Friday, September 13, 2013

Barcelona harbor - Christopher Columbus of Ambiguous Parentage

Harbor at Barcelona. Voyages come to mind. Parts unknown.  Climb about a galleon. 

Who was this Christopher Columbus, with the many spellings depending on the language.  Here he points west, from a very high vantage point at the harbor, a Catalan area and Catalans, too, claim him. See http://www.christopher-columbus.eu/who-was-columbus/catalan.htm


There is disagreement, and many theories, about his parentage.  This lecture supposed him to have been a Greek nobleman. See http://www.prometheas.org/Events_flyers/Christopher_Columbus.pdfv.

Others stay with the traditional Genoa, Italy connection, with parents who were poor.  Others say he is the illegitimate son of a Spanish monarch. 
 

Regardless of scholarship, most of us learn by osmosis, by looking at pictures, absorbing impressions, and the monument offers a noble view.  Too saccharine.  As an adult, these kinds of monuments do not hold attention for long. Just long enough to snap and look up later.





Should his landing in the new world be celebrated, along with the disease and violence that ensued?  The Ayn Rand Institute touts the objectivism of individualism as the ultimate goal, not weighing goals of others so as to restrict one's own choices, and says, yes.  See http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=objectivism_columbus/.  As a clearly superior culture, suggests the Rand article, those of the west can rest happy in whatever was or was not accomplished.  Next?

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