4 ms·

So, just like any empire at the time.

by gostsamo 4y ago

mc32 4y ago
Pretty much, except for the frivolous human sacrifice aspect.
- gostsamo 4y ago
  Yes, the random genocides in the name of progress or capital gain are totally different. I'm sure that the starving irish, native americans, and asians who were caught in the opium wars died with grateful appreciation that there were no priests around to oversight their expeditious sending to the afterlife.
  - irrational 4y ago
    I don’t know why you are being downvoted. Whether it is ritualistic human sacrifice or pushing native Americans onto reservations, it is all versions of trading human lives for our own benefit. This takes many forms from the person who uses another person’s body for their own sexual gratification to wage theft to murdering people in a ritualistic setting to curry a God’s favor. It is all about how can I use others (other’s time, bodies, possessions, lives, etc.) to get gain for myself.
    - nhchris 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - gostsamo 4y ago
        Think about the GP comment though: "they've had achieved statehood with a complex society, but they were killing people for religious reasons". And the religious reasoning underpinned a major part of the colonial effort.
        kortilla 4y ago
        And colonialism is appropriately panned for it. What’s your point?
        gostsamo 4y ago
        It is like you did not read the first sentence of the comment that you are replying to. I'll repeat it in another form: the gp implied that human sacrifice is sufficient enough to discard any other achievement of the society in question. I argue that the value of human life at the time was rather conditional matter. The rest of the debate is quantity and quality, and people who prefer to draw semi-arbitrary lines in the sand.
        kortilla 4y ago
        >the gp implied that human sacrifice is sufficient enough to discard any other achievement of the society in question No they didn’t. You’re just not used to seeing criticism leveled at other things. Something can be simultaneously flawed and quite impressive.
      - l3mure 4y ago
        > never comes up An absurd assertion, it's a staple of discussions on here. Takes all of 5 seconds to find examples. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33811795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33811795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32973297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32973297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32338743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32338743
        nhchris 4y ago
        Then HN is an exception, because I never come across it otherwise. Which is not surprising, given the complete absence of those instances of slavery and imperialism from pop culture. Sorry, near complete - I'm sure if you really try, you can dig up some movie showing it, and claim it has equal weight to the torrent of movies about US's slavery.
        morelisp 4y ago
        Really? I see it all the time. For example, last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35024471 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35024471 And two weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34947944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34947944 It actually seems like some people can't shut the fuck up about it in every thread even peripherally touching upon African history.
    - gostsamo 4y ago
      The reason is mostly the tone I think. Too sharp and makes statements that are both uncomfortable and hard to argue against. A counter argument could be constructed, but it would be difficult and backlashing is easier.
      - kortilla 4y ago
