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Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

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Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#61

Post by oconnor0 »

seldo wrote: post #54
themilkmandan wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, all this black-or-white talk about genocide misses a lot of the subtleties. How about a nuanced analysis of the Jewish Holocaust? Nobody brings up enough the fact that Hitler built some damn good roads.

You're missing the point. It's not that genocide is sometimes good, it's that civilizations that commit genocide also do good things. The Germany that produced the Jewish holocaust also invented rocket science, which indirectly led us to the space program, satellites, and a big chunk of our modern communications network. Does this excuse genocide? No. Does it make it difficult to label German civilization as "all goo…

True, and the article is a little simplistic on that front, but a modern communications network does not morally justifies the holocaust. Neither does making lots of money & whatever else the Unobtainium was going to do justify wholesale slaughter & genocide of the Na'vi.

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#62

Post by yummyfajitas »

jcl wrote: post #39
yummyfajitas wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would have almost no effect. Unless the Americas were completely isolated from Eurasia, everyone would have died anyway. The Americas were not conquered by force of arms, but by disease. A common pattern: send an expedition, which discovers cities, towns and gardens. Send another expedition years later: find nothing. I highly recommend the book 1491, which is a great historical account. There was absolutely nothin…

Why didn't it work symmetrically? Shouldn't the diseases going the other way have wiped out Europe? The only major disease I can recall coming from the Americas was syphilis.

Eurasia was a cesspool. The Americas were not.

Eurasians/Africans evolved an immune system capable of fighting infectious diseases because for thousands of years they lived in close quarters with domesticated animals and other people.

American Indians had few domesticated animals (only Llamas and Alpacas, I think), minimal over overcrowding and hence had few infectious disease. This caused them to be tall and healthy by contemporary Eurasian standards, but also made them prone to illness.

For much the same reason, I got food poisoning twice in two weeks in Egypt but my (Asian) Indian girlfriend came away unscathed.

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#63

Post by turkishrevenge »

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…

There is a definite wrong when one group directly benefits materially from the exploitation of another, no matter how you spin it.

The practice of rape, pillage and plunder is without a doubt a bad thing.

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#64

Post by turkishrevenge »

baxident wrote: post #33
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #24

I made it about halfway this through before bailing. Yet another "western civilization is so bad" articles. Ho hum. The problem here is, as mattmaroon put it, if you buy into this logic we'd all still be chasing down antelopes on the savannah. At some point some civilizations, for whatever reason, start developing things like private property, the wheel, common law, reading, the printing press, etc. It's become fashi…

If Europeans had already developed the idea of private property, then why did we find it necessary to take the land of these ingenious populations?

Because the idea underlying of private property is to acquire more of it.

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#65

Post by IsaacSchlueter »

themilkmandan wrote: post #52
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…

Yes, all this black-or-white talk about genocide misses a lot of the subtleties. How about a nuanced analysis of the Jewish Holocaust? Nobody brings up enough the fact that Hitler built some damn good roads.

You missed the point, and then made exactly the error I was pointing at. And you did so in a way that gets very close to Godwin's Law without quite invoking it. Nicely done.

I'm not suggesting that Hitler's good roads made the holocaust less bad. I'm suggesting that the Holocaust didn't make the good roads less good.

Things aren't either all good or all bad. That includes the Conquistadors, Hitler, the Nazis, your children, a puppy, the Na'vi, the Native Americans, and everyone else.

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#66

Post by seldo »

oconnor0 wrote: post #61
seldo wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point. It's not that genocide is sometimes good, it's that civilizations that commit genocide also do good things. The Germany that produced the Jewish holocaust also invented rocket science, which indirectly led us to the space program, satellites, and a big chunk of our modern communications network. Does this excuse genocide? No. Does it make it difficult to label German civilization as "all goo…

True, and the article is a little simplistic on that front, but a modern communications network does not morally justifies the holocaust. Neither does making lots of money & whatever else the Unobtainium was going to do justify wholesale slaughter & genocide of the Na'vi.

But that's exactly what I said. It doesn't excuse the holocaust. But it also makes it hard to say that Germany in the 1940s was an evil regime that contributed nothing to the world. Both are true: they were evil bastards, and they gave us rocket science. The real world is tricky like that.

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#67

Post by IsaacSchlueter »

turkishrevenge wrote: post #63
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…

There is a definite wrong when one group directly benefits materially from the exploitation of another, no matter how you spin it. The practice of rape, pillage and plunder is without a doubt a bad thing.

I'm not defending rape, pillage, or plunder.

I'm defending rationality, and criticizing the all-or-nothing cognitive distortion.

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#68

Post by arcadeparade »

mattmaroon wrote: post #5
bokonist wrote: post #3

Question to HN readers who are sympathetic with this article: If you could wave a magic wand and "undo" all that was done, would you do so? So imagine all those who perished in the 1500's would be revived from the dead and restored to their ancestral lands, all those living in the Americas now would be sent back to England, Ireland, China, etc, with a one way ticket and $10K in cash to start a new life. Would you wav…

I'm sympathetic to the plight of the native American, though this article is poor, but no, I would not. It's an unfortunate but necessary part of human progress. It's no worse than the Romans, or Gauls, or Saxons, etc. By that logic you'd have to keep waving your wand until we were all back on the Savannah tossing spears at antelopes.

>It's no worse than the Romans, or Gauls, or Saxons, etc.

Or the Nazis?

If they had won WW2 I'm sure some people in Germany today would be calling the Holocaust "an unfortunate but necessary part of human progress" and would tell us all about the backwardness of Jewish culture, I'm sure while also being "sympathetic to the plight" of those victims too.

That doesn't mean that one group of people have the right to wipe out another culture to benefit their own, no matter what the consequences are.

I'm really shocked by some of the comments here.

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#69

Post by IsaacSchlueter »

tfh wrote: post #56
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…

> 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. I don't understand what do you mean with that. I don't think there's an absolute good or bad. But according to the fact that Europeans are the ones who came to America and slaughtered the Natives, they are t…

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?

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#70

Post by cglee »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #24

I made it about halfway this through before bailing. Yet another "western civilization is so bad" articles. Ho hum. The problem here is, as mattmaroon put it, if you buy into this logic we'd all still be chasing down antelopes on the savannah. At some point some civilizations, for whatever reason, start developing things like private property, the wheel, common law, reading, the printing press, etc. It's become fashi…

> Some cultures are demonstrably better than others, like it or not.

I'm having a really hard time swallowing this one. If people value different things, how can you even make such an argument?

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