European Behavior Towards Others

[Baba Ahmed]

EUROPEAN BEHAVIOR TOWARDS OTHERS*

Theories of Euro-Caucasian Behavior: The Question of Cause

" 'The power of one man or group of men over others--in our case, of white men over black--is the single most salient thread of history,' and slavery, Kovel asserts is, 'the most extreme version of the western symbolic matrix.'(57) Kovel does not realize it, but it takes the European world view to understand history as being based on power relationships; such an understanding issues from a confrontational utamawazo** that insists on definitions of dominance and submission. Nonetheless his comments bring us to the question of the relationship of what is commonly called 'racism' to the power drive in European culture. That these two phenomena are related is clear, but the nature of that relationship is not as easily understood.

"In Kovel's view the problem of 'racism' is 'part of the problem of western culture' and 'the record of history is basically of the successions of that power. All the complexities of culture are harmonics about this basic theme.(58) What happened to the thousands of years before Europeans had any power to speak of, indeed, before there was a 'Europe' at all?

[indent]"It is because the dynamics of race and ethnicity are so intimately related to the European power drive that I prefer to particularize the European commitment to 'white nationalism' of 'white supremism' as a dominant component of Western European nationalism. White supremism can never be reduced to the mere definition of peoples and cultures in terms of race. Race or group consciousness, which might logically result in the desire to remain separate and distinct, is qualitatively different from an ideology that requires the physical presence and dehumanization of other peoples for the 'acting out' of a power relationship in which the actor has supreme control over those peoples. The conative striving for power as motivating factor here becomes the crucial element.[/list]

"Let us broaden the terms. The power drive is placed in the formulative and originating process of European culture. The cultural other becomes a creation of that power drive as valued behavior. 'Race' (the concept that ambiguously links culture with the gene pool and color) is then one of the determining factors in a cultural identification and...a definitive component in the European conception of the cultural other.

"The value of any theory of white supremism, from and African-centered perspective, lies in its ability to lay bare the dynamics and centricity of the power relationship inEuropean ideology and behavior. Whether it is in the 'anal personality' theory of Joel Kovel, the Cradle theory of Cheikh Anta Diop, the psychopathic racial personality theory of Bobby Wright, or the historical analyses of W.E.B. Dubois and earlier Pan-Africanists--in each case their value lies in the fact that they place white supremism squarely within the matrix of European ideology and biocultural development. They particularize what they call 'white racism' within the spectrum of patterns of behavior based on the idea of race. The significant and indisputable ethnological fact in this regard is that the European conceives of the desirable power relationship in terms of his (white) supremeacy over the (black or 'colored') cultural other. Whatever its etiology the cultural fact is that the self-image and concept of the European includes 'whiteness,' while the 'cultural other' is its dialectical opposite. Welsing points our, as does Johari Amini, that the European gives to people of other cultures 'categories which are dysfunctional' for them.(59)

"The present study seeks to explain the pattern of European cultural (group) behavior in terms of the nature of the culture itself. We have demonstrated European behavior towards others (exploitative and destructive imperialism) and the attitude towards others (disdain, xenophobia) to be connected within the asili or logos of the culture, both to each other and to other patterns within the culture, and our objective is to understand that essential nature (asili).


"

"We must simply ask the question head on: Can it be an accident that the only people who have built an entire culture based on the dominance of others are also the only ones who are Caucasians? It doesn't matter if it is argued that some few Caucasians do not participate in this system of world-wide dominance. The generalized question begs to be asked.

"Bobby Wright an African psychologist, says simply that the collective behavior of Europeans 'reflects an underlying biologically transmitted proclivity with roots deep in evolutionary history.'(60) He says that the pattern of behavior that we have been describing is symptomatic of the 'pyschopathic personality,' who, usually functioning well in (European) society

• is of average or above average 'intelligence'

• is unable to experience guilt

• has no feeling of insecurity

• is unable to accept blame or to learn from experience

• is sexually inadequate and has difficulty forming close personal relations

• appears to be honest and human, but has only selfish motivations

• has almost no ethical development

• has almost total disregard for appropriate patterns of behavior

• consistently ignores concepts of right and wrong

• and rejects constituted authority

"Wright's boldly African-centered posture placed him in the vanguard (the Ankobia), ideologically and intellecturally, among people with an African consciousness in the early 1970s. His concerns were the same as those of the present work: that we understand the nature of European behavior so that we might be in a better position to achieve African self-determination. His...death in 1982 was a great loss to the African victory, but his work has propelled us forward."

