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Comment by chmod600 | Hacker News Reader

"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.

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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.

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

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.

> Coercion is not the only option.

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

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