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> What I am saying is that (if you're American) you are reaping the benefits of a society that exists as it does because it dominated a continent, destroying much of the existing landscape and natural inhabitants.

Every society on Earth exists as it does because it destroyed much of the previously existing landscape and natural inhabitants, most definitely including the Native American societies. If you read Over the Edge of the World, a fascinating book about Magellan's voyage around the globe, you'll find that as he traveled the straits at the southern tip of South America -- the most miserable, cold, dreary, and awful environment that could be imagined -- he met a miserable and starving aboriginal tribe: a tribe that, it turns out, had been pushed all the way to the tip of Tierra del Fuego by succeeding waves of "native" migration across the land bridge from Siberia to Alaska. The sin of the United States is not original with the United States: it is the sin of every society.

> But some level of responsibility nonetheless (and when adding up the small responsibility of each current member the responsibility to do something as a group to rectify past wrongs may become quite large indeed).

You could smuggle an elephant inside that parenthetical clause. For starters, how specifically is one to "rectify past wrongs" that were committed against people who have been dead for hundreds of years? And are the remnants of those societies that still exist today also obliged to "rectify past wrongs" against the people they aggressed on even farther in the past?

I think you're blowing the comment put of proportion by deliberately interpreting a very qualified statement in an extreme and maximalist way.

The poster dodnt say every wrong against everyone and everything ever has to be rectified. There are many concrete and affordable steps we can take to remediate much of the damage our societies have done and are doing to each other and the environment. I agree with the poster that we have an obligation to take as many of those steps as we feel we can afford.

I'm not going to just sign on to an arbitrary promise like that, though. In the United States the people who talk about remediating what our societies have done, etc., have proposed things like massive and unending wealth transfers, unequal enforcement of the law, explicitly segregationist race-based government systems, and even secession. For that reason I am disinclined to just take someone talking about this subject at their word and say "sure, whatever you want."

Not everybody talking about remediating past wrongs are proposing or endorsing such extreme measures, or not in an extreme way. What's frustrating is that moderate or conservative (small 'c') voices have been essentially silent on the matter leaving the field disproportionately open to more extreme advocacy. Those who are in favour of more moderate steps should advocate them and not use other people's disproportionate views as an excuse for throwing their hands in the air and giving up on the whole subject completely.

> Every society on Earth exists as it does because it destroyed much of the previously existing landscape and natural inhabitants,

THANKS.

Every human culture out there is responsible for wars and horrible crimes and destruction; primitive societies were no better (Hobbes Was Right (TM)), but only a few have built advanced and prosperous civilizations, and what is more, the West is basically the only which reflects on its past.

I'm over with modern western ethnomasochism.

You seem to think "reflecting on its past" is one of the advances that came with Western civilization. Not sure what "modern western ethnomasochism" is, but I imagine it goes along hand-in-glove with "reflecting on its past." Can you really have one without the other? Do you really think reflection is going to reveal only good things? Why reflect at all if you're not trying to identify things in past that can be fixed or improved upon?

> You seem to think "reflecting on its past" is one of the advances that came with Western civilization

Not if taken so far as to become self-destructive.

> Not sure what "modern western ethnomasochism" is,

It means that here in the West we are (were) the best (in relative terms) but we think we are the worst, and wish for our own end.

> Can you really have one without the other?

Oh yes. Godspeed to Asia which will inherit the future, learning the good bits from the West without the suicidal self-flagellation.

What does that responsibility mean? Let's say I accept my responsibility for benefitting from killing all this wildlife and murdering the inhabitants. Now what? Does this change something? Is there some action I should take?

Yes, you can support efforts to preserve remaining habitats and examples of that wildlife and conserve the cultural heritage of the victims. Or at least you could avoid actions that might hinder or prevent such efforts, such as by not voting for representatives that might de-fund them or pass laws hindering them.

Nobody's suggesting you should be tried for the crimes of your ancestors, or previous members of your society. What we can do is stop doing more damage and try to rectify some of it, where it is reasonable and affordable to do so.

I'm all for that, but I don't see that being linked to taking responsibility, it's just the right thing to do. Maybe this is just a terminology thing.

I disagree. While I think your suggested actions are reasonable, nothing distinguishes them from actions we would take if our hands were clean, and instead another group were at fault.

