
Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See - swombat
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/01/11/the-holocaust-we-will-not-see/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email
======
IsaacSchlueter
This article, and many of the comments here, hint at a deeper and more
interesting phenomenon: the need to have things be either all good or all bad.
That is, either (A) western civilization is good, and the things it has done
were good, and the things it values are good values, etc., or (B) it's bad,
and the things it has done were bad, and the things it values are bad values,
etc.

Once this dichotomy is accepted, _any_ evidence of goodness is proof of A, and
_any_ evidence of badness is proof of B. If A is accepted, then nothing can be
bad, and if B is accepted, then nothing can be good. You get one guy saying
"Medicine good!" and another saying "Slavery bad!" and they shout at each
other forever.

In fact, A and B are both all-or-nothing cognitive distortions.

It's quite possible for the Native Americans to have been savages, and the
Europeans to have been savages (with better weapons), and for one group of
awful people to have murdered another group of awful people.

Losing doesn't make someone good, and neither does winning.

Having nice things today doesn't mean that genocide 400 years ago was a good
idea.

Being good doesn't mean we came from good people or entirely good traditions.
Neither does being bad.

Having some good traits doesn't mean we have nothing left to learn, or that we
can't get better. In fact, good people can even learn things from bad people,
or good cultures can learn things from bad cultures. Even if modern western
culture is, on the net, much better for humans than aboriginal American
culture, we can still probably learn a lot from it.

There's a lot of richness between these blacks and whites. Perfection is not
required for goodness.

~~~
tfh
_> It's quite possible for the Native Americans to have been savages, and the
Europeans to have been savages (with better weapons), and for one group of
awful people to have murdered another group of awful people._

I don't understand what do you mean with that. I don't think there's an
absolute good or bad. But according to the fact that Europeans are the ones
who came to America and slaughtered the Natives, they are the bad ones. The
Natives did not something bad by defending themselves. In that situation and
if you value human life over material benefit you have to admit "Europeans
bad!".

~~~
Retric
At least one South American civilization was committing human sacrifices,
calling them "good people" before the Spaniards showed up is simplistic. At
the same time suggesting the Spaniards were a "good people" simply because
they replaced one set of barbaric behaviors with another is also simplistic.

~~~
potatolicious
I think this is the big point people are missing from reading this article:
the author is shameless in his bias... the aboriginals were saints! They lived
the perfect, tranquil life before the barbaric Europeans came and killed them
all!

This sort of moral absolutism is hogwash, and has no place in intelligent
debate.

This is an interesting topic worthy of discussion, but I really do not think
this article serves as a good basis for it. Until we can come up with a fair
resource that doesn't look at the natives like saints, and Europeans like evil
incarnate, I don't think any productive discussion can happen.

~~~
Tichy
So apart from that one culture doing human sacrifices, what did the others do
in your opinion to deserve extermination?

I really can't follow the logic here. Why do you even feel the need to justify
the murdering of the natives? And how can you think it can be justified? Even
if the old ones were murderers (which is probably not true in general, even if
you make it so), what about the babies?

~~~
potatolicious
> _"Why do you even feel the need to justify the murdering of the natives?"_

Wait, what? Thanks for going all "think of the children" on me man, where if
I'm not with you I'm for murdering the natives. You are (apparently)
representative of the moral absolutism problem I am talking about.

I'm not defending the extermination of native American natives.

The problem with this article is that it cast native American society as a
utopian paradise, and the white European invaders as evil, ruthless, and
completely without moral compunction. This sort of historical revisionist
"blackwashing" doesn't help anyone - because it has not fairly represented
either side. The natives were not utopian societies, nor were they savages
deserving of murder. The Europeans were not ruthless monsters, nor were they
benevolent conquerors. To represent this situation as black and white is both
ignorant and unproductive.

By "blackwashing" I mean skewing the facts and injecting calls to emotion
where it doesn't belong, to try and make something seem worse - where
whitewashing is the opposite (skewing the facts and injecting emotion to make
it seems _better_ )

[edit] Also, to address specifically why the moral absolutism is a problem: by
casting the Europeans as ruthlessly evil, you have removed any deep
introspection into _why_ the murder of the natives occurred. You've
transformed a complex human situation into a fairy tale - where the bad guys
need no explanation. You've also effectively discounted the possibility that
bad things can happen for relatively benign (or at least, not overtly evil)
goals.

Not to mention dehumanization is inherently dangerous - even if the person
you're dehumanizing is the "bad guy".

