@PugJesus The Aztecs were in no way inferior to Europeans, not in their art & ingenuity, nor in their use of a cruel religion as a tool hand in hand with war. I think Barry’s point was to highlight the inhumanity, but he does neglect to include that European introduced disease enabled Cortez to succeed on his second try. The Aztec’s rapid rise of “civilization” shows what humans are capable of. If only we could do so with compassion as a foundation.
Destruction of objects and buildings of importance is ancient and universal - and very many beautiful things have been destroyed or killed along with this process. I suppose I found mostly odd the implication of a in-some-way fundamentally different culture from the degraded ‘West’, and the association of the Aztecs with nature.
@PugJesus Yes. The history of pre-Euro western hemisphere has been severely biased in our education systems, even more so now with our felonious leader. That the Indigenous Americans were lessor beings, just savages, was the myth Lopez was dispelling. I don’t think the irony that they were just as sophisticated in their savagery as Europeans was lost on him, based on some of his other work.
Millenia pass, some things change, some stay the same. We can travel to the moon, but we can’t get along.
@PugJesus The Aztecs were in no way inferior to Europeans, not in their art & ingenuity, nor in their use of a cruel religion as a tool hand in hand with war. I think Barry’s point was to highlight the inhumanity, but he does neglect to include that European introduced disease enabled Cortez to succeed on his second try. The Aztec’s rapid rise of “civilization” shows what humans are capable of. If only we could do so with compassion as a foundation.
Destruction of objects and buildings of importance is ancient and universal - and very many beautiful things have been destroyed or killed along with this process. I suppose I found mostly odd the implication of a in-some-way fundamentally different culture from the degraded ‘West’, and the association of the Aztecs with nature.
@PugJesus Yes. The history of pre-Euro western hemisphere has been severely biased in our education systems, even more so now with our felonious leader. That the Indigenous Americans were lessor beings, just savages, was the myth Lopez was dispelling. I don’t think the irony that they were just as sophisticated in their savagery as Europeans was lost on him, based on some of his other work.
Millenia pass, some things change, some stay the same. We can travel to the moon, but we can’t get along.