I came across this brilliant piece today that responds to Gregg Popovich's Columbus Day comments and analogizes that issue to the broader issue of societal decline, at least as exemplified in Berkeley, California. I thought the Corral regulars might find it interesting. It's fairly long, but here are some highlights:
Popovich is perhaps the greatest NBA coach of all time, and a sneaky Bay boomer himself. He hails not from the Berkeley Hills, but instead from San Francisco’s Presidio Heights, where he kept a condo for nearly two decades. ... Those who’ve worked with Pop would not deny the temper or the flaws, but most will come down firmly on the side of “good guy.” He doesn’t do what he does for attention; he genuinely cares. So, when Pop’s going off in public about an issue, it could be more out of concern than a desire for the spotlight.
[Transcript of Pop's Columbus Day comments]
Popovich isn’t necessarily wrong. He’s right that Columbus murdered and took slaves. He could have added that Columbus was brutal even by the standards of the 1490s.
And yet, Columbus is a great man, at least in terms of impact. He just is. His will and ambition changed the world, arguably for the better if you are partial to some of these nations in the Western Hemisphere. Half a billion people speak Spanish because of this guy. The Columbian Exchange is one of the most important fundamental shifts in human history. And yes, the development of the United States follows Columbus bonking into San Salvador.
Obviously, the Columbian Exchange enriched some and devastated others, including the Aztecs, who were impressive in their own right, but also incredibly violent. But ultimately, whoever we are, we’re here and wouldn’t be but for it. This isn’t some far-flung “butterfly effect” where one little incident irrevocably alters the course of bigger ones. No, this was the big one, the historical paradigm shift that all the others in the Western Hemisphere were predicated on. Without it, we aren’t.
Rising countries tend to inculcate a sense of pride in their citizenry, making them believe that they are part of a largely positive tradition. Is America a force for good? Perhaps debatable. Can America be healthfully functional if most of its citizens believe it to be evil? Probably not, I’d hazard. The simplest analogies apply here. You’re more likely to take care of a car if you think it’s a nice one.
I just buy that you must instill some broad sense of positive tradition in a populace, or there’s no real path forward. That doesn’t mean suppressing those who discuss sins of the past, but it does mean refusing to define the past as one big sin. The cosmopolitan among us largely don’t apply this myopic lens to other modern nations and yet we will to our own, when looking back. The favored academic perspective is to be a moral absolutist across time, but relativist across space.
You see the Ohlone name on a lot of places in Northern California, a self-conscious post-1960s phenomenon to be sure. “Land acknowledgements” are now increasingly common before official business is conducted in the Bay Area. Few seem to actually give a shit about or have much connection to what’s being acknowledged, though. The uncomfortable truth is that Christopher Columbus and the founders had a far greater influence on our modern civilization than the people we displaced.
A friend who teaches at a charter school asked me why the land acknowledgement happens at her meetings. I responded that it’s to rob participants of the moral authority to demand their aspirations. She laughed, but I don’t think I was kidding. If your existence is a crime, then improving it can be framed as a compounding of that original sin.
Personally, I’d probably shrug all of this off as the cost of doing business to live in a great place — if things were going well.
Ask a Berkeley cop, if you don’t believe that speaking to one is such a moral offense: Most of the people in these tents are doing a shitload of meth and fentanyl. That doesn’t mean they deserve unsheltered addiction, but it probably means that indulgence enables a metastasizing problem. And as for the favored, fashionable remedies: No, knocking 10% off the average apartment price with a housing boom is not going to break this cycle of sedated hopelessness. Fine if you do it, but get real on what that accomplishes.
But how do you break sedated hopelessness? Materialist solutions can help, but not all the way. People require the means to achieve comfort, but they also need to trust that society itself is worth it. In the Bay, we aren’t so keen on telling people that they’re part of anything good, let alone that they’re violating some grand tradition by bowing out of the game.
Abolishing some ancient Italian’s commemoration isn’t the cause of our condition, but it’s illustrative of the journey: Well-intentioned, well-educated authority figures fixated on symbolic disavowals of our scars, perhaps hoping that all we’d do is heal. Instead, in the end, we couldn’t stand the sight of ourselves, and slid off into a paralysis that risked no future sinful incursion.
