I disagree, people were crazy and mean back then. They used to beat the tar out of their own women and children and rape the ones next town over, to say nothing of spontaneous mass-slaughters like St. Bartholomew's Day. I don't think they would have been that civil to natives who got in their way.
This line of logic is akin to justifying a deadly home invasion because the homeowners didn't have guns.
Sure, and next to Pol pot and Mao and Stalin etc Ceaucescu doesn't look so bad. Still a piece of **** though, and Columbus was not only a nasty greedy piece of ****, he was also exceptionally stup id. Went to his grave believing he was in India. Not to mention there were non horrible humans living in that era.
I'm less concerned about Colombus being an a-hole or the side effects of disease as I am about the fact that his "accomplishment" doesn't seem all that amazing.
I know there is no way I will ever convince you otherwise. It is a fundamental tenant of secular humanism that deep down everybody is the same. I know you're intelligent, and I'm not looking pick a fight or be condescending. I didn't believe it at all when I was first introduced to the idea. I used to very much agree with you, and it took a whole lot of evidence and time to convince me otherwise. The only thing I can say is in the future try to keep an open mind about this. There were people who tried to be good. There were people who, probably, on the whole did more good than bad. But I firmly believe that if you look closely enough at people of the era, you will almost inevitably find some example of what today would be considered shockingly cruel that they did without blinking an eye, and I would contend that nobody who was in a position of real power would be able to do their job without being evil by today's standards. This was the era when the #1 public entertainment in England was Bear Bating. The inquisition was in full swing, torturing and murdering anybody they could find, and they were even proud of it. Popes were declaring war on other countries to annex territory. Etc. Etc. In that Oatmeal link, Columbus is contrasted with Bartolomé de las Casas, who decided that slavery for Native Americans was immoral. I laughed out loud when I read his solution, because it showed the total lack of what today would be called a "moral compass". His solution was to free all the Native Americans and replace them with African slaves. Like I said, I don't expect you to change your mind or anything, so we can just "agree to disagree" or whatever. But I contend that if there's anybody who would be considered "morally clean" by today's standards, they were so inconsequential and insulated from the reality of everyday life that their names have been lost to history forever. The fact that Columbus was able to view the "different people" as non-human is a fairly common reoccurring thing for the era. Yes he was cruel and stupid. But relative to everybody else of the era, only slightly more so than average. I'm not sure when the concept of "human rights" was invented, but I'm pretty damn sure it wasn't the 16th century.
I agree with those who say being monstrous was common in that time because our thinking is very 21st century-centric. Slightly off-topic, but one of the biggest reasons mainstream Islam has such friction with the West today is the idea of human rights which are products of the European Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment. The Magna Carta, the English Bill of Rights, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, and the US Constitution/Bill of Rights formed the foundation of egalitarianism. It was only until WW1 and the League of Nations that HR became a policy openly dicussed. WW2 and the formation of the UN finally cemented the notion that HR was universal thing. In other words, nearly 800 years of history lead to the canonized idea of Universal Human Rights in the mid 20th century. Mainstream Islam and most of the societies where it's dominant are centuries behind, and it will take another century at least before they're on an acceptable level to the West.
y u no give us Cabeza De Vaca day? as long as I don't have a UPS package coming, I don't mind the extra 'holiday's for the kids. It's not like we adults get to rest on them and I use the term adult lightly.
You were right to say people are pretty much the same but wrong to say that 98 percent respect inalienable rights. there was a book that detailed what soldiers do in war, particularly the raping of women, in modern times. It's amazing what many people will do to "the other" when they can get away with it.
