a young woman is expected to be ready to marry and have children right after puberty.  Few people in the USA today would approve of their 13-year-old daughter or son marrying.  Times change and so do expectations that address what is acceptable and what is not acceptable concerning sex.

The USA had always had very different cultural expectations governing which ethnic groups and which religious groups could have sex together.  These beliefs have changed greatly over time.  My Lutheran wife was expected to marry another Protestant or practically any other Christian except a Catholic.  Years ago, mixed marriages were more than frowned on (We will talk about laws and politics in the next blog).  Couples crossing forbidden boundaries were belittled and ostracized by their parent communities.  I was in Minnesota in the early 60’s before I ever saw a Black man and a White woman walking together.  It took many years before I knew any Black women who were married to a White man or vice versa.

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So what, you might be saying!  What is my point?  Where are I going with all this?  Who cares about cultural practices in relationship to sex?  I bring these issues up because sex practices are too often regarded as either right or wrong, moral or immoral, normal or deviant.  Only by looking at the history and totality of sexual practices in the world can we develop a healthy attitude towards sex.  Sex should be an occasion for joy.  Sex is not sinful as some Christians seem to believe.  If you are married and you have sex with someone else, whether it is immoral or not will depend on what you and your spouse have agreed to.  Living in a nudist colony does not make anyone a pervert.  Having sex with multiple partners may be a choice made by some married partners and perfectly moral for them.

This does not mean that various cultural sex practices will always be navigable.  No more than a trip down a river will always be tranquil and benign, sex between individuals may be fraught with difficulties.  A friend of mine once said that “I don’t know if sex will improve or hurt your relationship, but it will certainly change it.”

downloadI tend to believe that there are some biological drives that influence cultural traditions and vice versa.  In sociology classes, there was always an argument concerning nature and nurture.  Sometimes it seems that the advocates of nature have the winning argument and other times it seems that the nurture or cultural advocates win.  It is very easy to say that life is composed of both nature and nurture, but it is much more difficult to delineate the amount that each impose on a given cultural practice.  Is monogamy part of nature?  Is it built into our DNA?  Are there multiple survival benefits from a monogamous lifestyle?  Are these still valid in today’s world?

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A more difficult question to answer might be how I can convince my wife to let me engage in extramarital sex with other women.  She has never embraced that idea despite my facetious arguments that men are not naturally monogamous.  Thus, in this case, nurture trumps nature.  228-2281833_husband-beaten-by-wife At least is seems to. 

“So she thoroughly taught him that one cannot take pleasure without giving pleasure, and that every gesture, every caress, every touch, every glance, every last bit of the body has its secret, which brings happiness to the person who knows how to wake it. She taught him that after a celebration of love the lovers should not part without admiring each other, without being conquered or having conquered, so that neither is bleak or glutted or has the bad feeling of being used or misused.”  ― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

Character, Culture and Race:  From a White Perspective

28 Sep 2020 14 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

What do character, culture and race have to do with each other?  That is the subject of my blog this week.  I believe that each of these concepts is not well understood by people in America or in any other country for that matter.  There is a science to understanding these concepts but there is also an art that comes from experience and living.  Both science and experience are necessary to understand each concept and their relationship to each other.  Since my experience can only come from where I stand, I note that I stand as a white, USA born, male in the early 21st Century.  Standing anywhere else would no doubt give me a different experience and a different perspective on these ideas.  Let me start with first defining what the term Character means to me.  I am going to give you my take and not Webster’s dictionary definition.

Character:

I think there are four major elements of character.  I believe these are: integrity, wisdom, tolerance, and courage.  Integrity is standing up for what one believes.  Integrity is the opposite of sycophancy.  Sycophants go along imageswith someone for an underlying motive or future advantage that they hope will accrue for their fawning behavior.  People with integrity do what they believe is right whether or not any advantage will accrue from their efforts.  People with integrity are consistent in their stated ideas and do not read the polls to see which way public opinion is blowing. 

