I have a few things I'm prepared to talk about in this post (and, don't worry, sexist remarks isn't one of them). Firstly, I know I mentioned this briefly in class, but it's really interesting to me that so many events in history have been perpetuated by an idea of "divine right" or "manifest destiny", and how every time it has led to detrimental circumstances. This idea isn't one of comparatively archaic ideal either, it was but some 7 or 8 years ago that our country invaded the country of Iraq, with similar rhetoric. This considered, I think we can all agree that a divine right alone is not reason enough to invade a country. If an agenda has to be justified by divine right--knowing that such ideals are fairly arbitrary in the realm of politics--we have absolute room for questioning the particular policymakers' ulterior motives, especially in a country in which we're allowed and able to do so. Admittedly, you all most likely understand this concept and accept it, it's just something I've been dying to articulate. My conclusion to this point may be hasty but I think that divine right has always been on the wrong side of history, just as racism and segregation have.
Professor Conte mentioned The Natives Land Act in our discussion and some parallels on Native American Reservations were made. Once again, we all agree this system was corrupt, created grievances and tensions, at which point these feelings of tension or grief were born into ideas and then into action (i.e. ANC), and what I find most compelling about the colonial history of South Africa is the huge amounts of paranoia and general mistrust in the settlers of the natives. They came to the continent with a supposed intention to "civilize" it with the word of God or what have you, but remained in a state of absolute suspicion. This is obviously a psychological question, but I can't help but wonder how their mistrust didn't resonate with them at all. That they didn't stop and think to themselves "maybe my mistrust stems, not from a legitimate wrong done to me by these people, but the polarization between my rhetoric and my action". Mostly to the fault of my obsession with human intrigue, I must speculate at these instances and conclude that these settlers were trying to, literally, shove the native people of South Africa under the rug, by pushing them into colonies of extreme rural area and little resource just to allow spare themselves the aesthetic effects of having to witness the grievances of these people.
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Carly! I'm so glad that you wrote this post. I completely agree with you. I know me and you talked about the whole manifest destiny thing in class and about the invasion of Iraq. It is strange how the U.S., among other people, seem to have a particularly difficult time looking into their own history as they go about their way. This is manifest destiny all over again, but not for land this time--for democracy. For some reason, we feel we have this 'divine right' or duty to spread democracy to every corner of the world--even if it means we have to do it at gunpoint.
ReplyDeleteThe division of religion seems to also have a recurring role in the relationships between peoples. The settlers came hoping to 'civilize' the people with the word of God as Carly said. Now, we aren't necessarily sending missionaries out to the middle east to civilize them..but many Christians might ignorantly argue the civility of Muslims. and vice versa. In both of these religions, there are strong veins of peace and love for fellow men. It is sad how much hate can blur the views we have of one another.