I feel the need to quote the noted philosopher Bender-
Every religious fanatic in history has said the same thing about their own religion. Why should I, or the Sentinelese, or anyone else, treat your assertions differently than those from fanatics from other religions?
This prolonged discussion has shown, to me at least, that we are still seriously affected by the colonial attitude that our way is simply better and that we have the perfect right, responsibility even, to go into other cultures and change them any way we see fit.
Looking at American society today, I’m thinking we could do with someone from the outside affecting changes in our society. Rather than pass judgment on other societies, we have a plethora of problems of our own that we need to address.
I thought you were against outsiders imposing their ideas on a culture …
You are conflating colonizers with missionaries.
Colonizers =/= Missionaries. The mission of a colonizer is not to spread religion, but to colonize/extract wealth.
This is completely absurd.
You misinterpret. I’m saying that, for those who insist we have the right/duty to interfere with another society, a case can be made that we ourselves can be judged in the same light using their standards and way of thinking.
That is incorrect. “My truth” is based on the teachings, life, death, and resurrection of a 1st Century Jew named Jesus and the institution that he established prior to his ascension into heaven (the Catholic Church).
Cite?
Agreed.
“A bunch of bronze-age myths” is a comically ridiculous characterization of the Catholic faith. I believe that truth is superior to falsehood. I believe that full truth is superior to partial truth. I think we all do. What is arrogant about that?
Have they? I’m not sure that’s true. But if it is, okay then, let’s test those claims.
Mostly the part about your insistence that your mythology is the one and only truth. It is an astonishingly arrogant. And even more arrogant that you would insist on inflicting this on someone else without their consent.
Let me ask you this: What do you think of ISIS? If an ISIS member showed up and told you that Islam was the only true religion, and that their particular version of Sunni Islam was the only correct form of Islam, what would you say to them? Would you resist their idea that they had a monopoly on ‘truth?’ Would you point out that their religion has a long history of bloodshed and coercion? Would you call them arrogant for assuming that their 7th-century religion is in any way relevant, much less superior to your own? I bet so. Heck, I bet you would rather die than join ISIS.
And that is what we think of you. People aren’t ‘offended’ by you sharing your religion. We’re terrified of an arrogant, egotistical, self-righteous colonizer who wants to destroy our lives and would rather murder us than allow us to live in peace. And that’s really what it boils down to: I would rather die than participate in your evil religion.
You can insist to me all day long that you are only there to help and that missionaries are not equal to colonizers, but the problem is that you are fighting against 2,000 years of your own history, which you appear to be completely ignorant of. So if I have the choice of believing your claims of good intentions or the demonstrated pattern of bloodshed, manipulation, and tyranny… Well… I’m going to trust your history long before I trust you.
We can leave religion out of this for a moment. This is about a fundamental right of the Sentinelese to self-determination and representation in world bodies and they are being denied that right.
Let’s pretend for a minute that the Earth is part of some prime-directive ‘zoo.’ There are bunches and bunches of aliens out there who have all sorts of awesome things and are making all sorts of decisions. Let’s pretend for a moment that those decisions can and do impact us. For instance maybe they are siphoning energy off of the sun or mining the Moon for unobtanium without our knowledge. They’re sucking gas out of Jupiter for their widgets making it less stable in its orbit. They are doing things that maybe we won’t notice, but have the potential to have a real impact on us. Now maybe they have had bad contacts with ‘primitives’ like us in the past, maybe bad things have happened and it’s certainly unpredictable what would happen if they contacted us now. Maybe we would end up being galactic paupers or dying of ‘space lice.’ But don’t we have a fundamental right to have our interests represented in the ‘galactic Senate?’ Don’t we have a fundamental right to be our own counsel and determine for ourselves what stances to take in galactic affairs? If nothing else, don’t we at least have a right to know what those decisions are and be given an opportunity to prepare ourselves in case Jupiter does fly out of orbit or the mining on the Moon reduces our tides or what have you?
I would posit that we are fundamentally undermining their autonomy and right to self-determination by keeping them in the dark about these decisions.