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*YURUGU: An African-Centered Crituque of European Cultural Thought and Behavior, by Marimba Ani; chapter 8. First printing 1994, seventh printing 1997. {Baba note: this chapter is prefaced by this by Ayi Kwei Armah: [i]"Wherever there is life, even if it be only a possibility, the harbingers of death must go to destroy it. See the footsteps, they have left over all the world. Wherever they have been they have destroyed along their road, taking, taking, taking."
** Utamawazo: Culturally structured thought. It is the way in which cognition is determined by a cultural Asili. It is the way in which the thought of members of a culture must be patterened if the Asili is to be fulfilled.
*** Asili: "The logos of a culture, within which its various aspects cohere. It is the developmental germ/seed of a culture. It is the cultural essence, the ideological core, the matrix of a cultural entity which must be identified in order to make sense of the collective creations of its members.
**** Utamaroho: "The vital force of a culture, set in motion by the Asili. It is the thrust or energy source of a cuture; that which gives it its emotional tone and motivates the collective behavior of its members. Both the Utamawazo and the Utamaroho are born out of the Asili and, in turn, affirm it. They shoul not be thought of as distinct from the Asili but as its manifestations.
57. Joel Kovel, White Racism, Vintage, New York, 1971, p.148.
58. Ibid, p.85
59. Frances Cress Welsing, "A Conversation with Dr. Welsing," In Essence Magazine,October 1973
60. Bobby Wright, The Psychopathic Racial Personalityand Other Essays Third World Press, Chicago, 1985, p.2.
61. Ibid, p.7.

[Baba Ahmed]

What it All Means

Utamaroho in Disequilibrium

"The immortal gods have willed the Roman to rule all nations. - Cicero: Phillipics: 333

"Utamaroho (the energy source of the culture) is the force that determines collective behavior. It manifests as the collective affective being (personalty) of the members of the culture, tending to standardize their tastes and behaviors. It is the vital quality of the culture and is uniquely defined according to the needs of the asili which it helps to fulfill. The phenomenon of the European utamaroho demands ethnological attention. Once its essential character is understood, it becomes relatively easy to 'make sense' of the pattern of European development. What are the characteristics, euphemistically associated with this utmamaroho?

• 'Spirit of adventure'

• 'the love of challenge and exploration'

• 'the conquering mood'

• 'a certain inventiveness, ingenuity and restlessness'

• ['ambition'

• 'love of freedom.

"These phrases signify the misinterpretation of an intensely devastating spiritual disease.

"Twisted by the ideological demands of the culture into valued characteristics, they are made to seem positive, superior, even healthy. They are, instead, manifestations of a cultural ego in disequilibrium. Created in a spiritless context, the European utamahoro lacks the balance that comes from an informed experience of the whole self. The self that then emerges---defined in disharmony---seeks further to despiritualize its surroundings. The effectively despiritualized context it creates redefines an utamaroho that is in an essential imbalance, in basic disequilibrium. Chronically insufficient and spiritual inadequate, this utamaroho ever seeks spiritual fulfillment, a harmonious condition. Europe is a cultural statement of Yurugu (see Author's note, p.i), the male being, arrogant and immature, who caused his own incompleteness, and so is locked into a perpetually unfulfilled search for the female twin-soul that would make him whole, the part of himself he has denied.

"The European utamaroho is seeding the self it lacks. But the possibility of spirituality as a recognized and valued dimension of experience has been denied to Europeans by the presuppositions and definitions of their utamawazo, by their world-view, and perhaps, as in the case of Yurugu, by the circumstances of their birth. They, therefore, interpret their needs to lie elsewhere; an error that sets in motion the process of European development. Because assessment of their needs is blurred by what Theodore Roszak has called 'single vision,' because they seach in the wrong dimension of human experience, and because they are, by definition, deficient (Yurugu), their search is unending. The more unsatisfying the pursuit, the greater is the assurance of the continued existence of an utamaroho in disequilibrium; an unfulfilled spirit. The unchanging character of the European utamaroho and the unidirectional driving force of the culture are therefore guaranteed. Its 'success' and failure are inseparable and causally linked.

