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>we don't think of those humans as less intelligent. No serious intellectual in the humanities or sciences does. Feels like No True Scotsman. Much of Western c

by yterdy 3y ago

>we don't think of those humans as less intelligent. No serious intellectual in the humanities or sciences does. Feels like No True Scotsman. Much of Western colonial policy for half a millennium was based on this very assumption, and their effects echo in their unreformed and unreparated posterity.

inglor_cz 3y ago
"Much of Western colonial policy for half a millennium was based on this very assumption" I am not so sure, especially about the "half a millennium" part. It seems you are extrapolating from specifically Anglo-Saxon justifications of slavery, where blacks were considered unequal-because-stupid. That's not the norm over the entire globe and half a millennium, though. There isn't significant evidence that, say, the Spanish conquistadors considered the vanquished Amerindians stupid (and it would be indeed hard to pronounce the people who built Tenochtitlan or Cuzco stupid). Same with the English in India. Heathens, yes, stupid, no. Obsession with intelligence, stupidity, heredity thereof and, subsequently, eugenics, mostly dates from post-Darwin times. It approximately matches the last century of colonialism, but not 500 years. Prior to the 19th century, few people cared about sophisticated explanations of conquest and dominance. There just weren't enough intellectuals around for theoretical explanations to matter. You lost a war, you became someone's subject or slave, that was it. In Europe, in Arabia, in China, everywhere. If there was any theory at all in play, it was mostly theological ("the unbelievers lost, because God willed it so, or we lost, because we sinned and God wanted to punish us").
- rramadass 3y ago
  > Obsession with intelligence, stupidity, heredity thereof and, subsequently, eugenics, mostly dates from post-Darwin times. Blame Social Darwinism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism) for this. Even today a lot of people (mainly in the Western world) try to promote this pseudoscience under any pretext possible. Note : Despite the fact that Social Darwinism bears Charles Darwin's name, it is primarily linked today with others, notably Herbert Spencer, Thomas Malthus, and Francis Galton, the founder of eugenics.
  - inglor_cz 3y ago
    You are right, that is definitely not old Charles' fault.

by yterdy 3y ago

inglor_cz 3y ago

"Much of Western colonial policy for half a millennium was based on this very assumption" I am not so sure, especially about the "half a millennium" part. It seems you are extrapolating from specifically Anglo-Saxon justifications of slavery, where blacks were considered unequal-because-stupid. That's not the norm over the entire globe and half a millennium, though. There isn't significant evidence that, say, the Spanish conquistadors considered the vanquished Amerindians stupid (and it would be indeed hard to pronounce the people who built Tenochtitlan or Cuzco stupid). Same with the English in India. Heathens, yes, stupid, no. Obsession with intelligence, stupidity, heredity thereof and, subsequently, eugenics, mostly dates from post-Darwin times. It approximately matches the last century of colonialism, but not 500 years. Prior to the 19th century, few people cared about sophisticated explanations of conquest and dominance. There just weren't enough intellectuals around for theoretical explanations to matter. You lost a war, you became someone's subject or slave, that was it. In Europe, in Arabia, in China, everywhere. If there was any theory at all in play, it was mostly theological ("the unbelievers lost, because God willed it so, or we lost, because we sinned and God wanted to punish us").

rramadass 3y ago
> Obsession with intelligence, stupidity, heredity thereof and, subsequently, eugenics, mostly dates from post-Darwin times. Blame Social Darwinism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism) for this. Even today a lot of people (mainly in the Western world) try to promote this pseudoscience under any pretext possible. Note : Despite the fact that Social Darwinism bears Charles Darwin's name, it is primarily linked today with others, notably Herbert Spencer, Thomas Malthus, and Francis Galton, the founder of eugenics.
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  You are right, that is definitely not old Charles' fault.