My Beauty Best Teacher

Image by Martin_Heigan via Flickr

Ochuko Tonukari writes:

There has been, of late, enormous interest in the study of nature conservation by traditional societies. The protection of patches of forest as sacred groves and of several tree species as sacred trees belong to the religion-based conservation ethos of ancient people all over the world. ...

According to a very elderly and learned Urhobo man, “the concept of the sacredness of trees, from the Urhobo historical past enters into every facet of Urhobo traditional religion. It rests on the earliest conceptions of the unity of life in nature, in the sense of communion and fellowship with the divine centre and source of life. The sacred tree is said to be deeply rooted in the primitive religious ideas of earliest Urhobo people. In the history of Urhobo religious evolution, it lies behind the primitive era.”
As one Urhobo traditionalist noted, "If you come upon a grove of old trees that have lifted up their crowns above the common height and shut out the light of the sky by the darkness of their interlacing boughs, you feel that there is a spirit in the place, so lofty is the wood, so lone the spot, so wondrous the thick unbroken shade."

...[continue reading]

Hat Tip Toyin Adepoju!

Tunde Obadina writes about the myth of Neo-colonialism "...I do not know how economic non-rationality can possibly result in development, which occurs in the material world and not the spiritual domain. Development is not abstract art, where any combination of brush strokes and colours can pass as a completed picture. What we have seen in Africa is a tragedy in which intellectual opposition to the West has prevented African thinkers from developing a coherent ideology for change. Ironically, in its penchant to criticise colonialism and defend the integrity of traditional African society, African political and economic thought has been trapped by its own myths.
The search for an alternative model continues, but it is unlikely that one will be found. It is an uncomfortable truth that if the objective is to improve the material conditions of the people, then most of the institutions and values introduced into Africa during colonialism are more conducive to modernisation than are many traditional ones. Modern institutions and principles such as representative democracy, judiciary, banking, factories, provide more effective means for meeting the new desires of Africans than what existed in pre-colonial societies. Every society, whether capitalist or socialist, that has developed has used the same set of institutions. What differentiate modern societies are the ethics and rules applied in the operation of the institutions. Leaving aside variances in ideology and cultural style, there is a single modern civilisation in the world..."

via Africa Economic Analysis

In Pambazuka Ronald Elly Wanda makes a case for re-instituting the indigenous institution of traditional jurisprudence:

Ronald Elly Wanda

Since flag independence in the 1960s, African governments have been in a rush to normalise authoritarian rule and human rights abuses under the auspices of maendeleo (development) and economic growth. A short stroll in any African village today confirms that the globalised Western culture of justice delivery or innovation that most African leaders seem to trust has not improved the well-being of our local communities or delivered justice for them. On the contrary, it has often blocked viable indigenous innovation of cultures and suffocated African justice. Here in East Africa, cultures of innovation have largely accrued from the jua kali (informal), and not the formal sector. Indigenous cultural innovations have also been at the centre of development in most highly indebted poor countries (HIPC), such as in Uganda or its slightly richer sister Kenya, notably because of wanainchi (citizens) exceptionally limited access to capital.
As such, when it comes to delivering justice in Africa, we ought to revise our priorities by doing away with existing preconceived ideas that might have worked within the European cultural setting. They have clearly not worked in the face of the socio-cultural heritages of African societies, and neither has the opposite, the Africanisation of Western concepts of justice delivery.

