“A major theme emanating from this basic assumption of human-nature relations is that of ‘survival of the fittest’… The principle underlying this theme is that those humans (i.e., individuals, races) who achieve the greatest degree of mastery, control, suppression and manipulation over nature represent the fittest among the human community. Fittest, then, represents the lofty position of human achievement attained through competition (i.e., aggression), and is indexed by the amount of psychological and physical distance that one is able to establish between herself (self-consciousness) and nature-phenomenal experience… This usually occurs in terms of the degree to which one has gained effective manipulative power and/or dominance over nature (through the objectification of nature). Therefore, one’s degree of mastery or control over nature establishes the ‘fittest’ level of the individual.” “Hence, the European worldview is defined by the basic values of materialism, control, aggression and linear-ordinal ranking, conflict and opposition. As Marimba Richards (1989) [Let the circle be unbroken: African spirituality in the diaspora] observes: ‘The mode or determining structure in the western (European) worldview is that of power, control and destruction. Realities are split into pairs of opposing parts… one…becomes valued while (the other) is understood as lacking value. One is ‘good’ and the other is ‘bad.’ Other opposing pairs, in the European worldview, are ‘knowledge/opinion,’ ‘objective/subjective,’ ‘science/religion,’ ‘mind/body,’ male/female,’ ‘man/boy,’ ‘white/black,’ … and so forth, and the mode of thought is literal-concrete (p.6)’ “Thus, the dichotomization of nature or reality into linear-ordinal rankings, such as top/bottom, high/low, strong/weak, best/worst, and superior/inferior, is central to the Eurocentric valuation process of the objectification of nature through measurement. There is also the spiritual-material dichotomy in which the physical is valued over the metaphysical and defined as separate realms of reality. Let us not forget, of course, that the central, in fact ‘cardinal’ value of the white-European supremacy over African-Black inferiority dichotomy governs European social philosophy and human relations.” Kobi Kazembe Kalongi Kambon “The African Personality in America: An African-Centered Framework” Page 12
Posted on: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 08:50:17 +0000
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