It has been said that: “Knowledge helps you to make a living while wisdom helps you to make a life.”  Wisdom is the ability to as Father Sthokal would have said “Exercise discernment.”  The Greeks would have said that wisdom is the ability to exercise the Golden Mean.  The ability to live life in moderation and not to be seduced by extremes or excesses.  Many a smart people there are who you know are very stupid.  I see college professors who can see no further than the myopia induced by their academic disciplines.  Thus, they see everything through only one lens. 

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A favorite quote of mine respecting tolerance and courage states that:  “The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority.  The test of courage comes when we are in the minority.” — Ralph W. Sockman.  It takes real courage to stand up for what you believe when everyone is against you.  In the USA today, it takes courage to stand up for immigrants and poor people.  The greed in American life has prejudiced so many people who mistakenly believe that the poor and needy are taking their jobs or money away.  People are afraid to speak out because they are afraid that they will be labeled as Un-American. 

downloadTolerance is the willingness to respect and stand up for someone when you are in the majority and they are in the minority.  Difficult it is to speak out against your peers and tribe.  When someone has an idea that does not fit with the normal conception, the tolerant person will try to hear them out.  Tolerant people respect those with seemingly strange and weird or wild ideas.  The tolerant person does not say “That is crazy or that is a stupid idea.”  A recent example I think that shows both tolerance and courage is the song by Tyler Childers – “Long Violent History.”  You don’t hear many country singers supporting the Black Lives Matter movement or speaking out against racism. 

Character is not limited to any race, religion, culture, nation, or ethnicity

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Culture:

When I met my current wife Karen, she had an adopted Korean daughter.  Susan or Lee Hei Sook was six years old when Karen went though the procedures to adopt her.  She was an orphan who did know where her mom and dad were.  Many years later when Susan was out of college and expecting her second child she decided to search for her birth mother.  Through her amazing efforts, Susan was able to find both her birth mother and birth father.  I was fortunate enough to travel with Susan and Karen to Korea to meet both of them.  They had been divorced for many years and the story of Susan’s being sent to an orphanage would require a blog of its own. 

What is remarkable about the above story for me is Karen’s effort to help Susan retain her culture, heritage and language and even support her efforts to find her birth mother.  Karen cooked Korean food for Susan, sent Susan to Korean Camp each summer and learned how to eat with chopsticks.  Too many people in the USA believe that culture must be abandoned and that being having an ethnic or cultural identify is incompatible with being patriotic.  I know many of my generation who were not taught their parents’ language since there was a strong drive to become assimilated by many immigrants.  To desire to learn Korean would strike many of the “Greatest Generation” as a useless activity.  It did not strike my wife Karen this way.

Many older and younger people feel that our American culture is the best culture and that immigrants must discard other cultural affiliations in order to become assimilated.  The holy grail for Black people (at least as indicated by many white people) is something called integration.  This basically means abandoning any idea of “Blackness” and becoming as white as possible.  The same holy grail of assimilation or integration was foisted on many Native Americans.  Indians were forced to attend white “culture” schools and were not allowed to practice their native languages or wear indigenous clothing.  This rejection of culture has led to a considerable degree of prejudice and outright racism in the USA.  Witness the incarceration of Japanese Americans during the Second World War. 

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What is culture?  Culture is a universal phenomenon.  There is no such thing as not having a cultural identify.  Culture is forged for every living human being regardless of where they live.  Culture is the norms, habits, rituals, protocols, traditions, and beliefs of a group that you identify with.  Everyone has a culture.  Even hermits develop a culture based on their habits and ideology.  Gangs, tribes, schools, companies, organizations, ethnic groups, countries, nationalities, and any group with a set of shared norms and patterns develops its own unique culture.  I grew up with an Italian father and a mixed Irish-German mother.  I always lived in an Italian neighborhood when I was growing up.  I never learned to speak Italian, but I learned many Italian swear words.  I hung around with a gang who were mostly Italians.  My family had one culture.  My gang had another culture. 

