Re: SIL (was: A project)

On Sun, 16 Sep 2001, Andreas Johansson wrote:

> Marcus Smith wrote:
> >But even apart from the Christianity issue, SIL workers bring their own
> >cultures with them. Sometimes in an honest attempt to be friendly and
> >helpful, they introduce things and ideas that are harmful to the local
> >culture. A case in point (one I was told about, but have no confirmation
> >of) is where SIL workers introduced soccer and the card game UNO to a
> >culture that did not encourage competition. This, apparently, brought
> >about hard feelings between natives of the town that drastically changed
> >things. Whether or not this is true, it does illustrate the point that SIL
> >workers can destroy a culture/community, even if Christianity itself is
> >not the main problem.
>
> On a tangential topic, ANY contact between different cultures carries a risk
> that one or both of the cultures will be destroyed, destabilized etc. At the
> very least, both will change. Many multiculturalists seems to try to both
> eating the cake and have it - both perserving existing cultures and mixing
> 'em into some multy-culty, liberally-tolerant superculture. The underlying
> assumption seems to be that culture is just some kind of mental clothes you
> can change at will - Spanish today, European tomorrow and Javanese on
> Wednesday.
>
> Needless to say, I don't consider myself a multiculturalist.
>
>                                                        Andreas
Nor am I, too much...but it works well enough in Canada..