Sunday, April 02, 2006

Multiculturalism and Carbon Footprints

No, no connection. Just a couple of thoughts.

(1)Multiculturalism. I saw an event on BookTV (which was actually quite good) wherein the speaker, at one point, decried the way Americans idolize their Founding Fathers. After all, George Washington did own slaves. 'But he freed them' is not enough because he owned them in the first place.

Multiculturalism attempts to give us awareness and tolerance of other cultures. Hasn't it ever occurred to the multiculturalists that 18th and 19th Century America were other cultures as well?

(2)Carbon Footprint. I've started hearing this bandied about in relation to gasoline/oil usage with the not-so-subtle implication that the release of carbon contributes to global warming.

Life itself is mostly carbon and water. The carbon in oil is from life that existed on this planet millions and millions of years ago. That carbon was taken from the atmosphere and the earth's surface and buried underground. We're just putting it back where it came from.

If you are really worried about releasing carbon to the atmosphere, be sure you don't allow yourself to be cremated. Have a proper burial instead so that eons from now you, too, may become an energy source.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Syl:

I have never understood the fact that people are unable to keep things in the context of their times. Our whole history has to be viewed that way, that is reality.

As for the whole carbon thing, if all these folks are really that worried about it all, let them live the way those founding fathers did. See how they like it. George Washington died after getting sick from riding his horse in a blizzard, they bled him and tortured him for days before he finally begged them to let him die. Yeah, I can see the environmentalists embracing that kind of life style.

BTW Washington did not only free his slaves, he provided for them. By the time of his death he had changed his attitude toward slavery considerably and considered it a moral and economic anachronism.

Barry Dauphin said...

Whenever I hear the multiculti's applying contemporary standards to people that lived centuries ago, I wonder how we will look to folks in the 23rd century.

Dymphna said...

Terrye--

I think they call that kind of thinking (besides being anachronistic) "presentism." Only someone with a deep ignorance of history and an equal amount of resentment/entitlement can't understand context. And they can't listen, either. Their intake button came off at birth.

As for being buried vs. being cremated, well...of course. I know the graveyard, about 3 miles from here, and I know what my headstone will look like since my husband designed my mother's and I want one like it. Nothing keeps your perspective like looking at the piece of ground where you know you will lie eventually.