“the truths of the faith… are universal” :rolleyes:
What threat exactly did the Chau guy pose? I suppose he could be a disease carrier, but typically speaking we don’t go around shooting people who might conceivably be carrying a random disease of which we have no knowledge. They have no reason to believe that he was a disease carrier, nor do we even know that they have any real idea how disease is even spread.
He could have been the first wave of a caravan. That should garner him a lot of support from posters here. 
AFAIAC, these folks are citizens of India and unless India has granted them some authority to shoot intruders, then no, they don’t have the right to do so. Whether or not the Indian government decides to prosecute them is the business of the Indian government.
He was an outsider. All outsiders are potential threats to a tribe.
Ah, so you did know one kind of threat he could pose. That kind of makes your first question suspicious, IMO.
Why are you applying your cultural norms to the Sentinelese? 
They also have no reason to believe he was NOT a disease carrier. Your point is moot.
So are you proposing that we teach them that by spreading a disease to them? :dubious:
Sweet, so in your ethical system, I can go about shooting Mexicans since they threaten my ‘tribe?’ Gotcha.
Not at all. I do know what kind of threat, but they don’t. Nor am I convinced that he was a disease carrier.
We’re talking about moral culpability. If it’s objective morality, cultural norms are irrelevant. If it’s subjective, then all I have is my viewpoint. If you think shooting people in the face for bringing you gifts is fine, I can’t really argue with you. I just think you’re screwed up and I would still hold you morally culpable, despite your opinion on the subject.
If they don’t have a concept of disease, there’s plenty of reason to suspect he’s not a disease carrier, because there is no concept of a disease carrier. If I were to have no idea how heart attacks occur, it wouldn’t justify me shooting someone in the face because they might spread their heart attack to me.
No, I propose that we teach them by gradually initiating contact over the period of many years and learning their language and teaching them about modern medicine and disease theory and immunology.
If we are to debate the morality of the islanders’ actions, we should represent them more accurately. The missionary in question was not (directly) murdered for the crime of bringing gifts; he was killed for failing to fuck off and repeatedly trespassing after wearing out his welcome. Similarly, serious arrows did not fly at the Indian VIP until his security party shot off firearms (after ignoring warnings to leave and approaching even closer).
Anyone who knows anything about the history of the Andaman peoples knows that North Sentinel Island is not the place to look for a casual bed-and-breakfast, but I have not seen any evidence that people there live by either a more or less stringent moral code than random people anywhere else.
What if they’ve robbed you every time. And also kidnapped some of you. And every time they’ve done so, someone in your family also got sick and died?
The threat to the Sentinelese is very real. And they know it.
Why should they? Our criminal justice system doesn’t have jurisdiction over them, so it’s irrelevant.
You think they’re unaware of the power imbalance?
Do you think they’re all blind, or just stupid?
I see you’re going with “stupid”
Well, they do have one way of knowing…
No, I’m respecting their own, experience-based, decision that outsiders are bad news. I happen to have additional information that confirms that they’re right, but that’s separate.
They do have a very good idea, based off previous experience.
You might want to look up the *actual *definition of genocide by Rabbi Lemkin, some time. What Chau was intending certainly strikes some of the notes…
They’re both human, *and *culturally endangered.
Woah there with the “you and I” - I may live on the outside, but I have actual experience with other peoples who have had their culture forcibly stripped away, who have verbally expressed to me a longing to go back to when they were just hunter-gatherers.
You keep missing the point.
You keep talking about some hypothetical situation whereby an outside culture contacts some insular culture, lets them know that we come in peace, and they establish some sort of mutually beneficial cooperation.
But I’m not talking about some hypothetical situation. I’m talking about an actual situation, with an actually existing outside population and an actually existing insular population.
And the reality is that if we tried to convince them that we come in peace, we’d be fucking lying, right? Because while the envoys extending peace overtures might want peaceful coexistence, there are plenty of other people who don’t. There are drug smugglers, arms dealers, pirates, fishermen, missionaries, slavers, real estate developers, and on and on that would be happy to use, exterminate, and expropriate these islanders.
Again, you’re constantly acting as if we’re talking about some uncontacted group that we’re sneakily keeping pure in some sort of zoo. But that’s false, false, false. They are not uncontacted. They are contacted all the time. And the only reason they aren’t contacted even more is that the Indian government enforces a no-trespassing rule. But they can’t keep out everyone, as was seen last week. Anyone who wants can sail over to the island, and the odds are pretty good that they will make it.
