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Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

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Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#141

Post by Tichy »

IsaacSchlueter wrote: post #83
turkishrevenge wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you're talking in vague abstractions without referencing specific period of brutality in humanity's history. Platitudes prevent you from making an actual judgment about a given event. > "It's quite possible for the Native Americans to have been savages, and the Europeans to have been savages (with better weapons), and for one group of awful people to have murdered another group of awful people." Conquistadors, we…

Holy crap, I can't believe this. Let me say this for the record: The slaughter of Native Americans by the Conquistadors was a terrible thing. Awful. Tragic. An abomination. Also, and completely not taking anything away from the awful abominableness of that terrible tragedy, the Native Americans had lots of other problems with their culture, and were in many ways, quite savage. The Conquistadors had really good food,…

"My point is that you can't just say "they did this awful thing, therefor everything about their culture was horrible"."

Nobody was even saying that. You seem to fabricate an enormous straw man.

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#142

Post by potatolicious »

Tichy wrote: post #140
potatolicious wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is the big point people are missing from reading this article: the author is shameless in his bias... the aboriginals were saints! They lived the perfect, tranquil life before the barbaric Europeans came and killed them all! This sort of moral absolutism is hogwash, and has no place in intelligent debate. This is an interesting topic worthy of discussion, but I really do not think this article serves as…

So apart from that one culture doing human sacrifices, what did the others do in your opinion to deserve extermination? I really can't follow the logic here. Why do you even feel the need to justify the murdering of the natives? And how can you think it can be justified? Even if the old ones were murderers (which is probably not true in general, even if you make it so), what about the babies?

> "Why do you even feel the need to justify the murdering of the natives?"

Wait, what? Thanks for going all "think of the children" on me man, where if I'm not with you I'm for murdering the natives. You are (apparently) representative of the moral absolutism problem I am talking about.

I'm not defending the extermination of native American natives.

The problem with this article is that it cast native American society as a utopian paradise, and the white European invaders as evil, ruthless, and completely without moral compunction. This sort of historical revisionist "blackwashing" doesn't help anyone - because it has not fairly represented either side. The natives were not utopian societies, nor were they savages deserving of murder. The Europeans were not ruthless monsters, nor were they benevolent conquerors. To represent this situation as black and white is both ignorant and unproductive.

By "blackwashing" I mean skewing the facts and injecting calls to emotion where it doesn't belong, to try and make something seem worse - where whitewashing is the opposite (skewing the facts and injecting emotion to make it seems better)

[edit] Also, to address specifically why the moral absolutism is a problem: by casting the Europeans as ruthlessly evil, you have removed any deep introspection into why the murder of the natives occurred. You've transformed a complex human situation into a fairy tale - where the bad guys need no explanation. You've also effectively discounted the possibility that bad things can happen for relatively benign (or at least, not overtly evil) goals.

Not to mention dehumanization is inherently dangerous - even if the person you're dehumanizing is the "bad guy".

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#143

Post by grellas »

The idea of glamorizing indigenous peoples has always fascinated me.

Do those historically connected with a particular place throughout its history never experience cruelty? How does one explain the slaughter in Rwanda and similar places if tribes living in one place are said to be imbued with an innate purity that should exempt them from having the same impulses toward evil and genocide that characterize the rest of the world?

As I ponder these things, and consider the lurid facts depicted in this article, my intuition tells me that this might be as much a case of selective reporting as anything else - reporting that seeks to shape a narrative consistent with a particular worldview held by the author of the piece.

I know there have been atrocities in the United States and in the Americas generally. But there is undoubtedly something very good as well to be said for the United States in particular, where (whatever its shortcomings and inconsistencies) freedom has been upheld for the benefit of all sorts of people and with which most of the world pales in comparison in terms of opportunities, or at least that is how umpteen generations of immigrations scrambling to get here have seen it.

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#144

Post by pradocchia »

_h4xr wrote: post #27
wendroid wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The third-world isn't some laggard full of overbreeding simpletons. It was created in the 18th & 19th century by well armed invaders helped at the end of the 19th C by drought & flood that killed 50m people in India & China and 50m in S. America. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Victorian_Holocausts Indian & Chinese civilisation was crushed by armies & opium.

