Posts by nzlemming
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Hard News: Media Take: The Easter Show, in reply to mark taslov,
I think in order for me to better understand your angle it would be incredibly helpful if you could outline some of the features of Christian ideology unconsciously driving Britain’s imperialist ideology, and most specifically those features of Christian ideology that may also no longer be applicable to governance in the “post-colonial” age.
The essential thing is not christian idealogy, which one could say might be a Good Thing (tm) as regards charity, social justice, equality and whatnot, but the practice of christianity in Britain, as exemplified by the mixing of church and state referred to above. Pretty much the worst thing the colonisers did was make way for missionaries, the single most destructive force on indigenous cultures.
The British colonisers saw themselves as superior to the indigenous people (and to a lesser but significant extent, the colonists as well) because they were a) white, b) christian and c) British. They saw this as giving them the right to spread white rule (because it's best) and christianity (because it's best) and Britishness (because it's obvious). Indeed, it's fair to say they equated c with a+b.
Chris mentions the Great Commission. I grew up catholic and the missions to the Islands, to Biafra, to anywhere where brown people were thirstily awaiting the word of god (as interpreted by Rome), were a huge part of religious life even into the 70's. Up until I was 17, I was seriously considering the priesthood as a career, right up until I left catholic school and started reading a bit wider than the school library. When your dominating culture is so pervasive that you don't consider alternatives and downsides to be important, then it is influencing any other ideology it comes into contact with. This is what happened in 19th century England.
You seem hung up on the fact that what was actually practiced by christians doesn't match up with what you think are the tenets of christian ideology. I'd argue that the ideaology you speak of has only ever existed in the abstract, except in certain individuals who stand out because of that (e.g. Francis of Assissi) and that you should look more at how religion was practiced in the period and how that affected other aspects of life, such as colonisation.
Could a true christian who adhered to Jesus' teachings to the letter have perpetrated the genocide against the Aborigines, the rape of Maori land, the reduction of Maori to a dying race whose coverlet we were soothing? Hell, no!. Did the people who did those things think of themselves as christians and that they were acting accordingly? Hell, yes! And that is where the dichotomy lies.
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The Church of England would differ with you on that, Keir. When your synod decisions have to be ratified by both houses of parliament and 26 of your bishops sit in one of those Houses, that's about as official as it gets outside of an Iran-style theocracy. And Iran would claim it's a democracy as well.
Mark, you can take it as read I know about the history of the New Zealand Company. My point is that the predominant christianity of the colonisers (i.e. the decision-makers in London rather than the actual colonists) was a driving factor in the formation of the imperial ideology as Britain pursued it. It may have been unconscious on their part ("this is just the way things are done") but it is quite visible.
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Hard News: Media Take: The Easter Show, in reply to mark taslov,
Isn’t this still the case Mark? I feel that the emergence of democracy in Britain, and the extent to which the New Zealand Company pushed the British Government’s hand is perhaps getting too little credit in that argumen
I seriously am confused as to where your point lies. You said:
"If the colonisation of New Zealand had involved a unified strategy between Church, State and private entererprise then my analogy might be unreasonable" to which I pointed out that this unified strategy did indeed exist, which you now appear to agree with which means your analogy is indeed unreasonable.If you're trying to argue that the New Zealand Company is getting credit for democracy either here or in Britain, I'm sorry but the facts don't bear that out at all and no-one else has been saying anything like it.
Yes, the head of state in the UK is still the head of the official church of the UK, but the New Zealand Company no longer exists. The corporate interests are now multinational and need neither church nor state to achieve their ends (except when pushing things like "free trade agreements" through)
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Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to Sacha,
Mediawatch’s Colin Peacock sets out the context.
Interesting para in there:
"Local event television is a long-term strategy and we are very comfortable with the performance of these shows to date . . . despite what some uninformed commentators believe, these days the success of shows like The X Factor NZ and The Bachelor New Zealand is not solely measured by television ratings," the statement said.So, if ratings aren't important to "reality" shows, why are they so important when CL is considered?
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Hard News: Media Take: The Easter Show, in reply to mark taslov,
If the colonisation of New Zealand had involved a unified strategy between Church, State and private entererprise then my analogy might be unreasonable:
Except that it did. The head of state was also the head of the prevailing church in Britain and granted liberal consessions to the companies such as the New Zealand Company to go forth and claim the world on her behalf. It may not have been painted as a crusade against the godless, but christianity was a huge factor in forming the ideology of colonialism.
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Hard News: Media Take: The Easter Show, in reply to BenWilson,
Jesus we can fix at two points – he was very likely baptized by John the Baptist and crucified by Pontius Pilate, and everything before and between is hazy clouds of possibility and supposition.
And even those two points require you to believe that the self-contradictory documents that make up the New Testament are true, to some degree. Which is like saying that National's election promises are true, to some degree. Christian propaganda (in the true sense of the word) does not equal evidence.
The books of the Bible were chosen much later than 100 years after the supposed death of the supposed Messiah in order to suit the political situation of the time (The Catholic Church did not finalise the canonical makeup of the Bible until the Council of Trent in the mid 1500s, although there was a canonical New Testament recognised by the Council of Trullan in 692) and many books were included or left out, depending on one's brand of Christianity. The Protestants, for example, adhered to the narrower Hebrew list of books of the Old Testament rather than accept the wider Popish list that Catholics used, and the Catholics left out Gnostic and Coptic texts yadda yadda yadda...
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Hard News: Media Take: The Easter Show, in reply to philipmatthews,
No, the majority of historians would say that he did.
Well, I'd be interested in which sources they'd cite. As far as I am aware, there is 1 mention of his followers in Josephus (a known fabulist) and that is it, apart from the religious writings which don't actually match the known history of the area and time..
Believing he existed, because of your faith, and proving it are two entirely different things.
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Hard News: The other kind of phone tapping, in reply to Richard Grevers,
…although it might be torrentable at archive.org
It's downloadable as a zipfile (18.4MB) from there, too
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Hard News: The other kind of phone tapping, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
The BBC was looking for antique valves, but the ones they want are a bit bigger.
I read that entire article in the Pathe newsreel style, in my head.
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Hard News: How about that cricket, eh?, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Lucky we aren’t playing on Friday
Might have been better if we were.