More here

There is an appealing logic to the latest multimillion-dollar aid package for Africa announced last week by George Bush and Tony Blair. It is supposed to help rob terrorists of a breeding ground and, in a humanitarian spirit, relieve the continent of some of its misery. But anyone who has followed the fate of Africa over recent decades might wonder: Why should these millions of dollars have any better effect than the billions that have gone before? Why does the West feel the need to keep pouring money into Africa? One answer has to do with the underlying conventional wisdom, which blames Africa's miseries on the delayed effects of Western colonialism.
['Africa Unchained']
Yet as the decades pass it becomes apparent that, although there is some truth to the claim, there is more to Africa's problems than that: A solution will require radical changes in the way Africa is governed and in the way its economies function. George Ayittey makes such an argument in "Africa Unchained" (Palgrave, 483 pages, $35), a superb analysis of the continent and its recent ordeals................
................Colonialism plays a part in Mr. Ayittey's account, too, but in a different way. For him, the continent's problems stem from the characteristics of the governing elite. In "Africa Unchained," he draws a sharp distinction between African governments -- generally corrupt, socialist, centralizing -- and the informal sectors of the African economy, which the elite's misdeeds have impoverished. At independence in the 1960s, Africa was a net exporter of food; now it imports $18 billion of food per annum.
But where did the elites pick up their bad habits? Mr. Ayittey describes in detail the economics of precolonial African societies. Property was held in common among the extended family but not by the community as a whole, while economic activity was undertaken for profit, with prices set by hard bargaining. Government operated through consultation, with chiefs exercising power only after full discussion with a council of elders. Thus the modern pattern of one-party or one-person rule, state ownership and state controls over prices and distribution is an import from Europe, not an African tradition.
Free Institutions
Mr. Ayittey's claim that democracy and free markets, not autocracy and communal ownership, are a legacy of Africa's own past is important, since it provides a rationale for Africans to move toward a system that can work. It presents a striking parallel to the work of parliamentarian historians at the time of the English Civil War, who traced English civil liberties back before Magna Carta to the Anglo-Saxon "Witanagemot" -- a gathering of tribal eminences -- and to the free institutions ascribed by Tacitus to the Germans of the first century. These historians gave their liberal cause legitimacy; Mr. Ayittey's researches may give a similar legitimacy to free institutions in Africa.
As for what those institutions might be, Mr. Ayittey calls for independent judiciaries, independent media and, not least, independent central banks. He would like to see power devolve as much as possible to Africa's traditional leaders -- at the village and regional level -- who are closer to the people they rule and less able to escape abroad from the penalties for corruption and malfeasance. He notes that Africa's governments today too often divert what money they have -- from aid or from oil and mineral revenues -- to military spending, wasteful prestige projects and tax-haven bank accounts. Here, too, local control would help. Aid in particular -- Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair take note -- needs to be targeted locally and regionally, rather than nationally, and it needs to be dispensed much more quickly than it is now, and in much smaller amounts.
What chance is there of such reforms actually happening? Less than one might wish. Part of the problem still comes from the West. When the principal cadres of Westerners dealing with Africa are aid agencies, charities and NGOs, rather than the financiers and businessmen who predominate in India and China, one has to expect that Africans, elite and otherwise, will be exposed to a high level of economic illiteracy.
Still, capital and investment will not flow toward Africa until it has done more to shrink the power of its governments and provide havens, secure against tax, inflation and expropriation, for the savings of its striving peoples. And in this regard Western attempts at institution-building will be of little help. It is for Africans to build their own models of governance. Luckily, as Mr. Ayittey shows, they have a proud tradition to draw upon -- and never mind the colonizers.
Mr. Martin Hutchinson is the author of "Great Conservatives" (Academica Press).

From Mywage Madalitso Kateta in conversation with Muza Gondwe:

Last born in a family of three children and leading a successful single life, Gondwe believes that the social pressure on girls to be raised for marriage and child bearing has been a major cause of many young girls’ academic failure.“The general feeling in many African societies is that girls have to be raised to be married and have children. However, the world is changing and we need to move away from this perception that sees women as baby-making machines,” she said.

Continuing she indicated that:

“We are living in a changed society and we have to accept the reality that marriage is not for everybody. We have to move away from cultural and traditional principles that girls have to marry and have children, to a society where girls are able to make their own decisions based on what they aspire to be in life,” she said.

More here

Unlike liberals, whose main motivation seems to be to control other people, my main motivation is to understand other people, and thereby understand the world better. Several times in my blog I have wrote about my attempts to understand how liberals think, and my attempts are starting to converge.

In The Religion of the Democrats I wrote:

The modern Democrat party feels that people are trapped in an unfair and unjust material world. In churches they blame a lot of people for this, and their anger and bitterness is felt quite clearly. They frequently point fingers at God himself, who unjustly and unfairly did this to certain groups and races... They frequently reject the traditional Christian teachings of God, and try to go over his head to find some greater power than him. To Democrats, there is some higher power yet than even God- The People, The World, The Globe- they call it by many names, but the idea is the same, that there is some remote and powerful being out there who is higher than God... Democrats today believe that man is good and that the world is evil- that man was a good and decent person but was ambushed and put in a nation or world where bad things occur. It isn’t man’s fault, it isn’t any groups fault- no one is at fault, since man is good. The fault lies with the world, which must be changed from its fallen state..."

In Book Review: The Man Who Was Thursday I wrote:

...their ideas about economic suicide for no reason, their dislike of labeling things right and wrong, and their views on life and mark them as the modern Democratic Party. And at the center of the inner circle there is a man who speaks to applauding crowds and says pleasing phrases, but he is under no illusions, and his actions have terrible consequences for our great nation...

