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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 tho

• mattmaroon 17y ago
  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.
  • eries 17y ago
    I think the most interesting part of Guns, Germs and Steel was the assertion that violence is not an aberrant condition for humans. In other words, violence is not a disease, it's standard operating procedure. However, it's normal only under certain conditions. So to prevent violence, you need to work on preventing those conditions.
  • Quarrelsome 17y ago
    I wouldn't say it was necessary. But it happened and that history wasn't ours. We only get to influence things that are happening now.
  • arcadeparade 17y ago
    >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.
    • bokonist 17y ago
      What's your answer to my question?
      • arcadeparade 17y ago
        It's not a sensible question so I can't answer it. I just dont think that what happened to the Native Americans was right, it was genocide, and anything positive that came out of it doesnt excuse it.
        • bokonist 17y ago
          Let's try a similar, more realistic question. It's 2050. The U.S. has run out of oil, it only has enough to run farm equipment and food shipment trucks for another year. There is hope of converting everything to nuclear/electric power, but that will take a decade. In the meantime, the entire population, including your friends and family, face hunger or starvation. Nigeria and Venezuela have oil, but refuse to sell it at any price. The U.S. government is contemplating war to seize the oil. Do you support the war?
          • arcadeparade 17y ago
            Why dont they want to sell it? And how does that scenario compare to the invasion of the United States in the 1500s? It wasnt invaded to save the population of Europe.
            • bokonist 17y ago
              Americans have no goods that are as valuable to them as oil.
              • arcadeparade 17y ago
                Ok, well let's compare that with a real life situation. Right now there are thousands of people dying from easily preventable diseases every day in Africa, which could be cured for a few cents each. American pharmaceutical companies have this medicine, and they are operating in one of the most profitable industries that have ever existed. Africans have no goods that are as valuable to them as medicine. Should African countries invade America to get this medicine?
• DaniFong 17y ago
  I have to believe that somewhere in the parameter space of human diplomacy and relationships there is the possibility for expansion and coexistence without utter annihilation of one side. We appear to be doing it on some scales in the modern age, certainly much better than we've done before, though not perfectly. Still, homo sapiens largely wiped out neanderthal populations many eons ago. They had a similar to larger cranial capacity to cro-magnons and modern humans, they used and created tools, and there's some evidence of cultural artifacts such as jewelry around their sites. The signs point to a culture of intelligent humanoids, now almost completely wiped out (except with possible genetic relics in the human population). This genocide preceded civilization as we know it by millennia... Placental mammals, crossing over to south america from the isthmus of Panama when it arose, almost completely destroyed marsupials in south america. That's not just an ethnicity, race, or species, it's an entire infraclass. It is likely the case that our primate ancestors did the same for many other classes of beings. So to turn the clock back, it is hard to know when to stop. Fundamentally it is difficult for me to reason about when it is good for one creature to profit while others perish. I do know, though, that they are in a much more complicated relationship -- that it is impossible to separate one creature from its ecosystem, and that if no particular creature or plant or species is to be sacred above others, then surely it's the integrity and continued vitality of the ecosystem that matters. This is one reason I am an environmentalist: human beings now have immense power over the environment, and as such need to take responsibility for the fact that they can alter it, destroy it, or care for it. We have to become not the Earth's ignorant children, but the it's gardeners.
  • bokonist 17y ago
    I have to believe that somewhere in the parameter space of human diplomacy and relationships there is the possibility for expansion and coexistence without utter annihilation of one side. I always thought that the Romans empire expanded solely out of greed and power lust. One day I was reading about one of their very, very early battles. Turns out the population of Rome and of the neighboring city had expanded to the point where there was only enough resources for one city to survive. Rome won, and in a quest to secure resources and protect the home city from getting sacked, did not stop expanding. I recommend the book, "The Fates of Nations" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fates_of_Nations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fates_of_Nations ). It's dark, but very realistic. The fundamental problem of human affairs is that we are animals born to reproduce, living in a world of limited resources. The real hope for the human race is not a new moral code. It's thorium and the birth control pill. Only the combination of sufficient energy and controlled population will enable us to share the same planet without clawing each other to death.
• Quarrelsome 17y ago
  No. What's done is done and the perpetrators of this genocide are dead. However we should acknowledge the history, the lies our ancestors placated themselves with and the parallels in the lies we tell ourselves today. An example would be the premise that we are "more" civilised than other people or are in some way better. As a westerner and an Englishman considering my history I also find it very difficult to get onto a high-horse about much. As an example in the UK there are many that complain about levels of immigration but if you look into the history of the British Empire it is very apt to have a lot of immigration here. What's even more interesting is that we are still standing on the backs of the third-world. Sure, we've dimmed it down a little bit and abstracted it beautifully but spare a thought for the chap who made your IPhone or VCR and the number of hours they worked. Acknowledge that our life-styles cause a degree of suffering elsewhere in the world.
