>I wonder how much interest hunter-gatherers 10,000 years ago in (say)
>what we now call Indonesia had in hunter-gatherers in what we now call
>the Ukraine? And so forth. In what pronouncement handed down from the
>heavens does it say that to desire peace one has to "know and care"
>about "the rest of the world." Isolationism is, in fact, a synonym for a
>true interest in peace -- in leaving others alone and in being left
>alone oneself.
Every now & then you expose the reactionary misanthropy of a certain kind of leftism. As the Old Guys put it 150 years ago:
>The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal
>display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much
>admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence.
>It has been the first to show what man's activity can bring about.
>It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman
>aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that
>put in the shade all former exoduses of nations and crusades.
>
>The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the
>instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production,
>and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the
>old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the
>first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes.
>Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of
>all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation
>distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed,
>fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable
>prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become
>antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air,
>all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face
>with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with
>his kind.
>
>The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases
>the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle
>everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.
>
>The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of the world market,
>given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in
>every country. To the great chagrin of reactionaries, it has drawn
>from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it
>stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed
>or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries,
>whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all
>civilized nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous
>raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones;
>industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in
>every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by
>the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for
>their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In
>place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency,
>we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence
>of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production.
>The intellectual creations of individual nations become common
>property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more
>and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local
>literatures, there arises a world literature.
Etc.
Doug