Mike Shupp wrote:
> If we can't grant Westerners any material superiority
> in technology, economic development, etc, during the period
> in which they rose to (short term) mastery if the planet,
> we have to recognize the importance of immaterial factors,
> I would think. God perhaps, or more likely superior amounts
> of will, stamina, determination, zeal, "heart", pluck on the
> part of Europeans, and sloth, laziness, inefficiency, corruption,
> fatalism, etc. on the part of the non-European natives.
It amazes me that Mike can't get this right -- but then he is an
American, from the land where a gun is called an "equalizer"or a
"peacekeeper" and the big bombs are called a "nuclear umbrella." The
thing that has distinguished north Europeans over the past five hundred
years, The Gunpowder Years (tm), is simply the will to mass violence,
and the willingness to direct it at other cultures and individuals, and
their cats, dogs, libraries, customs, tax policies, and gods.
> What qualities did Europeans themselves attribute their successes
> to during the 1500-1850 AD period? Material or immaterial?
>
Godliness. Next question.
-dlj.