Comment by potatolicious | Hacker News Reader

Comment by potatolicious | Hacker News Reader

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> "Why do you even feel the need to justify the murdering of the natives?"

Wait, what? Thanks for going all "think of the children" on me man, where if I'm not with you I'm for murdering the natives. You are (apparently) representative of the moral absolutism problem I am talking about.

I'm not defending the extermination of native American natives.

The problem with this article is that it cast native American society as a utopian paradise, and the white European invaders as evil, ruthless, and completely without moral compunction. This sort of historical revisionist "blackwashing" doesn't help anyone - because it has not fairly represented either side. The natives were not utopian societies, nor were they savages deserving of murder. The Europeans were not ruthless monsters, nor were they benevolent conquerors. To represent this situation as black and white is both ignorant and unproductive.

By "blackwashing" I mean skewing the facts and injecting calls to emotion where it doesn't belong, to try and make something seem worse - where whitewashing is the opposite (skewing the facts and injecting emotion to make it seems better)

[edit] Also, to address specifically why the moral absolutism is a problem: by casting the Europeans as ruthlessly evil, you have removed any deep introspection into why the murder of the natives occurred. You've transformed a complex human situation into a fairy tale - where the bad guys need no explanation. You've also effectively discounted the possibility that bad things can happen for relatively benign (or at least, not overtly evil) goals.

Not to mention dehumanization is inherently dangerous - even if the person you're dehumanizing is the "bad guy".

Why does it even matter who was "evil" and who wasn't? The fact remains that one party killed off the other. It seems clear that among the killers there were some "evil savages", but of course not every European was evil. It doesn't even make sense to think in such generalizations. However, if some actions were ordered by "the state", then it seems to me to make sense to hold "the state" responsible for it. Whatever kind of entity the state is - of course not everybody in the state endorses it's actions, but they still benefit or suffer from it. I suppose you can not hold a soldier in a war responsible for killing, because he was ordered to do so and presumably had no other choice. But that doesn't validate wars - and if said soldier later lives on the farm of the person he killed, it seems fair to ask some questions.

I don't think in modern times if you murder somebody, the court will be very interested in whether the victim was a good or a bad person.

Also I have to admit I still don't understand what you are going on about - if the European invaders where not evil, ruthless and completely without moral compunction, how were they capable of doing the killing? (The ones who did, let's assume not everybody participated). Who did the killing?

> "if the European invaders where not evil, ruthless and completely without moral compunction, how were they capable of doing the killing?"

That's precisely why it matters who was "evil" and who wasn't. This kind of "pure evil" doesn't really exist, and by assuming it does you are glossing over the real causes of the native genocide. It's far too easy to ask "why did the Europeans murder the natives?" and answer with "because they were evil, ruthless, and completely with morality"

It's a feel-good answer, because moral absolutism makes us all feel better. But it's far from the truth - and masks analysis that can actually help us prevent things like this in the future.

For example (and apologies for the Godwin): we know that not every Nazi soldier was for exterminating the Jews. Heck, we know that many German soldiers guarding the extermination camps were not supportive of the cause, yet they went along with it. Why?

The simplistic explanation that makes us feel better is that these men were evil, without morals, and participated willingly in mass slaughter. But this ignores much more useful insights on mob mentality, the power of coercion, propaganda, misinformation, and a slew of other things that actually help us understand what happened, and prevent these things from happening again.

We're talking about an event that occurred hundreds of years ago - playing the blame game is pretty pointless at this point. It really doesn't matter what is whose fault; the importance of understanding the European conquest of the Americas is to determine the factors that caused a bunch of perfectly reasonable people to exterminate entire civilizations, so that we may better understand our present selves and hopefully prevent such things from repeating.

Which leads back to your original question:

> "Why does it even matter who was "evil" and who wasn't?"

It matters because by playing the blame game, and telling this story as a fairy tale of black and white, good vs. evil, you are bypassing the need to analyze what is, in reality a complex situation of many causes and effects. You are robbing a heinous and dark event of its proper gravity and complexity, and grossly simplifying something that carries relevance today.

"This kind of "pure evil" doesn't really exist"

I'll argue that it exists - not everybody who torments a baby has an excuse for it. Of course it is useful to try to figure out what made them do it, there might be a kind of excuse in terms of an explanation of what made them do it (bad childhood whatever). Or why - um, presumably they wanted the land? I think what happened in America is that some people had the better weapons and they wanted the other people's property.

"by playing the blame game"

How is it playing the blame game? A bunch of people killed another bunch of people. There is nothing to play about it. What to do about is another question - I am not even sure what you are worried about. Nobody in this thread has called for any kind of reparations or anything, I think?

Isn't pointing out the history of European settlers exactly what you want: pointing out that Europeans can be bad, too, so we always have to keep asking what makes the "bad" come out? I don't think by forgetting history, we are helping the kind of understanding you seem to seek.

Ultimately, though, I think the bunch with the better weapons will always get and take what they want...

> I'll argue that it exists - not everybody who torments a baby has an excuse for it.

[citation needed] -- It's practically a tautology that people take actions for reasons, even if they don't consciously know what those reasons are.

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