|
|
Forums:
Climbing Information:
Access Issues & Closures:
Re: [apeman_e] Cave Rock Closing:
Edit Log
|
|
k.l.k
Jun 12, 2009, 5:41 PM
Views: 1899
Registered: May 9, 2007
Posts: 1190
|
apeman_e wrote: I think anyone that took the use of this analogy to mean that rock climbing closures are tantamount to nazi genocide are trying to find a problem, which is nothing new around here. An extreme analogy, no doubt, but I see what pfwein was trying to express.
Your first and second sentences conflict. Your claim that the only folks likely to criticize pfwein's use of Niemoeller here are simply typical flamers "trying to find a problem" is at odds with your own description of the analogy as "extreme." But "extreme" is on the money: The notion that Niemoeller's reference isn't Nazism is simply absurd.
I am willing accept pfwein's explanation that he didn't mean for one of the most famous quotations associated with the Holocaust to actually reference Nazism. All of us can be clumsy with quotation and analogy down in the tubez.
For all the lurkers, there are two problems with using Niemoeller in this context. First, the analogy likens climbers to Jews and other vicitims of Nazism whil identifying the feds, native Americans, and any other folks pursuing closures of climbing land to Nazis. Pfwein may not have "intended" that meaning, but it is there. Second, the thrust of Niemoeller's statement* is a quintessentially modern Protestant faith in the oneness of humankind: Jews, Communists, gypsies, etc. All are equal and all deserve the same support and sympathy.
In this context, the analogy would mean that all access issues are exactly the same: Big mining corporations subverting national monuments, state parks banning climbing while allowing sport rappelling, private landowners prohibiting poaching, NPS banning power drills on El Cap, Auburn Quarry getting filled in, Native American groups asking for voluntary seasonal closures on Devil's Tower, all represent the exact same kind and quantity of evil, and all should be opposed equally.
Some of you may join apeman in finding that part of the analogy insightful. To me, that level of the analogy is also so wrongheaded that I find apeman's enthusiasm difficult to understand. What strikes me most forcefully about the many access issues confronting the climbing community is how very different most of them are. I don't see the Washo's claims to Cave Rock as morally equivalent to Acme Mining Cos. claims to a national monument. But go ahead, party like it's 1999.
*Niemoeller's quote is not easy to pin down. See Herbert Marcuse's essay in source criticism here:
http://www.history.ucsb.edu/...lty/marcuse/niem.htm
Edit for typo.
(This post was edited by k.l.k on Jun 12, 2009, 5:42 PM)
|
|
|
Edit Log:
|
|
Post edited by k.l.k
() on Jun 12, 2009, 5:42 PM
|
|
|
|
|
|