And then what? What exactly are you going to offer them? Modern medicine? Seriously? Who’s going to pay for that? You? The wonders of modern civilization aren’t given out for free, they are given in exchange for goods and services, which is why there are billions of people living in abject poverty on planet Earth.
When people visit the island, the islanders tell them to go away. If they won’t go away, they start shooting arrows near them. If they won’t leave after that, they start shooting in earnest, and either the invaders leave after getting some arrow wounds, or they get killed to death by arrows. Or they could shoot back.
You keep talking about sending a mission to these people. The only way to do that without getting killed is an armed mission that will respond to violence with violence. That’s why I keep saying that your plan requires massacring half the island, because the only way to stop them from shooting invaders is to shoot back. In lots of places around the world if tribal people killed an outsider then outside authorities are very likely to show up to punish the killers. Like you advocate. We gotta punish the murder of this missionary, he was murdered, murder is wrong, so we gotta show these primitive screwheads we mean business. And that means getting out the boomsticks and killing them when they shoot arrows at people. That’s how they get the message.
There is no other way to establish meaningful contact with these people. We teach them murder is wrong by shooting them, and eventually they’ll stop shooting at us so we can stop shooting at them, and then they can take their proper place as impoverished third world peasants at the bottom of the global socioeconomic system.
In further support the point that the Sentineli act not out of ignorance, but know exactly what they are doing, here is a quote reported by George Weber from a couple of Indian scientists in 1990, proving that there were still plans to turn the island into a big coconut plantation:
The Sentineli had enough of that from the British and stopped it in the same way.
No. Your “tribe” doesn’t have “killing outsiders” as an acceptable cultural, legal or ethical norm. It isn’t “my” ethical system, it’s theirs (and common to tribal societies).
your question was suspicious because you actually knew the answer already, as evidenced by your subsequent post. That means it wasn’t a real question for knowledge, but served some other agenda.
All you have is your viewpoint. And the Sentinelese have theirs. Why don’t you respect their viewpoint?
You’ve utterly failed at understanding me or in seeing past your own biases. You are applying 21st century American morals and laws to a people who have no connection to either of those things.
You aren’t really making any kind of argument or observation here: you’re trying to justify intruding on someone else’s home.
They do not want any contact. It’s very difficult to believe that a stronger message could be sent than the systematic killing of anyone who tries to go there. Why are you confused or inclined to ignore these messages?
Your argument of “if they knew what they were missing, they’d want in on this” carries no weight. They do not know and they do not want to know. They want to be left alone. Why won’t you honor their wishes?
We don’t, but then we don’t have a significant chance of losing our entire society and population from a single outsider contacting us. And they may well have good reason, whether from oral history or even recent history, to believe that outsiders bring disease.
If only. Peasants are farmers or farm laborers. The Sentinelese don’t have such a skill set. Again, 19th century British colonialists struggled to find work for former hunter gatherers. And that economy was far friendlier to illiterates than this one.
The Sentinelese would have difficulty competing against a member of India’s untouchable or scheduled castes. And those folks (the Dalits) are at the bottom of the pile.
ETA: Remember the Yanomani? The so-called fierce people of the Amazon? Loggers have invaded their land and many of them make their living today as prostitutes. It doesn’t matter how bad ass you are if you can’t pay the bills.
One quibble…
According to the World Bank, less than 740 million people currently live in extreme poverty.
I have no idea how Raphael morphed into Rabbi…
It might be common to the few “uncontacted” groups who are purposely avoiding the modern world, but it’s not common to tribal societies, in general. And just because they seem to be OK with it doesn’t mean we need to. “We” generally arrest people who kill others, at least put them on trial, and sometimes even put the killers to death. So, if we’re going by all this cultural relativism, then the islanders who did the killing could be in deep shit.
You’re missing the point, which is that they don’t owe anyone any kind of explanation as to WHY they don’t want any outsiders entering their society. They are a free and autonomous people who have the right to run their society the way they see fit. The fact that they want to be left alone should suffice, and their wishes need to be respected.
Are they and do they? AFAIK, the Indian government has a hands-off policy, but do they grant them complete autonomy on all things? I doubt it, but if you have a cite that says otherwise, I’m open to changing my mind.
I disagree.
Are you familiar with the term “ethnocentric”?
Cite (bolding mine).