Where were the (non-aboriginal) North Americans living in the 1500's?Originally Posted by Manfred Hideous
Where were the (non-aboriginal) North Americans living in the 1500's?
You mean the European colonists (Excluding the Irish and Africans of course)?
Kinda my point
Although in a world without the US would undoubtedly be more of the aforementioned aboriginals - must have been a habit picked up from somewhere.
While I don't agree with Malcanis, he's not defending genocide there. I must've missed the part where the rest of us defended genocide, too.
Its more of a "if it happened in the past good things come out of it, if it happens today its bad" sort of thing. When the Serbs, Croats, and Muslims were busy killing each other in the Balkans most of the world was quite happy to say "thats just the way they are" and not try to solve the problems that caused the fighting.
If you kill enough of them they stop fighting - Gen. Curtis Lemay
Fear the KKM
I was using the Magna Carter as an example of presumed cultural superiority because I think you're from the UK and couldn't think of anything specifically British to come out of the Renaissance so instead I just went back to your first codified social contract.
What it has to do with Europe's colonial efforts was a satirical paraphrasing of the idea behind what you wrote. You said something shockingly jingoistic without the benefit of it being a part of some gimmicky satire post. The way it just came out so casually leads me to believe that you actually do think that having a "superior" culture is a validation for the wholesale genocide of "inferior" cultures. In which case the European continent should be speaking Arabic.
It's kinda hypocritical that Euros spend pages laughing about other people's racism while being so casual about their own.
PS you're a fucking moron if you think Native American lives were improved by their contact with colonial Europe.
*Carta*
What on earth are you on about - I think you've mis-interpreted quite a bit (has Manfred hacked your account)
PS it's been a while but I'm pretty sure the Magna Carta didn't come out of the renaissance.
I am on about what Malcanis said about the Incas and Mayans and how the Spanish colonization was somehow an improvement over their previous situation. I had 2 points:What on earth are you on about - I think you've mis-interpreted quite a bit (has Manfred hacked your account
PS it's been a while but I'm pretty sure the Magna Carta didn't come out of the renaissance.
1. What he said is, by any reasonable historical or humanitarian standard, bullshit. The idea relies on ignorance and stereotypes to provide a feel-good rationalization.
and
2. It's a position ("Better off a slave to a white man than being free on your own") commonly espoused by fine southern gentleman in nice white outfits with matching hoods.
I know the Magna Carta (now I even know why it looked kinda funny when I wrote it out) didn't come out of the Renaissance, I used it as a backup when I couldn't think of something someone would consider cultured about the UK during that time period. I did the mental rolodex thing and could only come up with stuff from the Victorian era and completely forgot about Shakespeare.
Yeah I got that, just didn't get the Magna Carta bit - don't think anyone was really saying its fine to commit genocide if you we're a more 'advanced' nation. Can't foster a decent thread without a bit of hyperbole.
Hehe. Far from partly, I'd say I'm mostly european, to be fair.
There is no such thing as "the epitome of peaceful human-rights respecting societies", much less back then, since "human rights" are something we nade up very recently.
The locals where dicks, of course, but I believe everyone is entitled to be a dick in his own homeland. Not to mention the fact that the Spanish conquerors (and the portuguese, and the french, and the dutch, and the english) didn't just kill a shitload of people and then built their houses here. They built an entire system where non-europeans where second, third, fourth and fifth class humans (depending on mixes and heritage), and enforced it for centuries.... the conquest was just the initial frenzy of a long history of brutality and opression.
Lastly, I wouldn't dare say the Spanish were an improvement, because there was a gazillion different civilizations here. Saying that the people here were better off with the spanish empire just because you took Apocalypto as a documentary is... quite funny, to be honest (or insulting, if you ask the thousands of free tribes and civilizations that existed -and still exist- here).
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/hChYV.png[/IMG]
"Every rifter counts friend" - VR
Magnum Carter: a mega souped-up grocery cart with all kindsa hawt fiery decals.
I know that but I didn't want to get into it over a spelling error, when the idea that the Magna Carta was anything at all to do with the latinisation of South America was much more interestingly wrong.
Also today I learned that the Renaissance started in 1215 in Runnymede.
I don't know where poaw is getting his ideas about racism and whatever from, but I can only assume that he's thinking of some other argument entirely. Oh wait, let's have a look:
"The locals where dicks, of course, but I believe everyone is entitled to be a dick in his own homeland"
So apparently it's OK to oppress and slaughter when it's locals, but not when you're a tourist. So that's two things I've learned today!