I think it's just a matter of degree. I feel a general responsibility towards planet earth in general to preserve its environmental and cultural heritage. But I feel a greater obligation to contribute towards mitigating some environmental and cultural harms than I do towards others due to my nation and cultures role in exacerbating them.

There's no law at work here though. If there is some specific issue you are particularly concerned about that happens not to have any such historical link to you, but it bothers you so much that you take a special personal interest in it then that's fine. But even without dedicating our personal resources towards righting the worlds wrongs, as tax payers, consumers and voters we often make decisions that bear on these issues. I think it's worth bearing that in mind.

Good question. Someone else pointed out that _all_ societies have benefited from destroying the environment. I get the feeling they were pointing this out to argue that "we" (modern day Americans) don't really need to feel responsible. "Everybody does it, so it must be okay."

I don't know what the answer is to the question of what actions I (and "we") should take because of my responsibility (and our shared responsibility). I do know that the responsibility I feel is greater the more tightly I am tied to a society or community. I don't feel much responsibility at all for homo sapiens' eradication of Neanderthals (assuming that's what happened). The actions happened too long ago and the "society" is too loose (homo sapiens). I do feel some responsibility for what my country's recent forebears have done; I feel a tie as an American and 100 or 200 years in the past is just a handful of generations.

For me it seems the minimum is to identify myself as an "environmentalist". Many (most?) of the objections to proper care of the environment come from people who argue against it because doing so will lessen business profits by a little bit. Even assuming it's true that it will lessen profits, seems like we need to devote more of our resources to preserving the environment. At a minimum, that should mean that businesses in our society should have to accept somewhat lesser profits (perhaps by being taxed) in exchange for better preservation of the environment.

Also, I have no problem with businesses that affect the environment negatively bearing much more of the cost to replace past harms. In the past, and even now, we've allowed businesses to pollute our environment (air, water, land) without them paying for the damage they've caused. They are among the prime offenders, although everyone does share some responsibility for being part of a society that's let those businesses operate as they have.

> Good question. Someone else pointed out that _all_ societies have benefited from destroying the environment. I get the feeling they were pointing this out to argue that "we" (modern day Americans) don't really need to feel responsible. "Everybody does it, so it must be okay."

Not quite. What I was getting at is this argument is usually presented in the context of blaming the West generally or the United States specifically for various atrocities, and gently eliding how the societies which were aggressed upon were usually no different from a morality standpoint: it was simply a matter of who got to who first with a bigger stick in their hand. Not "everybody does it, so it must be okay," just "everybody does it, so casting blame on a specific group is, paradoxically, unfair."

For that reason, our responsibility to properly safeguard the environment and to ensure the rights of all people cannot be dependent on one nation or culture atoning for some crime their ancestors allegedly committed in the past. That just builds a never-ending tower of recrimination and anger. It has to be simply our obligation as human beings to each other, right now, today.

I'm certainly not singling out U.S., or Europe as "culpable offenders". The U.S. is my society, so I know it better and I feel its societal obligations more strongly. As you point out, the Western countries were simply the ones that got there first. And they are also the first to be figuring out how to fix the problems they've caused. Doesn't make them morally better or worse than countries that for historical reasons (smaller economies and lack of technology) have caused less environmental damage.

Also, given that you seem to already agree we have the obligation, your insistence on dis-acknowledging our cultural past as a source of the obligation seems odd. Nobody said the obligation had only a single source. The only reason to get angry, so far as I can see, is if a person thinks current steps are perhaps nice to do, but not obligatory. I fail to see how a "never-ending tower of recrimination and anger" can arise from someone simply giving an additional reason that supports the decision we've already made (that we have an obligation).

> your insistence on dis-acknowledging our cultural past as a source of the obligation seems odd.

Well, look at it this way. If someone had killed my father, I wouldn't be satisfied with them saying "here, I'll pay for your college education and we'll call it even"; I'd want them in the electric chair. Similarly, a focus on alleged crimes of past cultures leads inevitably to angry demands for retribution for said crimes, followed by a lot of people replying -- with absolute justification! -- that they weren't responsible for these past crimes, or maybe the other guys were just as bad. Next thing you know everyone's screaming at each other and the formerly universal values have been turned into a political football. If you've got a concept that should be apolitical and universal, the last thing you want to do is prominently attach it to one side of a bitter cultural war.

You are reaping the benefits of slaughtering the Neanderthals and wiping out the mammoth. Shame on you.