A World Where Thinking Is Anathema

But the Two Minutes Hate are not:

When I was at university, first attending then teaching, we always talked about how our goal was to encourage “critical thinking.” In high school you mastered basic prerequisites: reading, writing, mathematics, a little science, some knowledge of the history of your region, country and the world. But in university came your full flourishing as you were challenged to read, engage with, understand and eventually judge for yourself the truth of what you were confronted with.

In this context “critical” meant: skeptical, weighing, judging, in the way a critic weighs and judges the merits of a movie, book or play. Critics need to be skeptical but they should also bring an open mind to whatever work they’re considering. They are allowed to conclude, if that’s their reasoned judgment, that on balance what they’re reviewing is good. (Their review is a statement of that reasoned judgment.) A cousin of “critical” is “scientific.” The word introduces other complications but the scientific state of mind is also essentially skeptical — what’s your theory?, show me the data, have you considered all possible refutations? — but it too is ultimately open to persuasion.

“Critical” has another meaning, however, which seems to be taking over: namely, “negative,” as in “Everybody’s a critic!” Thus to be critical of something is to find fault with it. “Critical race theory” finds much fault and almost no good in the history of relations between “races” (race being a thought-relic of the 19th-century that has made a comeback after agreement people’s “race” is a result, not of their genetic history, but of their being socially “racialized”).

Critical theory is not a new mode of thinking but a collection of stock words plastered onto those who recognise faults in society but prefer to look at them objectively, speak about them honestly and fix what can be fixed.

The proponents of critical theory would not even deign to read these passages and counter them with proof and nuance:

“Slavery was a permanent status in all Northwest Coast societies,” wrote anthropologist Leland Donald in his 1997 book, Aboriginal Slavery on the Northwest Coast of North America. Slaves could end up in that predicament for any number of reasons: captured as part of inter-tribal warfare, after inter-tribal raids, born to an existing slave, or if they were an orphan (which could lead to enslavement even in one’s own tribe, as occurred among the Clayoquot, Lummi, Chinook, and Puyalup-Nisqually). A wife could be sold and enslaved through a deliberate attempt by her husband at humiliation (recorded among the Haida, for example). One could even end up in slavery voluntarily, this to pay off one’s debts, a practice that occurred in other societies where slavery was present. As with slavery elsewhere in the world, captives in the Pacific Northwest were considered property. They were sometimes given as gifts, including at potlatches; on other occasions slaves substituted as payment for fees due to shamans. 

Slavery in the Pacific Northwest developed at some point between 500 B.C. and A.D. 500, long before European contact, and at contact, slaves were clearly set apart from the existing tribal ranking system and prestige-seeking in the region. Early indigenous peoples also possessed other practices that predated contact with the British and Europeans: cannibalism and the killing of slaves, the latter of which also occurred and for a variety of reasons: funeral feasts, the building of a new home, a new title, the erection of a totem pole, or as part of the ceremony at potlatches. A Russian Orthodox priest recounted how in one Sitka ceremony where a new clan chief was appointed, four slaves were strangled as part of the ritual. 

On another occasion, among both the Mowachaht and the Clayoquot, a slave was killed to celebrate the first whale kill of the season.

(Sidebar: I know what you're thinking - Who the hell kills a whale?)

In Tlinglit folklore, a memorial potlatch was necessary so fellow spirits in the village of the dead would not despise the newly deceased. The memorial included the murder of a slave. Among the Nuu-cah-nulth, a wolf dance also occasioned the taking of a slave’s life. Lastly, in one account of a ceremony at Fort Rupert, British Columbia, two female slaves were burnt as part of a ceremonial display, though they volunteered in the belief they would be resurrected four days hence. The regional slave trade was numerically smaller in absolute terms, though similar as a proportion of some local populations, ranging from almost nil to as high as 40%; the average was 15% of the local population.

Are all cultural practices equal? Is slavery somehow an acceptable cultural curiosity now?