- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
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Of course there are better and worse colonizers.
I suppose you consider yourself “one of the good ones” right?
Yeah you tell those native people what’s good for them. You know better than them. Those silly native people who have dealt with colonizers for centuries and have all this experience with it they can’t know more than you can. No you’re the good kind of colonizer I’m sure.
You’re at a hospital and you have 5/10 pain. You have two options, one gets you 3/10 pain and the other gets you 7/10 pain. Which is better for your pain situation? Is neither better because neither is 0/10?
I think the issue is they would argue that independence would be a 0/10. Why fight for 3/10 when you can fight for 0?
That still proves their statement false which makes them sound dumb.
And you being such an intelligent doctor can tell the patients how much pain they are experiencing and don’t even need their input right? That sounds ethical.
This isn’t about doctor or patients or colonies or oppression. It’s about the word “better” and how they objectively misused it and undermined what they were trying to express by doing so.
I totally get it. Those stupid silly natives aren’t smart enough to know what words like objectively mean. So it’s up to you to tell them how to feel and think. I understand what you’re laying down. They’re just not civilized enough, they’re like children to you right? So obviously it’s up to you to do what’s best for them since they couldn’t possibly know for themselves. Totally understand.
They can all be shit but one can still be more shit than the other. I don’t want to lose one eye but I’d rather that than go fully blind.
Though the argument here is more that “we are the better colonizer, trust us bro” should never be taken as a reason to want a new colonizer to take over.
This is a rather poor argument against the U.S. takeover of Greenland. If neither Denmark nor the U.S. is better, then it makes no difference if the U.S. takes over.
Edit: not sure why I’m being downvoted. I would appreciate someone explaining the headline to me because I honestly don’t get it.
It makes all the difference if you’re the slightest bit interested in consent.
can you please explain how that relates to the argument? For sure I think consent is important, but I don’t see how it relates to the headline.
It’s not about the headline, it’s about your statement:
If neither Denmark nor the U.S. is better, then it makes no difference if the U.S. takes over.
It makes all the difference to the people who live there, who don’t consent to becoming American. The question isn’t, “who can better administer the landmass and its populace”, the question is, who has the right to? The population is not consenting to America imperialism, so it makes all the difference to them. Consent matters.
Yes obviously it would be terrible if the U.S. took over Greenland. Though I don’t think Denmark having “the right” to colonise is what the people who said that were intending to convey.
A thought experiment:
Suppose, for something to “better” or “worse”, it would have to surpass some absolute threshold of “goodness”. This would mean “betterness” is no longer transitive with “worseness”.
If this were the case, then it’s possible for American colonization to still be worse than Danish colonization without Danish colonization being better than American colonization. Neither would meet the requirement for being “better” and as such are incomparable, but both would be meet the requirement of being “worse” and can be compared in that respect.
OK but that’s not how people generally use “better” or “worse.” I think transitivity – and reflexivity – are generally respected by people’s usage of the terms.
That’s just silly. Would it be better to have someone break one of your arms or two?
Eh… One.
Or… two, if you have an Oedipus complex.
Nice