I went into the United States Air Force when I was 18 years old.  The Air Force had its own culture.  The Army had its own culture.  I would guess there is not a person on the face of the earth who does not belong to more than one culture.  I would bet that most of us can identify with many cultures.  Thus, the term “cultural appropriation” is rather quixotic in many ways.  On the one hand, people might feel flattered that you want to merge symbols of their culture in your own traditions.  However, many other groups feel insulted and abused by such appropriation.  I can understand Indians who think that white people have no right to acquire their culture.  When your culture has been denigrated by the majority group and you have been maligned for trying to practice your culture, outrage against any outside group using your cultural icons for profit or fame would be a normal reaction.

Belonging to more than one culture does not necessarily mean that you should or must give up your identification with another culture.  Culture is a grounding for humans.  Culture helps us navigate life by adopting behaviors and norms that will help us fit in.  Culture is a means to share life with others.  As a veteran, I have many stories and fond memories of times spent with men whom I initially had nothing in common with.  Yet years later, I still enjoy meeting with veterans because we share so many of the same experiences concerning life in the military. 

“Culture does not make people.  People make culture.  If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we can and must make it our culture.”  — ― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

Race:

What is race?  Scientists say that there is no such thing as race.  How can this be?  Employment applications, loan applications, credit card applications and hundreds of other official documents include demographic questions where you must identify yourself as Black, White, Native America, Asian American, Latino and sometimes Other.  Black people identify with Black people as members of a common race.  The same is true for Caucasians, Indians, Latinos and Asians.  If there is no “race” how can there be “racism”?  Yet, the concept of “racism” is enshrined in laws both for and against “racism.”  If there is no race, why do I see people of different colors and backgrounds who have common acceptance of the idea that they are different from me.”  What can we attribute these different physical characteristics to if not race?

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“Researchers who have since looked at people at the genetic level now say that the whole category of race is misconceived.  Indeed, when scientists set out to assemble the first complete human genome, which was a composite of several individuals, they deliberately gathered samples from people who self-identified as members of different races.  In June 2000, when the results were announced at a White House ceremony, Craig Venter, a pioneer of DNA sequencing, observed, “The concept of race has no genetic or scientific basis.”  — National Geographic, Elizabeth Kolbert, March 12th, 2018

Most of the world’s citizens outside Africa originally migrated from Africa.  These early immigrants through genetic mutations and adaptation to different environments gradually gained different features.  The most predominant feature being skin color.  Skin color is not uniform throughout the world as we can see in places like India, Southeast Asia, China, South America, and even among the indigenous people in the USA.  Many people with “dark” skin coloring in the world would not say that they were Black or White.  I have been to more than thirty other countries.  I have noticed that “Black” people or people from an African Ancestry are not called African in these countries.  In the USA, we have used the term African-Americans but in Sweden, Africans are not called African-Swedes.  The same is true in many other countries across the globe.  Here in the USA, we seem obsessed with the concept of race.  Evidence shows that the genetic differences between individuals are greater than the genetic differences between the so-called “races.”

A randomly-selected American can be more genetically similar to a randomly-selected Korean than to a fellow randomly-selected American.  Similarly, a randomly-selected Ethiopian can be more genetically similar to a randomly-selected Norwegian than to a fellow randomly-selected Ethiopian.  This kind of occurrence is so common that simply comparing the genomes of two people will not help you classify them into what the world currently recognizes as their “race”. — Kristen Hovet, There Is No Such Thing as Race at the Genetic Level

But let’s get down to some common sense and away from science and genetics.  Adolf Hitler said that “Race” mattered more than anything.  Blood and Soil or “Blut und Boden: was a key ideology of the Nazi Party.  Hitler black-people-lynchedbelieved that German blood defined a German race which was superior to other races.  This superiority led to the extermination camps wherein “inferiors” were eliminated.  These inferiors included many people from other “races”, religions, ideologies, and with different physical characteristics.  There was one tribe of Germans and not belonging to this tribe was a potential death sentence.  Hitler set up a pseudo-scientific structure to discriminate between “True Germans” and other inferior “races.”  There never was and never will be a scientific basis for a German race, but this did not stop millions of Germans subscribing to the Nazi ideology of Germanic superiority. 

