I think all of that analysis makes perfect sense. Knowing the Trumps and other villains of the world up close, esp. if one is screwed over by them, makes for a whole different impression of them than thru the corporate media or a person's particular subculture echo chamber. I know my brother learned a whole less admiring impression of rich elite kids and their families after he spent a year at an Ivy League college and saw what pricks and future adult powerful and rich assholes most of these people were.

I used to live in an Amish area in Pennsylvania. Grew up there, even had an Amish kid in my elementary school 1st through 6th grade. Anyway, I saw that shunning was used variously by different groups. It seemed less common for many years as families wanted to keep contact with kids who left the sect. That seems to be changing and going back to : you leave, don't return. I knew a couple people my age who were exAmish and they still reflect on missing family. About 12 years ago, I worked with a young man who was doing Rumspringa and living like the English. His family was pressuring him to come home, get rid of his motorcycle, and marry a nice girl. He loved his family; however, he had become very attached to his Kawasaki. So, yea, it's a fucked up religion.

I'm not so sure that the greedy and cruel are admired and think that the toys and trappings of power may be alluring.

Ain't That Some Shit? paraphrasing a rapper

@SnowyOwl MEANING WHAT may one ask?
FYI MY peoples have been around a WHOLE lot longer than you or your 'rappers.'

@Triphid I'm not really sure who has been around longer, who kept score? I do know that my ancestors were very warlike and brutal, my 9th generation ancestor came over from England on a wooden ship that he built himself. The official explanation was to protect King and Country but knowing my people it was about exploitation and conquest. We are nasty pieces of work but we continue to try and make things a bit better with each generation and have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to the people that we branded as savages in order to allow our atrocities to pass without too much guilt.

@Triphid Our People, there is only one human race. Some of us are shit and most of us are decent.

@SnowyOwl Then JUST for you I shall re-phrase it by saying the Ancestors of and MY fellow Indigenous Peoples.

And, when will they LEARN that Forgiveness is NOT a GIVEN, it IS something that, just like respect, MUST be EARNED.

@Triphid "When will 'they' learn...?"
Rhetorical question?? I suspect for many, the answer is never. Especially with shit traditions like Catholic confession....revolving door of "sin," confession and easy instant supposed forgiveness. Naturally the church claims the power to erase guilt, regardless of what third parties are actually wronged/violated/harmed.

Humans in general are nasty pieces of work for the most part but we aspire to be better. I don't think that the abused and denigrated survivors of the native genocide are the best example to hold up as an example but it is also very easy as the victor to be magnanimous but we haven't done that to our victims or towards each other for that matter.

We humans have been killing each other since time immemorial BUT only the supposedly CIVILZED WHITE/off-WHITE European Humans so effectively and efficiently as well against each other and everyone else that they totally ECLIPSE ANYTHING and EVERYTHING that other peoples around the world have ever managed to do to each other.
And, imo, the U.S.A. runs a very, very close second place to both the Catholic Church and its wanton MASSACRES of Innocent Natives peoples and the Nazis of Germany during WWII and their Extermination Camps.

@Triphid Perhaps when one talks of more recent times but during much of history things were different. A National Geographic report a couple of years ago made a report of how some tribe in S. America was experiencing a long period of heavy rains. In order to placate the gods children, hundreds of them were offered. A mass grave had been found and anthropologist put things together. Study the history of Easter Island. It was once heavily wooded but the incoming Polynesians came along and cut down all the trees. They could no longer fish and rats started eating their foodstuffs. Eventually the tribes broke into two factions - the long ears and short ears. The statues each represented a tribe and each tribe would upend the other's then, out of desperation they resorted to cannibalism. Anthropologists found human bones in the midden piles. No human has ever had a pure history (LOL not even Adam and Eve).

@JackPedigo Yes there are still, what we, the so-called CIIVILIZED ones, called Savage peoples who practise somewhat barbaric rituals, etc, etc.
Rituals not unlike our predecessors may have partake in not so many centuries either btw.
However, the Great and Noble Gentleman pictured in this thread of comments was NOT of the peoples of either Central or South America, he was an Indigenous NATIVE American whose people were living in the NORTHERN continent of the Americas long, long before the Europeans Invaded the lands.

If you look back on most of the pre-conquest native American cultures you will find highly structured agrarian societies. They were certainly stratified but the closer people get to the land the closer together they tend to pull, as a matter of survival but also as a purpose for maintaining a strong community that makes life worth living.
I spent 3 decades building for largely well heeled and often fabulously wealthy clients and I can count on one hand the clients that were happy in their hearts.

Probably not just wealth accumulation itself, but as societies populations grow, so does estrangement

@twill Yeah, I think several factors feed off each other, wealth potential being one. But that potential for material accumulation leads directly to wealth disparity, social tension, haves and have-nots. At the same time, while hunter gatherer societies HAVE to remain small for reasons of resource limitations, agrarian societies could grow tremendously, leading to less personal relationships and, in turn, less motivation to absolutely carefully tend to maintenance of cooperative relationships between people.

@SnowyOwl you make a good point about agrarian know-how existing in ancient America. There were a lot of different nations, and it was a mix of hunter-gatherer/migrating groups vs settled, agrarian cultures. I wonder if, and suspect that, in large, relatively wealthy states, such as the Aztecs, Incas, Mayan, etc, that greed was likely still more commonplace than in subsistence small tribes.

They try to scare you and make you fear what is actually good for you and bad for them.

I figured out the trap of material possessions a couple of decades ago, there is something called enough and then there is too much but most people have to struggle to get by on not nearly enough because there are those of us who want too much, demand too much and feel that they are entitled to too much.
It still doesn't make them happy no matter how much they accumulate before they turn back into worm food. Some of the happiest people I ever got to know on a personal level were in Latin America and they had what most Westerners would consider to be almost nothing but they had enough food and shelter and they had the love of their family and neighbours, these are things that many rich people have no comprehension of because they think that their money will love them when nobody else will. They may be half right.

While I wouldn't want to be racist against Caucasians (I am 96% British by DNA analysis, so whiter than Wonder Bread) we really do have a history that shows us to be a right fine bunch of bastards.

Yes...same here. We are selfish, violent, and entitled.

I have often thought the white "race" to be unredeemable. At least from a religious stand point.

@SnowyOwl We were pretty much an okay bunch until the Roman's civilised us, taught us that might makes right and introduced us to the idea of money and that greed is good.
We no sooner got rid of the bastards than they came back in different clothes and introduced us to the prosperity gospel religion, and after that we were pretty much fucked.

@LenHazell53 ah yes, good ol' "prosperity gospel religion!" Hello Joel Osteen! Lol
[google.com]

@MikeInBatonRouge Yes he is a modern version, but the primitive Catholics were peddling this shit 18 hundred years ago.
Follow us and benefit in this life and the next, deny us and burn here on earth and forever in Hell