6 ms·
The Western museums preserved Chinese artifacts that otherwise would have been destroyed by the Chinese themselves. That fact does indeed legitimize the status
by i_am_nomad 8y ago
The Western museums preserved Chinese artifacts that otherwise would have been destroyed by the Chinese themselves. That fact does indeed legitimize the status quo. The artifacts must and will remain, excluding those pilfered by the criminals described in the article.
- justicezyx 8y ago> That fact does indeed legitimize the status quo. So how about let western white people own everything, and kill all non white people, as non white are not doing a good job of protecting their own stuff. This is what you called "legitimize". This is not only utterly racism, it's also plain stupid. If there were no opioid war, the artifacts would have been protected very well. Get your logic straight first.
- i_am_nomad 8y agoI'm sorry to say, this type of outburst really has no place in a civilized discussion.
- qiqing 8y agoI'm just going to leave this right here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_policing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_policing The commenter was angry, but I understand his anger. I can see how even the slightest hint of it in sharing my personal experiences can trigger negative responses from other people, but it also helps for you and others to be sensitive to the trauma that many others (and our families) have lived through.
- lainga 8y agoWhat's your argument here? If there were no Opium Wars, there would have been no Nine-Power Treaties, and thus the Qing would not have fallen, and thus Mao and the CPC would not have eventually gained control over China, and thus the Cultural Revolution and the Four-Olds Campaign would not have happened?
- justicezyx 8y agoI am not making stories. I am saying it's not legalized.
- Leary 8y agoIf I rob your house and take your furniture, and then later see you burning a chair on your lawn. Am I absolved of the theft in the first place if I kept your furniture nice and clean in my house?
- i_am_nomad 8y agoYou’re committing the depressingly common fallacy of scaling interpersonal ethics up to intercultural. Let me suggest that you give some thought to how your analogy fails in this regard.
- Leary 8y agoNote that you do not address the claim that an immoral act (the destruction of Chinese art during the Cultural Revolution) does not absolve another one (the pillaging of Chinese art by Europeans decades/centuries earlier). If scaling interpersonal ethics up to the intercultural is a common fallacy (which it's not), then you have committed the depressingly common fallacy of Argument from Fallacy [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy
- lainga 8y agoIf it is not a common fallacy, let me make an appeal to you: If I go to your house and beat you up, you have every right to call the police on me and they should be able to throw me in jail, and keep an eye on me until I've reformed my ways. However, this doesn't mean you can go to my house and start stealing all my things: just like any other immoral act, as you point out, one crime doesn't absolve another. This should apply even if you're a policeman. Accordingly, the USSR should not have seized Kaliningrad, Stettin, and Silesia. Don't you think those territories should be returned to Germany?
- qiqing 8y agoBoth of you are lumping all Chinese people together as a monolith. Let's put it this way. If you come to my house and beat me up and loot my stuff, and then burn most of my house down, but I survive, and then a mob of poor people came by and then destroyed other artifacts in my house, do the actions of the mob of poor people absolve you, the original looter? Does it complicate or simplify things if you, the original looter, also sold opium to the mob of poor people?
- thereare5lights 8y ago> That fact does indeed legitimize the status quo. That does not logically follow from any point you've made. Preservation of something does not legitimize its theft.