Conclusions:

prov-12-15If race does not exist but culture exists, what does this mean for group identity?  How strong should group identify be?  Should I sacrifice all for my group and fight to the death for my cultural identify?  What if I believe that my culture is better than your culture?  Could culture become just another banner to wave for those who want to commit acts of prejudice and discrimination on the basis of some perceived differences?  I think this is a distinct possibility and has indeed occurred throughout history.  How then can we have a cultural identify without resorting to racism and discrimination?

I think the solution lies in a hierarchy.  One hierarchy is evil and leads to racism and discrimination as well as genocide and war.  One hierarchy is good and leads to respect, tolerance, acceptance, and harmony among people. 

The Evil hierarchy puts culture, race, ethnicity, religion, gender, nationality, patriotism first and character is second. In this hierarchy, the notion of character is not as important as the notion of skin color, ideology, tradition, language, norms, and many other common bases for group acceptance.  You are first and foremost either a member of my group or not.  If you are a member of my group, I will then judge you on the basis of your character.  However, if you are not a member of my group, your character does not matter. You are evil by virtue of being an outsider and as an evil person, you need to be punished. 

The Good hierarchy puts character first and group identify second.  I don’t care if you do belong to my tribe, if you lack character, integrity, and wisdom then I need to deal with you accordingly.  I must of course exercise good character for myself.  I judge you first on your character.  I should also be judged on my character.  If we belong to or have similar tribal, ethnic, cultural, religious, ideological ideas or traditions, so much the better.  However, my relationship to you is based first on your character and only secondarily on which tribe you belong to.  I do not dismiss the importance of tribal or cultural affiliation.  If I am not of your culture or tribe, I will respect, understand and hopefully even be able to share some of your cultural traditions.  Diversity is a means of obtaining knowledge and ideas that can help us all become better than we are.

I will sum up my message here with the following points.

  • Race is a chimera and a substitute for genuine relationships with people
  • Racism is a negative stereotype based on ignorance and bigotry
  • Culture exists and is real. It can define us and allow us to lead more interesting lives
  • Culture if used as a measure of goodness or excellence can lead to prejudice and discrimination
  • Character is the most important criteria for valuing people
  • Tread lightly on all judgements of others

Here I must issue a warning and an extremely strict caveat.  Beware taking the role of judging others on the basis of what you think character means.  I have no doubt that character exists, but I would be very uneasy thinking that I should or could be the ultimate judge of good character or bad character.  Character is a little like quality.  Many say they know it when they see it but defining it can be very elusive.  If someone lies, cheats, steals, robs, rapes, assaults, abuses others or breaks the law, we may well think that they are a bad character.  On the other hand, a person who is honest, truthful, compassionate, and helps others may well be thought of as a good character.  However, time and circumstances may well render judgements made today as inaccurate in the future.  No one has the insight or knowledge to ever know the goodness or badness of another human being fully.

“We don’t care whether you are Christian or Muslim or Jew or Hindu; all we care is the goodness inside you because only the goodness inside you can make you a good human!” — Mehmet Murat ildan

“We are brothers and sisters not because of the color of our skin but because of what is inside of us.” —- J. Persico

When the TRUTH Will Not Set You Free!  Part 1 of 3 Parts  

12 Jan 2015 3 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Dangerous-LiarsFor the next three weeks, I want to help us find the truth.  Truth has been said to be the most important element in our lives.  Truth is what everyone wants to find.  Thus truth should make a difference in the world, but does it?  We will examine some specific episodes in history in our search for the truth.  I have selected the following ten situations:

  1. The Trial of Socrates
  2. Slavery
  3. The Crusades
  4. The Inquisition
  5. The Extermination of Native and Indigenous Peoples
  6. Reign of Terror
  7. Scottsboro Boys
  8. The Holocaust
  9. The Khmer Rouge
  10. Roman Catholic Sex Abuse Scandals

What do they all have in common?  What does truth have to do with these injustices?  What truths did the perpetrators subscribe to that allowed these travesties of justice to happen?  What truths did the perpetrators fundamentally ignore?  Would the truth even have made a difference?  Are we more liable to listen to “truth” today or is it simply a fiction that we trot out to justify our prejudices, bigotry and murders.  Will it really set us free or is that simply another myth spread by the powerful to emasculate those with less power?  (Listen to in Search of the Truth  by Guy Sweens)