To be honest, I even side with the religious on this one. Why do we get to determine what religion that these islanders follow? Can we not trust them to hear competing truth claims and evaluate them in some manner? If they think that Catholicism is true, then why not. I would certainly object to forced conversions, but not a marketplace of ideas. If there was some sort of ‘Religion X’ out there that some government was forcibly preventing people from telling me about, I’d be pretty incensed. Why can’t I know about Religion X? Again, the Sentinelese are not children that we have to care for. They are adult human beings who one presumes are capable of making their own decisions. Catholics, Muslims, Atheists, Hindus or what have you should all be able to present to them their particular philosophies and allow them to choose for themselves, just like pretty much everyone who is typing here was allowed to choose for themselves. Shoot, maybe we’ll all be convinced by whatever the Sentinelese think about the role of humanity in the universe. Maybe they’ve got it going on and we’ll all be followers of the Divine ‘What-Have-You.’ Why are you denying them their chance to convince the rest of us that their ideas are closer to reality?
Are we talking philosophical “truth” or examinable “facts” ?
Imagine an alien landed on Earth.
The alien gets out of his spaceship and says, “I want to bring you into the galactic community, and let you make your own -“
And then the Earthlings shoot him in the face.
Because that’s the part that you just don’t seem to get. People have tried over and over to communicate with the Sentinelese, and they react with violence. And this has been explained to you over and over, and you don’t acknowledge it.
So to return to your analogy: If the alien ambassador gets shot in the face, what do the aliens do? If every ambassador they send gets shot in the face, how many dead ambassadors do they tolerate before they just give up and accept that the Earthlings don’t want what they offer?
Or… Do they bring in their alien space ships and tripod war machines, kill all the humans that resist them, and then educate the survivors so that they can make an informed decision? You know… Because we wouldn’t want to deny them their “rights.”
Because that is what you are saying. You are so concerned with their “right to self-determination” that you are willing to use force to conquer and re-educate them so that they can more effectively exercise their right to self-determination. And that makes not a bit of goddamned sense.
And that’s the last I have to say on the subject, until and unless you begin acknowledging what people are telling you.
Sure, it’s acknowledged. But it also needs to be acknowledged that we have had peaceful contacts with them in the past. There are many, many anthropologists and scientists that made contact with them. Shoot, even this guy that got killed initially had peaceful contact with them. I think that there are more options available than ‘Don’t talk to them’ and ‘Invade them and send the survivors to reeducation camps.’ They are not necessarily cheap or easy options, but not everything in this world has to be approached the American Way - “Either kill them or abandon them. No other way.”
Why did you ignore the question in my post? Here it is again: Why should I, or the Sentinelese, or anyone else, treat your assertions differently than those from fanatics from other religions?
If the Indian government chooses to pursue one of those “not necessarily cheap or easy options” to enlighten the noble savages, they’re free to do so. The rest of us don’t have that option, at least not legally.
Maybe you’re confusing me with another poster, as I never insisted on anything of the sort. It certainly was not my intent. I’m not talking about “inflicting” anything on anyone. Like I said earlier, if there is a way of life that has demonstrably proven to be superior to another way of life, what’s wrong with sharing it? The choice is the hearer’s whether they choose to implement that new way of life. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.
I would ask them to show me how. Truth is truth, wherever it is found.
No, because that is not very relevant to a religion’s truth claims.
A religion or a truth claim cannot be arrogant. A person can be arrogant. If the individual was speaking arrogantly, I might call him out on it; but one is not arrogant simply for making a truth claim.
Of course Islam is relevant. It is a major world religion with over 1 billion followers. The question of which religion is superior (Catholicism or ISIS-brand Islam) is one that can be debated, and one that I believe Catholicism wins easily. Which one better supports human flourishing?
That does sound pretty terrifying. Thankfully, that’s not me or any Catholic missionary I’ve ever heard of.
Can you give some examples, please regarding the “demonstrated pattern of bloodshed, manipulation, and tyranny”?
Both.
I apologize,
You (or the Sentinelese) shouldn’t. You should evaluate all assertions objectively, the best you can.
Okay. Objectively, through history, missionary activity has been much more likely to harm indigenous cultures and peoples than to help them. So objectively, indigenous cultures are wise to be suspicious and even hostile to those who want to proselytize.
I certainly understand that and I’m not advocating some sort of private expedition to the Sentinelese or for some other world government take charge. I’m simply discussing what ‘should’ be done by a vague concept of ‘the rest of humanity.’ I obviously don’t support Chinese and American warships showing up at North Sentinel to violate Indian sovereignty in the name of a humanitarian mission. I also fully recognize the ‘what-about’ involving other disenfranchised and/or oppressed people and I’m not attempting to prioritize Sentinelese contact over say Syrian refugees or the homeless in DC. I’m simply saying they have a right to enter the international community rather than be kept in some sort of nature preserve.