Subject:
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Re: And now for something completely different...
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 7 Mar 2003 21:08:55 GMT
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Viewed:
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394 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Leonard Hoffman writes:
>
> > "Well look at it from another point of view. We still have messes to clean
> > up from ejecting the Moors. What can an expedition to China do that would
> > make such an expenditure worthwhile? Let Columbus help solve the problems
> > here in Spain first" - Ferdinand (or was it Isabella)
> >
> > That was the wrong viewpoint. 100 years later it was clear that funding
> > exploration was the right thing to do.
>
> Umm.. Excuse me? You mean Columbus who kidnapped a native child to bring back
> as a trophy to his queen? You mean the discovery that launch the largest
> genocide in the history of humanity? The destruction of so many cultures and
> people that we don't even know all of their names. The enslavement and
> destruction of the Incas and Aztecs?
>
> Not to mention that the sudden inflow of gold and silver from Peru sent the
> Spanish economy into the gutters, an injury that Spain is only beginning to
> pull itself out of.
>
> 100 years later it was the right thing to do? Personally, I'd be questioning
> that decision 500 years later.. even if America is my home now. It WAS someone
> else's home.. know they're dead.. somehow I can't think of that as being
> justified.
Just to make sure we're clear here. Are you saying it would have been better
had no one ever discovered North America? Are you saying that you'd rather
that the western hemisphere forever remained the domain of its then current
inhabitants? What if the shoe had been on the other foot? If the Incas or
Aztecs had discovered Europe instead, would that have been all right?
You would have been OK with them imposing ritual human sacrifice on the
French and Swiss, perhaps? (well, maybe not the Swiss...)(1)
Or are you saying something else entirely? If so, what? What alternative
sequence of events do you think would have been better (2). Explain or give
some sort of example.
Coming out against exploration or exploitation completely, which is how your
above paragraphs read, to me anyway, is luddite. (especially when coupled
with the stuff I trimmed away about how we should not export our problems....)
1 - "That's a Joke, Son!" - Foghorn Leghorn
2 - That's not to say that one might not wish for things to have unfolded
differently. For an interesting take on that (but certainly not the only
one) see the novel "Pastwatch - The Redemption of Christopher Columbus" by
Orson Scott Card, which you can dig info up on via Google, try this string "
pastwatch redemption of christopher columbus" in your search box
++Lar
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