I have to wonder if one of the reasons “Christian” organizations are calling for murder charges and prosecuting Sentinelese responsible for shooting Chau is to give them an excuse for intervention - after they round up the suspected culprits, which will likely be a majority of adult men, they’ll say “well, since we’re here, let’s talk to them about Jesus!” Also, force them to wear clothes and give up their “heathen” ways.
All for their own good, of course. :rolleyes:
I believe that it would be a noble act to attempt to make contact with these people. They are human beings after all.
However, when it comes to “interfering”, I guess it depends on what that means.
If those who make contact can show the Sentinelese better ways of living that allow them to flourish and pursue the good, then the “interference” is a good thing.
However, if those who make contact are only doing so in order to turn these people into cconsumers, then the interference is a bad thing.
Can you define “better?”
Can you define “good?”
Virtuous, in a classical sense (prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude). Add to these faith, hope, and charity, and you have the ingredients for maximum human flourishing that transcends and refines any culture.
Thanks!
Dude, are you fucking serious?
People attempt to make contact with the Sentinelese all the fucking time. And what happens? They get filled full of arrows.
People are acting as if this was an abstract moral question. But it isn’t. It’s about particular people who live on a particular island, surrounded by a particular world culture with a particular history. If the Indian navy stopped enforcing the travel ban, what would really happen?
What would really happen in our real world is that they’d mostly end up dead, or with the few survivors left to become charity cases, living off the handouts and castoffs of the new owners of their former home. They wouldn’t be turned into “consumers” because to become consumers they’d have to have things they could exchange for goods and services from the outside world. And what would that be? They’re not going to enter the world culture and get scholarships to become doctors and lawyers and engineers. They’re going to enter the world culture at the rock bottom, like about a billion other impoverished third world peasants.
The only difference between them and the other billion dispossessed people is that whenever people try to visit their island, the visitors get filled full of arrows. Again, anthropologists and traders aren’t being kept away from the island because we think it’s cute to keep the Sentinelese in a zoo. They’re kept away because the Sentinelese kill anyone who tries to visit, and the only way we can stop the Sentinelese from killing visitors is to shoot back at them. So contacting them is just another word for massacring them.
Maybe if prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude, faith, hope, and charity were flourishing in the United States I’d be a bit more confident about your plan to bring these virtues to the benighted hellbound heathens of the Sentinel Islands.
Again, you do know that there are, today, thousands of refugees waiting on the US border, hoping for a little bit of help from the United States? And that our response is to build a wall to keep those diseased vermin out of our country? You knew that, right?
So all this talk about helping the savages of the Sentinel Island live virtuous lives is pretty hard to take.
So what makes you think that we can offer improvements in any of those areas?
I’m a huge fan of intercultural dialogue especially in the Indian Ocean. Here’s how it goes.
[INDENT]Guy 1: Hey, we’re smuggling opium to the Australia! Wanna participate?
Sentinelese: Arrow in your face.
Guy 2: Hey we’re fishing in your waters! That cool?
Sentinelese: Arrow in your face.
Guy 3: Hey, we’re bringing arms to the needy people of Afghanistan by way of Bangladesh, can we camp out for a while?
Sentinelese: Hide. Then, arrow in your face.
Guy 4: Here are some gifts.
Sentinelese: We’ll take them. Then reach for our bows.
Guy 5: We have a team of officials from India who would like to meet you.
Sentinelese: Arrow in your face.
Guy 6: Hey here’s a Bible, jabber jabber in unknown language.
Sentinelese: Arrow in your face.
[/INDENT] It’s taken a while, but I think we’re close to an understanding. I wonder what they want though?
I don’t know who you mean by “we”. I certainly don’t claim that the US government is up to the task.
Somebody someday somehow will get through to them. I just hope it’s the right people doing it the right way, you know, prudently 
I don’t claim that any of those things are flourishing in the United States.
John Chau attempted to make contact.
They killed him.
When will people learn to take “No” for an answer?
Why do you believe that the Sentinelese do not currently possess these qualities?
You know, maybe we could start slowly, working with the friendly Andaman Island tribes, then reaching out to more touchy ones. After all, there were something like a dozen tribes on the islands.
We could start with the Jangil. Except they went extinct in 1931. Or the Aka-Bea. But they aren’t around either. The Akar-Bale? Nope, extinct. Ake-Pucikwar? Sorry, not available. Maybe we introduce the Aka-Kols to the higher virtues? In the next life I mean: they are gone. The Oko-Juwois? Not available. Aka-Jeru, Aka-Kora, Aka-Cari, Aka-Bo? No longer around.
What about the Jarawas? They number 250-400: it’s not clear. They actually have increased their contact with civilization (though they were never uncontacted: they have been known to outsiders for thousands of years). But for some reason they are… hostile… to outsiders. Why is that? Don’t they understand we mean well?
Ok, maybe I exaggerated. There are some two dozen half caste squatters living in destitution on the Andaman island waterfronts, descendants of some of the above tribes. Also beggars. Or at least there were a couple of decades ago: it’s hard to say now.
Well, just a shot in the dark, probably because of their kill-first-and-ask-no-questions-later policy.
Measure for Measure, thank you for that American Scholar link. Worth reading for those interested in the history of recent contact with the Andaman peoples and Sentinelese.
Seems to me the Sentinelese know what they want and dont want.
Bit more detail please?
I’m not a fan of the “prime directive” approach (little too late for that anyway, since they know we exist and have seen our tech), but I absolutely don’t think we should interact with them in any way which could physically harm them.
I really couldn’t care less if they retrieve his body, but if they do it should be in a non-harmful way.
I would not be opposed to efforts to develop a way to intelligently communicate with them, if not for the sole purpose of letting them know our intentions.
Back to the OP: Unethical as it may be, I’d be absolutely fascinated by a TV program that would involve using insect-sized drones to observe the Sentinelese up close.
I doubt whether they do, largely because they are homo sapiens. We sure as hell don’t.
That’s not a good depiction of their foreign policy. They generally provide warnings first and displays of hostility. Then they shoot untipped arrows. Only when the invader shows persistence do they use more lethal methods.
Admittedly, their interactions with illegal fishermen weren’t recorded. They may have escalated faster: that would be reasonable.