Fantastic video. I think you have a unique level of insight given your coming of age in a colonial society, in a colonial school system as the molded colonizer. Colonial societies and authoritarian societies in general (North Korea, Rhodesia, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, etc.) are collectivist. Whether it's building up the colonial project, as in Rhodesia, or defending the country from U.S. Imperialism, as in North Korea and the Soviet Union, or deporting and eventually wiping out the European Jewish population, as in Nazi Germany, the youth are hardened, tempered by hardship, and inculcated, by ideology and repetition to be soldiers for "the cause." The postmodern capitalist west is entirely individualist. Young people have no sense of direction, unless they're raised to subscribe to some kind of pre-modern paradigm, such as Amish Christianity, orthodox Judaism or extremist Sunni Islam, and become narcissists. They're concerned with their unique identities, their self-serving lives, their sustenance and enjoyment, rather than identifying with the collective mass, "the cause," serving it tooth and nail, and prioritizing its sustenance and enjoyment above their own meager existences.
The problem with Said (and I speak as a Marxist who subscribes to dialectics) is that he is an idealist. According to his PoMo interpretation of colonialism, based in what I think is a misreading of Foucault, colonial systems are produced by colonial mindsets. The colonizer's "orientalist gaze" others the colonized, thereby reducing their perceived status to that of lower animal species to be prodded at and surveyed without any consideration for their feelings. This isn't necessarily so. For one, ideas are produced by systems, dominant ideology and the material conditions at hand, particularly during the formative years, and not the other way around, as Marx pointed out in The German Ideology. In other words, the colonial mindset is the product of a definite, actually existing colonial system. Colonialism is systemic and not simply "in the mind." It is more than the thoughts, sentiments and actions of individual white Europeans. Also, the colonizer never colonizes out of mere callousness -- he wants to save what is human in the supposed "savage," and this is a most righteous and morally upright cause, in his eyes. This was the prevailing justification behind the enrollment of Native American children en masse into the white colonial residential schools, here in the U.S. This is best summed up in a statement made by the founder and superintendent of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, Capt. Richard H. Pratt: "Kill the Indian, Save the Man." This sentiment of transforming the "savage" into the European idea of a "man" is at the heart of European colonialism.
I very much appeciate your scholarly and perceptive response too.
I do think Said is an oversensitive moral fanatic. Colonialism is socially conditioned, not the result of perceptions that can be intellectually erased.
Also aiming to silence me, when I am bringing this information to light is the ultimate of Western intellectual depravity. Nothing sinks lower than this -- not even colonialism. Colonialism was at least true to its ideals, but Western intellectuals are true to nothing.
The problem with Said (and I speak as a Marxist who subscribes to dialectics) is that he is an idealist. According to his PoMo interpretation of colonialism, based in what I think is a misreading of Foucault, colonial systems are produced by colonial mindsets. The colonizer's "orientalist gaze" others the colonized, thereby reducing their perceived status to that of lower animal species to be prodded at and surveyed without any consideration for their feelings. This isn't necessarily so. For one, ideas are produced by systems, dominant ideology and the material conditions at hand, particularly during the formative years, and not the other way around, as Marx pointed out in The German Ideology. In other words, the colonial mindset is the product of a definite, actually existing colonial system. Colonialism is systemic and not simply "in the mind." It is more than the thoughts, sentiments and actions of individual white Europeans. Also, the colonizer never colonizes out of mere callousness -- he wants to save what is human in the supposed "savage," and this is a most righteous and morally upright cause, in his eyes. This was the prevailing justification behind the enrollment of Native American children en masse into the white colonial residential schools, here in the U.S. This is best summed up in a statement made by the founder and superintendent of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, Capt. Richard H. Pratt: "Kill the Indian, Save the Man." This sentiment of transforming the "savage" into the European idea of a "man" is at the heart of European colonialism.