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> To me it’s weird because it’s so unimportant. Who cares which groups of who were advanced or not and what they were doing back then. The people colonizing th

> To me it’s weird because it’s so unimportant. Who cares which groups of who were advanced or not and what they were doing back then. The people colonizing those lands certainly cared at the time, and they used such beliefs to justify a lot of pretty awful acts. Given that the modern, western world is built on the legacy of colonialism, it's important (at least to me) to understand whether those motivating beliefs were true.

ninkendo 4y ago
I think that’s a pretty uncharitable interpretation of GP’s comment. They said you don’t need to feel better or worse about yourself due to what your ancestors did or didn’t do and when. It doesn’t mean nobody did any bad things or that we can’t learn from it, but that we shouldn’t let it cause more tribalism today. IMO, we’re all the same species, our history is littered with awful and good people, and lots of flawed people in between. The retelling of history can be a bit one-sided at times, but it’s sometimes unhealthy to fixate on it as an ongoing cause of problems today.
- aatd86 4y ago
  As long as it is not also an excuse to not undo the wrongs that often persist with such multi-generational catastrophic human problems. If I knew that everything I have is built on genocide, I would feel pretty wrong. Those who do not are probably a bit strange imho.
  - kimi 4y ago
    > If I knew that everything I have is built on genocide, I would feel pretty wrong. If I knew that everything I have is built on genocide is called human history. And I have a feeling that if the victims had been more lucky as to be the winners, they would have made more or less the same things.
    - aatd86 4y ago
      Well, it's not a question of "if I were the winner" , that's a pretty dumb argument (excuse my French). Reestablishing fairness would still be the same issue with simply the roles reversed. It's a question of being humane and restablishing fairness of opportunities amongst human beings. The status quo might be appealing but it can feed needless conflicts between people, sometimes on the sole basis of skin complexion. I understand that burying one's head in the sand can be appealing but that still shows a lack of accountability and a reluctance to improve Humanity imho.
  - seti0Cha 4y ago
    > If I knew that everything I have is built on genocide, I would feel pretty wrong. Well, isn't it? Human history is a bloody affair from the first days of farming to today. History is a long series of wrongs. How shall we undo them?
    - anonymousDan 4y ago
      How about recognising wrongs as a first step?
      - seti0Cha 4y ago
        Which wrongs do you think we have yet to recognize? Maybe I'm being naive, but it seems to me that we (by which I mean modern American and European society) have taken a pretty thorough inventory in the last few decades, at least of our own failings.
        jl6 4y ago
        It’s not enough to recognize wrongs. The aim is to extract a confession that will hold up in court, so your possessions can be redistributed fairly.
        aatd86 4y ago
        Yup and to be more precise it's not even necessarily redistribution of possessions but fairness of opportunity. Possessions are depreciating assets. Even more when people don't know how to use them. That won't be a solution but more of a bandaid over the long term if the goal is to reach fairness (equality).
    - aatd86 4y ago
      So I assume that you don't think there are persisting systemic inequalities due to such things as slavery? When a country such as France helps installing the son of a former dictator at the helm of a country in 2022 (which leads to more than 200 people massacred, even on the premises of the US embassy since the regime is lawless) , I think there is a deep unaddressed issue, for instance.
  - deleted 4y ago
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- deleted 4y ago
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ajsnigrutin 4y ago
Taking over land, goods and people is a very human thing to do, not localized to europe. There were nations (tribes, kingdoms, whatever) trying to occupy europe too, both from the south and east... and let's not forget the many many internal european wars and conquests. Looking globally, europeans were really that much more advanced (in science, warfare, medicine, logistics,...) than the areas they managed to occupy... how else would a few people on a few boats occupy whole continents? Did those people do a lot of very very bad things (from slavery to genocide) ... sure. Was there some luck involved? Sure... the romans were more advanced than the occupying tribes and they still lost. But generally, the more advanced groups were the winners.
- anthk 4y ago
  Rome assimilated tribes and peoples into its own, and the Western world tried to imitate Rome's imperialism, as Spain did 500 years ago. The rest of the Europeans living up in the North tried to do worse, not to assimilate the enemy culturally to build a bigger Empire, but to truly genocide it.