~~~
Tichy
Why does it even matter who was "evil" and who wasn't? The fact remains that
one party killed off the other. It seems clear that among the killers there
were some "evil savages", but of course not every European was evil. It
doesn't even make sense to think in such generalizations. However, if some
actions were ordered by "the state", then it seems to me to make sense to hold
"the state" responsible for it. Whatever kind of entity the state is - of
course not everybody in the state endorses it's actions, but they still
benefit or suffer from it. I suppose you can not hold a soldier in a war
responsible for killing, because he was ordered to do so and presumably had no
other choice. But that doesn't validate wars - and if said soldier later lives
on the farm of the person he killed, it seems fair to ask some questions.

I don't think in modern times if you murder somebody, the court will be very
interested in whether the victim was a good or a bad person.

Also I have to admit I still don't understand what you are going on about - if
the European invaders where not evil, ruthless and completely without moral
compunction, how were they capable of doing the killing? (The ones who did,
let's assume not everybody participated). Who did the killing?

~~~
potatolicious
> _"if the European invaders where not evil, ruthless and completely without
> moral compunction, how were they capable of doing the killing?"_

That's precisely why it matters who was "evil" and who wasn't. This kind of
"pure evil" doesn't really exist, and by assuming it does you are glossing
over the _real_ causes of the native genocide. It's far too easy to ask "why
did the Europeans murder the natives?" and answer with "because they were
evil, ruthless, and completely with morality"

It's a feel-good answer, because moral absolutism makes us all feel better.
But it's far from the truth - and masks analysis that can _actually_ help us
prevent things like this in the future.

For example (and apologies for the Godwin): we know that not every Nazi
soldier was for exterminating the Jews. Heck, we know that many German
soldiers _guarding the extermination camps_ were not supportive of the cause,
yet they went along with it. Why?

The simplistic explanation that makes us feel better is that these men were
evil, without morals, and participated willingly in mass slaughter. But this
ignores much more useful insights on mob mentality, the power of coercion,
propaganda, misinformation, and a slew of other things that actually help us
understand what happened, and prevent these things from happening again.

We're talking about an event that occurred hundreds of years ago - playing the
blame game is pretty pointless at this point. It really doesn't matter what is
whose fault; the importance of understanding the European conquest of the
Americas is to determine the factors that caused a bunch of perfectly
reasonable people to exterminate entire civilizations, so that we may better
understand our present selves and hopefully prevent such things from
repeating.

Which leads back to your original question:

> _"Why does it even matter who was "evil" and who wasn't?"_

It matters because by playing the blame game, and telling this story as a
fairy tale of black and white, good vs. evil, you are bypassing the need to
analyze what is, in reality a complex situation of many causes and effects.
You are robbing a heinous and dark event of its proper gravity and complexity,
and grossly simplifying something that carries relevance today.

~~~
Tichy
"This kind of "pure evil" doesn't really exist"

I'll argue that it exists - not everybody who torments a baby has an excuse
for it. Of course it is useful to try to figure out what made them do it,
there might be a kind of excuse in terms of an explanation of what made them
do it (bad childhood whatever). Or why - um, presumably they wanted the land?
I think what happened in America is that some people had the better weapons
and they wanted the other people's property.

"by playing the blame game"

How is it playing the blame game? A bunch of people killed another bunch of
people. There is nothing to play about it. What to do about is another
question - I am not even sure what you are worried about. Nobody in this
thread has called for any kind of reparations or anything, I think?

Isn't pointing out the history of European settlers exactly what you want:
pointing out that Europeans can be bad, too, so we always have to keep asking
what makes the "bad" come out? I don't think by forgetting history, we are
helping the kind of understanding you seem to seek.

Ultimately, though, I think the bunch with the better weapons will always get
and take what they want...

~~~
blinks
> I'll argue that it exists - not everybody who torments a baby has an excuse
> for it.

[citation needed] -- It's practically a tautology that people take actions for
_reasons_ , even if they don't consciously know what those reasons are.

------
eries
I was expecting the "The Holocaust We Will Not See" to be the one that will
obviously take place after the film ends. The native people have driven the
imperialists off their planet. But, the imperialists have space weapons and
the natives do not. Plus, the imperialists only want inert matter that exists
underground. And, they are so evil they have no respect for life in any form.

I assume a kinetic bombardment is imminent:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment>

~~~
seldo
[Warning: spoiler-heavy]

I have to say the exact same thing occurred to me at the end of the movie.
"And so the aliens returned to their dying world." ...yeah, to get more ammo.

