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Comment by chillacy | Hacker News Reader

I was reading an account from the Roman Empire about parents begrudgingly using the imperial language while their kids grew up completely “Roman”. Then I reflected that if you go back far enough we all have a great^N parent who was in this situation.

Someone else in their reply mentioned Hawaii and the US but even Hawaii was unified by force by King Kamehameha. I’ve come to an uneasy acceptance of the fact that we’re all the conquerors and the conquered.

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"I’ve come to an uneasy acceptance of the fact that we’re all the conquerors and the conquered."

We all have to accept the past. We don't need to accept that the future will be the same.

There are many ways that different areas and cultures can share an assimilate. Trade, travel, multilingualism, federations, mutually-agreed democratic annexation, shared constitutions, diplomacy, immigration, intermarriage, etc.

Coercion is not the only option.

One of my favorite quotes (don’t know the source): “we can either protect the past from the future, or protect the future from the past”.

It's interesting that you mention immigration and intermarriage because if your press Tibetan and Uighur activists, or look at their more private communications rather than their press releases, miscegenation is frequently at the forefront of their concerns (as tends to be the case when a predominantly male group perceives itself to be losing status, e.g. poorer white men in the west). Outside of the wealthy cosmopolitan west, views toward intermarriage tend to be extremely illiberal.

Just another way for criminals to excuse themselves of their crimes. Imagine if you said this to a black person in the context of slavery

True, I see the future as being coercion through soft power: e.g. people want to come to America because it has attractive political freedom, economic strength, and cultural capital.

In this world, cultures built around immigration end up changing themselves to better compete for people. e.g. the US had to undergo civil rights reforms in the 60s and expand access to all as the USSR looked increasingly attractive to those traditionally left out.

> Coercion is not the only option.

Do you have examples of those alternatives, or are they theoretical?

>> if you go back far enough we all have a great^N parent who was in this situation.

'Everyone is a victim' is a cop out. The fact that some ancestor of mine was probably conquered by vikings doesn't mean that I shouldn't criticize china for doing the same thing today. Nor do I feel like a conqueror because some other ancestor was one of those vikings. Look to the deep past for lessons. Don't point to the deep past as justification for horrible actions today.

Not to mention, China can’t seem to stop at simply owning the land, they want to wipe these regions and people of their culture and heritage.

I don't know why you're getting downvoted, there is some evidence to suggest this, such as reports of them sending Han men to replace Uighur men in their homes after they've been sent to prison camps.

The fact that you criticise someone doesn’t make you right though.

It’s just a fact that every single empire in history ended up with a society which hated the conquests only to be conquered by another, less ethically-concerned nation.

It’s easy to judge when you are in a privileged position, however the reason you do that is because you already made someone else pay the price of the externalities of your champagne pacifism.

Basically you have this ethical idea that war is bad, but you provide no solution as to how to make today’s poor people reach the same level of education and plenty without giving them the means to conquer you politically, economically or by the means of warfare.

Can you explain how conquest is necessary for people to come out of poverty?

Conquest is necessary because if you take a conservative opinion that you should expect from the world what it currently gives you; and what it currently gives you is that a small minority of the world’s population lives semi-happily in the western countries; then the only way for the poorer countries to get on the same level of salaries is to take away those salaries from the west and make west the third world instead.

Every other argument you make is akin to a “what if”. I am speaking about how it _currently_ is.

Just because something is common doesn't make it right either.

Sure, we can criticize, but just keep in mind cycles of criticism and acceptance are the norm in the past. That many of us have forgotten the outrage and moved to acceptance is only further demonstration of this pattern.

Will the future be different? Maybe.. technology (especially communications tech) might be the thing that lets us break the cycle.

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