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# 2021-04-08 - Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe | |
I listened to the LibriVox recording of Robinson Crusoe read by Mark | |
F. Smith. The story kept my interest because of my background in | |
wilderness survival. It felt odd to listen to a colonial fiction | |
from a modern perspective. Robinson Crusoe was enslaved for a few | |
years in Africa, he escaped to Brazil, and the very first thing he | |
did was embark on passage back to Africa to enslave people to work on | |
his new plantation. He spent time reasoning philosophically on | |
cultural relativism about noble savages who were innocent with | |
regards to European people and superior to Europeans when it came to | |
applying moral sympathies. Yet he treated "his" Caribbean man with a | |
surprising amount of contempt. | |
His focus on craft and traps reminded me of my own play as a child. | |
My best friend loved to go to "the swamp" and build "booby traps." | |
> Novelist James Joyce noted that the true symbol of the British Empire | |
> is Robinson Crusoe, to whom he ascribed stereotypical and somewhat | |
> hostile English racial characteristics: | |
> | |
> He is the true prototype of the British colonist. ... The whole | |
> Anglo-Saxon spirit in Crusoe: the manly independence, the unconscious | |
> cruelty, the persistence, the slow yet efficient intelligence, the | |
> sexual apathy, the calculating taciturnity. | |
> | |
> --Wikipedia | |
> I don't believe in censoring art which reflects the attitudes of the | |
> times in which it was produced. It allows us to understand change | |
> better," he said. | |
From: https://inews.co.uk/news/racist-robinson-crusoe-leads-bbc-search-for-top-… | |
Below are relevant excerpts from the book: | |
"Upon the whole, here was an undoubted testimony, that there was | |
scarce any condition in the world so miserable, but there was | |
something negative or something positive to be thankful for in it; | |
and let this stand as a direction from the experience of the most | |
miserable of all conditions in this world, that we may always find in | |
it something to comfort ourselves from, and to set, in the | |
description of good and evil, on the credit side of the account." | |
So I went to work; and here I must needs observe, that as reason is | |
the substance and original of the mathematics, so by stating and | |
squaring every thing by reason, and by making the most rational | |
judgment of things, every man may be in time master of every mechanic | |
art. | |
I had now brought my state of life to be much easier in itself than | |
it was at first, and much easier to my mind, as well as to my body. | |
... I learnt to look more upon the bright side of my condition, and | |
less upon the dark side; and to consider what I enjoyed, rather than | |
what I wanted... all our discontents about what we want, appeared to | |
me to spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have. | |
... the conduct of the Spaniards, in all their barbarities practised | |
in America, where they destroyed millions of these people, who, | |
however they were idolaters and barbarians, and had several bloody | |
and barbarous rites in these customs, such as sacrificing human | |
bodies to their idols, were yet, as to the Spaniards, very innocent | |
people; and that the rooting them out of the country is spoken of | |
with the utmost abhorrence and detestation, even by the Spaniards | |
themselves, at this time, and by all other Christian nations of | |
Europe, as a mere butchery, a bloody and unnatural piece of cruelty, | |
unjustifiable either to God or man; and such, as for which the very | |
name of a Spaniard is reckoned to be frightful and terrible to all | |
people of humanity... | |
This renewed a contemplation... in the dangers we run through in this | |
life; how wonderfully we are delivered when we know nothing of it: | |
how, when we are in a quandary, (as we call it) a doubt or | |
hesitation, whether to go this way, or that way, a secret hint shall | |
direct us this way, when we intended to go another way; nay, when | |
sense, our own inclination, and perhaps business, has called to go | |
the other way, yet a strange impression upon the mind, from we know | |
not what springs, and by we know not what power, shall over-rule us | |
to go this way; and it shall afterwards appear, that had we gone that | |
way which we would have gone, and even to our imagination ought to | |
have gone, we should have been ruined and lost... 'tis never too late | |
to be wise... certainly they are a proof of the converse of spirits, | |
and the secret communication between those embodied, and those | |
unembodied... | |
...yet that [God] has bestowed upon [indigenous people] the same | |
powers, the same reason, the same affections, the same sentiments of | |
kindness and obligation, the same passions and resentments of wrongs, | |
the same sense of gratitude, sincerity, fidelity, and all the | |
capacities of doing good, and receiving good, that he has given to us | |
[European people]; and that when he pleases to offer [indigenous | |
people] occasions of exerting these, they are as ready, nay more | |
ready, to apply them to the right uses for which they were bestowed, | |
than we [European people] are. And this made me very melancholy | |
sometimes, in reflecting, as the several occasions presented, how | |
mean a use we [European people] make of all these, even though we | |
have these powers enlightened by the great lamp of instruction, the | |
Spirit of God, and by the knowledge of his word, added to our | |
understanding; and why it has pleased God to hide the life saving | |
knowledge from so many millions of souls, who... would make a much | |
better use of it than we did. | |
Let no man despise the secret hints and notices of danger which | |
sometimes are given him when he may think there is no possibility of | |
its being real. That such hints and notices are given us I believe | |
few that have made any observation of things can deny; that they are | |
certain discoveries of an invisible world, and a converse of spirits, | |
we cannot doubt; and if the tendency of them seems to be to warn us | |
of danger, why should we not suppose they are from some friendly | |
agent (whether supreme, or inferior and subordinate, is not the | |
question), and that they are given for our good? | |
author: Defoe, Daniel, 1661-1731 | |
detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Robinson_Crusoe | |
LOC: PR3403 .A1 | |
source: gopher://gopher.pglaf.org/1/5/2/521/ | |
tags: ebook,fiction | |
title: Robinson Crusoe | |
# Tags | |
ebook | |
fiction |