Of course, the counter-argument might be that the Na'vi managed to defeat a
heavily-armed base using a skeleton force, before most of the tribes had even
turned up, so by the time they got back Pandora could be too well-prepared to
resist for them to be successful. Kinetic bombardment is all very well, but
you need to get down to the surface to pick the stuff up -- unless you
completely destroy every living thing on the planet, in which case you develop
a very serious logistical problem (they were growing their own food on the
surface).

------
byrneseyeview
I recommend getting over it. You are almost certainly the descendants
murderers and conquerors.

[http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=7819&...](http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=7819&IBLOCK_ID=35)

That's just how humans roll.

Western Europe had lots of problems, but countries that operate in the
European tradition are better places to live. (At least, when you look at the
immigration patterns between third-world and first-world countries, it's clear
that first world countries export idealism, which is then processed into jaded
realism and returned. Meanwhile, poor countries send their top .1% to join the
Western world's top 10%; a good deal for both sides).

~~~
senthil_rajasek
"That's just how humans roll."

Thats not how I look at it. We have made progress from a society of primitive
tribes to a more reasonable society rapidly in the last couple of centuries.

Universal women's suffrage
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Womens_suffrage#United_States>) did not even
exist in the United States until the beginning of the 20th century.

There is an endless number of social issues that Humans have made
advancements, including Civil Rights, Gay Rights etc.,

Our understanding of the world has increased [changed] and so has our ability
to make decisions based on such new knowledge.

~~~
jswinghammer
Your bias is defining all those things you listed as progress. For some those
items are signs of a degenerate society that has lost its way.

Your thinking is more like this:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_history#Social_ev...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_history#Social_evolutionism)

Than this:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cycle_theory>

------
DanielBMarkham
I made it about halfway this through before bailing. Yet another "western
civilization is so bad" articles. Ho hum.

The problem here is, as mattmaroon put it, if you buy into this logic we'd all
still be chasing down antelopes on the savannah. At some point some
civilizations, for whatever reason, start developing things like private
property, the wheel, common law, reading, the printing press, etc.

It's become fashionable to say something like "well, that doesn't make them
any better than other civilizations" but I think that's soft-headed horseshit.
Anybody who lives in a civilization with private property, contract law,
medicine, literature and art is living in a better place, and in a better way,
that somebody who doesn't have it. Some cultures are demonstrably better than
others, like it or not.

The interesting question, especially with alien stories, is "How do two wildly
diverse cultures interact in a way that is respectful of both?"

I've thought about this for some time, and using all the earthly examples I
can come up with, the fact is they don't. If we ever meet another primitive
species and interact with them? It's going to be very traumatic on the part of
the other species. Likewise, if Cebulons from the Osari System arrive next
week with technology five thousand years ahead of ours? You can say goodbye to
a lot of what people think of when they talk about human culture.

And I guess I'm okay with that. If the Cebulons show up, I'm going to be first
in line learning to speak Cebulonese, watching all the Cebulonese TV shows,
and taking my kids to Cebulonese high schools. We will learn, adapt, and
overcome, and the human species will continue. To me that's a lot more
rational that sitting around moaning about how things might have/would have
been had things not changed. I just hope the Cebulons come to trade and
exploit our resources in a manner respectful of private property, so we can go
to their system and do the same one day :)

I really did not like Avatar. Gorgeous, magnificent movie. Terrible hackneyed,
one-dimensional plot. Ugh. I think a quote from Cameron's other movie is most
apt: I vote we nuke it from orbit. It's the only way we can really be sure.

~~~
baxident
If Europeans had already developed the idea of private property, then why did
we find it necessary to take the land of these ingenious populations?

~~~
pyre
He's ignoring the point that 'rule of law' didn't exist in the Americas. Maybe
private property and rule of law existed in Europe and made for a better
society there, but the conquistadors that came to the Americas acted like the
rule of law was "whatever I want to do, I get to do." Ideas like private
property don't excuse things like slavery and murder.