“Historical injustice is ubiquitous in human history. The origins of just about every institution relevant to human political life has a pedigree stained by injustices of various magnitudes. Slavery, genocide, mass expropriation of property, mass internment, indiscriminate killings of civilians and massive political repression are all depressingly familiar features of human history, both in the distant and more recent past.” —- Historical Injustice, Duncan Ivison, University of Sydney in Jon Dryzek, Bonnie Honnig, Anne Philipps (eds) Oxford Handbook to Political Theory (Oxford, OUP, 2006)

I want to briefly explore each of the above injustices.  I apologize for calling these injustices, they deserve a harsher more critical term that that.  For the victims of these “injustices” were slaughtered, maimed, mutilated, tortured, butchered, immolated, hung, gassed, poisoned, executed and stripped of all human dignity.  The words we can use to describe man’s inhumanity to man can never go far enough to convey the “truth.”  I debated whether to start the New Year of 2015 with such a heavy dose of misery and horror but perhaps it is better to start with some thought for creating a better world and recognizing the work that needs to be done.   We are told that all we need is the truth and the world will be a better place. We are constantly urged to seek the truth and to speak the truth.  But what is the truth and what can these injustices tell us about the truth?  Do you dare to see the truth?  Do you have the stomach for the truth?  I have ordered the above list in a rough chronological order.  Let us together examine each one of these horrors to see what truths were behind their execution.  For surely, one fundamental fact is that no human being acts without some truth.  Thus, you may be as curious as I am to see what truths the perpetrators had subscribed to in the implementation of these deeds.  Also, what were the truths that the victims subscribed to?

Keep in mind that we must give perpetrators the benefit of the doubt.  It is possible that they only thought they had the truth and that each of these injustices was not based on actual truth but an incorrect system of beliefs which we shall dutifully avoid calling lies.  Some might say that each of these injustices represented a lapse in truth.  If so, perhaps we can learn the real truth from looking at them more closely and finding out why there was a lapse.

“Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true.” —Swami Vivekananda

These ten injustices range from the death of one man to the death of millions of men and women.  They include the deaths of people from every corner of the earth, every tribe that ever existed and every culture that was ever known.  That is a truth.  But I doubt it is the truth that we seek.  Before we proceed with this exploration, let me warn you.  You may find some truths that you do not want to hear.  What if each injustice in this list was the truth?  What would this tell us about human nature?  Could you look at your fellow human beings and live with this truth?  Do not despair yet, for at this point, I have presented no evidence to show that either truth or false beliefs were behind any of these inequities.  Perhaps, we shall find that truth had nothing to do with them.

“But I suppose the most revolutionary act one can engage in is… to tell the truth.”  ― Howard Zinn,

The Trial of Socrates:

death of socratesSocrates, the wisest man in the world was tried in Athens, the world’s greatest democracy sometime around 400 BCE.  Socrates was tried for corrupting the minds of the Athenian youth.  The truth for Socrates was that he never taught anything (since he did not know anything) but he loved to ask questions to stimulate the thinking of other people.  Socrates was teaching Critical Thinking skills before they were popular.  The truth for his persecutors was that it was too dangerous for the young people of Athens to be questioning their elders.  Socrates did not mount a defense, did not hire canny lawyers, did not plead “not guilty by reason of insanity” and did not blame Athenian society for his plight.

“At first, they’ll only dislike what you say, but the more correct you start sounding the more they’ll dislike you.”   Criss Jami

Much to everyone’s chagrin, Socrates plead guilty as charged.  One might wonder what fears could have brought about the conviction of a man teaching other people to think.  Was it the potential fall of the Athenian Democracy or the current threats that leaders saw mounted to this democracy?  Was Socrates really a threat to democracy?  Is this possibly a truth we have not admitted in our own zeal to export democracy all over the world?  Truth:  Thinking is bad.  Truth:  Following orders is good.  Truth:  He who is in charge decides what is true.

