[blackshoe]

jtfanclub, on May 20 2008, 09:58 AM, said:

Clearly you have no clue as to how the Chinese railroad workers were treated.

You are mistaken. And I didn't say anything about dictionaries.

[onoway]

There is supposed to be a ghost ship off the coast of BC where a boatload of Chinese workers were chained in the hold, and abandoned when the ship caught fire. They were being brought over to work in the coal mines I think. That was the other area where they were bitterly abused, at least in Canada.

[kenberg]

I guess I first learned a little, very little really, about the Chinese and the railroads by reading East of Eden (from Genesis of course, Lukewarm can give you the chapter and verse) some fifty plus years ago. Although it was hardly the main storyline of the novel, it stuck in my mind.

As a nation we have held slaves, we destroyed the Native culture, we brought Chinese here in horrible conditions to build our railroads, we dropped uranium and plutonium bombs on Japan, and that's just what occurs to me at the moment.

There are always ways to duck. I was six at the time of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, my father came to this country after slavery, after the Indians were pretty much destroyed, after the railroads were built. Thanks for the out, but no thanks. I have never found it likely that I am a better person than the rest of humanity.


We are an interesting species. Possibly Nature is getting a little fed up with us.

[blackshoe]

Granted that we as a nation have not always (rarely?) followed the ideals under which our country was in theory founded.

As for Nature getting fed up with us, I suppose that's possible.

James P. Hogan, in one of his SF novels, had some of our distant descendants, several million years from now, returning to Earth only to discover that here, humanity has been supplanted by sentients (or semi-sentients, I don't recall clearly) descended from the praying mantis. Or perhaps the cockroach.

[Gerben42]

Quote

As for Nature getting fed up with us, I suppose that's possible.l

No that's not possible. Nature is still the same as it was before, but we're settling in vulnerable areas so no surprise... And note that even earthquake areas those who are outside, like all the animals, are usually okay afterwards. It's only because we live in buildings and need roads for transportation that they hurt us so much. For prehistoric humans, an earthquake would have been scary but not deadly, living in the African rift valley for example.