Worldview supremacy
by Marc Ambler
Photo stockxchg
It is interesting to observe the quandary of former European colonies where a western
culture prevails, in handling the status of indigenous groups. Countries such as
Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the USA and South Africa spend fortunes supporting
indigenous people as cultures separate from the rest of the population. Very often
these communities become cesspits of alcoholism, drugs, molestation and abuse. Governments
scratch their heads and pour ever-increasing amounts of money at the problems without
ever solving them, it seems.
Those citizens of such countries that are integrated into the general society often
cannot understand why these indigenous people are not set the same standards as
the rest of the population; in other words, ‘Take your opportunity to get
an education, work hard and provide for yourself and your family.’
Society as a whole seems to treat these communities and cultures with a different
yardstick than that we apply to our own peers and children.1 If our society truly believes in the equality of
human beings in western democracies, why does it do this? The very condescension
inherent in this attitude seems at odds with the modern world’s disavowal
of racism.
What these humanists had arrogantly failed to see and accept was that the society
and culture they inherited and valued was built, not on skin colour, but on the
Christian worldview.
I suggest the answer lies in the limits of people, constrained within the naturalistic,
evolutionary mindset, to evaluate or ‘rank’ a culture, practice or belief.
The only options are to believe one culture associated with a particular ‘race’
to be superior or more advanced than another (politically incorrect today), or else
that it is of equal value and merit and therefore demanding preservation and ‘special
treatment’. The former was the evolutionary way of thinking in western culture
for probably 150 years before WWII. Western humanist men and woman saw an obvious
superiority in their cultures when compared with indigenous cultures in the lands
they colonized. The rule of law, rights of the common man, protection of women and
children, scientific and medical advances, democratic practices of government, education
standards and quality of life all exhibited obvious superiority to the lack of many
or all of these things they observed in indigenous communities. They concluded that
as these benefits of Western society seemed primarily associated with white skin
colour, that whites were further along the evolutionary path than various other
racial groups (such notions were already in existence prior to Darwin, whose grandfather
already published a fully-fledged theory of evolution). The ‘white supremacy’
that has so plagued western society for 200 years was born. Within the mythical
evolutionary paradigm, it would have been difficult to arrive at any other conclusion.
What these humanists had arrogantly failed to see and accept was that the society
and culture they inherited and valued was built, not on skin colour, but on the
Christian worldview. The fact that this worldview was primarily associated with
those of less pigmented skin colour was a result of the providence of history during
the last few hundred years. This, and the fact that it had previously been predominant
in darker skin cultures of the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, was lost
on them.
Photo Wikipedia
Jürgen Habermas
The German philosopher Jürgen Habermas has written, ‘Christianity has
functioned for the normative self-understanding of modernity as more than a mere
precursor or a catalyst. Egalitarian universalism, from which sprang the ideas of
freedom and social solidarity, of an autonomous conduct of life and emancipation,
of the individual morality of conscience, human rights, and democracy, is the direct
heir to the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy,
substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation
and reinterpretation. To this day, there is no alternative to it. And in the light
of the current challenges of a postnational constellation, we continue to draw on
the substance of this heritage. Everything else is just idle postmodern talk.’2
Individuals and societies reap what they sow and the benefits of Judeo-Christian
values reached their apex in the 300–400 years after the Reformation. Those
of us who inherited this superior (though not perfect and fast disappearing) culture
do not have our skin colour to thank, but the grace of God and the convictions of
many Christian preachers, politicians, lawyers and laymen that took God at His Word.
With this framework and way of thinking, they built the foundations, sometimes with
their lives.3
This heritage is fast withering away and may disappear altogether. It may even become
primarily associated with people of other shades of skin colouring4 and bring the same benefits to those cultures as
it brought to protestant Europe and from there to other European countries, the
colonies and beyond. Its influence is not genetic but lies in the realm of ideas
and beliefs and therefore has no physical boundaries.
Unfortunately, both the Christian worldview, as well as the worldview of philosophic
naturalism/materialism which predominates today, arrived in many of these places
at roughly the same time. And the arrogance and greed of the latter brought devastating
consequences in many instances. The evolution-inspired idea of supremacy based on
race reached its destructive climax in Hitler’s Germany. The world has rightly
recoiled from it since then, but is now left in a sociological vacuum, unable to
determine the relative value of beliefs and practices.
Supremacy is a politically incorrect notion today but ideas have consequences and
the greatest, noblest of ideas given us in God’s Word, resulted in the greatest,
temporal benefits to mankind (besides the eternal benefits). They were the result
of a worldview derived directly from the ‘big picture’ given in the
Bible. The fact that this worldview was primarily but not exclusively associated
with a particular group over the past few hundred years is of no more significance
than the predominance of a certain colour of clothing in a crowd on any given day.
Further reading
Related resources
References
- This does not mean, of course, that it is easy for individuals
within those indigenous communities to simply take that advice and advance their
cause. Dysfunctional cultures/communities impact the lives of individuals and can
often impact their ability to benefit from such things as educational opportunities
the rest of us take for granted. Much of the money spent on such communities is
often squandered on bureaucracy, and despite the need to escape from the ‘victim’
mentality, there is always the reality of discriminatory attitudes, in a self-perpetuating
cycle. Return to text.
-
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jürgen_Habermas
Return to text.
- An increasing number of academics, among them non-Christians,
are today willing to concede that the advances of modern science and technology
would not have been possible without the way of thinking provided by Christianity.
return to text.
- We all have the same brown-black skin colouring chemical—melanin—only
differing amounts of it, leading to different shades of the same colour, essentially.
Return to text.
Published: 4 March 2008(GMT+10)
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