Socrates was given a poison called hemlock and his last words were:  “Crito, we owe a rooster to Asclepius.  Please, don’t forget to pay the debt.”

“Everyone knows perfectly well what truth is – everyone except Pontius Pilate and philosophers.  Truth is the quality of being true, and being true is what some statements are. That is to say, truth is a quality of the propositions which underlie correctly-used statements.” — Bob Stone

Slavery:

slavery in IslamSlavery has existed since time immemorial.  Slavery was known in almost every ancient civilization, and society, including Sumer, Ancient Egypt, Ancient China, the Akkadian Empire, Assyria, Ancient India, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, the Islamic Caliphate, the Hebrew kingdoms in Palestine, and the pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas.  According to Wikipedia:   “Slavery is officially illegal in all countries, but there are still an estimated 20 million to 36 million slaves worldwide.   Mauritania was the last jurisdiction to officially outlaw slavery (in 1981/2007), but about 10% to 20% of its population is estimated to live in slavery.”

Many distinctions and definitions exist regarding types of slavery and conditions related to how slaves were and are still treated, bought and sold.   According to the U.S. State Department, 600,000 to 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders every year for the purpose of sex, servitude or pornography.  More than 70% are female and half are children.  Without going into the various categories of slavery, anyone with a smidgen of morality can see that all slavery is immoral and cruel.  But that is a truth for the slaves.  What was and is the truth for the slave owners and slave traders?

Truth:  We have a right to their labor and even bodies

Truth:  Slaves are inferior creatures and do not deserve to be treated as we would want ourselves to be treated.

Truth:  If it is my slave, you have no business telling me what I can do with his/her labor.

Truth:  My slaves may have had different ideas regarding these “truths” but their ideas do not count.

Truth:  Money made by slavery is more important than the morality of the trade.

“So our definition of truth needs to be much more flexible than Plato, Descartes and other philosophers claim. I would say that a pragmatic theory of truth is closest: that truth is the ‘thing that works’; if some other set of ideas works better, then it is truer.” — Andrew Warren

Will slavery ever come to an end?  Is there a truth to slavery that will enable all to see the inhumanity of it?  What about the truths that the perpetrators have?  Is their truth less valid than the truth of the slaves?  Does anyone care about the slaves’ truths?  Which truth is truer?  When will the truth arrive to set the slaves free?

“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.”  ― Galileo Galilei

The Crusades:

From about 1100 CE to 1300 CE, Europe invaded the Mideast with the purported reason of securing the Holy Land for Christian pilgrims.  Some would say the real reason was conquest while others would say it was purely economic.  According to Wikipedia:

“Pope Urban II promised forgiveness of all sins to whoever took up the cross and joined in the war.  While there were additional motivations for taking up the cross—opportunity for economic or political gain, desire for adventure, and the feudal obligation to follow one’s lord into battle—to become a soldier for Christ was to express total devotion to God.”

crusadeWhile I find the arguments for the wars intriguing, I am not as interested in the motives for conquest as I am in the truths that both sides, Muslims and Christians used in their massacres of each other.  As Ulysses S. Grant noted about the southern sharecroppers who supported the Civil War, it is curious that so many Christians could be induced to fighting for goals that had no material or even spiritual advantage for them.  Of course, one could argue that the “forgiveness” of sins was some type of spiritual advantage.  I would counter that there would have been easier ways to attain this goal rather than risking one’s life.  Did not confession as a Catholic sacrament exist in 1100 CE?  No, if there was a real reason for the crusades, I think as usual we will find it in the truths that motivated both sides.

Christians then and now believe that God is our God and not the God of Islam.  Allah is not Jehovah or Yahweh or I Am.  Allah is some foreign and heretical interpretation of the “real” god who belongs to Christians.  “Allah Be Praised” is not the same as “In God We Trust.”  Another truth is that Muslims had no right to the Holy Lands.  God (The Christian God) gave the Holy lands to the Catholics by way of Abraham, David and those other Jews who were known as the Israelites but who no longer existed back in 1100 CE.  Of course, Jews were scattered all over Europe but the world was not yet interested in regaining the Holy Lands for Jews.  In fact, in another one hundred years or so, we would start an institution to get rid of Jews and eliminate the heresy that was associated with Jewish beliefs (More on the Inquisition later).

