I was reading this post on why the fattest populations are Polynesians. One of the commenters claimed to be Polynesian and he was such a whiner that I that rather went off on him. I don’t think it’s good form to copy his entire post, but the first paragraph rather fully sums up the tenor of his whine:
I am unsure on your reasons for postulating that “obesity may seem like a small price to pay for access to the modern world and all its comforts and opportunities.” I can resolutely say, as a Pacific Islander, that it is needed a massive price to pay. The ‘opportunities’ of the modern world that you seem to be praising, must include the western tradition of monetizing the health and happiness of a person – in this case to the detriment of Pacific communities. Obesity is a disease, a disease that robs people of their ability to realize the fullest potential of their bodies (and all of the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual growth that results from increased health)
… (continued here.)
That whining really got under my hide and I went off on the guy:
Oh, give me a break.
Stop it with the polynesian version of pastural idealism. Pre-contact Polynesia was a blood soaked land of incessant warfare, conquest and mass murder. You know, just like everywhere else. The societies were highly-heirachial and oppressive and ruled by a warrior elite who gained their positions with murderous violence. Just like everywhere else. The technology level meant that the vast majority of the population lived and died at the whim of nature. Just like everywhere else.
Everything in the past uniformly sucked and everything in the present by comparison uniformly rocks. Don’t believe me? Well, how about that pre-20th century dentistry? What, did traditional polynesians have some secret for antibiotics and anesthesia?
Anyone who whines about being provided to much food and treats it like a crime against humanity has never watched a child starve to death. At anytime prior to the last 30 years the idea that making people fat was doing something wrong would have provoked gales of laughter. It still should.
People like you are the reason that Polynesians are marginalized. Brained dead romantics who would rather whine about the loss of a mythical past than adapt to the modern world. Polynesians are marginalized because they don’t have the individual and collective skills to make themselves powerful in the modern world. You can’t use traditional Polynesian culture to find success in the modern world anymore than white Americans could act like their medieval ancestors and expect to prosper.
You whine just like American Southerners used to whine. Oh, it was so unfair that the South was as rich and economically advanced as the North. It was all the fault of the greedy and exploitive Northern industrialist and capitalist! In response, the Southern states adopted a wide range of economic policies intended to “protect” themselves from Northern exploitation such as making it nearly impossible for out of state banks to operate.
In reality the Souths economic backwardness was entirely self-inflicted. They needed to lose the slavery, lose the Jim Crow, lose economic protectionism and lose the hostility to entrepreneurism. Starting in the 1960s they did all those things and like magic the South began to grow and even outpace the North (which ironically was headed in the opposite direction.)
If you want to run your society the same way that grandpa did, expect to have grandpa’s standard of living and grandpa’s place in the world.
Playing on the sympathies of others just makes you a well respected beggar. Even if you it earns you a house of gold you are still a beggar and still marginalized. You still depend on the whims of others for your livelihood and you never have any real respect.
The worst fate to befall any people is for leftists to decide they are victims. The moment the people themselves buy into the fallacy of their own helplessness, they doom themselves to a life of economic marginalization and permanent political dependency.