ninkendo 4y ago

I think that’s a pretty uncharitable interpretation of GP’s comment. They said you don’t need to feel better or worse about yourself due to what your ancestors did or didn’t do and when. It doesn’t mean nobody did any bad things or that we can’t learn from it, but that we shouldn’t let it cause more tribalism today. IMO, we’re all the same species, our history is littered with awful and good people, and lots of flawed people in between. The retelling of history can be a bit one-sided at times, but it’s sometimes unhealthy to fixate on it as an ongoing cause of problems today.

aatd86 4y ago
As long as it is not also an excuse to not undo the wrongs that often persist with such multi-generational catastrophic human problems. If I knew that everything I have is built on genocide, I would feel pretty wrong. Those who do not are probably a bit strange imho.
- kimi 4y ago
  > If I knew that everything I have is built on genocide, I would feel pretty wrong. If I knew that everything I have is built on genocide is called human history. And I have a feeling that if the victims had been more lucky as to be the winners, they would have made more or less the same things.
  - aatd86 4y ago
    Well, it's not a question of "if I were the winner" , that's a pretty dumb argument (excuse my French). Reestablishing fairness would still be the same issue with simply the roles reversed. It's a question of being humane and restablishing fairness of opportunities amongst human beings. The status quo might be appealing but it can feed needless conflicts between people, sometimes on the sole basis of skin complexion. I understand that burying one's head in the sand can be appealing but that still shows a lack of accountability and a reluctance to improve Humanity imho.
- seti0Cha 4y ago
  > If I knew that everything I have is built on genocide, I would feel pretty wrong. Well, isn't it? Human history is a bloody affair from the first days of farming to today. History is a long series of wrongs. How shall we undo them?
  - anonymousDan 4y ago
    How about recognising wrongs as a first step?
    - seti0Cha 4y ago
      Which wrongs do you think we have yet to recognize? Maybe I'm being naive, but it seems to me that we (by which I mean modern American and European society) have taken a pretty thorough inventory in the last few decades, at least of our own failings.
      - jl6 4y ago
        It’s not enough to recognize wrongs. The aim is to extract a confession that will hold up in court, so your possessions can be redistributed fairly.
        aatd86 4y ago
        Yup and to be more precise it's not even necessarily redistribution of possessions but fairness of opportunity. Possessions are depreciating assets. Even more when people don't know how to use them. That won't be a solution but more of a bandaid over the long term if the goal is to reach fairness (equality).
  - aatd86 4y ago
    So I assume that you don't think there are persisting systemic inequalities due to such things as slavery? When a country such as France helps installing the son of a former dictator at the helm of a country in 2022 (which leads to more than 200 people massacred, even on the premises of the US embassy since the regime is lawless) , I think there is a deep unaddressed issue, for instance.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

ajsnigrutin 4y ago

Taking over land, goods and people is a very human thing to do, not localized to europe. There were nations (tribes, kingdoms, whatever) trying to occupy europe too, both from the south and east... and let's not forget the many many internal european wars and conquests. Looking globally, europeans were really that much more advanced (in science, warfare, medicine, logistics,...) than the areas they managed to occupy... how else would a few people on a few boats occupy whole continents? Did those people do a lot of very very bad things (from slavery to genocide) ... sure. Was there some luck involved? Sure... the romans were more advanced than the occupying tribes and they still lost. But generally, the more advanced groups were the winners.

anthk 4y ago
Rome assimilated tribes and peoples into its own, and the Western world tried to imitate Rome's imperialism, as Spain did 500 years ago. The rest of the Europeans living up in the North tried to do worse, not to assimilate the enemy culturally to build a bigger Empire, but to truly genocide it.