So what truths motivated the Muslims to risk life and limb to protect the Holy Land and to stop the Infidels from regaining the center of Christian spiritual life?  I think the term “Infidel” easily answers this question.  Translated the word Infidel means:  “A Person who has no religious faith; an unbeliever.”  Thus, to many Muslims then and now, an unbeliever is a Christian or Jew who does not believe in Mohammed or Allah.  That is the Allah of Islam.  The truth to a Muslim is that Christians are unbelievers and not worthy of respect.  Of course, not all Muslims believe this.  Another motivational truth was that many Muslims in 1100 CE thought it was their land.  They were upset that French, Italian and German Knights thought that they somehow had a right to lands that had been occupied by Arabs since Ismael’s time.  The truth that “this is my land and not your land” has always been a powerful motivator for fighting (More will be said about this when we talk about the Extermination of Indigenous Peoples).

“Truth is not constant. Some beliefs which were held to be true are now considered false, and some for which truth is now claimed may be deemed false in the future, and vice versa. Truth is good for helping us decide how to act, because it serves as a standard for making some sort of sense of a world populated also by half-truths and untruths.”  —- Ray Pearce

The Inquisition:

Galloping on through history we now arrive at the Inquisition, another great idea to come from the Roman Catholics.  How can we stamp out lies, heresies and false truths?  Heresy can be defined as:  “My beliefs or truths are different from your beliefs or truths and since you have more power than I do, my beliefs are wrong and punishable.”   Solution:  Let’s inquire as to the beliefs that potential heretics (Jews, Cathars, Protestants, Muslims, Free Thinkers, intellectuals and many others) might have in respect to what are the true beliefs that we know are true.  Any suspects whose thinking deviates from our truth will be punished until they are repentant.

“Wherefore if forgers or money and other evil-doers are forewith condemned to death by the secular authority, much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated, but even put to death. “ — Thomas Aquinas

Inquisition_torture_03This simple inquiry or Inquisition process was complicated by the unfortunate fact that people lie.   Solution:  We will need to torture them to tell the truth.  Complication:  people who are tortured will also lie and tell you whatever you want to hear.  (See the current US Senate Report 2014 on Torture).  Thus, the suspect is dammed if he tells the truth and dammed if he does not, since he won’t be believed in either case.  If he does tell his truth and it is not the right truth he will be burnt at the stake for being a heretic.  Solution:  Burn all suspected heretics no matter what they say.   Is it any wonder, so many people finally left the Old World and when they came to the New World wanted nothing to do with religion, the Pope or the Catholic Church?

“Discovering the truth will be a hurtful and painful experience when the facts or realities turn out to be different from what is expected. Yet there ought to be no grounds for despair if we accept that the ideal of truth, like all other virtues, can be approached rather than attained. This ideal truth can be glimpsed if we manage to be skeptical, independent and open-minded when presented with the supposed facts and realities.”  —- Ian Rizzo

The Extermination of Native and Indigenous Peoples:

Aborigines, Mayans, Native Americans (Indians), Eskimos, Tibetans, Incas, Ainus, Daurs, Bushmen.  All indigenous people.  All subjected to murder, famine and extermination by more powerful invaders who wanted their land or resources.  There is not an inhabited continent on earth where the indigenous people were not persecuted and their rights and even lives forfeit to the invaders.  There is not a time in history where such persecutions have not occurred. From the first historical records to the most recent news reports of mass tribal exterminations in various parts of the world, we see the truth.  The truth of the invaders and the truth of the exterminated though are not the same.

I have listed the Holocaust in a separate category of injustice.  Many historians would see the systematic genocide of the Holocaust as perhaps belonging in my category of Extermination.  We can add numerous examples of genocide to the above list.  The Bosnian Serb massacres, the Rwandan murders, the Armenian massacres, the Cambodian massacres might also fit in the Extermination category but in my scheme of things, I would include them in the Holocaust category since I believe and will show that they are based on a different set of “truths.”  The truths for the extermination of indigenous people as defined by the invaders are:

Truth:  They don’t need the land and stand in the way of progress.

