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Just as a side thought... if you look long enough at any country's history, you'll surely find horrors and terrible individuals. But that rarely means that coun

Just as a side thought... if you look long enough at any country's history, you'll surely find horrors and terrible individuals. But that rarely means that country or its modern descendants would want to be "liberated" by a foreign conquerer, whether that's China or the USA. Forced assimilation is a form of genocide and people would almost always choose to be oppressed by one of their own rather than a foreigner...

whimsicalism 5y ago
Not saying it does, although for note this structure I'm describing was Tibet in the 1940s-50s, so not too far in the past. They guy who did this blinding is the guy who picked the current Dalai Lama Agree that a regime being "better than" one that existed in the past doesn't justify repression, but also what is "foreign" and what is not is something that is socially constructed and shaped by the passage of time, not objective fact. For instance, I would not have preferred for the South in the US to be able to secede because "repression by a local is better than foreign Northerners."
- rackjack 5y ago
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    Not quite, since I'm specifically responding to someone describing how "peaceful" Tibet's society was. Indeed, pointing to rhetorical fallacies deployed by the Soviet Union to distract from a discussion of Tibet is more likely to be whataboutism itself?
hutzlibu 5y ago
Thats true, but you do not have to look long to see, that Tibet was a feudal theocracy, with no dissent allowed, either. But that is history. Modern Tibet deserves to make their own choices, I hope they get the chance to make them one day. And about old Tibet, I recommend "Seven Years in Tibet", real story of a Nazi who fled a british war prisoner camp in india and then spend 7 years in Tibet, also as a teacher for the young Dalai Lama, until the chinese came. I read and recommend the book, but they also made a Hollywood movie with Brad Pitt out of it (which I have not watched yet, it is supposed to be good, but likely not as deep).
- sacrosancty 5y ago
  How would modern Tibetans making their own choices work? They're majority Han Chinese now so are you proposing some kind of apartheid or ethnostate, or Han dominated democracy?
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    I know, this is not simple with so much time passed and I am not a fan of proofing heritage or ethnicity to be allowed to life anywhere. And I am not directly involved, so I do not propose any concrete solution, due to lack of detail knowledge. But I do see some solutions. Local autonomy. Federalism. Different districts with different systems. End of absolute rule of the CCP - no more interfering in cultural and religious topics. Allow the exil Tibetans and the Dalai Lama to come back, give them back the monastaries. Let them work something out, with the Han chinese who live there today and in many cases, were born there.
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      > monastaries The monasteries including their lands? That's absurd.
      - hutzlibu 5y ago
        Why is that absurd? The catholic church did some pretty horrible things in the past, too. But they changed (and still have most of their churches and land) and it seems, so did the Tibetian Buddhism. So like I said, it is complicated to reverse expropriation, but if it is possible and the tibetians want their temples back, it would sound right to me, to give them at least some important ones.
        whimsicalism 5y ago
        The catholic church is not comparable to the social system in Tibet. When you say "let the Catholic church keep their lands", it is a much smaller claim than saying "let the monastaries keep their land" as the monasteries were the center of the feudal system in Tibet. They owned over half of all of the arable land in Tibet and had legally bound serfs working that land for the benefit of the ecclesiastical class. Your request is more akin to saying that Europe should return the land belonging to feudal lords (ie. most land).
mushbino 5y ago
Doesn't every country have official languages that they teach and conduct business in? There are very few groups who still speak their native languages after being assimilated into the US. Tibetan is still being taught in schools there along with mandarin. Wouldn't it be hard to integrate into the business community if you didn't speak the official language of business in a given country?
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  It's just definitional stretch, which is basically inevitable when you have a word like "genocide." People want to make some odd simile to the holocaust when obviously assimilation is not at all close in magnitude to that horror.
- giraffe_lady 5y ago
  No definitely not. The majority of people and the majority of countries are multilingual. People conducting business in a language other than the one spoken at home is possibly even the norm, worldwide. And many places have regionally varying languages within a country. Even in "monolingual" countries this is true to some extent. Most of the people likely to be in here right now are are in countries clustered along one side of the spectrum, that we are a minority and an outlier.
- technobabbler 5y ago
  The US does not have an official language. We just default to English. There are bilingual schools, especially in bigger cities. It's typically conservatives who don't want bilingualism. Within major immigrant hubs, bilingualism and code-switching are very common, especially in multigenerational households. And most modern immigrants come to America willingly, seeking a better quality of life. Among the forced assimilations (Native Americans, Blacks), yeah, they lost a lot of culture. Many other countries are multilingual and to some degree multicultural. Few are as homogenous as East Asian countries. > Wouldn't it be hard to integrate into the business community if you didn't speak the official language of business in a given country? Uh, so offer free Chinese language schools and economic opportunities. It doesn't require kidnapping them and putting them in concentration camps.