The facts have a strong anti-A- bias.
Then you're just retarded. Here I was thinking you were trying to find a way out of a completely stupid statement and you actually don't *get* what you said wrong.
The Locals, as you called them had a variety of cultures and yeah they did go to war and kill each other off. They kept to themselves though and invented stuff like brain surgery when nobody was killing.
Then the Tourists showed up and noticed there was a lot of gold and decided to enslave or kill every least one of the locals.
Is that different than what went on before (save the focus on God instead of medical advancements)? Not really. It's part of the human condition, although almost nobody could compete with Euros when they had a desire to kill and destroy. What makes you racist is saying that it's OK because at least the Europeans brought (their) civilization.
The US was a European state as much as it was independent so it's still pretty valid to blame Europe for what happened. At the very least, Europe is to blame for almost everything east of the Mississippi. Don't forget there wasn't even a U.S. prior to 1788 so we'd had 300+ years of Europeans running natives off the land at that point.Kinda my point
Although in a world without the US would undoubtedly be more of the aforementioned aboriginals - must have been a habit picked up from somewhere.
When did this change from a world without America to Europeans like to kill and murder everyone
The same way this always happens...
Euros argue that the USA is the cause of *insert conflict/disaster*, and Americans point out that the root cause was European Colonialism. The argument then devolves into a discussion of why it was ok to plunder a nations resources then, but not now, etc.
As an example: Americans are responsible for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. USA#1 points out that the British handed the keys to the Israelis after succumbing to a prolonged zionist terror campagin.
If you kill enough of them they stop fighting - Gen. Curtis Lemay
Fear the KKM
The third thing I have learned today is that calling people "gold-crazed genocidal maniacs who'd make the Einsatzgruppen blink" is semantically equivalent to being "OK" with them.
My target is to learn a new thing every day, so I can kick back until Thursday now.
The facts have a strong anti-A- bias.
At least you guys convict people for natural disasters in Europe: http://www.sfgate.com/news/science/a...ng-3971183.php
The part I'm arguing is you saying they were "better off" after my ancestors came and kicked them into the ground, because I disagree with that in many levels. Worst-case-scenario, they were in the same overall situation but their opressors had beards now (that'd be true for people under the Inca and Mayan empires)... but I'd say the situation of most natives actually worsened after the conquest. Most tribes and civilizations were free and independent up untill that point. Muiscas, Tayronas, Pijaos, Caribs (just to name a few around my area) all had their own political independent federations. They were definitely better off without europeans.
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/hChYV.png[/IMG]
"Every rifter counts friend" - VR
I was using the Magna Carta rhetorically as an example of "enlighted" culture thinking, because I thought you'd be familar with it.
I was pointing out that your idea that native lives were somehow improved by colonialism falls comfortably in-line with America's most notorious neighborhood watch and others who could comfortably be called racist in polite company. I never stated that the level of dick-headedness was somehow equivelent, my point infact was the exact opposite. That the Europeans for all their Renaissance enlightment were actually much worse than the natives they killed and enslaved. To be more direct, I am saying native Americans were better off before they encountered Europeans. They weren't living in a Utopia, but being "discovered" by Europe pretty much turned their existance into the closest thing to hell on earth the world would see until about 400 years later. It was like seeing someone drinking soup made of piss and deciding to take a huge steaming shit into it and then patting yourself on the back for improving their meal.
If you seriously still don't understand what I'm trying to say then replace nessecary words to be about your home country and whatever immigrant/political group you are completely repulsed by, like Sharia Islam or the BNP or something.
As I'm from a small state in europia, am I not allow to complain about things that are happening in my life time because of things that some of my cuntish ancestors did a very long time ago?
Back in the day, everybody was a nightmare, bad things happened because it was how the world worked, you were the big I am, then the next big I am came along and fucked you up and so on and so forth, as far back as history recalls this was the case, we all realise now that we all acted in some pretty horrific ways, and some of the consequences are still visible in the world we live in today, but fuck man, while this might be a viable reason to blame us for literally everything written in the history books, it can't surely be an excuse to act like a nightmare in this life time. It's very much like a "you started it" kind of arguement, but the problem is we started (and finished) forever ago.
I think we did some cool stuff too, does any of that count?
You're allowed to complain or even rejoice in whatever you like. My specific problem was with Malcanis saying that native American lives were better before Europeans arrived when by anything approaching an informed and reasonable standard for quality of life shit got worse, way worse for them.
