I would not call either Native Americans or Europeans awful, though. As you correctly point out, neither group (in fact no group in all of history) was either pristine and perfect or wholly bad.

The author seems to merely be pointing out that western society largely denies the magnitude of the human and environmental cost of its prosperity.

On the whole, I think this is untrue. For European countries that had colonies, as often as not the colonies had a negative effect on their economies. If you look at European states today, ones that didn't have colonies (e.g. Sweden, Austria, Switzerland, Greece) are just as prosperous on the whole as ones that did (e.g. UK, France, Spain), or the ones that were owned by other European countries (e.g. Ireland, Finland, Slovenia).

Spain in particular suffered a good deal of long-term economic harm from its colonies as the importation of gold crowded out the real economy.

Germany and Italy had short-lived colonial empires that didn't run at a profit.

Probably the British did gain overall from their colonies, but much of their American colonies were lost in the 1770s. Jamaica OTOH made the fortunes of many wealthy British families.

Whether Europe was successful or not in profiting from the genocide, genocide did happen and I think the author is merely saying that the western world for the most part doesn't own up to this.

Regarding the profitability of colonialism, while I agree that it's debatable whether Europe itself was massively enriched by the colonies, Europeans profited. European immigrants to North America were able to create an empire by consolidating their power over the indigenous residents then leveraging North America's land and natural resources.

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!".

Cortez only managed to conquer Mexico by getting caught up in the wars which were already being waged. The Massacre at Cholula, (depending on whose account you believe) was either instigated by the Tlaxcalans or the Aztecs.

In addition, while many native tribes were complicit in the subjugation of their neighbors, the most consistent defense of the human rights of the natives come from religious missionaries who did everything in their power to protect the natives.

In the end, there were 'good guys' and 'bad guys' on both sides and you can't judge Europeans as evil based on this. The truth is just more complicated.

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.

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?

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".

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?

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.

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...

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

What if Bob had murdered 1000 children, and Frank wasn't a murderer until he murdered Bob?

Does being a victim cleanse your sins?

The practice of rape, pillage and plunder is without a doubt a bad thing.

I'm defending rationality, and criticizing the all-or-nothing cognitive distortion.

> "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."

Conquistadors, went to the Americas and slaughtered millions. Regardless of your assertion that both could be "savages", one group initiated and subsequently conducted systematic violence against another group over several decades. You're honestly saying you can't judge that as "bad"? What if you were among one of those indigenous groups that were killed? I know I would not appreciate it...

But of course we can't make concrete judgments about that.

The slaughter of Native Americans by the Conquistadors was a terrible thing. Awful. Tragic. An abomination.

Also, and completely not taking anything away from the awful abominableness of that terrible tragedy, the Native Americans had lots of other problems with their culture, and were in many ways, quite savage.

The Conquistadors had really good food, and the technological know-how to cross the oceans, which are both quite good and important things.

Being a murderer doesn't mean your ships aren't great. Having great ships doesn't make you less of a murderer.

My point is that you can't just say "they did this awful thing, therefor everything about their culture was horrible".

My point is also that you can't just say "they had this awful thing done to them, therefor everything about their culture was better."

We can judge the act as bad without thinking that it somehow pollutes everything that is good about the culture that did the heinous thing.

We can also judge the act as bad without thinking that being the victim of a heinous act somehow erases everything that is bad in the victim.

The real world is complicated, and all-or-nothing thinking is irrationally and unforgivably lazy.

> "The real world is complicated, and all-or-nothing thinking is irrationally and unforgivably lazy."

Yes, some idea require a certain nuanced approach to fully comprehend, others however, do not. This is not one of them. I guess you can throw up you up your hand and cry "I can't decide, these waters are too ethically difficult to navigate, argh!" and forever cop out. It's easier.

That is not what he is saying though. He is arguing for a more rational and more balanced view than that advocated by the original article, which was quite "all-or-nothing". This does not mean that genocide is not bad, it certainly is. But because they committed genocide does not mean they did not have other good qualities and achievements as well.

Nobody was even saying that. You seem to fabricate an enormous straw man.

The Germany that produced the Jewish holocaust also invented rocket science, which indirectly led us to the space program, satellites, and a big chunk of our modern communications network.

Does this excuse genocide? No. Does it make it difficult to label German civilization as "all good" or "all bad"? It absolutely does.

And since as a nation their positive moral acts was so little relative to their negative moral actions you can call them "bad".

You get into trouble by saying that in Germany my friend :)

I'm not suggesting that Hitler's good roads made the holocaust less bad. I'm suggesting that the Holocaust didn't make the good roads less good.

Things aren't either all good or all bad. That includes the Conquistadors, Hitler, the Nazis, your children, a puppy, the Na'vi, the Native Americans, and everyone else.

This does not mean that everything the German army did was good or justified (e.g. the Holocaust). And neither was the allies knights in shining armour (firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo comes to mind).

My grandparents (although not German citizens) were fiercely supportive of Germany in WW2, as where many people. This stemmed mostly from the UK’s treatment of people in its colonies.

Tyler Durden, Fight club.

Maybe you are trying to argue for something good, but dead people are dead. They don't benefit from a civilization that emerged a couple of decades later.

This is like all the whining about slavery. Slavery has been one of the most widespread practices in the world. Europeans were the ones who have come closest to putting a stop to it. And in fact it is only European derived morality that makes slavery and genocide wrong.