In Stonehenge and the Descent into Barbarianism I noted that:

...As government becomes increasingly powerful in Europe and America and we move father away from our Founder's conservative views, more and more often we are seeing evidence of Western societies slide back to barbarianism, and this celebration by hippies, leftists, liberals, and pagans at Stonehenge is yet another example. Pagan religion is becoming increasingly popular and accepted in our society. I see it most in the numbers of people who openly and proudly proclaim that they are not Christian, and also are the most fervent and devout believers in man-made-caused-one-way-global-warming-solved-by-government-power. They now worship the Green God. Other people, in an effort to be fair and politically correct to everyone, have decided to worship every god, embracing a polytheistic view of the world, whereby they pray to whatever god they think will help them the most. Animal rights activists worship animals and many people worship men (like Obama)- paganism is on the rise, not decline, in our society...

In The First Commandment I really noticed liberals religion:

...In my view, this commandment is fairly easy to understand- believe in God, believe in his power, and worship him and no other gods. Not only that, one should also refuse to 'worship' other things- money, sex, success, beauty, status, etc. Also, this commandment further prohibits one from holding false beliefs about God- in other words, don't believe in a false or incorrect God... society increasingly promotes worship of a new God- Mother Earth. The increasingly worship of this God, increasingly at odds with the God of the Bible and Christians, is a shocking breach of the 1st Commandment... A moral society is a just one, and we are losing our morality- we are attacking our morality, and it all begins with worshipping of other gods...

Today my brother emailed me another piece of the puzzle. Albert Mohler, in this article, starts putting the pieces to the puzzle together after reading a piece by Howard P. Kainz, which reminds him of something that he had read earlier by J. Gresham Machen.

The radical idea (for 1920) is that evangelical Christianity and its liberal rival are, in reality, two very different religions. Oh, I realize that you might not believe that liberalism is a religion, but does it have dogmas? A group of writings that you have to read? People who 'know' the ideas better than others and are accepted speakers on any liberal subject? Observances or holidays that we have to celebrate? Parades or rallies? Do liberals get all frothy and upset when someone utters a heresy like "affirmative action is racist" or "global warming isn't real"? What does 'future man' look like to a liberal- going to heaven, or a heaven on Earth? Liberalism is a religion.

I want to caution you that I agree with the author- "not all liberals are committed to this religious vision of liberalism... conservatives may find common cause and common ground with these non-religiously committed liberals."

In order to make this world a better place, you should be aware that there are people out there that BELIEVE on faith alone that mankind must overcome 'religious superstition' by means of Reason, that empirical science can and will answer all the questions about the world, and that the human race, by invalidating and disregarding Christian traditions, can and will achieve perfectibility.

Excerpts from George Ayittey's Indigenous African Institutions:

....Indeed, Africa is one of the homes of advanced legal institutions. Perhaps the most famous of these institutions are the courts still found among the Bantu states of the southern third of the continent...Disputes arise in any family or society with regards to property, and African societies were no exception. To resolve these disputes, various mechanisms and institutions were created. However within the traditional African modus operandi, there was an additional unique dimension. Individual attachment to lineages and latent groups of solidarity always carried the potential risk of transforming personal disputes into broader group conflicts...[continue reading]

via Cheetah Index

Last week on TV I watched for the uncountable time The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. This movie was my favorite out of the three (although The Bridge of Khazad-dûm in one and the Battle of the Pelennor Fields in three rival it). Although I love the movies, just like I loved the original Star Wars, there are some parts of the movie I don't like, and so I was glad to find a LOTR companion to match the excellent piece that the Weekly Standard's Jonathan V. Last put out on the Star Wars called The Case for the Empire. It is high time that the LOTR was analyzed in a similar manner, and I think that this piece by Salon's David Brin does just that. Do I really believe this stuff? Probably not, but it is fun reading. Enjoy!

J.R.R. Tolkien -- enemy of progress: "The Lord of the Rings" is lovingly crafted, seductive -- and profoundly backward-looking. Why not look at things through the Dark Lord's eye for a change? Here are the best parts (only about 1/3 of the whole article)- I highly suggest you read the whole thing here:

Of course there is much more to this work than mere fantasy escapism. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote his epic -- including its prequel, "The Hobbit" -- during the dark middle decades of the 20th century, a time when modernity appeared to have failed in one spectacle of technologically amplified bloodshed after another.