Truth:  Might makes right.  Since we are mightier we can simply take their property.

Truth:  They will never fit in with our way of doing things.

“This unfortunate race, whom we had been taking so much pains to save and to civilize, have by their unexpected desertion and ferocious barbarities justified extermination and now await our decision on their fate.” — Thomas Jefferson

“The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are.” — L. Frank Baum (Author of the Wizard of Oz)

native_american_indian_six06Looking at the truth from the point of view of those due to be annihilated provides a different perspective on the truth.  We see the White truth that Indians are lazy, barbaric and that their culture stands in the way of progress.  A White truth is that the problems with Indian culture far outweighed any inherent value in their way of life.  They are immoral, cruel and uncivilized and worse they refuse to adopt the “White man’s ways.”  Heck, we gave them reservations, taught them to speak English, sent them to schools to learn to read and write and even sold them booze and now they have casinos.  Truth:  Nothing seems to make them happy.

However, the voices from Native Americans seem to present a different truth:

“Before our white brothers arrived to make us civilized men, we didn’t have any kind of prison. Because of this, we had no delinquents.  Without a prison, there can be no delinquents.  We had no locks or keys and therefore among us there were no thieves.  When someone was so poor that he couldn’t afford a horse, a tent or a blanket, he would, in that case, receive it all as a gift.  We were too uncivilized to give great importance to private property.  We didn’t know any kind of money and consequently, the value of a human being was not determined by his wealth.  We had no written laws laid down, no lawyers, no politicians, therefore we were not able to cheat and swindle one another.  We were really in bad shape before the white men arrived and I don’t know how to explain how we were able to manage without these fundamental things that (so they tell us) are so necessary for a civilized society.”  —John (Fire) Lame Deer, Sioux Lakota – 1903-1976

“I am poor and naked, but I am the chief of the nation. We do not want riches but we do want to train our children right.  Riches would do us no good.  We could not take them with us to the other world. We do not want riches.  We want peace and love.” — Red Cloud

Do Red Cloud’s words sound familiar?  Have you ever heard of a man named Jesus Christ who said:

“Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.” — Luke 6:30

“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”  — Mark 8:36

“A new command I give you: Love one another.  As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” — John 13:34

It would seem like Red Cloud knew more about the “true” teachings of Jesus then the thousands of Christian missionaries who went to Asia, Africa, South America, North America and elsewhere to teach the pagan barbarian primitives how to be good Christians before they were slaughtered.  Much merit to these missionaries since in the Christian theology, you cannot get to heaven unless you are baptized.  It would be simply awful if these indigenous peoples, whom we planned to rape, rob and murder could not get to heaven.  What do you suppose they will say to their murderers when the murderers arrive in heaven?  Egad!  I just had a terrible thought.  What if all the conquerors and murderers are going to hell?

Let’s wrap this up.  Thanks for your patience.  I never thought this blog would get this long. I suddenly realized it was almost beyond too long and I have decided to break it into two parts.  When I started this blog, it was as much an exploration for me as it may have been for you. I truly wondered if I would find the Truth.  I wondered if a clear set of precepts might emerge which would better help me to understand humanity and how we can allow such injustices to occur.

I thought that by exploring the worst injustices or at least a variety of the worst injustices in history, a light would inevitably shine on the Truth.  Everyone talks about the Truth.  Everyone says they are looking for the Truth.  We all know that the “Truth will set us free.”  Free from what though?  I am more confused than ever.  Thus, the search will continue next week.  You deserve the Truth, if you can handle it.  The problem seems to be in finding it.  In my next blog, we will look at the next five atrocities on my list to see if they will shed more light on the Truth.   We have invested too much time to quit our quest now.

“The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear.” — Herbert Agar

Time for Questions:

Have you found the Truth?  What is your Truth?  What keeps us from the Truth?  Is there really a Truth to be found?  How do you know?  What if there was no truth?

Life is just beginning.

“We must pass through the darkness, to reach the light.”   ― Albert Pike

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