We also need to remember that the Anglo-Saxon tradition also gave us the diggers and levellers, agrarian socialists, that sought to throw off the Monarchy in the English civil war. It gave us Tyler Watt and the peasants revolt. It gave us the agrarian socialism of the CCF in Saskatchewan which led to universal healthcare and our social safety net. These collective values run parallel to the individualist values that dominate our discourse, we need to find balance, not purity. Putting all our epistemological eggs in one basket reduces our cultural resiliency
There is no biological inevitability in Culture. We can make it whatever we want it be.
It turns out that a lot of these western values of freedom and personal autonomy are actually Wendat values. The early European explorers were coming from a places that had no sense of this. They came from a culture of religious inevitability, a place where God had placed everyone in the correct level of hierarchy.
When they encountered the Wendat they were shocked by their freedom of movement within social structures and that authority came from expertise and persuasion and not divine sanction.
These ideas came back to Europe and started the emancipation of people from Kings and Churches. The enlightenment doesn’t start before contact it starts because contact.
What we keep forgetting from the lessons learned from the Wendat is that power should be constantly distributed and negotiated. You can’t be both on the side of God and Kings and also support personal freedom and autonomy. Centralized power and rigid social structures always enslave and limit the possibilities of a culture.
We can still learn a lot from how the north eastern people of America decided 800 years ago to throw off the power of their nascent sun kings in Cahokia and reorganize themselves into loose, highly democratic confederacies.
We also need to remember that the Anglo-Saxon tradition also gave us the diggers and levellers, agrarian socialists, that sought to throw off the Monarchy in the English civil war. It gave us Tyler Watt and the peasants revolt. It gave us the agrarian socialism of the CCF in Saskatchewan which led to universal healthcare and our social safety net. These collective values run parallel to the individualist values that dominate our discourse, we need to find balance, not purity. Putting all our epistemological eggs in one basket reduces our cultural resiliency
There is no biological inevitability in Culture. We can make it whatever we want it be.
It turns out that a lot of these western values of freedom and personal autonomy are actually Wendat values. The early European explorers were coming from a places that had no sense of this. They came from a culture of religious inevitability, a place where God had placed everyone in the correct level of hierarchy.
When they encountered the Wendat they were shocked by their freedom of movement within social structures and that authority came from expertise and persuasion and not divine sanction.
These ideas came back to Europe and started the emancipation of people from Kings and Churches. The enlightenment doesn’t start before contact it starts because contact.
What we keep forgetting from the lessons learned from the Wendat is that power should be constantly distributed and negotiated. You can’t be both on the side of God and Kings and also support personal freedom and autonomy. Centralized power and rigid social structures always enslave and limit the possibilities of a culture.
We can still learn a lot from how the north eastern people of America decided 800 years ago to throw off the power of their nascent sun kings in Cahokia and reorganize themselves into loose, highly democratic confederacies.
While not Canadian, I see the American universities beginning to cancel DEI contracts as a major crack in the woke agenda.
I hope the trend continues