The pay off for torture, enslavement, and genocide was a the Spanish language and culture for whoever survived. That isn't some lamentation of a cruel world gone by, he puts the value of Spanish culture above that of the native Americans AND their freedom and lives combined.
I am really running out of ways to make that more clear and I'm not even sure if people don't understand what I'm saying or if they disagree with me but don't actually want to come out and say "well of course European culture is superior" because they're smart enough to know what it would look like to anyone else reading.
You're right in much of that. The thing is if you claimed you decimated a native population and made them better off, you'd be rightfully called on it.
I'm willing to bet not one person reading this is part of or descended from a culture that has not fucked over for profit/religion at some point in the last 500 or so years.
That being said, some of the uniforms were cool.
Seeing this is really frustrating to me and leads to a completely off-topic annoyance of mine, but suffice to say once you get outside of the bubble of European colonialism you tend to stop seeing the things you refer to. Either the scale declines or it's intensity, but in either case their tends to be a clear line "One of these sucks more." The sentiment you expressed makes me visualize it as a bunch of anthropomorphic representations of the colonial powers sitting around a poker table nd smoking cigars asking, "Hey did you do that? Yeah me too. Well I guess it's ok because we're everyone right guys?"
Ok, I'm sorry for being part of a country that had an Empire. I can confirm that it was definitely my fault & probably the fault of my direct family who did whatever they did purely for self interest & greed & general interest. I'm really sorry. I also know nothing about them at all just that they were bad.
Also, nobody else did it worse than us, we were definitely the worse people to do it & for that I can only apologise. All other countries are by comparison saintly & committed virtually no genocide at all hardly, no sir. & if they did (which they didn't) they didn't know it was bad whereas we did. Sorry.
PS stick your miserable faggoty excuse for a colonial hang up where the sun don't shine & get some therapy or something. You're no better or no worse than anybody else.
PPS if I somehow misread your post then oops, I'm sure you'll get over it.
I wasn't looking for an apology, I was arguing that drawing a moral equivalency between the empires of colonial Europe and pretty much anywhere else in the world is misleading. When you look at the actual institutions themselves from conquest to administration to their withdrawal it becomes pretty clear that European empires were the worst. In both terms of scale and repulsiveness they hold the heavyweight belt and will most likely hold on to the crown for quite some time. The only purpose of the "all empires were like that" argument is to minimize the enormity of the crimes involved.
A much better argument would be that the European powers had the bad (good) luck of sitting at a gap in the junction between pre-industrial/industrial revolution and modern western thinking on human rights and dignity. They were basically the first ones who had the logistics and technology to commit genocide and were about 450 years ahead of someone seriously asking "Should we be committing genocide?"
So not the Mongols, Chinese in various incarnations, Romans (or do they get lumped in as 'Europeans' & yes i'm aware of where Rome is), Egyptians, A large proportion of Africa, The US (nice land, we'll take) it The aformentioned SA civs, Turkey, almost anywhere in the Balkans, Israel .. I could go on depending on who & what you are exactly lumping in.
None of these count because there wasn't industrialisation & the poor fellows didn't know about such lofty ideals such as human liberty? Seriously?
Are we OK with concerted ethnic persecution but just not actual colonisation?
How are we judging this, by total deliberate death of % of population or total numbers?
Are we going on native satisfaction surveys before & after colonialisation?
Does it count if you just take over a country/area or is it only evil when its colonised?
What about financial & diplomatic attack ruining a country by proxy?
What if your world peers think its ok to play this game - surely that's a consensus & we've down with that right?
I'm certainly not going to start wringing my hands over events that happened completely out of context to our current world view especially when there plenty of other issues to wring hands over in our current lifetimes.
If you do I'd suggest that its patronising & probably just a little bit bigoted.
Why not? We still get harassed about the whole slavery thing in the U.S. (something gifted to us by our European brothers). Wringing hands over generations long dead is the new black.
Its your arteries, wring away. Who harasses you over slavery, you effectively got rid of that way back in the 60's- not that Maggie Thatcher again surely
Biden has been harassing us over slavery =(Its your arteries, wring away. Who harasses you over slavery, you effectively got rid of that way back in the 60's- not that Maggie Thatcher again surely
Kater Magnus = German's fake Latin for "big hangover"Magnum Carter: a mega souped-up grocery cart with all kindsa hawt fiery decals.
puts on his Hugo Boss suit
To add some serious content here: The title-question of this thread is a ridiculously hypothetical one to ask. We might as well ask ourselves how the world would look if Hannibal had taken Rome or what if Zhengtong hadn't put a final stop to China's naval expeditions; what if the Huns had never decided to storm westwards. It may be nice to ponder on but eventually the "what ifs" don't matter.
