Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!actnyc!gcf
From: gcf@actnyc.UUCP (Gordon Fitch)
Newsgroups: sci.psychology
Subject: Re: Curiosity
Message-ID: <857@actnyc.UUCP>
Date: 29 Apr 88 18:24:12 GMT
References: <598@mccc.UUCP> <2398@ttidca.TTI.COM> <603@mccc.UUCP>
Reply-To: gcf@actnyc.UUCP (Gordon Fitch)
Organization: InterACT Corporation
Lines: 19

In article <603@mccc.UUCP> pjh@mccc.UUCP (Pete Holsberg) writes:
>In article <2398@ttidca.TTI.COM> hollombe@ttidcb.tti.com (The Polymath) writes:
>...     [quoting Robert Howard]
>...     Barbarians are always more polite than civilized people because
>...     civilized people don't have to be as concerned about having their
>...     head split over a verbal insult.
>
>Sounds like an oxymoron to me.  Barbarians are not noted for their
>politeness, or are we talking about different barbarians?

There are, of course, no "barbarians" as such.  The word is a value
judgment on the behavior of individuals; so, by definition, barbarians
have bad manners.

When the Romans burned cities and exterminated populations, they
called it "civilization."  When the German tribes began to give
the Romans a dose of their own medicine, the Romans borrowed the
Greek term for non-Greeks, and its deprecatory connotation, and
called the Germans names.