        You just self-congratulated your own argument. You’re getting downvoted because you’re not contributing anything meaningful to the discussion. Whataboutism does not justify criticism of a practice.
        masswerk 4y ago
        This answered directly to a comment attempting to differentiate religious from other imperialist practices. I can only see "aboutism" in this, but no "whataboutism" – that is, maybe in those arguing it may be just like any other argument they do not appreciate.
        kortilla 4y ago
        Read the whole thread. The human sacrifice was being criticized. OP did a knee jerk “like all the empires” and got a reply pointing out that many had banned human sacrifice hundreds of years before that. OP then changed gears to include completely different reasons for death to make it seem like that made human sacrifice no different. Textbook whataboutism.
    - throwaway031123 4y ago
      > I don’t know why you are being downvoted. This argument is generally used by people to defend bad institutions. I've heard Confederate apologists makes the exact same argument you have here ("Look at the Union treatment of Native Americans. All sides in the Civil War were immoral."). There are gradations of bad behavior. Treating bad behavior as if it's all the same just encourages a race to the bottom.
- orange8 4y ago
  Look up king Leopold of Belgium if you're looking for a less "frivolous human sacrifice" aspect during that time period. Humans have a strange thirst for blood, whether its for religion or money.
  - rajin444 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - notahacker 4y ago
      Ah yes, just as it would be wrong to single out Hitler for capitalising on latent anti-Semitism that already existed, and the real problem with WWII is that Germany wasn't successful enough in its expansion to prevent pogroms... Leopold introduced a policy of paying his (non-native) soldiers based on the number of severed hands produced, FFS. I doubt the kingdoms that existed beforehand were wonderful places that never arbitrarily killed anyone, but you absolutely can blame him for paying bounties for evidence of sufficiently prolific indiscriminate killing/maiming, and generally being one of the most despicable humans to have ever lived.
    - orange8 4y ago
      He did introduce it. Rubber was not traded or even heard of in the Congo until the Belgians arrived. > Pygmies are still eaten in the congo today. LOl! There are no Pymies in Congo. Pygmies are from the CONGO BASIN, not CONGO. But I wouldn't expect someone who still believes in old proganda stories from the 1800s to know anything about the continents geography. Do you have any proof of pygmy cannibalism?
scythe 4y ago
China banned human sacrifice in -384 (Duke Xian of Qin). Rome banned it in -97, which was inherited by the Christian and Islamic traditions. The Northern Crusades around +1000 eradicated it in the Scandinavian / Baltic region; the Spaniards banned it in the Americas in the 1500s. Buddhism (ca. -500) and Jainism (ca. -3000 or earlier) prohibited it among their followers, which gradually spread to most of India (ahimsa), though reports of cult sacrifices (Shaktiism) persist until the early colonial period. So I wouldn't say it was particularly common in the 19th century.
- gostsamo 4y ago
  At the same time, making sure that those with the wrong religion and/or skin tone would die rather easily was still accepted practice of the time. I my other comment I gave a few examples how mass casualty policies were introduced with the more or less implicit understanding that people will die in the millions. This is like the difference between white-collar crimes and those of the poor - the punishment matches how graphic it is, not its overall effect because the causality chain obviously washes out the responsibility.
- lazyninja987 4y ago
  [dead]