"This search is, after all, the expression of a universal human need; it is the need for peace (completion, wholeness). But the European has been misled by the ideological architects of his culture. He has been taught to identify 'peace' with rational order, rather than with harmony. Rational order and harmonious order are very different. They represent two radically different modalities of being. Remember that for Plato 'justic' in the individual and in the State is achieved by the rational ordering of conflicting elements; that is, through the control of the irrational by the rational. The struggle to control can never lead to harmony---the essence of spiritual well-being. Rational ordering is predicated on the assumption of conflict and opposition and, in European intensity, becomes a sublimated form of violence. Rational order can never be more than a creation of human beings in partial recognition of who they are; that is, in partial recognition of their cosmic significance. Rational order is the order of lesser beings, in this sense. Through it, they can only experience a part of what is possible. If they limit themselves to this order, which they have created, they and their world become distorted, which is how the asili was initiated, through a distortion of nature.

"The apprehension of harmony requires the ability to 'feel' for and intuit a pre-existing order, pre-existing not in a temporal sense; but in the sense that its existence is more comprehensive than that which we can rationally consume or generate. Greater than we are, its discovery takes us beyond ourselves, and yet is ourselves (but not as persons are thought to think of themselves in the West). Its perception requires at least for the moment, transcendence beyond the cognitively rational self. The experience of harmony is lodged in the recognition of spirit, to which human intuitive response and interaction are guideposts. It is predicated on interdependence. It is the sense of this cosmic harmony that typically has lent majority cultures their human an dmoral order; herein lies the philosophical profundity of African thought.(8) Human-made rational order has its place but is only meaningful when understood to be a small part of an ordered whole. It is only on the level of the spirit that rationality can be positively integrated into the human context. When that level is not reached, that which is rationally ordered merely succeeds in distorting the environment and imparing the spirit.

"The European utamaroho translates the search for fulfillment into fanatical expansionism. The expansionism endemic to European culture is constantly reinforced by the insatiable desire for complete rational order; which, in concrete terms, comes to mean the European ordering of the world. For the European utamaroho ordr comes to mean European control, since it is by projecting the rational self that the world becomes ordered---a cultural definition that helps to create a unique utamaroho; an utamaroho that demands exactly this cultural view. Only by destroying the ordr inherent in the cosmos can this utamaroho regenerate itself. Projection of ego is substitued for fulfillment of self. This utamaroho eternally seeks an emotional satisfaction it cannot experience…. The ideology of progress is but an expression of this utamaroho. It is predicated on the destruction of a harmonious, organic order and seeks to replace it with a rational and mechanical one. This ideology proffers a goal that can never be realized, for the sake of which human beings consume as they destroy. Technological rationalization and exploitative capitalistic enterprise are the social activities correlated with this ideology and the utamaroho that created it. Global imperialism (the destruction and consumption, or reordering of other cultures) is the form of intercultural behavior the utamaroho demands. The syntax of univeralism is the ideological and cognitive manifestation of this expansionisic utamaroho.

”

It is important to understand the relationship between expansionism and control, since they give shape to the dynamics of the European tatmaroho. ‘To control,’ for this utamaroho means to render passive. Once a thing, person, or culture can be ‘acted upon’ at will by the European self (ego), that self is considered to have expanded. Expansionism is the increase of its domain. Hence the European concept of ‘power,’ is the ability to manipulate and control---to make passive as an agent of change. It is power ‘over,’ not power ‘through.’ "
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Marimba Ani, YURUGU… her conclusion, pgs 360-363.
8. Leonard Barrett, Soul-Force, Anchor Press, Garden City, NJ, 1974. p. 17.

[RecoveringAA]

^^^^^^^^Bumping em Up^^^^^^^^

[Baba Ahmed]

Greetings Ozellh20 of melinated Blackness!

What programme are u waiting for? Yeah this site's administrators wise guidance stimulates visions! EuroCentric thought and behavior generally is a worldwide happening today differing only in locale and outward appearances. It must be recognized for in my opinion those of us born, reared/raise, "educated" in Eu-rope-lands and who especially read, write and speak English also use some of its forms, ideologies and many cultural aspects unwittingly even with "good" intentions.

May the ancestors clear your path!