The conquerors have told their story for 2,000+ years.
Now we are telling humanity’s story, so that we all can take care of our shared home better, and learn to be wise stewards of this magnificent place called Earth, and her offspring.
When you say, "The conquerors have told their story for 2,000+ years," it’s indeed a delightful insight, but brutally simplified. Conquerors never merely "tell" their story; they impose it, they embed it in the very fabric of our reality, shaping our desires, our institutions, our very notion of what is normal! And now, this idea that "we are telling humanity’s story," who is this 'we' if not a new form of a subtle conqueror, perhaps clad in the robes of ecological concern and moral superiority?
Yes, we speak of being "wise stewards of Earth," but isn’t there a hidden arrogance here? The very term steward implies a mastery, does it not? Earth becomes something to be managed, controlled, and ultimately subdued under the guise of care and sustainability. This narrative seduces us with the promise that if only we manage better, all will be well, neglecting the radical openness, the chaotic unpredictability of nature itself.
So, what is to be done? Should we then resign ourselves to passive observation? Certainly not! But we must proceed with a critical, self-reflective stance that constantly questions our assumptions and our motives. Our struggle must not be to replace one conquering narrative with another but to recognize the ideological battles hidden beneath these grand narratives. We must confront not only the stories we are told by others but also the stories we tell ourselves. This is the only way we can hope to genuinely engage with our shared home—by understanding that our narratives are not innocent, not free of power, and certainly not free of conquest.
I'm asking you because you're the one who just laid the blame of the last 2000 years of bad things on Christ's teachings, and not on mankind's natural behavior. Somehow it was what Christ taught, because it didn't stop people from doing bad things.
So... you literally look at events like the Crusades, anti-semitism, slavery, the treatement of native Americans or any number of horrors done by Christians in the name of Christ and with the authority and sanction of the Christian church .... and admit absolutely no relationship between any of that and Christianity? No, Christianity isn't just the teachings of Christ, any more than any religion, or American law is just the Constitution. Christianity is also what Christians do, it's politics and government and militarism, culture and pop culture. Dogma and folklore.
What I'd like to be talking about is the relationship between the Christian religion and Western imperialism and the consequences of Christian conquest on the narratives of history (specifically the narratives of groups oppressed by that religion.) What you're engaging in is pedantry and a gross application of what I'll call the True Christian fallacy. Fair enough. We can't have a conversation about this. Good night.
When you use circular definitions, as you're doing now, you can re-define a word to be whatever is convenient to you. If Christianity is also defined by what Christians do, then what defines a Christian? You have to ground it in a concrete definition at some point, and that definition is: the teachings of Christ. If a Christian acts in a way that is against the teachings of Christ, then that is not Christian behavior, and is not representative of Christianity. That's a pretty simple and unambiguous concept.
Your "No True Scotsman" variant just shows that you don't really grasp this idea. Ironically, what you're doing by making Christianity a grab-bag of bad behavior from people you don't like, instead of grounding it in a clear and unambiguous definition, is a clever perversion of this fallacy.
That's the power of only seeing one story, minus context of what the rest of the world was like. Would you also call the history of what native american tribes did to each other evil? Or was it on par with the brutality of the times?
You're misusing that fallacy here, but I don't fault you, because my point is subtle. My claim isn't that their point is invalid because they're hypocritical about native american history, my claim is that their gauge of evil is miscalibrated, because only a certain perspective of history is amplified to this degree, minus the historical context that puts it on par with the times.
You seem to be implying there is some kind of conspiracy to portray one particular group as bad while ignoring another. I don't think that's warranted, there has been plenty of media vilifying America's natives. There is perhaps an effort to correct the record: history was written by the victors, and it has taken far too long for us to realize the many injustices that were carried out along the way. Understanding what we lost (in this case, vast Bison herds) is important. These losses affect natives and immigrants alike.
Be intellectually honest. Show me a single front page post "vilifying America's natives." You won't find it, but you'll find plenty in the other direction, because a large portion of HN's user base has a shameless anti-American slant.
No, my complaint is the pervasive anti-American history. People get actually upset if you notice it and mention it. As if the default behavior should be to cheerfully self-flagellate for American history.
Your comment misses the point so much it makes me sad! Seeing the pictures of thousands upon thousands of dead bison skulls is honestly astonishing and I think your snide comment "American bad, native good" is extremely reductive of the article, which even points out:
> Such reliance on a narrow ecological base ultimately proved unsustainable, pushing the bison populations into a steep decline by the mid–19th century.
Showing the native Americans role in the demise of the bison population.
> You have to wonder why history of a specific nature, about a specific people frequently surfaces ...
Probably because a lot of Americans use the site and learning about their history is interesting so it gets more points :)