You can't say, "I claim this piece of land for my own. Oh, look! There are
people living on it already. I guess I get to enslave, rape, torture them."
This has more to do with brutal people being the first people to encounter the
natives in the Americas, and deciding that since there was no European justice
system or society to condemn/jail then that they could do whatever they felt
like.

~~~
Psyonic
"I claim this piece of land for my own. Oh, look! There are people living on
it already. I guess I get to enslave, rape, torture them."

Actually, you can say EXACTLY that. The very idea of private property is
founded on that principle. When whoever it was originally decided some plot of
land belonged to him, that's precisely what he said. All I would add to that
statement is the clause, "Or they can get the hell out."

~~~
pyre
So you're claiming that if someone decides to enter my house, I can legally
torture, rape and/or kill them?

~~~
outotrai
I think he's saying that if someone came into your house and said it was
theirs, and had the ability to enforce that, it wouldn't be your house
anymore. No, you can't _ethically_ say "I claim this piece of land for my own.
Oh, look! There are people living on it already. I guess I get to enslave,
rape, torture them." But if ethics are not of any concern to you, then you can
certainly say it and do it, and the land will then be yours.

~~~
Psyonic
Thanks outotrai. Couldn't have said it better myself.

------
astine
This article is largely based on the claims of Bartolome de Las Casas, an
activist from the time of Conquistadors. Some scholars believe thathe wildly
exaggerated the crimes in order to convince the Spanish and other governments
to intervene.

~~~
narag
Has anyone travelled to both Spain and Latin America? Spaniards are white.
Latins have on average a mixed colour. So it's clear that extermination did
not take place... there.

~~~
b-man
There was miscegenation for sure, not only with native people but between
Europeans, Africans and everyone else that came here.

But that does not imply that there was not an extermination. [1]

[1] A single and not isolated example. ->
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupi_people#European_colonizati...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupi_people#European_colonization)

~~~
narag
_There was miscegenation for sure, not only with native people but between
Europeans, Africans and everyone else that came here._

The racial traits are different from african to american natives. It's clear
the difference between Brazil or Cuba (where most slaves were brought) and
Mexico. And remember I'm writting of _average_ ,

About the word "extermination" it seems you're using it to describe killing of
many individuals. I would keep it to refer to something like killing 99.99
indigenous population.

------
bokonist
Question to HN readers who are sympathetic with this article: If you could
wave a magic wand and "undo" all that was done, would you do so? So imagine
all those who perished in the 1500's would be revived from the dead and
restored to their ancestral lands, all those living in the Americas now would
be sent back to England, Ireland, China, etc, with a one way ticket and $10K
in cash to start a new life. Would you wave your wand and cast this spell?

~~~
mattmaroon
I'm sympathetic to the plight of the native American, though this article is
poor, but no, I would not. It's an unfortunate but necessary part of human
progress.

It's no worse than the Romans, or Gauls, or Saxons, etc. By that logic you'd
have to keep waving your wand until we were all back on the Savannah tossing
spears at antelopes.

~~~
arcadeparade
>It's no worse than the Romans, or Gauls, or Saxons, etc.

Or the Nazis?

If they had won WW2 I'm sure some people in Germany today would be calling the
Holocaust "an unfortunate but necessary part of human progress" and would tell
us all about the backwardness of Jewish culture, I'm sure while also being
"sympathetic to the plight" of those victims too.

That doesn't mean that one group of people have the right to wipe out another
culture to benefit their own, no matter what the consequences are.

I'm really shocked by some of the comments here.

~~~
bokonist
What's your answer to my question?

~~~
arcadeparade
It's not a sensible question so I can't answer it. I just dont think that what
happened to the Native Americans was right, it was genocide, and anything
positive that came out of it doesnt excuse it.

~~~
bokonist
Let's try a similar, more realistic question. It's 2050. The U.S. has run out
of oil, it only has enough to run farm equipment and food shipment trucks for
another year. There is hope of converting everything to nuclear/electric
power, but that will take a decade. In the meantime, the entire population,
including your friends and family, face hunger or starvation. Nigeria and
Venezuela have oil, but refuse to sell it at any price. The U.S. government is
contemplating war to seize the oil. Do you support the war?

~~~
arcadeparade
Why dont they want to sell it?

And how does that scenario compare to the invasion of the United States in the
1500s?

It wasnt invaded to save the population of Europe.

~~~
bokonist
Americans have no goods that are as valuable to them as oil.

~~~
arcadeparade
Ok, well let's compare that with a real life situation. Right now there are
thousands of people dying from easily preventable diseases every day in
Africa, which could be cured for a few cents each.

American pharmaceutical companies have this medicine, and they are operating
in one of the most profitable industries that have ever existed.

Africans have no goods that are as valuable to them as medicine. Should
African countries invade America to get this medicine?