What matters however is the question why we still aren't able, as "advanced" and "civilized" as we make us out to be - speaking especially of the western world - to stop nationalising our experiences when it comes to "helping other, less advanced cultures to develop", usually accompanied by hypocrisy of moral superiority without following one's own principles. It's certainly not unique to Europe and its offsprings, but given its economic and military dominance for the past 500 years, it's the most prominent example.
Whether you toss aside the whole "love thy neighbour" principle of Christianity while enslaving or erradicating foreign cultures to get to their gold or to stage yourself as the herald of democracy and human rights while interfering with other nations' businesses, supporting military juntas over democratically elected governments, or pissing on a global institution whenever you see fit that is built on your own principles.
We've all been there, we got the blood-sprinkled t-shirt a thousand times, and yet, rather than learning "globaly", every new power thinks the crimes of the old ones as a justification for re-doing it again on their own. Says enough about our stage on enlightenment.
You see, America, (at least) we (western Europeans) don't hate you or want you gone. We just despair of what has become of you, more consciously now that the Cold War justification is gone. What happened with the independence of the 13 colonies (and what Jefferson put to paper in its declaration) is the epitome of progressive European thoughts of that time, and it was a promise of a New World with the space to develop those thoughts into practive - something that wasn't possible in Old Europe. 200 years later it's the same old shit and what was once a great progressive experiment has become partially regressive.
EDIT: And yes, certainly there's a notion of being powerless and the fear of becoming redundant globally in that European complaint, making it just as hypocritic and sad, along with Europe's half-hearted actions.
The facts have a strong anti-A- bias.
The Mongols, Chinese, Romans, Egyptians, Native Americans and Africans did the same things (when did the Balkans stop being Europe?). Yes, they count. Europe was still the worst. In most of the categories by an order of magnitude over their nearest competitor. You can pretty much pick any universal standard of measuring human degradation and see that. I dunno why you're getting so worked up over stuff people acknowledged like 50 years ago. The only reason to seriously debate it would be if what I said was factually untrue or if it interferes with some narrative like "The White Man's burden" in your mind or something.
BTW instead of going with calling me a bigot, which won't gain much traction when all I'm saying is that European colonialism was the worst colonialism and pointing out specific details and explaining my position, you could draw parallels to me making a distinction between the different kinds of imperialism and the American right on the subject legitimate/forcible rape.
I guess the point Scroobius was trying to make is that no matter where you look, you'll find evidence of one people/nation/culture trying to topple over another. Modern man may distinguish itself from his ancestors by being relatively peaceful within its own social group but he's still as aggressive to other groups/families/tribes/etc. as any other primate.
Simply due to the economic and technologic advantage Europe build up since the 15th century, by quantitative margin, we are undoubtably the worst up until now, no question.
In other words: Europeans weren't special for being cruel to "weaker" cultures, just more "effective" due to technological advantage. And no, it's not to be understood as an apologetic statement; it's no excuse for anything at all.
The facts have a strong anti-A- bias.
In a nutshell & better said
"Bigotry may be based on real or perceived characteristics, including age, disability, dissension from popular opinions, economic status, ethnicity, gender identity, language, nationality, political alignment, race, region, religious or spiritual belief, sex, or sexual orientation. Bigotry is sometimes developed into an ideology or world view."
I.E. Europeans <insert other including the US> be bad!- I'm perfectly down with he fact that panapoly of human nationhood is capable of all manner actions, benevolent or otherwise. To attribute a generic 'better' or 'worse' to any of them outside of of the relevant historical period is on the whole flawed. Calling an entire continent out on its actions 200+ years ago to me just doesn't wash as a serious political argument & smacks of the aforementioned. Doesn't mean I think you are a bad person
Sure but it's equally flawed to tell one of the descendants of the side that was decimated that they're better off because of it. :-/In a nutshell & better said
"Bigotry may be based on real or perceived characteristics, including age, disability, dissension from popular opinions, economic status, ethnicity, gender identity, language, nationality, political alignment, race, region, religious or spiritual belief, sex, or sexual orientation. Bigotry is sometimes developed into an ideology or world view."
I.E. Europeans <insert other including the US> be bad!- I'm perfectly down with he fact that panapoly of human nationhood is capable of all manner actions, benevolent or otherwise. To attribute a generic 'better' or 'worse' to any of them outside of of the relevant historical period is on the whole flawed. Calling an entire continent out on its actions 200+ years ago to me just doesn't wash as a serious political argument & smacks of the aforementioned. Doesn't mean I think you are a bad person
No, seriously, white people are the worst.