The third-world isn't some laggard full of overbreeding simpletons. Any concrete reason for that belief? It looks like the "overbreeding" is objectively true: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_birth_rate . As far as simpletons go, you tell me: is there any intelligence test you know of that routinely ranks people in Djibouti over people in Japan? If not, it sounds like your statement is unfounded. The…

When you complain about how the Victorians ran things, you have to compare it to something.

How about pre-Victorian rule? European profit seeking turned Congo in to a hell hole.

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#145

Post by Tichy »

potatolicious wrote: post #142
Tichy wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So apart from that one culture doing human sacrifices, what did the others do in your opinion to deserve extermination? I really can't follow the logic here. Why do you even feel the need to justify the murdering of the natives? And how can you think it can be justified? Even if the old ones were murderers (which is probably not true in general, even if you make it so), what about the babies?

> "Why do you even feel the need to justify the murdering of the natives?" Wait, what? Thanks for going all "think of the children" on me man, where if I'm not with you I'm for murdering the natives. You are (apparently) representative of the moral absolutism problem I am talking about. I'm not defending the extermination of native American natives. The problem with this article is that it cast native American societ…

Why does it even matter who was "evil" and who wasn't? The fact remains that one party killed off the other. It seems clear that among the killers there were some "evil savages", but of course not every European was evil. It doesn't even make sense to think in such generalizations. However, if some actions were ordered by "the state", then it seems to me to make sense to hold "the state" responsible for it. Whatever kind of entity the state is - of course not everybody in the state endorses it's actions, but they still benefit or suffer from it. I suppose you can not hold a soldier in a war responsible for killing, because he was ordered to do so and presumably had no other choice. But that doesn't validate wars - and if said soldier later lives on the farm of the person he killed, it seems fair to ask some questions.

I don't think in modern times if you murder somebody, the court will be very interested in whether the victim was a good or a bad person.

Also I have to admit I still don't understand what you are going on about - if the European invaders where not evil, ruthless and completely without moral compunction, how were they capable of doing the killing? (The ones who did, let's assume not everybody participated). Who did the killing?

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#146

Post by marcofloriano »

dejb wrote: post #136
IsaacSchlueter wrote: post #38

This article, and many of the comments here, hint at a deeper and more interesting phenomenon: the need to have things be either all good or all bad. That is, either (A) western civilization is good, and the things it has done were good, and the things it values are good values, etc., or (B) it's bad, and the things it has done were bad, and the things it values are bad values, etc. Once this dichotomy is accepted, a…

How great would it be to see movies that reflected this dichotomy you mentioned. Where you could come out of the film not being sure who the 'good guys' were.

Swordfish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swordfish_(film)

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#147

Post by bokonist »

hristov wrote: post #115
bokonist wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think the same thing, but I now believe that is wishful thinking. The Europeans had 10,000 of cultural and genetic adaptation to high density, agricultural based living. The natives lived a fundamentally different way of life that required far less population density. Like the Navi in Avatar, most natives would rather fight and die than give up their ancestral ways. And even if they had wanted to assimilate…

I think you may have a rather stereotypical view of the natives. Not all natives were Sioux. A lot of the natives (probably the majority) were farmers themselves. And a most of them were rather friendly towards the early colonists and eager to trade with them and intermingle. If the Europeans simply taught the natives their higher efficiency farming methods, there would not be a conflict for land either, because Amer…

Many natives were farmers, but those farmers were also hunters and gatherers. Hunting provided essential proteins. Europeans evolved to get a lot of proteins from cows milk, but natives are lactose intolerant and so would not have been able to drink milk (http://www.amazon.com/000-Year-Explosion-Civilization-Accele... ). Europeans also evolved to deal with farm animal borne diseases, having natives try and use European farming techniques (with animals) may have been a death sentence. And even if the natives could have adopted farming, very few people will give up their old way of life and ancestral lands voluntarily, without putting up a fight. The low density hunter-gatherer-farmer life the natives lived was in many ways more attractive than the dense settlement agriculturalist way of life.

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#148

Post by Tichy »

tfh wrote: post #87
IsaacSchlueter wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say there are two murderers, Frank and Bob. Frank murders Bob. Is Bob therefor less bad than Frank? What if Bob had murdered 1000 children, and Frank wasn't a murderer until he murdered Bob? Does being a victim cleanse your sins?

