Ancestoral blame and moral judgements

Inspired from this thread:

I agree with Pinguin, the Italian government should pay compensation to all the countries the Romans invaded.

A tricky subject, I think its fine to pass moral judgement on past states and to an extent peoples:  romans were brutal at times, mongols were destructive, etc.  But I think it should stay in the academic arena, moving beyond that just would not work in my opinion.  The idea of giving america's black citizens monetary stipends because of their ancestors being slaves for example; an admirable sentiment, but, that is an endless headache of problems for numerous reasons. 

Yes, people should be held to a moral standard. We should give some kind of flexibility, of course. And then we must evaluate our own behavior.

So, we can start by judging how, for example, the Aztecs were wrong by committing human sacrifice for religious purposes. But then the Spaniards also killed people for religious purposes as well, and the act is not different. So the Aztecs wanted to keep the universe running, and the Spaniards wanted to keep society intact without the evil influence of other religions.

And now we can compare it with our modern practices. The death penalty is really a human sacrifice. Most of its rational defenses centered around on the idea that we must kill people to keep our society intact. And we all know that it doesn't work, so killing people for crimes works just as well as killing heretics or killing warriors to keep the sun running.

The other way that we can judge people is by trying to be empathetic. An example would be for a Mexican to understand that the English-Speaking Texans had pretty good reasons to want to leave Mexico if one takes into consideration the political nonsense that was going on in Mexico during the time. And the Alamo was pretty horrible. If that happened today to us, we could react the same way.

Modern day people cannot be accountable for what they didn't do. It doesn't make any sense.

At the same time, modern day people can do a lot to heal open wounds, especially if the descendants of the people who got hurt are still living the consequences. In many cases, just acknowledging the wrong of the ancestors is all what is needed.

In some specific cases there needs to be more done, but that varies from case to case.

Should the current modern day generations be held just as equally accountable and responsible for the actions of their ancestors from the past?

No one should be held responsible for the actions of their fathers or of their cultures. Because if you really look at it, put into the same situations and circumstances any other peoples would do the same thing. In other words if the oppressed could be the oppressors they would do it, it isn't a question of different moral codes, all you can do is ensure that everyone is treated fairly and that current social morality is upheld because realistically that's all you can do.

Also I dislike the fact that in our modern mindset everyone is always trying to play the role of victim instead of hero, because in order to be a victim all you have to do is nothing, whereas to be a hero you must put forth so much more effort than those you aid. The fact that victims get so much more media coverage than heroes is also sickening when you really think about it.

It's also very difficult to quantify suffering. For instance is the pain the Cherokee felt during the trail of tears more or less than the suffering of Africans traveling across the Atlantic. Can the Irish potato famine even be allowed into such a conversation? Or does a decade of genocide of millions of people in the Holocaust weigh up to three hundred years of slavery in America? Also how can Europeans take the blame for the destruction of up to 95% of American Aboriginols when they themselves knew nothing about the germs they were carrying and in the vast majority of cases the diseases themselves reached the natives decades before the survivors saw their first white man.

Individuals are responsible for actions, not cultures, not governments, not religions, people need to realize that and start being heroes and stop being victims.

Originally posted by pinguin A throublesome topic is the property of the land. In many places around the world, lands were grabs from natives without compensation to give it to foreign settlers. Those lands are today patrimony of theirs descendents. However, the legitimacy of that ownership is still in doubt.

Originally posted by Aelfgifu ...  But what defines native? How long ago did a people have to arrive to be legitimate, and where do we draw the line?

Originally posted by Paul Words are cheap, it's actions that count.   Perhaps Pinguin should start by setting an example, giving his home to a native american and fly to Madrid airport claiming refugee status.

This doesent make any sense.
How can the state of Spain be held accountable for the conquest of south america if most of the spaniards' , living in Spain, ancestors�in�fact�stayed�in�Spain.�
Shouldnt�the�people�who�are�decendants�of�the�settlers�who�left�to�south�america�be�held�accountable�what�happened�there.
So it would�be states like say Chile who�should be held accountable what happened there.


Edited by cola - 19-Jan-2008 at 12:43