Don't really think the ethics of it all is relevant. Columbus' voyage was the catalyst for a cascade of events that ultimately led to me and most everyone here being here. It was a revolution as big as anything we've had, and Columbus provides a nice handle for us to grab onto and think about what a big impact the New World has had on the world. I don't think we need to mythologize Columbus or anything. But, it's a good time to recognize the world changed in 1492.
you seem to wanna hammer Columbus into this box of "sure flawed, but look at the times..." I don't think that applies at all because he was more than just flawed in the way that he'd toss a leper out on the street to die or kick a cat in the road the way most folks would those day. Instead he acted on his plans/failings/etc (and of course, you never hear about those that didn't so whose to say how prevalent it was?) in a way that others didn't. Which is of course why the iconic Columbus figure that we were taught about as schoolkids is so laughable, the guy was a certifiable P.O.S. - maybe everybody was a POS back then, or would have been, had they been in his place. But he's the one who acted on it, which IMO is enough to lose the commemoration/veneration that he used to have. Contrast that with Bartolome, who used his "african slaves instead!" as more of a rationalization to his critics; he didn't jump in a boat and go out across the ocean and start catching them (and as somebody else noted he later recanted...). If the times truly were as brutal as you say that Columbus was merely a garden variety pillager, then he stands out even more due to contrast. "Everybody did it, look at the times" - I can swallow it with Jefferson holding/sexing up his slaves a bit, because at least he had other accomplishments. COlumbus meanwhile was kind of a jackass who wasn't especiallly smart, just exceptioanlly lucky.
You miss the point. In the modern world, if someone had this revelation, they'd say, "Gosh, enslaving Native Americans is wrong. We should eliminate all slavery." Back then, they were apparently incapable of extrapolating to the big picture. They said, "Gosh, enslaving Native Americans is bad, we should enslave Africans instead!" The fact that he eventually figured out that was even as well is irrelevant. Pretty consistently back then, they'd stumble from one bad idea to another, never quite capable of learning any broad lessons from their mistake.
Sam, it seems like you are pretty determined to find some sort of good/bad morality story here that can be applied to modern life. I see a billion rats determined to claw their way out of a sinking ship. I actually don't really care to or want to try to assign meaning to the world back then. The whole ****storm was an absurdist nightmare. Life was a Bosh painting. Trying to pick out which scene is most grotesque is counting how many angels fit on the head of a pin. It seems to me a bit like looking at two rabid dogs and deciding which is more evil. If the rabid toy poodle kills fewer people than the rabid pit bull, does that mean the poodle was less evil, or just less capable? Evil and good imply enough cognitive wherewithal to be something more thoughtful than a wild animal. And the "good" people back then weren't kind or loving - they were scared of the wrath of God. The Pope would have no compunction about shoving a red hot poker up some heretics ass.
I can't tell if that was a typo for Hieronymus Bosch or a pun (remarking on how ugly Chris Bosh is). Nonetheless, I like the imagery in your post. Definitely has an Earthly Delights vibe to it. Still, these art works by Bruegel and Rubens came to my mind as I read it.
The Boshian nightmare world of Raptors and long necked stretch 4s is nice but doesn't really change the underlying fact of Columbus vain, stupid idiocy. Morality doesn't have anything to do with it;the fact is that his main achievement consisted of being dumb and lucky; he followed it up with nastiness which you claim was part for the course. Maybe it was, but that's not the discussion is it? Your analogy about the pit bull would make more sense of you were asking if we should celebrate his achievement. The veneration of Columbus was a distinctly modern invention, and in modern times we know better than to celebrate such a ****head.
I can't spell. I was on my phone and knew I couldn't spell Hieronymus. I just didn't realize I couldn't spell Bosch. Maybe the problem here is you are arguing about the veneration of Columbus (which I guess is what the thread is about), while I'm just arguing about Columbus? There are plenty of conservatives who celebrate Labor Day between speeches about the evils of socialism. I agree that Columbus Day is stupid, but I don't think it is remarkable in its anachronism or irrelevance to modern life.
I don't think that life in late 15th century Europe was quite the "state of nature" that Hobbes was talking about, but that's pretty much what the situation was for the explorers who were dealing with people outside of their social contract in the Caribbean and in the Americas. You could argue that the explorers, finding no legitimate government that they recognized as powerful or legitimate, initiated a state of nature until the region was "civilized" which would pretty much explain their actions.
