One Man’s Truth Is Another Man’s Bias

The saying one man’s truth is another man’s bias has been a popular saying for decades but in relation to Caribbean Civilization but what exactly does it mean firstly; let’s dissect the phrase into basic and simple forms. What is the definition of a truth and a bias? A truth is that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality usually based on some form of substantial evidence where as a bias is a prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair.  This is usually because of insufficient evidence to support the claims being put forth and is based on allowing personal opinions to influence your judgment.

Now let put this into the perspective of the Caribbean, over many years Caribbean history has been told from the prospective of European and Spanish inquisitions and prospective but let’s look at it from a Caribbean prospective, firstly lets discuss the Discovery of the Caribbean by Christopher Columbus in 1492 during his first voyage to discover possible trade routes to Asia by sailing West until he reached Asia. This voyage occur on August 2nd 1492 as Columbus first voyage into the new world as historical records depict Christopher Columbus was the first person to discover the new world but also within historical record the islands discovered by Christopher Columbus were said to already have inhabitants or indigenous  called taino and kalinago yet history depicts this as a discovery for Christopher Columbus but despite this Christopher Columbus technically was not the first to discover the Caribbean, he may have been the first to be recognized as the first of the Spanish to discovery the Caribbean from the Spanish perception, as the term discover means  to gain sight or knowledge of (something previously unseen or unknown) and for Spain and Columbus this would have been a discovery but from the perspective of the taino and kalinago this would not have been a discovery as they were indigenous people who had migrated to the Caribbean from Africa years ago, for Spain the discovery of the Caribbean would be true as to them this was yet uncharted and undiscovered region in their prospective and majority of the world and due to their advancement in technology Spain claimed the right to depict it within history as a discovery of the Caribbean as history is always told from the view of the conqueror or the victor.

Secondly the suggestions that they were no civilizations or civilized people within the Caribbean, it has been shown to not so be true as both taino and kalinago’s practice both some form of religion, they also had social structures, within the tribes possibly taken from the roots of where they originated, they had fully functional societies with trade, politics and systems of communication. So what does it mean to be civilized the term civilization comes from the word civilized which in modern terms it means bring (a place or people) to a stage of social, cultural, and moral development considered to be more advanced, but the meaning of the term civilization has changed several times during its history, and even today it is used in several ways. It is commonly used to describe human societies "with a high level of cultural and technological development", as opposed to what many consider to be less "advanced" societies and as a result is often subjective to opinion as  a behavior considered “civilized” by a particular culture may be judged senseless of even seen with horror by another culture, this definition, however, is unclear, subjective, and it carries with it assumptions no longer accepted by modern scholarship on how human societies have changed during their long past and this was the case within the Caribbean islands during the 1492 discovery of the Caribbean by Christopher Columbus as Spain would have seen these cultures and form of civilization as uncivilized due to considering themselves as being more advanced both technologically and socially as they  considered the attributes of a civilization to fall within 10 basic attributes.

An influential scholar named Gordon Childe identified the list of ten attributes that distinguish a civilization from other kind of societies; his list was reviewed and rewritten many times. What follows is the version of Charles Redman, an American archaeologist: Primary characteristics which consisted of Urban settlements, Full-time specialists not involved in agricultural activities, Concentration of surplus production, Class structure, State-level organization (government) and Secondary characteristics which were Monumental public building, Extensive trading networks, Standardized monumental artwork, Writing, Development of exact sciences and among these attributes Spain considered the lack of being unable to write as a form of being uncivilized as there was no way to pre-mandate the history or keep an accurate record of traditions and historical events, despite these civilizations using various other methods of passing on these event and history, as both tanio and kalinago and other early Caribbean tribe displays most of these attributes (or even all of them), it enable us to refer to it as a civilization no matter how alien, unpleasant, or archaic we might find its way of life and values, the fact still remains that each of these tribes had their own form of civilization leading to Spain’s truth yet being a bias of Caribbean civilizations.

Based on this fact it can also be said that these civilizations also had their own form of religion and despite it not being Christianity in which the Spanish had practiced and since Christianity was the only form of religion in which the Spanish had deemed a form of religion as such they would have considered any other practices to be null practices, devoid of this these civilization had their own forms of religion as they had their own deities and various god’s to which they prayed to establishing further evidence suggested both the Island Arawak and the Island Carib possessed a notion of a high god, though, as the chroniclers' reports make clear, their high god differed conceptually from the God of Christianity. It has also been said that aboriginal high gods were thought to exert very little direct influence on the workings of the universe. Many of the early chroniclers, including Fray Ramón Pané, Gonzalo F. de Oviedo, and Raymond Breton, refer to Arawak and Carib high gods as kinds of deus otiosus; that is, they are inactive gods far removed from human affairs and concerns. Neither the Island Arawak nor the Island Carib conceived of their high god as creator of the universe, and it is unclear how powerful the high god was thought to be. Was it that their high god was able to interfere directly in world affairs but chose not to do so, or was he thought to be totally ineffectual? Chroniclers differ somewhat on this. Pané suggests that the high god was a powerful deity who chooses to be inactive. Other chroniclers stress the inactivity of the high god and the lack of attention accorded him. The bulk of the evidence, including what we know of other American Indian religions (Hultkrantz, 1979), supports the latter interpretation. To further establish that both the Tanio and kalinago had various forms of religion as these forms of religion had some form of supporting background.