LOTR clearly reflected this era. Only, in contrast to the real world, Tolkien's portrayal of "good" resisting a darkly threatening "evil" offered something sadly lacking in the real struggles against Nazi or Communist tyrannies -- a role for individual champions. His elves and hobbits and über-human warriors performed the same role that Lancelot and Merlin and Odysseus did in older fables, and that superheroes still do in comic books. Through doughty Frodo, noble Aragorn and the ethereal Galadriel, he proclaimed the paramount importance -- above nations and civilizations -- of the indomitable Romantic hero.

Millions of people who live in a time of genuine miracles -- in which the great-grandchildren of illiterate peasants may routinely fly through the sky, roam the Internet, view far-off worlds and elect their own leaders -- slip into delighted wonder at the notion of a wizard hitchhiking a ride from an eagle. Many even find themselves yearning for a society of towering lords and loyal, kowtowing vassals.

Wouldn't life seem richer, finer if we still had kings? If the guardians of wisdom kept their wonders locked up in high wizard towers, instead of rushing onto PBS the way our unseemly "scientists" do today? Weren't miracles more exciting when they were doled out by a precious few, instead of being commercialized, bottled and marketed to the masses for $1.95?

Putting aside cultural superficialities, on every continent society quickly shaped itself into a pyramid with a few well-armed bullies at the top -- accompanied by some fast-talking guys with painted faces or spangled cloaks, who curried favor by weaving stories to explain why the bullies should remain on top.

Only something exceptional started happening. Bit by bit, the elements began taking shape for a new social and intellectual movement, one finally capable of challenging the alliance of warrior lords, priests, bards and secretive magicians.

In this conflict, J.R.R. Tolkien stood firmly for the past. Calling the scientific worldview "soul-less," he joined Keats and Shelley, Sir Walter Scott, Henry James and many European-trained philosophers in spurning the modern emphasis on pragmatic experimentation, production, universal literacy, progress, cooperative enterprise, democracy, city life and flattened social orders.

In contrast to these "sterile" pursuits, Romantics extolled the traditional, the personal, the particular, the subjective, the rural, the hierarchical and the metaphorical.

By the turn of the century, Romanticism was fast losing all vestige of its initial empathy for the concerns of common folk. One solitary artist -- or entertainer or lost prince or angry poet -- loomed larger in importance, by far, than a thousand craft workers, teachers or engineers (a value system shared today by the mythic engine of Hollywood). Just as in Homer's time, 10,000 foot soldiers mattered less than Achilles' heel.

This fits the very plot of "Lord of the Rings," in which the good guys strive to preserve and restore as much as they can of an older, graceful and "natural" hierarchy, against the disturbing, quasi-industrial and vaguely technological ambience of Mordor, with its smokestack imagery and manufactured power rings that can be used by anybody, not just an elite few. (Recall the scene where Saruman turns away from the "good" side and immediately starts ripping up trees, replacing them with mining pits and smoky forges. The anti-industrial imagery could not be more explicit.)

Consider the rings. Those man-made wonders are deemed cursed, damning anyone who dares to use them, especially those nine normal humans who tried to rise up, using tools to equalize and then usurp the rightful powers of their betters -- the High Elves.

The nine Ringwraiths aren't just evil henchmen and cardboard monsters. In my opinion, they are among the most important figures of the epic. Tolkien himself calls them tragic figures and dwells on their background. These fallen mortals -- men who were hauled into service to the "dark side" -- can be looked upon as cautionary figures, conveying the universal lesson that "power corrupts."

On that much we can all agree. But I think there's more to the Ringwraiths. To me, they distill the classical Greek notion of hubris -- a concept that Romantics often embrace -- the idea that pain and damnation await any mortal whose ambition aims too high. Don't try putting on the trappings or emblems or powers that rightfully belong to your betters. Above all, don't try to decipher and redistribute mysteries. In other words, exactly the same morality tale preached in "Star Wars." Romanticism has come full circle, now unctuously praising the very same lords -- the über-men -- that it started out bravely opposing.

Were any orcs or "dark men" offered coalition positions in King Aragorn's cabinet, at the end of the War of the Ring? Was Mordor given a benign Marshall Plan? I think not.

In fact, J.R.R. Tolkien was himself far more critical of the situation portrayed in his universe than any but a few of his myriad readers ever chose to notice. Certainly more self-critical than most of his contemporary readers or those watching the new film trilogy.

