Madame Blavatsky and the swastika

Wed Dec 23 11:12:00 UTC 1998

Dr. Robert J. Zydenbos:
> Indians, Tibetans, Amerindians and others *cannot* be held
> responsible for what other persons at much later times have
> done with the same signs and symbols.

No they can't. The problem is that most people don't know the origin of
those signs and symbols. I always recall an history some twenty years ago.
I played Judo in a sports center and the bathrooms were shared by all
sports. One day there were people that practiced Shorinji Kempo, a Japanese
Martial Art that uses a green swastika as their symbol. My country -
Portugal - had just thrown away a fascist dictatorship a couple of years
before. So, a man that practised another sport just starts shouting at the
Shorinji practitionners because they were carrying a Nazi symbol. How could
they have the nerve to do it? I remember all too well the surprised and
confusion of the Sensei, and his innability to explain the mistake.

> There was a question here recently about what constitutes
> scientific methodology. A good start on the scientific path is:
> *look at things the way they are*. Then you will discover that
> in India svastikas can turn in either direction, hence also (and
> in fact more often) in the 'Nazi' direction.

Once more, the problem is that not everybody uses, or wishes to use, good
scientific methodology (not even scientists do it in their dailly life).
And science is not detashed, and cannot be detashed, from non scientific
misconceptions. The best way to defend science, and to insure that we *look
at things the way they are* is to acknowledge that there are people that
don't do it, and to discuss this. It is not to act like if it didn't
happen, just as you want to do:

> Let us hope that all this amateuristic nonsense quickly moves
> away from this list back to the USENET, where it apparently
> belongs.

The worst thing that can be done is to think that you can define a place
for science, and a place for nonsense. That's the best way to ensure that
nonsense keeps prevailing.

Sergio

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