Quote: (12-03-2018 07:23 AM)Fortis Wrote:
I'm not sure what's so difficult to grasp for either side here.
Europeans created the modern world and they're rather pretty benevolent about it when you look at the grand scheme of things.
Not really. The modern world is built out of the inventions of the entire world. Take writing, for example, it was not invented by Europeans, it was invented in Sumeria, and then possibly independently, or possibly not, in Egypt and China. And also definitely independently, but later, in Mesoamerica. So even if the rest of the world had dropped the ball, the Mesoamericans would have been a failsafe.
Without writing, Europeans are stuck in the stone age. And Europeans did not invent writing. I mean, that's a big one, it's the foundation of knowledge transfer and storage. It's been a team effort, always has and always will be.
Quote: (12-03-2018 07:23 AM)Fortis Wrote:
If some other group had won, I suspect that the earth would have far fewer of every group except for that hypothetical winning group. ![[Image: icon_lol.gif]](https://rooshvforum.network/images/smilies/new/icon_lol.gif)
You can't really dispute that unless you have some sort of weird agenda.
Or if you're Native American. Of which there are now far fewer than otherwise.
Or Aboriginal. Of which there are now far fewer than otherwise.
Or Jewish. Of which there are now far fewer than otherwise.
That said, actually, other groups have won, as in, have gotten way ahead of everyone else, at times. One example is the Chinese, they had the capability to explore and wipe out other people. They sent some ships around the coasts, saw that the folks they met were not as advanced as the Chinese, and instead of colonizing them, decided to go back home.
That's benevolent. What the Europeans did is the opposite, even though much of it, admittedly, was due to disease. But not all.
That said, there's no innocents here, because those Chinese that sent ships out to explore, how did they become Chinese in the first place? Well, the Chinese colonized all of China. It was just done so long ago that it's mostly forgotten. I found this online, regarding the matter:
Quote:Quote:
"The unified ethnic Chinese drove out non-ethnic Chinese peoples living in China, and eradicated non-ethnic Chinese culture, which they regarded as “barbaric.” For instance, many early Chinese emperors burned books in non-Chinese languages, making the culture of the newly united China increasingly monolithic."
The Europeans were, and still are, fractured culturally. No European nation was able to do what the Chinese were able to do, absorb every culture around them and unify everyone. Many tried, none succeeded the way the Chinese did. None.
The Europeans did pull it off away from Europe, fighting people vastly technologically inferior to them. The Chinese, on the other hand, pulled it off, against their immediate neighbors, despite not having as vast a technological advantage against their adversaries as the Europeans did.
In any case, it's a complex topic, but yeah, in regards to contributions, it's been a team effort and always will be, and in regards to what would now be considered atrocities/genocide, Europeans are by no means the only ones that got in on that action, not by a long shot.