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PaperclipPerfector  2yr ago (text post)   33860 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023

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I think the White Man's Burden poem is pretty clearly sarcastic, even if some people took it seriously. Kipling is saying that white people shouldn't be killing themselves in order to civilize anyone else.

While the poem can certainly be read that way (death of the author and all that), Kipling himself really can't. Rather, Kipling saw imperalism as a kind of noblesse oblige, especially in connection with Western influence on humans around the world. In addition to this poem, Kipling directly addressed then-governor Teddy Roosevelt on the matter of the Philippines:

Now, go in and put all the weight of your influence into hanging on, permanently, to the whole Philippines. America has gone and stuck a pick-axe into the foundations of a rotten house, and she is morally bound to build the house over, again, from the foundations, or have it fall about her ears.

For Kipling, empire-building was a matter of "you broke it, you bought it." A nation simply cannot stand on the world stage, in trade or military or diplomatic matters, without inadvertently impacting humans outside its borders. Some of those humans, not being the subjects of powerful nation-states themselves, are rendered horribly vulnerable to the resulting externalities. The responsible thing to do, then, is to take those humans under your collective national wing (says Kipling). Like children, they may whine about it, but it really is for their own good. And like a sullen teenager, you might whine about it, too, but that's the price of a seat at the grown-up table: you have to clean up your own messes.

In my experience, contemporary "decolonizers" hate the poem because it comes very close to illustrating a common contradiction in their worldview. Decolonizers actually agree with Kipling, at least 90% of the way. Every single demand that wealthy nations "redistribute" wealth is a demand for empire-building, for wealthy nations to take vulnerable nations under their wing. But such demands are routinely accompanied by insistence that no cultural demands be made, no changes be wrought, no missionizing of religion or appropriation of culture or...

But those are just the organic things that happen when wealth is "redistributed." Send dollars to Samarkand, and those dollars will be most effectively spent on importing American goods, American workers, American culture, whatever. Send food, and you will put local farmers out of business. Send military supplies, and you will empower a warlord. Buy their sand for manufacturing, and they run out of beaches; refuse to buy their sand, and their children go hungry. As Thomas Sowell says: there are no solutions, only trade-offs.

He's not saying it's wrong for white people to rule, but rather that white people shouldn't rule in a way that doesn't benefit themselves.

No, he's saying that it's time for America to grow up and start doing the hard work of a mature empire: the thankless task of bringing the Enlightenment (and, you know, Christianity) to the many humans who were still enslaving each other, engaging in cannibalism, and dying of curable diseases in their mud huts. The "white" part, on which people of course focus inordinately today, is just a historical accident. It's the "white man's burden" because literally no one else had taken it up. Here's a more modern rendition (circa 2012 because G7 doesn't fit as well). It came out a bit sarcastic but you can hopefully imagine someone writing it earnestly, and understand how such a person might be the modern day equivalent of Kipling on this matter.

Take up the G8's burden--

Send forth your currency--

Offshore your workers' lifestyle

Across the migrant's sea.

Build schools and homes and fact'ries,

For someone else's child,

But keep their culture vibrant!

It must not be defiled.



Take up the G8's burden--

You owe the world your wealth.

It's your fault they are weeping,

Your fault they're in poor health.

Your Western ways are costly,

Too costly to ignore,

And so you must export them

To every other shore!



Take up the G8's burden--

Too long you have denied

Your global obligations,

Your diplomatic pride.

You're lucky, and you're privileged

(And a xenophobe at heart),

So give some folks asylum

From the conflicts that they start!



Take up the G8's burden--

Not "colonial" in nature--

Instead a kind of penance

For your melting of that glacier,

For your raping of the landscape,

For your scorching of the skies--

For those who strove to prosper

Owe to others now the prize.



Take up the G8's burden--

It's time to pass the buck,

To burn your blue-necked workers

Because--who gives a fuck?

Comes now, to rate your credit

(Expecting not your thanks)

The only voice that matters:

The judgment of your banks!

For Kipling, empire-building was a matter of "you broke it, you bought it." A nation simply cannot stand on the world stage, in trade or military or diplomatic matters, without inadvertently impacting humans outside its borders. Some of those humans, not being the subjects of powerful nation-states themselves, are rendered horribly vulnerable to the resulting externalities. The responsible thing to do, then, is to take those humans under your collective national wing (says Kipling). Like children, they may whine about it, but it really is for their own good. And like a sullen teenager, you might whine about it, too, but that's the price of a seat at the grown-up table: you have to clean up your own messes.

It was particularly explicit on the part of European powers that the Americans would deal with their neighbors or they would, to the point where the French would invade Mexico during the American Civil War. American interventionism of the period was very much informed by Europe.

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