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It is fascinating - and unsettling - how many people react to this on range of "ha-ha, stupid medieval idiot, deserved to be murdered" to "typical American!".

• neeleshs 8y ago
  "objectively at least not doing anything we'd consider harmful" - According to the article, these islanders have been isolated for several thousand years. Newcomers can bring disaster to them via infections against which they may have no defense. We've seen how that played out in the mediterranean islands and of course, the americas. Edit: Again, absolutely sad that a human life was lost. I do not condone making mockery of the dead.
• ankitml 8y ago
  It has been documented that this tribe does not have immunity to many common diseases "outside world" has including flu etc. He was a danger to the tribe. Not only he was danger to the tribe, he was breaking all local laws as well. Even citizens of India are not allowed to go there.
• spdionis 8y ago
  Thought experiment: imagine it was a buddhist monk. I am sure the reaction here in the comments would be at least slightly different.
  • goalieca 8y ago
    Nope. Idiot breaking national law and against all warnings tries to indoctrinate with religion is both “self-righteous” and unethical. Doesn’t matter which religion.
    • wink 8y ago
      Oh I think it does help to not have your faith associated with holy crusades, if only a little.
    • smsm42 8y ago
      How about a Greenpeace protestor trying to prevent the locals from hunting the animals or harvesting the forest?
• xbmcuser 8y ago
  The tribe has been isolated from the world for 100s of years and has no immunity to many of the diseases that are common now. The Blockade is for their protection and he was endangering 120-150 people for promoting his religion. It's same as someone trying to use machine gun on a crowd of people I don't think anyone would have any sympathy for that person if he is killed before he can start shooting.
  • smsm42 8y ago
    It sounds to me like the danger of a single contact with a healthy person is a bit overrated. While theoretically it could happen that this particular person carries some disease strain that would be new for last 100 years and deadly to people on the island, the probability of this for a single contact with a single person is IMHO not that high. > It's same as someone trying to use machine gun on a crowd of people No, it's not the same. Christian proselytizers may be annoying, but believe me, machine gun is much worse. If you are given the choice, do choose the former.
• NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  Why on earth would the nationality or religion of the guy matter? Wouldn't change my view that he was an arrogant idiot choosing not to believe local custom should apply to him. Him being atheist or Buddhist wouldn't change that. He chose to follow the well trod path of believing them not "civilised enough" and wanting to force change. Doesn't really matter what change, does it? It's a shame he chose to waste his life so needlessly. "He meant no harm" Why does whether he meant harm matter? It would not matter to a crocodile had he chosen to wander into a zoo enclosure. It would not matter if he had wandered into a hot war zone. It did not matter to a group of people who have consistently, for a very long time, demonstrated they do not want invasions of their home. The evidence appears he knew full well his intentions were rejected, as he made multiple visits at times when he hoped he would not be seen or caught. "murdered" No. He was killed subject to the laws and customs of an isolationist territory he visited repeatedly despite his first visits being rejected. In local custom that could easily be considered more than fair warning. You might not like their laws and customs, just as some might not like SE Asian drug laws and the death penalties that result, or the laws or lack of due process of some other parts of the world. You risk flouting them at your peril regardless of intent, or whether you happen to agree with them. His nationality or religion is irrelevant.
  • smsm42 8y ago
    > Why on earth would the nationality or religion of the guy matter? Seeing the comments, it clearly does. > Why does whether he meant harm matter? That's kinda how we do morals around here? We treat a person that intentionally means harm to another person (e.g. if somebody shoots another person with intent to kill) as morally negative, and we usually treat actions that did not mean any harm with much less moral scorn, even if they led to bad consequences - e.g. if a car accident happens through no fault of anybody and still there's a fatality, we treat it as much less morally repugnant than, say, unsuccessful murder attempt. Moreover, in criminal case, to prove guilt, you usually need two things - actus reus (bad deed) and mens rea (guilty mind). Intent matters there too. > It would not matter to a crocodile had he chosen to wander into a zoo enclosure. People aren't crocodiles though. People are subject to moral judgement. That said, if somebody wanted to feed a crocodile that he genuinely believed is starving and in dire need of food, and the crocodile killed him, I don't think the person would deserve the kind of derisive mockery we see here. > No. He was killed subject to the laws and customs of an isolationist territory Yes, he was murdered. If you follow your moral relativist stance, you'd very quickly arrive at the conclusion that virtually every atrocity in human history - from ancient genocides to the Holocaust - is completely fine and justified, since it was OK by the rules of whoever perpetrated it. I don't think you really believe that.
