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Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

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Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#81

Post by hristov »

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…

This is BS. The article isn't condoning chasing antelopes in the savannah. It is against genocide. Just because your civilisation is more advanced (whatever that means) does not mean that you should simply murder and wipe out the other civilisation. You can live side by side and allow the others to learn from you and interact with you, etc. If there was no genocide, the US will probably be just as advanced as it is now but would have much more native Americans. In fact it would probably advance faster because in the beginning shortage of people was the main thing slowing down the US advance. If native Americans were free to join the American population, the population would grow much faster.

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#82

Post by maxwell »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #49
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When discussing genocide, pointing out the merits of those who conducted the genocide vs. those who were slaughtered constitutes an implicit justification of the act. Imagine if descriptions of Nazi concentration camps included lengthy treatises on how Jewish culture was backwards and savage, while German culture was refined and noble. Would you find this appropriate, or even relevant in any way?

I think you guys have fallen off in the weeds somewhere. The point wasn't that somehow Europeans were "right" in the way they treated the natives, any more than the natives were "right". My thesis is, given any two sufficiently distant cultures, any interaction between them, no matter how principled, will be traumatic to the lesser culture. That doesn't mean I approve of the side-effects of interaction, or that I'm a…

What, quantitatively, makes one culture "greater" than another?

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#83

Post by IsaacSchlueter »

turkishrevenge wrote: post #76
IsaacSchlueter wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not defending rape, pillage, or plunder. I'm defending rationality, and criticizing the all-or-nothing cognitive distortion.

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, and the technological know-how to cross the oceans, which are both quite good and important things.

Being a murderer doesn't mean your ships aren't great. Having great ships doesn't make you less of a murderer.

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

My point is also that you can't just say "they had this awful thing done to them, therefor everything about their culture was better."

We can judge the act as bad without thinking that it somehow pollutes everything that is good about the culture that did the heinous thing.

We can also judge the act as bad without thinking that being the victim of a heinous act somehow erases everything that is bad in the victim.

The real world is complicated, and all-or-nothing thinking is irrationally and unforgivably lazy.

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#84

Post by potatolicious »

Retric wrote: post #72
tfh wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

At least one South American civilization was committing human sacrifices, calling them "good people" before the Spaniards showed up is simplistic. At the same time suggesting the Spaniards were a "good people" simply because they replaced one set of barbaric behaviors with another is also simplistic.

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 a good basis for it. Until we can come up with a fair resource that doesn't look at the natives like saints, and Europeans like evil incarnate, I don't think any productive discussion can happen.

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#85

Post by tfh »

Retric wrote: post #72
tfh wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

At least one South American civilization was committing human sacrifices, calling them "good people" before the Spaniards showed up is simplistic. At the same time suggesting the Spaniards were a "good people" simply because they replaced one set of barbaric behaviors with another is also simplistic.

That's not what I meant. I revised my post. Are we trying to classify which civilization is better? If yes, I think that this is not going anywhere.

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#86

Post by protomyth »

eries wrote: post #6

I was expecting the "The Holocaust We Will Not See" to be the one that will obviously take place after the film ends. The native people have driven the imperialists off their planet. But, the imperialists have space weapons and the natives do not. Plus, the imperialists only want inert matter that exists underground. And, they are so evil they have no respect for life in any form. I assume a kinetic bombardment is im…

They do mention "bad press" in the movie. I would imagine that word of this defeat would get out and bad press / lawyer action might make a return painful.

I do wonder about the modern press applied to historical situations (WWII, American Frontier).

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#87

Post by tfh »

IsaacSchlueter wrote: post #69
tfh wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

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.

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#88

Post by b-man »

narag wrote: post #74
astine wrote: post #10

This article is largely based on the claims of Bartolome de Las Casas, an activist from the time of Conquistadors. Some scholars believe thathe wildly exaggerated the crimes in order to convince the Spanish and other governments to intervene.

Has anyone travelled to both Spain and Latin America? Spaniards are white. Latins have on average a mixed colour. So it's clear that extermination did not take place... there.

There was miscegenation for sure, not only with native people but between Europeans, Africans and everyone else that came here.

But that does not imply that there was not an extermination. [1]

[1] A single and not isolated example. -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupi_people#European_colonizati...

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#89

Post by protomyth »

cynicalkane wrote: post #30
_h4xr wrote: post #2

I recommend getting over it. You are almost certainly the descendants murderers and conquerors. http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=7819&... That's just how humans roll. Western Europe had lots of problems, but countries that operate in the European tradition are better places to live. (At least, when you look at the immigration patterns between third-world and first-world countries, it's clear that fi…

I'd like to think modern man is a better class of humans than their murderously genocidal ancestors. With so many of the comments seemingly endorsing manifest destiny on the part of "civilized" people, I'm beginning to reconsider this opinion.

read some articles on the "modern, civilized" Indian Health Service and find an reason to reconsider.

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#90

Post by bobbyi »

IsaacSchlueter wrote: post #65
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 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 ch…

Can you quote the portion of the article that you interpret as saying that Western civilization has never done anything good?
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