Just as the hopi are oppressed by a majority that does not understand or does not care to understand or is incapable of understanding what they have to say, so too am i. There has been one basic principle that has animated my arguments. This principle being that it would be a greater harm to the hopi to make them stop their ereligous practices than it would be to allow them to continue.
In base this is the harm principle that J.S. Mill argued for in On Liberty:
"[T]he sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in intefering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will is to prevcent harm to others. His own good either physical or moral is not suifficient warrant"
Where one can engage in free and equal discussion, there is no warrant for sanctions against a people or persons who engage in activities that some find morally repugnant and yet are not the cause of physical harm. How would you feel, having sexual morals dictated to you, or told which religion you must take up, or told generally how you must live?
I believe that to forcbily remove eagle sacrifice from the hopi would potentially be conducive of a very great evil indeed. The Hopi's religion is integral to their life, to their culture, to what it is to be hopi. To say that you could take one piece out and keep the whole more or less intact is a very dangerous assumption.
consider the following:
I ask anyone reading this to think of what is most important to them and think what it would be like to have a foreigner to come and take that away from them on the basis tnat it is barbaric.
Would you not say 'who are you to tell me what is barbaric? you do not even understand my culture. The reason why we do these things'.
To this the foreigner responds 'what you think does not matter. We know that we are right'.
The you say 'then show me i am wrong'.
To which the foreigner replies 'i cannot do that'.
So the foreigner passes a law banning this activity. At first you try to resist and continue to do it. The foreigner's begin to take away your possessions for you doing what you know to be right. Then after a while they grow agitated. 'Why' they say 'do you continue to disobey us. We have told you you are wrong now stop it'.
But you can as much stop doing this as you can stop breathing, so you continue. Eventually the foreigners come to see you, but instead of talking they put you in a car and take you away.
Used as to you are to living under the open sun you now find yourelf incarcerated in a smelly prison with people who you are horrified to learn have committed all sorts of crimes. How you wonder could i have neded up here when i have done nothing wrong. All i have done is to do what i know i must.
Eventually you get out of gaol. Upon your return to your home, you notice things have begun to change. The belief that you so firmly held, that once held you and your people together as brother and sisteer has begun to die.
A new culture is coming to town. Instead of practising the old ways, people are adopting the ways of the foreigners. Some sink into despair. New social problems (rampant prostitution, drug abuse etc) begin to emerge now that the old ways have died and people have lost the meaning of their lives. Your people have become obseessed with matieral possessions.
Some move to the foreigner's cities where they are forced to live in poverty, having no education or understanding of those ways. They are caught in the poverty trap.
etc...
Anyway, i have had enough. To those who say i have been emotional in my response, i heap my scorn upon you for i have never endeavoured to equate emotional reaction with morals as indeed they themselves have done.
I have given reasons for my moral position, that it would cause more hardship to the hopi to make them stop than it would to the birds to allow them to continue. My opponents it seems have failed to grasp this very basic principle, no matter how simply i have put it.
Such reasons do not of course mean that one cannot discuss such matters with the hopi and ask them to change or convince them of that.
But bringing about change does not involve heaping abuse and accusations of barbarity upon those you wish to change. It requires an understanding of their culture and the importance of it to them and knowledge that if they do not voluntarily decide to change their practices you are not justified in going in and forcing them to change.
i'll not post here again. So to those who showed me their contempt, all i can say is that i return it to you. I believe that i never posted an argument that i could not adduce at least some evidence for.
