Ancestoral blame and moral judgements

Originally posted by Slayertplsko ... So you most likely have Spanish blood as well...if we use your kind of generalisation and collective quilt, then you're the resposible one as well. Before you ask, I'm Slovak, with Hungarian and Czech blood. And nope, I don't blame Hungarian nation for the pogroms of the past.

Originally posted by pinguin  Accept the past and be better in the present and in the future. Above all, don't blame Germans for everything, because the crisis of WW II was the result of centuries of bigotry shared by all the people of the old continent.

How exactly do you want them to do it?? to accept it??

Were these alleged crimes contrary to the law that existed at those times ?

Originally posted by pinguin Originally posted by Odin I reject the whole concept of collective guilt, period. A German born in 1945 cannot be held responsible for the Holocaust. Living Euro-Americans are not responsible for the atrocities our ancestors inflicted on the Native Americans and Africans. What is past is past, we should not be pointing fingers and blaming modern people for the sins of their ancestors. Instead we should be asking "where do we go from here?"   Individuals may be innocent of the crimes of the past, but societies aren't. The government that exterminated American indians is the same that exist today. In the case of the holocaust, the society is still the same that existed 60 years ago.

Society is simply sum of the people that make it up, beliefs only exist within individuals, not as some essential force permeating society. Different people = different society. And German society certainly isn't the same society that existed in 1938.

I think words like genocide and holocaust get thrown about too easily. These days, 2 people die; a bloodbath, 10; a massacre,  50; genocide.

Originally posted by Styrbiorn ... Like in the Caribbean? Never seizing with the mud-slinging, are we?

Originally posted by Sparten I think words like genocide and holocaust get thrown about too easily. These days, 2 people die; a bloodbath, 10; a massacre,  50; genocide.

There was no law to stop Europeans from going to the new world, moreover most Amerindians didnt have a concept of land ownership. Some of them fought, but they lost, Europeans won, and your a product of that Pinquin. Today they just use our own laws to make money from us, rather like Blacks do in the USA, or Jews from Germans ect. 

Edited by Tyranos - 25-Jun-2008 at 02:05

Originally posted by pinguin Originally posted by Richard XIII American continent was not so peaceful before European conquest, in the Pinguin's vision just us, Europeans, must be blamed, Amerindians are in the same measure guilty of atrocities. In every actual living man genealogy are a lot of killers. The same abberant logic, Suuni and Shiia kill each other and West is quilty. Same logic of Pinguin.   Nobody invited Europeans or Africans to the Americas. It was the Europeans who decide to do whatever they wished with the New World. Who else to blame?

Those who did it. Not those who have nothing to do with the crimes. Those who did it are dead of course, so to get it out of your system you could, let's say, go and piss on their grave...what do you say?? Would it finally satisfy you?? Do you realize that but for them, you wouldn't be alive today?

Wait a minute. You say you're mostly of Spanish ancestry. Those people living in Spain are mostly of Spanish ancestry as well (they have some Arabic ancestry quite possibly, and Gypsy ancestry...those two are not European).

You, despite having Spanish blood, don't feel resoponsible/ashamed for the crimes commited by MORE YOUR ancestors then the ancestors of Spanish - Why?? Probably because you don't agree with what was being done, and you somehow connected yourself with something called 'American', which I don't really understand what it is to stand for.

You say that those people in Spain (or Europe) bear the guilt. Do you really think that they appreciate the genocides committed by the two Pizzaroes?? No they don't. So you're pretty much the same, I don't see any difference between Spanish people and Chilean people: both mostly of Spanish ancestry, both disagree with the crimes of the past.

Why then are you innocent and those people/societies/nations/whatever are not??!