Applause
There once was a boy from Vancouver
Who recklessly preached : “Hallelujah!
God loves you! I’m John!”
But it’s hard to preach on
With a quiver of arrows stuck through ya.
It may have been a land bridge/shallow water type situation at the time, though…
We *had *the idea that direct contact with certain diseases was bad, just not the causative agent. Witness the primitive CBW suit…
Nice!
Yep. Extreme hostility towards trespassers has been the norm for 99% of all human existence. If anyone is confused by their behavior, remember that it is WE who are the exception. Their motives probably have nothing to do with disease (although in North and South America, the natives figured out pretty quick that white people equaled disease). Rather, the hostility is based on the fact that they live in insecure groups with no state monopoly on power and no external justice system to control them.
It seems strange to us, because we are accustomed to living in a world where there is (A) no scarcity of resources, (B) strong state-sponsored law enforcement, (C) lifestyles that are not tied to land or territory, and (D) foreign enemies separated by continents rather than hilltops. We meet more strangers on a trip to the grocery store than these people might encounter in their entire lives, and for all of these reasons we are accustomed to simply ignoring strangers who mean nothing to us. People who lived / live in traditional societies had / have valid, rational reasons for fearing violence from their neighbors.
John Chau, idiot missionary, apparently went to idiot missionary boot camp, sponsored by All Nations: “John was one of the best participants in this experience that we have ever had.”
For those wishing to see the modern face of genocide, here’s the website of All Nations: https://allnations.us/
Admittedly, Chau did apparently isolate himself in an apartment for 11 days, to avoid sickness before setting out. I’d like to know what is considered rigorous protocol and whether he practiced it. The local fishermen he hired with certainly didn’t isolate themselves. Now they reside in prison.
They describe John Chau as “courageous” - well, maybe.
They also describe him as “humble”. Not so much. Seeking to impose your evidence-free superstitious beliefs on others is the height of arrogance.
Also that the idea had been triggered by his observation that midwives’ results were better than those of doctors; midwives did not infect patients, doctors did. Semmelweiss had the gall to say that a bunch of barely-educated women were getting results superior to those of university-educated men, and that in a context in which a lot of the business those men had stemmed from the cultural assumption that they were inherently superior to those women (everybody had access to midwives, not everybody had access to the more-expensive and rarer doctors). The men were so busy being offended that they couldn’t be arsed listen.
Interesting article. I hadn’t realized that Chau had been radicalized into fundamentalist evangelical Christianity.
Indeed, an interesting article.
I would have liked to ask John whether he’d be willing to give his life for Jesus if he knew he’d go to Hell regardless.
Chau was brave the way that Christopher McCandless was brave, in that he did something really stupid for no good reason that anyone with an ounce of sense knows is tantamount to suicide.
It sounds like the sort of conversation he would have loved to have.
It does seem likely he set his mind on this years ahead of time, and was so caught up by the chance of glory that he would not stop. He clearly knew the risks. He seemed obsessed with them.
This reminds me of the story about the man whose house was getting flooded. His neighbor offers to drive him to safety. “No, God will save me.” Rescuers in a row boat come to pick him up. “No, God will save me.” The water keeps rising and the man ends up on the roof. A helicopter comes and he refuses to go. “God will save me.” He drowns. When he meets God he asks him, “why didn’t you save me?” “Well, I sent you your neighbor, the boat and the helicopter. Why didn’t you leave?”
Chau just couldn’t stop.
Some sects, JWs and Westboro BC to name two, thrive on the abuse they get when they proselytize; it drives the members to herd up within the group. Could this have been the same thing on an individual basis instead of group-think?
Heh. I was just reading a longer version of this in a novella called Lifeboats, by Diane Duane.
I went to junior-high with Chris McCandless; he was quiet, kind, humble, and brilliant, if you’d like to know. He did what he wanted to do with his life, and suffered an accidental poisoning, probably due to potato seeds and fungus.
His death was a tragedy.
So fuck you and your pretentious assumptions.
Thanks for posting this link.
I’m not a psychologist, but everything I’ve ever read about Bipolar II lines up with this.
Hardly assumptions. His actions are well documented. He went into remote wilderness without the skills, experience or equipment to survive.
Puerperal fever rates and associated deaths in the 19th century were lower (at least in some instances) when midwives were involved as opposed to physicians, but midwives still spread infection and death at a much greater rate than when women delivered at home without such assistance.