Being a victim does not cleanse your sins. I'm sure that the Natives Americans were not perfect human beings. No one is. Being killed does not make the Natives good but the Europeans bad. I hope for you that you agree with that last sentence.

The natives being killed does not make Europeans bad. Doing the killing does. (if we have to speak in such general terms - talking logic here, not actual history).

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#149

Post by potatolicious »

Tichy wrote: post #145
potatolicious wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Why do you even feel the need to justify the murdering of the natives?" Wait, what? Thanks for going all "think of the children" on me man, where if I'm not with you I'm for murdering the natives. You are (apparently) representative of the moral absolutism problem I am talking about. I'm not defending the extermination of native American natives. The problem with this article is that it cast native American societ…

Why does it even matter who was "evil" and who wasn't? The fact remains that one party killed off the other. It seems clear that among the killers there were some "evil savages", but of course not every European was evil. It doesn't even make sense to think in such generalizations. However, if some actions were ordered by "the state", then it seems to me to make sense to hold "the state" responsible for it. Whatever…

> "if the European invaders where not evil, ruthless and completely without moral compunction, how were they capable of doing the killing?"

That's precisely why it matters who was "evil" and who wasn't. This kind of "pure evil" doesn't really exist, and by assuming it does you are glossing over the real causes of the native genocide. It's far too easy to ask "why did the Europeans murder the natives?" and answer with "because they were evil, ruthless, and completely with morality"

It's a feel-good answer, because moral absolutism makes us all feel better. But it's far from the truth - and masks analysis that can actually help us prevent things like this in the future.

For example (and apologies for the Godwin): we know that not every Nazi soldier was for exterminating the Jews. Heck, we know that many German soldiers guarding the extermination camps were not supportive of the cause, yet they went along with it. Why?

The simplistic explanation that makes us feel better is that these men were evil, without morals, and participated willingly in mass slaughter. But this ignores much more useful insights on mob mentality, the power of coercion, propaganda, misinformation, and a slew of other things that actually help us understand what happened, and prevent these things from happening again.

We're talking about an event that occurred hundreds of years ago - playing the blame game is pretty pointless at this point. It really doesn't matter what is whose fault; the importance of understanding the European conquest of the Americas is to determine the factors that caused a bunch of perfectly reasonable people to exterminate entire civilizations, so that we may better understand our present selves and hopefully prevent such things from repeating.

Which leads back to your original question:

> "Why does it even matter who was "evil" and who wasn't?"

It matters because by playing the blame game, and telling this story as a fairy tale of black and white, good vs. evil, you are bypassing the need to analyze what is, in reality a complex situation of many causes and effects. You are robbing a heinous and dark event of its proper gravity and complexity, and grossly simplifying something that carries relevance today.

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#150

Post by cabalamat »

mcantelon wrote: post #137
IsaacSchlueter wrote: post #38

This article, and many of the comments here, hint at a deeper and more interesting phenomenon: the need to have things be either all good or all bad. That is, either (A) western civilization is good, and the things it has done were good, and the things it values are good values, etc., or (B) it's bad, and the things it has done were bad, and the things it values are bad values, etc. Once this dichotomy is accepted, a…

Where in the article is the claim that western civilization is all bad? The author seems to merely be pointing out that western society largely denies the magnitude of the human and environmental cost of its prosperity.

The article states that "Europe was massively enriched by the genocides in the Americas".

On the whole, I think this is untrue. For European countries that had colonies, as often as not the colonies had a negative effect on their economies. If you look at European states today, ones that didn't have colonies (e.g. Sweden, Austria, Switzerland, Greece) are just as prosperous on the whole as ones that did (e.g. UK, France, Spain), or the ones that were owned by other European countries (e.g. Ireland, Finland, Slovenia).

Spain in particular suffered a good deal of long-term economic harm from its colonies as the importation of gold crowded out the real economy.

Germany and Italy had short-lived colonial empires that didn't run at a profit.

Probably the British did gain overall from their colonies, but much of their American colonies were lost in the 1770s. Jamaica OTOH made the fortunes of many wealthy British families.

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