We Deserve to Rule the World Because We are Better
This European mindset of unquestioned superiority is intolerably arrogant. Perhaps others besides Europeans consider themselves to be the pinnacle of humanity, but I am a product of the European mindset and not so arrogant as to comment on the sins of other cultures.
I am American; and while we have had a few hundred years to develop our own version of superiority, it is rooted in that of the motherland. In fact, we are so incredibly arrogant in our very young nation that we choose to think of ourselves as springing out of the American soil as a new race of pioneers instead of transplanted Brits carrying all the baggage of their history, their prejudices and their mercantilism. To understand America, we must understand our British roots.
British Roots of America: We came as British colonists. The morality of colonizing other people’s lands does not seem to have been questioned, whether the native people had been there for 10,000 years as in the case of North America, or 40,000 years as in the case of Australia. When savages come in contact with civilized man, the savages go extinct. It was inevitable, it was natural and therefore it was right.
Galton and Eugenics: Western man sees history as a linear progression from primitive doltish savages to reasoning civilized humanity, to the pinnacle and climax of human development-our own selves. Among the British, class was a determinant of the value of a human being, with Sir Robert Galton informing the Royal Society in the 1900s that the upper class was in danger of being overwhelmed by low class breeders. According to Galton’s hierarchy of classes (based on income) only the top classes had “civic worth.” Poor persons were born inferior which led them to “shiftlessness, idleness or drink.”
Monetizing Value of Human Beings: “I have tried…to make an approximate estimate of the worth of a child at birth according to the class he is destined to occupy as an adult.” Although Galton said he wasn’t entirely satisfied with his statistics, he estimated the value of a lower class baby at 5 pounds and an upper class baby at “thousands of pounds.” It was important to breed more upper class babies because “To no nation is a high human breed more necessary than to our own, for we plant our stock all over the world, and lay the foundation for the disposition and capacities of future millions of the human race.” The lower classes had bad blood and that bad blood should never be allowed to pollute the good blood of the upper class, lest the whole society degenerate.
Malthus and Survival of Fittest: British clergyman Thomas Malthus suggested, not charity for the poor, but starvation. This would be God’s way of encouraging them to change their evil ways or at least limiting their numbers which would limit the amount of suffering taking place. Feeding them or helping them in any way would interfere with the workings of the Almighty.
Genocides: Can you smell that? What is that sickening odor wafting on the breeze? It smells like rotting corpses, the rotting corpses of millions of native peoples mown down by the self-proclaimed superior specimens of humanity; mown down by the self-proclaimed pinnacle of civilization.
You may think I hate the British or the Americans. Not so, there is much to admire about both. Most of them have compassion and ideals and decent values.
Human Value: But I do hate the repulsive arrogance exhibited at times by both and I repudiate it. I say that a human being has value, not as a resource, but just because they are a human being. I say that civilized man is not nearly as civilized as he wants to think, that he uses his powers of reason to rationalize the exploitation and murder of other human beings and that this a great evil for which we will be held accountable.
New Holy War: We need a new kind of holy war. We need an internal jihad. We need to look inward to see if there is a dark, smirking, arrogant murderer lurking inside of us. We need to root out that darkness and use what reason we possess to face the unpleasant truth about some of our ugly and deadly assumptions. The truth hurts. So does surgery, but surgery can save your life and the truth can save your soul.
May we-whenever we start to think of ourselves as superior, as inherently more valuable than other humans-may we get a whiff of millions of rotting corpses and repent.