In several places, Tolkien openly stated his authorial judgment that the elves who made the Three Rings were ultimately to blame, having set the stage for tragedy in Middle Earth. They made their own rings (preceding Sauron's One Ring) in order to control the world, stopping time and preventing change, forbidding anything to die and decay and thus blocking the potential for new growth. In an oft-quoted letter, Tolkien wrote:

"They wanted to have their cake and eat it: to live in the mortal historical Middle Earth because they had become fond of it ... and so tried to stop its change and history, stop its growth, keep it as a pleasaunce." There are moments scattered throughout LOTR when Tolkien seems to be warning that Romanticism can lead one down the road to genocide. He was disturbed to see the Nazis, for example, embrace many of the same Nordic mythic stories and symbols that he used as source material.

In other books, like "The Silmarillion," Tolkien went deeper into this self-exploration, even going so far as to cast an analytical eye upon the elvish hierarchs of Middle Earth, in much the same way that Isaac Asimov reevaluated his Second Foundation and the meddlesome-patronizing robots of his famed science fictional universe. (This is the kind of self-examination the "Star Wars" cosmos desperately needs, alas, while there's still time.)

Indeed, many academics have cited the obvious parallel between the retreat of the High Elves in LOTR -- who abandon Middle Earth to return "west across the sea" -- and the dissolution of the British Empire that began with the emancipation of India about the same time that Tolkien was writing his epic. In fairness, J.R.R.T. did not rail against this change: He saw it as regrettable but inevitable -- like the end of his mythical Third Age, an approaching time of iron, when aloofly noble figures like Elrond and Galadriel must go back whence they came.

But those self-critiques never had the widespread readership or influence of the original LOTR. And ultimately, Tolkien could never bring himself to cross the gap that another Oxbridge don was writing about at roughly the same time -- the infamous "two cultures" gulf that C.P. Snow mapped between the world of science and the world of the arts.

Try as he might, and even confronted with the blatant Romantic excesses of Nazism, Tolkien could not escape his own deep conviction that democratic enlightenment and modernity made up the greater evil. That hated trend, he feared, would ruin all the beauty that he found in tradition. In aristocratic-mystical hierarchies. In the ways of the past.

The urge to crush some demonized enemy resonates deeply within us, dating from ages far earlier than feudalism. Hence, the vicarious thrill we feel over the slaughter of orc foot soldiers at Helm's Deep. Then again as Ents flatten even more goblin grunts at Saruman's citadel, taking no prisoners, never sparing a thought for all the orphaned orclings and grieving widorcs. And again at Minas Tirith, and again at the Gondor Docks and again ... Well, they're only orcs, after all.

Lev Grossman made a similar point in a recent Time Magazine article, when he asked, "Where are the women? Peter Jackson filled out Liv Tyler's role for the movies (it's much less prominent in Tolkien's version), but the Fellowship is still as much a boys' club as Augusta National."

Let's not ignore but instead openly acknowledge the underlying racism and belief in aristocracy that J.R.R. Tolkien wove into the books, without even much attempt at subtlety. Nor do I much blame him. He couldn't help it, coming from the imperialist and class-ridden culture that raised him.

Moreover, the characters whom the reader comes to know best -- Frodo, Sam and even the king-in-waiting, Aragorn -- are themselves not very snooty or racist. Aragorn has an easygoing, common touch -- much like Luke Skywalker, the only unpatronizing Jedi. The snootiest and most relentlessly aristocratic characters in LOTR stand off in the wings -- for example, the preachy, secretive and patronizing elf-lords Elrond and Galadriel, coaxing maximum effort from their allies while letting others do the fighting for them. (I'd point out endless parallels with a fellow named Yoda, but that would stir up too many hornets at once!)

Obsession with either past or future can almost define a civilization. Worldwide, most cultures believed in some lost golden age when people knew more, mused loftier thoughts and were closer to the gods -- but then fell from grace. Under this dour but recurrent worldview, men and women of a later, coarser era can only look back with envy, hearkening to remnants of ancient wisdom. Recognize this motif? It drenches every page of "Lord of the Rings." It is the old classic, the eternal verity -- the worst of all human clichés.

Only a few societies ever dared to contradict this dogma of nostalgia. Our own scientific West, with its impudent notion of progress, brashly relocated any "golden age" to the future, something we might work toward, a human construct for our grandchildren to achieve with craft, sweat and good will.My point? Well, LOTR is obviously an account written after the Ring War ended, long ago. Right? An account created by the victors.