Comment by rbg246 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rbg246 | Hacker News Reader

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Ok, firstly I am unsure how any of the above refutes my statements about the British Empire.

You have decided to get into the semantics of conquest vs land theft. My reading of your reply is that conquest is an excusable activity?

My understanding of your argument rests on that everyone does it (conquest) so what the British Empire did was only unique in its scale.

I think your question and argument takes on more a personal morality question and I will present you with the way I think about it.

A couple of questions, if you have different answers to me then we just have different personal belief systems and we can leave it at that.

Do you excuse murder, rape, kidnapping, robbery in your current life as just being something people and chimpanzees do?

If the answer is no (I am sure it is) then why do you say conquest is excusable? Which by my definition is just larger groups of people engaging in the above mentioned crimes?

I do not want to be celebrating an organisation which is responsible for those crimes.

Finally, indigenous people's violence (and remembering there are 1000s of nations across the world which is kind of ridiculous to be saying them all at once) does not culturally define them in the same way mass violence defined the British Empire.

Violence, oppression and misery was the modus operandi of the British Empire.

> My reading of your reply is that conquest is an excusable activity?

No, I believe you have misread my response. I said: "in an ideal world there would have been a supranational law enforced on all human groups that forbids violent displacement of one group of humans by another (i.e. conquest), which I guess most people would agree would be a good thing."

> Do you excuse murder, rape, kidnapping, robbery in your current life as just being something people and chimpanzees do?

No. Your prediction is correct.

> I do not want to be celebrating an organisation which is responsible for those crimes.

That's reasonable.

> Finally, indigenous people's violence (and remembering there are 1000s of nations across the world which is kind of ridiculous to be saying them all at once) does not culturally define them

I agree.

> Violence, oppression and misery was the modus operandi of the British Empire.

Agreed. It was the modus operandi of the British and every empire before them, and most organized groups of people with power before them. Which is the reason why "violence, oppression and misery" does not define the British empire culturally, as it does not define any of the indigenous peoples' culture.

The main difference in the modus operandi of the British empire is they replaced other groups exerting this violence globally because they were the only ones with the technological advantage that allowed them to do so at the time. Does not excuse the acts, but does not make the British empire any different than most organized groups of humans that have ever lived either (as far as willingness to perpetrate violence and oppression goes).

Thank for your reply.

I see we agree on most points except the final point which is ok because I was not arguing whether or not the British empire supplanted a culture that had violence - that topic of discussion would is incredibly complex and I wouldn't be able to make sweeping statements on it. But I can see that you have proven that perhaps some indigenous nation's in North America had a culture of violence.

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