Saturday, July 15, 2017

Clash of Civilizations

England was a civilization that worked. In the New World the English encountered another civilization that worked, one, like their own, in which people's names were generated by what they did. Yet, the contact of two civilizations that worked was,

not mainly of triumph but of confusion, failure, violence, and the loss of civility...

All the people involved--native Americans, Europeans, Africans--...struggled for survival...uncultured in what mattered. All--felt themselves dragged down or threatened with descent into squalor and savagery. All sought to restore the civility they once had known.