I didn't say that so stop implying it. At least try being relevant for a change rather than your usual distraction for fuck sake.
I didn't say you said it. It is relevant to this thread of the discussion since it *was* stated and you got all butthurt because Iratus did call out the person (Malcanis) who made the claim that South America was better off being invaded, the population destroyed, and the lands stolen. You can call it a distraction all you want but it doesn't make you right.
The absolute worst are the [SPOILER=Je...]m'hadar[/SPOILER]
The facts have a strong anti-A- bias.
The Jem'Hadar are mindless killing machines, you can't blame them for the dominion's agressive expansionist policoh god I am a nerd
Go oppress some more Tibetans about it.
If you kill enough of them they stop fighting - Gen. Curtis Lemay
Fear the KKM
Yeah, because they found religion they should be forgiven for all their past sins. Also fuck Tibetans, they have tons of water, keeping that shit for China.
You didn't. As manny pointed out, it was Malcanis who did:
Hell, for the interest of clarity, I'd like to point out that my family tree is close to 90% european (with "official" coats of arms and all that snobbery)... so I decry those deeds not out of inherited resentment to the conquerors, but out of knowing what my ancestors did when they got here and decided they liked the place (yeah, white guilt). The stories told about the way this lands were conquered, and how people from whom I directly descend were given "4 irish, 20 indians, 12 blacks and other assorted cattle as rewards for their service to the Viceroyalty of New Granada and the King of Spain" (seriously, that's the wording of one document in my father's archives) is quite awful, to be honest.
I'm certain you can find simmilar stories around the world, but there's no denying who was the biggest asshole on the block, even if it wasn't for lack of trying by the competition.
On the bright side, I got a load of nice antiques out of the deal.
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/hChYV.png[/IMG]
"Every rifter counts friend" - VR
Hey I'm Indian and I can be proud of my moral high ground, fucking gwai-los ruined the world.
& there we have it - it's conclusive.
Time to close the thread.
No. It's time to go back to the threads topic, A world without the US.
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/hChYV.png[/IMG]
"Every rifter counts friend" - VR
A world without the U.S. (being an active participant) is a day I dream of. It'll only happen after a total collapse, though and I'm not too hot on that.
That was what were talking about. It's impossible to untangle all the webs of causality to determine (or even really attempt to debate) what the world would be like if the US simply didn't exist, but we can look at the world before the US to see what we could reasonably expect in such a world. Instead of daydreaming though we should discuss the merits of various emerging powers of the world like India, Russia, and China taking leadership in the world stage.
My preference would be Russia, I enjoy the way they project strength, mostly thanks to Putin. I really like it when social expectations don't force strong men to act weak and he embodies the kind of strength that translates well on the world stage. Even though I'm American and very much support the Constitution I find it hard not be awed by a leader willing to use the unsolved murder of a journalist to drive another journalist asking inappropriate questions to the tears. The fact that Berlusconi was riding shotgun on the matter makes it even more awesome. Putin's willingness to invade another country right under the noses of the US says a lot about both his confidence and willingness to take calculated risks.
The man makes me want to vote in Russian elections, and because leaders make nations more than anything else and Hu Jintao comes across as a dithering bureaucrat attempting to avoid any risky decision and avoiding the results when they go bad. I don't know anything about India's Prime Minister, but I'm just assuming that's a bad thing.
Why would it need a "total collapse"? Arguably Britain in the 75 years after Trafalgar was even more powerful on the world stage than the US is now, but it didn't take a total collapse to change that. You might take comfort in the fact that Britain is in every conceivable way bar Imperial Pride far better off now that when the sun never set on the empire. It's not necessary to rule the world in order for life to keep getting better.
It does need a realistic acceptance that the situation can't last indefinitely though, and a realisation that Imperial Pride really is a very expensive luxury. The US is in some ways in a very similar situation to Britain in 1901 - seemingly at the apogee of world power, yet for years falling behind its rivals in basic national metrics due to over-investment in military dominance and underinvestment in economic & social infrastructure and improvement. (Military spending as a % of GDP was also quite similar)
But perhaps that acceptance will be harder in the US's case due to the great natural avantages (population geography, natural resources, etc) it still enjoys, so you'll end up doing that collapse thing. I don't know. I wouldn't recommend it when there's a perfectly viable alternative of simply not insisting on being Team America, and reverting to being "merely" a great power in the world. Your call.
The facts have a strong anti-A- bias.
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