So, just like any empire at the time.

mc32 4y ago

Pretty much, except for the frivolous human sacrifice aspect.

gostsamo 4y ago
Yes, the random genocides in the name of progress or capital gain are totally different. I'm sure that the starving irish, native americans, and asians who were caught in the opium wars died with grateful appreciation that there were no priests around to oversight their expeditious sending to the afterlife.
- irrational 4y ago
  I don’t know why you are being downvoted. Whether it is ritualistic human sacrifice or pushing native Americans onto reservations, it is all versions of trading human lives for our own benefit. This takes many forms from the person who uses another person’s body for their own sexual gratification to wage theft to murdering people in a ritualistic setting to curry a God’s favor. It is all about how can I use others (other’s time, bodies, possessions, lives, etc.) to get gain for myself.
  - nhchris 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - gostsamo 4y ago
      Think about the GP comment though: "they've had achieved statehood with a complex society, but they were killing people for religious reasons". And the religious reasoning underpinned a major part of the colonial effort.
      - kortilla 4y ago
        And colonialism is appropriately panned for it. What’s your point?
        gostsamo 4y ago
        It is like you did not read the first sentence of the comment that you are replying to. I'll repeat it in another form: the gp implied that human sacrifice is sufficient enough to discard any other achievement of the society in question. I argue that the value of human life at the time was rather conditional matter. The rest of the debate is quantity and quality, and people who prefer to draw semi-arbitrary lines in the sand.
        kortilla 4y ago
        >the gp implied that human sacrifice is sufficient enough to discard any other achievement of the society in question No they didn’t. You’re just not used to seeing criticism leveled at other things. Something can be simultaneously flawed and quite impressive.
    - l3mure 4y ago
      > never comes up An absurd assertion, it's a staple of discussions on here. Takes all of 5 seconds to find examples. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33811795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33811795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32973297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32973297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32338743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32338743
      - nhchris 4y ago
        Then HN is an exception, because I never come across it otherwise. Which is not surprising, given the complete absence of those instances of slavery and imperialism from pop culture. Sorry, near complete - I'm sure if you really try, you can dig up some movie showing it, and claim it has equal weight to the torrent of movies about US's slavery.
        morelisp 4y ago
        Really? I see it all the time. For example, last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35024471 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35024471 And two weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34947944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34947944 It actually seems like some people can't shut the fuck up about it in every thread even peripherally touching upon African history.
  - gostsamo 4y ago
    The reason is mostly the tone I think. Too sharp and makes statements that are both uncomfortable and hard to argue against. A counter argument could be constructed, but it would be difficult and backlashing is easier.
    - kortilla 4y ago
      You just self-congratulated your own argument. You’re getting downvoted because you’re not contributing anything meaningful to the discussion. Whataboutism does not justify criticism of a practice.
      - masswerk 4y ago
        This answered directly to a comment attempting to differentiate religious from other imperialist practices. I can only see "aboutism" in this, but no "whataboutism" – that is, maybe in those arguing it may be just like any other argument they do not appreciate.
        kortilla 4y ago
        Read the whole thread. The human sacrifice was being criticized. OP did a knee jerk “like all the empires” and got a reply pointing out that many had banned human sacrifice hundreds of years before that. OP then changed gears to include completely different reasons for death to make it seem like that made human sacrifice no different. Textbook whataboutism.
  - throwaway031123 4y ago
    > I don’t know why you are being downvoted. This argument is generally used by people to defend bad institutions. I've heard Confederate apologists makes the exact same argument you have here ("Look at the Union treatment of Native Americans. All sides in the Civil War were immoral."). There are gradations of bad behavior. Treating bad behavior as if it's all the same just encourages a race to the bottom.
orange8 4y ago
Look up king Leopold of Belgium if you're looking for a less "frivolous human sacrifice" aspect during that time period. Humans have a strange thirst for blood, whether its for religion or money.
- rajin444 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - notahacker 4y ago
    Ah yes, just as it would be wrong to single out Hitler for capitalising on latent anti-Semitism that already existed, and the real problem with WWII is that Germany wasn't successful enough in its expansion to prevent pogroms... Leopold introduced a policy of paying his (non-native) soldiers based on the number of severed hands produced, FFS. I doubt the kingdoms that existed beforehand were wonderful places that never arbitrarily killed anyone, but you absolutely can blame him for paying bounties for evidence of sufficiently prolific indiscriminate killing/maiming, and generally being one of the most despicable humans to have ever lived.
  - orange8 4y ago
    He did introduce it. Rubber was not traded or even heard of in the Congo until the Belgians arrived. > Pygmies are still eaten in the congo today. LOl! There are no Pymies in Congo. Pygmies are from the CONGO BASIN, not CONGO. But I wouldn't expect someone who still believes in old proganda stories from the 1800s to know anything about the continents geography. Do you have any proof of pygmy cannibalism?

scythe 4y ago

China banned human sacrifice in -384 (Duke Xian of Qin). Rome banned it in -97, which was inherited by the Christian and Islamic traditions. The Northern Crusades around +1000 eradicated it in the Scandinavian / Baltic region; the Spaniards banned it in the Americas in the 1500s. Buddhism (ca. -500) and Jainism (ca. -3000 or earlier) prohibited it among their followers, which gradually spread to most of India (ahimsa), though reports of cult sacrifices (Shaktiism) persist until the early colonial period. So I wouldn't say it was particularly common in the 19th century.

gostsamo 4y ago
At the same time, making sure that those with the wrong religion and/or skin tone would die rather easily was still accepted practice of the time. I my other comment I gave a few examples how mass casualty policies were introduced with the more or less implicit understanding that people will die in the millions. This is like the difference between white-collar crimes and those of the poor - the punishment matches how graphic it is, not its overall effect because the causality chain obviously washes out the responsibility.
lazyninja987 4y ago
[dead]