• vinutheraj 17y ago
  I think our moral viewpoint has changed over time ! When we were in tribes killing animals, that was deemed necessary at that point of time, because of all the benefits of animal food and the shelter provided by the animal skin. Then we moved into killing other humans, to gain control of their resources, because it was either them or us. I think it was correct from their viewpoint what they did. It's unfair to judge them using our morality, maybe our descendants will judge us in the future for wasting our natural resources, who knows ?!
  • riffraff 17y ago
    one of the most interesting moments of my 2009 was listening to a guy showing off this http://tafkav.blogspot.com/ http://tafkav.blogspot.com/ and talking about how we do not still consider plants (and computers!) as having rights (cfr. "Should Trees Have Standings?"). This seems completely unreasonable to us but the same was true between e.g. people and animals, europeans and native americans, japanese and chinese (see the nanking massacre). The "evolution of empathy" is probably still an ongoing process for which our descendants will consider us barbarians.
• yummyfajitas 17y ago
  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 nothing (short of complete isolation until the development of modern medicine) which would have prevented the Indians from dying out. Even if the Europeans did nothing but bring candy, puppydogs and fireworks in trade for furs, the puppydogs would have carried diseases deadly to American Indians.
  • jcl 17y ago
    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.
    • pyre 17y ago
      Maybe there were more diseases in Europe? It's not like diseases never hit Europe from other places (e.g. The Black Plague).
    • Prolorn 17y ago
      In simple terms, the Old World had a larger human population pool, with a longer history of settlement, and more domesticated animals (i.e. vectors for disease). Or in simplest terms, Old World germs were way nastier. (Contrast: African settlement.)
    • ggchappell 17y ago
      See Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond (which some disagree with, but an interesting book nonetheless). He says that the key factor was the large number of animal species in the old world that could be domesticated. So Europeans all had constant contact with animals and their diseases, which led to (1) more diseases, and (2) greater resistance (among those that survived). While in the Americas, with their relative lack of such species, the people had both fewer diseases (so they were less of a threat to the Europeans) and less resistance (so the Europeans were more of a threat to them).
• rainyday 17y ago
  While there's no magic wand for the past, you can affect the future. We're in the midst of a great extinction event, combined with anthropogenic climate change, various unsustainable practices. A lot of life--human, nonhuman--is going to die, badly, and for a long time, if people waste their time on junk like Avatar instead of dealing with this mess.
  • Quarrelsome 17y ago
    .... and you're posting on hacker news when you could be "dealing with that mess".
    • rainyday 17y ago
      A valid criticism.
  • whimsy 17y ago
    Hopefully you have heard of lesswrong.com by this point in time.
    • rainyday 17y ago
      First time. Thanks for the reference.
• hristov 17y ago
  This is a false dichotomy. It would have been quite possible to have had peaceful coexistence with the natives, and to slowly assimilate the natives into American society. In fact on a smaller scale that actually happened in a lot of places. Many early settlements had natives living and trading and working in there on a more or less equal footing as whites. In fact it would have been probably more beneficial economically for the early settlements to assimilate the natives rather than wipe them out, because the biggest problem for early settlements was lack of people.
  • bokonist 17y ago
    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, it's not clear it would have been possible. While there was some peaceful co-existence on a small scale, as soon as the density grows the farms start encroaching on the hunting grounds and the conflict becomes unavoidable.
    • hristov 17y ago
      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 America has enough land to support much larger populations than were present at the time. Of course some natives were hunter gatherers and they would have to change their lifestyles, so I am sure there would be some battles, but if the hunter gatherers had an option to assimilate, they would not fight to the death either, they would eventually see that there is no way out after losing a couple of battles. So there may be some war but there would not be genocide. As it happened, they only fought to the death because they knew there wasn't another option.
• SapphireSun 17y ago
  I'm conflicted. Part of me says turn the clock all the way back. Genocide is inexcusable. People can actually be happy without technology. Eventually the important stuff would be invented again. However, I am more inclined to not do anything at all because we survived so far, and there have been existential threats in the past. I'm even more biased by the fact that if we turn back the clock and fix some of these genocides, I wouldn't exist. It's hard to balance the conflicting philosophies :(
• dejb 17y ago
  A question for you. If you were magically transported into the the 1500s as one of the conquistadores would repeat their actions? If you had the capacity to stop their slaughter would you? Or would you perform the same terribly acts simply because it lead to a future that you are comfortable with? Everybody knows that the past is the past and can't be undone. But that doesn't mean that we should lie to ourselves about it. What really matters is what we do here and now in the world. If you condone such actions in the past then it is natural that you will condone them in the present and future as well.
• whimsy 17y ago
  I'm very curious what the modern age would look like if Europe hadn't found the Americas until the 1600s, or the 1800s... what would modern technology look like? Modern culture? Would the Americas eventually have sufficient technology (primarily medicine) such that they would be able to resist invasion? How long would that take? There is, of course, no way of knowing, but if American civilizations had thrived instead, and continued to be "peaceful and democratic" as the article put it, it seems somewhat plausible that we wouldn't be running into these "Tragedy of the Commons" problems... or, at least, that we would be making good progress on mitigating them. I'm pretty sure that's wishful thinking, though. I'm still interested in what sort of cultures and technologies would have come out of that seed.