O Progresso Da Civilização

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Pessoal... Leiam... só espero que possam ler Inglês... pois para traduzir precisava de dedicar a vida a isto!

 

George Orwell, who was a very wise man, wrote: “Who controls the past controls the future. And who controls the present controls the past.” In other words, those who dominate our society are in a position to write our histories. And if they can do that, they can decide ourfutures. That is why the telling of the Columbus story is important.

 

 

When I began to write my P e o p l e ’s History, I decided I must learn about Columbus. I had already concluded that I did not want to write just another overview of American history—I knew my point of view would be different. I was going to write about the United States from the point of view of those people who had been largely neglected in the history books: the indigenous Americans, the black slaves, the women, the working people, whether native or immigrant.

I wanted to tell the story of the nation’s industrial progress from the standpoint, not of Rockefeller and Carnegie and Vanderbilt, but of the people who worked in their mines, their oil fields, who lost their limbs or their lives building the railroads.

I wanted to tell the story of wars, not from the standpoint of generals and presidents, not from the standpoint of those military heroes whose statues you see all over this country, but through the eyes of the G.I.s, or through the eyes of “the enemy.” Yes, why not look at the Mexican Wa r, that great military triumph of the United States, from the viewpoint of the Mexicans?

 

And so, how must I tell the story of Columbus? I concluded, I must see him through the eyes of the people who were here when he arrived, the people he called “Indians” because he thought he was in A s i a .

Well, they left no memoirs, no histories.

Their culture was an oral culture, not a written one. Besides, they had been wiped out in a few decades after Columbus’ arrival. So I was compelled to turn to the next best thing: the Spaniards who were on the scene at the time. First, Columbus himself. He had kept a journal.

His journal was revealing. He described the people who greeted him when he landed in the Bahamas—they were Arawak Indians, sometimes called Tainos—and told how they waded out into the sea to greet him and his men, who must have looked and sounded like people from another world, and brought them gifts of various kinds.

He described them as peaceable, gentle, and said: “They do not bear arms, and do not know them for I showed them a sword—they took it by the edge and cut themselves.”

 

Throughout his journal, over the next months, Columbus spoke of the native Americans with what seemed like admiring awe: “They are the best people in the world and above all the gentlest—without knowledge of what is evil—nor do they murder or steal...they love their neighbors as themselves and they have the sweetest talk in the world...always laughing.”

 

Só para provar o meu ponto, o que é natural é as pessoas viverem em paz, principalmente quando vivem em harmonia com a natureza e não a destroem...,. destruido os seus proprios recursos.

 

And in a letter he wrote to one of his Spanish patrons, Columbus said: “They are very simple and honest and exceedingly liberal with all they have, none of them refusing anything he may possess when he is asked for it. They exhibit great love toward all others in prefer - ence to themselves.” But then, in the midst of all this, in his journal, Columbus writes: “They would make fine servants. With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Yes, this was how Columbus saw the Indians—not as hospitable hosts, but as “servants,” to “do whatever we want.”

 

Agora podemos começar a compreender os herois que nos impoem na escola.

Os herois da escravidão.

 

And what did Columbus want? This is not hard to determine. In the first two weeks of journal entries, there is one word that recurs 75 times: GOLD.

In the standard accounts of Columbus what is emphasized again and again is his religious feeling, his desire to convert the natives to Christianity, his reverence for the Bible. Yes, he was concerned about God. But more about Gold. Just one additional letter. His was a limited alphabet. Yes, all over the island of Hispaniola, where he, his brothers, his men, spent most of their time, he erected crosses. But also, all over the island, they built gallows—340 of them by the year 1500. Crosses and gallows—that deadly historic juxtaposition.

 

Eles eram livres da mente mas tinham que ser programados como toda a gente, para serem serventes da sua morte.

 

In his quest for gold, Columbus, seeing bits of gold among the Indians, concluded there were huge amounts of it. He ordered the natives to find a certain amount of gold within a certain period of time. And if they did not meet their quota, their arms were hacked off. The others were to learn from this and deliver the gold.

 

Podemos assim apreender a comunicação. Compreender o mundo a nossa volta é afinal simples, basta esquecer tudo o que nos foi ensinado.

 

 

parte 1/4

 

O que é o tão falado progresso da civilização?

Qual é o lado negativo?

Se as outras espécies estão a ser extintas o que é que podemos querer para nós?

 

Tiago

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Alguem faz um post?.... para eu poder continuar.... só me deixa fazer um post pequeno!

 

Tiago