• lucozade 8y ago
  I completely agree that this is tragic and not in any way funny. I also agree that his being American is irrelevant: we have arrogant, selfish fools in many countries. But I can't agree that his being Christian is irrelevant. His stated reason for being there was on a conversion mission. It was precisely his proselytising that gave him the arrogance to risk the lives of everyone on the island. And it was very likely his religion that led to his death. He had been shot at on a previous visit. He wrote to his parents saying that he may not return. It strikes me as highly likely that he thought that his death would be a martyr's death. So no, I don't find it funny. Any more than if someone climbed into a lion's enclosure and was mauled to death. Because, in many ways, that's very similar to what he did. An utterly stupid waste.
• instagraham 8y ago
  "I know some cultures don't value human life as high as we in the Western culture do." I'm sorry, I feel a general agreement with the rest of your post but this line is too much a false claim to ignore. If we're going to generalize on Western culture, I would say that that has a habit of only valuing lives that are Western or lives that are white. It took decades for there to be even mild acknowledgement that Thanksgiving celebrates the genocide of millions. You revere people like Churchill or Obama who are responsible for countless third world lives being lost. A single American dying somewhere warrants more attention in the West than a dozen brown lives. Had this American caused the death of 5-6 islanders with disease, I wonder whether it would be front page news. Please don't give me this claim that the West values life more. It is we in the East who suffer the bulk of the casualties of your Western wars.
  • smsm42 8y ago
    > I would say that that has a habit of only valuing lives that are Western or lives that are white. That's obviously not true. Ever heard about abolitionist movement, for example? Are you claiming no Western culture persons supported movements like civil rights movement, BLM, etc.? This claim flies right in the face of obvious historical and present facts. It sounds like you are just parroting some fashionable overgeneralisations - which may be fine to shout on a protest, where the goal is to push your point and getting a little overboard is ok, but it can't be taken seriously as a logical argument. Surely, there are Western racists - as there are racists and xenophobes in very many cultures. But no guiding principle of modern Western culture claims that only lives of persons with pale pinkish skin are valuable. Don't confuse propaganda with facts. > It took decades for there to be even mild acknowledgement that Thanksgiving celebrates the genocide of millions Why acknowledge an obvious falsity? Literally nobody celebrating Thanksgiving is celebrating "genocide of millions" (ok, I don't know, maybe you personally know people that do, but nobody else does). Surely, events that gave birth to Thanksgiving also led to some very appalling atrocities (if you bother to dig, atrocities are buried in history of virtually every country, and certainly in the history of many indigenous American tribes as well - you don't think Europeans invented war for them and they never knew what it is before that, do you?). But that is decidedly not what is celebrated on Thanksgiving. So only a propagandist completely detached from the facts would claim that it is what is celebrated. > A single American dying somewhere warrants more attention in the West than a dozen brown lives. In US, yes. In UK, that would be single Briton. In Russia, single Russian. In Japan, single Japanese. In Philippines, single Phllippinian. Of course people care about people that are close to them more than they care about abstract people they never saw and have nothing in common with. This is common to virtually every culture on Earth - if there's a culture that cares absolutely equally about every single human, I've never heard about it. You neither, probably. > Had this American caused the death of 5-6 islanders with disease, But he hadn't. Instead, he was murdered. Yet you ignore what happened while concentrating on what hypothetically could happen. > Please don't give me this claim that the West values life more I will. If an person from that tribe comes to a Western country, maybe he wouldn't be treated nicely. Maybe he would not be even admitted (he probably has no papers and no visa). Maybe he would be subjected to a treatment much worse than a common Westerner. But he won't be murdered on sight. > It is we in the East who suffer the bulk of the casualties of your Western wars. If you talk about any wars before WWII, most of Western wars happened in the West, and thus West suffered most of the casualties, naturally. WWII is impossible to call a Western war, though, given what happened in the Pacific theater, for example.