~~~
bokonist
No, because the invasion would fail. A good leader does not lead his troops on
suicidal missions.

But the oil example actually did happen in real life. You're the ruler of
Japan in 1941. The U.S. has just cut off your oil supply. You have months left
before your population faces severe hunger and deprivation. Do you invade
Indonesia to take their oil? I think if I was ruler I would. How about you?

~~~
arcadeparade
I dont know, but I think we should apply the same moral standards to ourselves
that we appply to others.

These questions echo the age-old maxim of Thucydides that "The strong do as
they can, while the weak suffer what they must" but that doesnt mean that the
actions on either side are just.

There are fundamental questions to be answered here about the legitimacy of
the nation-state, and what right one group has to natural resources over
another simply because of their location on Earth, when the results of this
unfairness are the strengthing of one group and the weakening of another.

------
breck
It humors me when people speak so confidently about events that happened 400
years ago, and yet if you asked them to explain in detail the events of their
own life a year ago would have trouble remembering.

I went to an exhibit once with real photographs from a native indian
population taken in the late 1800's. The photos showed a population that
looked, quite frankly, very savage and violent. These people didn't look like
Pocahontus or the friendly blue creatures of Avatar.

I'm not going to state an opinion either way about the early colonization of
America because frankly I have no clue about it and don't really care.

However, I do have an opinion that raw life is a brutal thing. Always has and
probably always will be. It was particularly brutal back then, for both the
Native Americans and the Europeans. I'd hate to have to live in either time
period. The depictions we see in movies are far, far removed from reality.

------
jafl5272
He only has one book as the reference for all the “history,” which makes me
doubt most of it. Certainly, the claim that everybody (except Aztecs and
Incas) was “peacable” (sic) is nonsense. The Apache tribes often raided each
other (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_indians>), and the legendary
Apache fighting skills were certainly not a result of living peacefully for
centuries before the Europeans arrived.

------
mattmaroon
"But in this case the metaphor is conscious and precise: this is the story of
European engagement with the native peoples of the Americas."

One planetary race driving another into extinction is a universal, cookie-
cutter sci-fi plot device. See Independence Day or Ender's Game. I suppose
this was the only one where the victims had some sort of aboriginal-sounding
accent, but I wouldn't take it as social commentary.

~~~
aristus
They also had badass arrows. But on a world where the flying things are all
glowing and lizardy, where did they get the feathers for the arrows?

~~~
swernli
Could have been from some of the plant life. There certainly seemed to be an
abundance of native flora and fauna that took sufficiently different forms
from the standard leafy greens that it isn't implausible that the "feathers"
were really plant-based.

Then again, it's a made up world in a sci-fi movie; there is a long list of
things that wouldn't be "implausible."

------
grellas
The idea of glamorizing indigenous peoples has always fascinated me.

Do those historically connected with a particular place throughout its history
never experience cruelty? How does one explain the slaughter in Rwanda and
similar places if tribes living in one place are said to be imbued with an
innate purity that should exempt them from having the same impulses toward
evil and genocide that characterize the rest of the world?

As I ponder these things, and consider the lurid facts depicted in this
article, my intuition tells me that this might be as much a case of selective
reporting as anything else - reporting that seeks to shape a narrative
consistent with a particular worldview held by the author of the piece.

I know there have been atrocities in the United States and in the Americas
generally. But there is undoubtedly something very good as well to be said for
the United States in particular, where (whatever its shortcomings and
inconsistencies) freedom has been upheld for the benefit of all sorts of
people and with which most of the world pales in comparison in terms of
opportunities, or at least that is how umpteen generations of immigrations
scrambling to get here have seen it.

------
blahedo
Fascinatingly, but unsurprisingly, this is yet another piece that uses Avatar
as a springboard into an essay about real-world human events _starting from
the claim that Avatar is clearly allegory for one specific such event_. Being
from the second wave of such articles, it even takes note of the other
interpretations and alleges them to be incorrect.

What makes Avatar such a great movie is that A) so many people are so sure
it's "about" a particular historical or current situation that they care about
and B) they're _all different_. I've seen Vietnam, I've seen Iraq, I've seen
Afghanistan, I've seen South America or the Americas as a whole, I've seen
Africa, I've seen climate change, man, I've seen a _lot_ of different
interpretations.

James Cameron FTW!

------
davidw
That's reddit bait if I've ever seen it.

