From: Jeremy Bradley (jeremyb@nor.com.au)
Date: Sun 20 Apr 2003 - 22:56:22 GMT
At 08:29 PM 19/04/03 +0200, you wrote:
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Keith Henson" <hkhenson@rogers.com>
>> Definitely good points on the Hutu/Tutsi conflict. But my argument is
>that
>> such matters are superficial. The particular historical background
>*looks*
>> to be causative, but is not. A starving population will become diseased
>> with some pathogen, but the cause is the starvation, not the opportunistic
>> pathogen.
>> In bad economic times we see historical grievances (i.e., memes) amplified
>> into major conflicts (or mob actions) by a long evolved psychological
>> characteristic that is "turned on" in humans by hard times. But the hard
>> times are the cause rather than the history, though the history certainly
>> contributes to the details of how the sides line up
>
>Keith,
>
>So the Hutu ( the majority) just killed the Tutsi ( the minority) because
>the former ( Hutu) blamed the latter ( Tutsi) for all the problems ( the
>hard times) where which they we 're faced !?
>Historical looking at things the Tutsi we 're to blame........!
>
>Why did the Hutu waited so long to kill the Tutsi.....afterall, the
>situation they we 're in lasted for decades and maybe centuries !?
>Where is the sudden profit in changing the situation round coming
>from !?
>
>There was, IMO a long lasting economic downturn for the Hutu
>majority, they certainly had reasons to blame the other group for
>their problems, that would certainly justifies their deaths, but I
>wonder about the reason why they waited so long to take action.
>Minority or not, in control or not, 10% of the population or not,
>still in an armed conflict, due to that evolved psychological cha-
>ractersitic of the others, the Tutsi would be wiped clean.
>
>I don 't really see the timescale of the events from Hutu- side !
>
>Regards,
>
>Kenneth
>
As I said before, in Rwanda the colonial invaders combined the two
traditional neighbours within one new 'nation'. They then elevated the
minority over the majority by advantaging their economic opportunities -
employment, education, land etc. This was the proven way of control of
large populations by a few.
Look at Ireland for an example The English invaders imported Protestants to
suppress the majority Catholics by disadvantaging their economic
opportunity. Eventually the majority won some autonomy over the South
through bloody revolution, and, even now, if the British pulled out of the
last Protestant areas in the North there would probably be a bloodbath.
Wherever colonisers have re-drawn boundaries to serve their greedy purposes
the results have been mayhem and disaster no matter how long has ensued.
This is because the memes of hatred, caused by the cheating or forcing
sovereign Peoples out of their birthrights, do not pass away with the
transit of a few generations.
The seeds of such resurfacing of hatred are carried in that Peoples'
retained narratives. They are mimetically encoded into the culture of every
suppressed People. It is the cause of all revolution. It is why all
Empires fall, in the end, to the people whom they once suppressed.
In some places, fearing this, colonial masters suppressed native languages
or restricted the education of colonised Peoples. But there is no stopping
the messages which are carried in the primary narratives - the tales told
to children which encode cultural attitudes and create the 'normal'.
Jeremy
Jeremy Bradley
3200 Oxley Hwy Wauchope 2446
Phone:02 65856652 or 02 65856134
E-mail: jeremyb@nor.com.au
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