whimsicalism 5y ago

Not saying it does, although for note this structure I'm describing was Tibet in the 1940s-50s, so not too far in the past. They guy who did this blinding is the guy who picked the current Dalai Lama Agree that a regime being "better than" one that existed in the past doesn't justify repression, but also what is "foreign" and what is not is something that is socially constructed and shaped by the passage of time, not objective fact. For instance, I would not have preferred for the South in the US to be able to secede because "repression by a local is better than foreign Northerners."

rackjack 5y ago
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  Not quite, since I'm specifically responding to someone describing how "peaceful" Tibet's society was. Indeed, pointing to rhetorical fallacies deployed by the Soviet Union to distract from a discussion of Tibet is more likely to be whataboutism itself?

hutzlibu 5y ago

Thats true, but you do not have to look long to see, that Tibet was a feudal theocracy, with no dissent allowed, either. But that is history. Modern Tibet deserves to make their own choices, I hope they get the chance to make them one day. And about old Tibet, I recommend "Seven Years in Tibet", real story of a Nazi who fled a british war prisoner camp in india and then spend 7 years in Tibet, also as a teacher for the young Dalai Lama, until the chinese came. I read and recommend the book, but they also made a Hollywood movie with Brad Pitt out of it (which I have not watched yet, it is supposed to be good, but likely not as deep).

sacrosancty 5y ago
How would modern Tibetans making their own choices work? They're majority Han Chinese now so are you proposing some kind of apartheid or ethnostate, or Han dominated democracy?
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  I know, this is not simple with so much time passed and I am not a fan of proofing heritage or ethnicity to be allowed to life anywhere. And I am not directly involved, so I do not propose any concrete solution, due to lack of detail knowledge. But I do see some solutions. Local autonomy. Federalism. Different districts with different systems. End of absolute rule of the CCP - no more interfering in cultural and religious topics. Allow the exil Tibetans and the Dalai Lama to come back, give them back the monastaries. Let them work something out, with the Han chinese who live there today and in many cases, were born there.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    > monastaries The monasteries including their lands? That's absurd.
    - hutzlibu 5y ago
      Why is that absurd? The catholic church did some pretty horrible things in the past, too. But they changed (and still have most of their churches and land) and it seems, so did the Tibetian Buddhism. So like I said, it is complicated to reverse expropriation, but if it is possible and the tibetians want their temples back, it would sound right to me, to give them at least some important ones.
      - whimsicalism 5y ago
        The catholic church is not comparable to the social system in Tibet. When you say "let the Catholic church keep their lands", it is a much smaller claim than saying "let the monastaries keep their land" as the monasteries were the center of the feudal system in Tibet. They owned over half of all of the arable land in Tibet and had legally bound serfs working that land for the benefit of the ecclesiastical class. Your request is more akin to saying that Europe should return the land belonging to feudal lords (ie. most land).

mushbino 5y ago

Doesn't every country have official languages that they teach and conduct business in? There are very few groups who still speak their native languages after being assimilated into the US. Tibetan is still being taught in schools there along with mandarin. Wouldn't it be hard to integrate into the business community if you didn't speak the official language of business in a given country?

whimsicalism 5y ago
It's just definitional stretch, which is basically inevitable when you have a word like "genocide." People want to make some odd simile to the holocaust when obviously assimilation is not at all close in magnitude to that horror.
giraffe_lady 5y ago
No definitely not. The majority of people and the majority of countries are multilingual. People conducting business in a language other than the one spoken at home is possibly even the norm, worldwide. And many places have regionally varying languages within a country. Even in "monolingual" countries this is true to some extent. Most of the people likely to be in here right now are are in countries clustered along one side of the spectrum, that we are a minority and an outlier.
technobabbler 5y ago
The US does not have an official language. We just default to English. There are bilingual schools, especially in bigger cities. It's typically conservatives who don't want bilingualism. Within major immigrant hubs, bilingualism and code-switching are very common, especially in multigenerational households. And most modern immigrants come to America willingly, seeking a better quality of life. Among the forced assimilations (Native Americans, Blacks), yeah, they lost a lot of culture. Many other countries are multilingual and to some degree multicultural. Few are as homogenous as East Asian countries. > Wouldn't it be hard to integrate into the business community if you didn't speak the official language of business in a given country? Uh, so offer free Chinese language schools and economic opportunities. It doesn't require kidnapping them and putting them in concentration camps.