I just happened to be reading The Emigrants' guide to Oregon and California. It was the guide that the Donner party used to take a short cut.
The book doesn't embellish. (The Donner party took one sentence out of that guide, and made a mistake.)
My reason for posting here is when the author was describing California; it was almost like reading fiction. The amount of wildlife was staggering. We were all told about the Bufflo, but there were so much more wildlife. Wildlife that we destroyed. One sentence really got to me. It stated, 'Salmon are 10 lbs. to 60 lbs.' I thought 60 lbs--it must be an exaggeration, but I think it's true.
Huge Salmon were once much more common up and down the west coast. However, they were easy to harvest (as they congregate in the river during their spawn and can be caught with nets or weirs) and so many stocks were decimated. In other rivers, hydroelectric dams destroyed the ability for the salmon to reproduce.
Not only that, but one of the unintended consequences of the policy of only allowing large fish to be caught is that you create selection pressure for smallness in the fish population.
The issue with books like this, when you start to question validity, is who was the writer and what was their goal. In this case the writer of "The Emigrants' guide to Oregon and California" is trying to entice individuals to move to the West, but also using their book. Doing this could be done by pointing to larger than life situations, beautiful landscapes and plentiful fish, surely this entices and could drive people to leave the less than 10 lb salmon on the Atlantic for the easier and more plentiful "10 lbs to 60 lbs."
This comment is symptomatic of a lot of modern-day problems, especially in U.S. "We" are a society, a community. "You" don't exist alone. You couldn't exist without the benefits from human societies you live in. It's hypocritical and immoral to take the benefits of those societies, and then to disclaim participation in actions that society takes (or has taken), which are in part responsible for those benefits. American individualism is all well and good, but it gets carried way too far. For America is also a single society, and members of a society can't rationally accept the benefits of that society while disclaiming all participation in the actions that produced those benefits.
I'm not saying "you" destroyed any wildlife. What I am saying is that (if you're American) you are reaping the benefits of a society that exists as it does because it dominated a continent, destroying much of the existing landscape and natural inhabitants. There is some level of responsibility that individuals have for prior actions taken by their society. Surely not as great a responsibility as if you'd done the actions yourself, or approved of the actions at the time they were taken. But some level of responsibility nonetheless (and when adding up the small responsibility of each current member the responsibility to do something as a group to rectify past wrongs may become quite large indeed).
> What I am saying is that (if you're American) you are reaping the benefits of a society that exists as it does because it dominated a continent, destroying much of the existing landscape and natural inhabitants.
Every society on Earth exists as it does because it destroyed much of the previously existing landscape and natural inhabitants, most definitely including the Native American societies. If you read Over the Edge of the World, a fascinating book about Magellan's voyage around the globe, you'll find that as he traveled the straits at the southern tip of South America -- the most miserable, cold, dreary, and awful environment that could be imagined -- he met a miserable and starving aboriginal tribe: a tribe that, it turns out, had been pushed all the way to the tip of Tierra del Fuego by succeeding waves of "native" migration across the land bridge from Siberia to Alaska. The sin of the United States is not original with the United States: it is the sin of every society.
> But some level of responsibility nonetheless (and when adding up the small responsibility of each current member the responsibility to do something as a group to rectify past wrongs may become quite large indeed).
You could smuggle an elephant inside that parenthetical clause. For starters, how specifically is one to "rectify past wrongs" that were committed against people who have been dead for hundreds of years? And are the remnants of those societies that still exist today also obliged to "rectify past wrongs" against the people they aggressed on even farther in the past?
I think you're blowing the comment put of proportion by deliberately interpreting a very qualified statement in an extreme and maximalist way.
The poster dodnt say every wrong against everyone and everything ever has to be rectified. There are many concrete and affordable steps we can take to remediate much of the damage our societies have done and are doing to each other and the environment. I agree with the poster that we have an obligation to take as many of those steps as we feel we can afford.
I'm not going to just sign on to an arbitrary promise like that, though. In the United States the people who talk about remediating what our societies have done, etc., have proposed things like massive and unending wealth transfers, unequal enforcement of the law, explicitly segregationist race-based government systems, and even secession. For that reason I am disinclined to just take someone talking about this subject at their word and say "sure, whatever you want."
Not everybody talking about remediating past wrongs are proposing or endorsing such extreme measures, or not in an extreme way. What's frustrating is that moderate or conservative (small 'c') voices have been essentially silent on the matter leaving the field disproportionately open to more extreme advocacy. Those who are in favour of more moderate steps should advocate them and not use other people's disproportionate views as an excuse for throwing their hands in the air and giving up on the whole subject completely.
> Every society on Earth exists as it does because it destroyed much of the previously existing landscape and natural inhabitants,
THANKS.
Every human culture out there is responsible for wars and horrible crimes and destruction; primitive societies were no better (Hobbes Was Right (TM)), but only a few have built advanced and prosperous civilizations, and what is more, the West is basically the only which reflects on its past.
You seem to think "reflecting on its past" is one of the advances that came with Western civilization. Not sure what "modern western ethnomasochism" is, but I imagine it goes along hand-in-glove with "reflecting on its past." Can you really have one without the other? Do you really think reflection is going to reveal only good things? Why reflect at all if you're not trying to identify things in past that can be fixed or improved upon?
What does that responsibility mean? Let's say I accept my responsibility for benefitting from killing all this wildlife and murdering the inhabitants. Now what? Does this change something? Is there some action I should take?
Good question. Someone else pointed out that _all_ societies have benefited from destroying the environment. I get the feeling they were pointing this out to argue that "we" (modern day Americans) don't really need to feel responsible. "Everybody does it, so it must be okay."
I don't know what the answer is to the question of what actions I (and "we") should take because of my responsibility (and our shared responsibility). I do know that the responsibility I feel is greater the more tightly I am tied to a society or community. I don't feel much responsibility at all for homo sapiens' eradication of Neanderthals (assuming that's what happened). The actions happened too long ago and the "society" is too loose (homo sapiens). I do feel some responsibility for what my country's recent forebears have done; I feel a tie as an American and 100 or 200 years in the past is just a handful of generations.
For me it seems the minimum is to identify myself as an "environmentalist". Many (most?) of the objections to proper care of the environment come from people who argue against it because doing so will lessen business profits by a little bit. Even assuming it's true that it will lessen profits, seems like we need to devote more of our resources to preserving the environment. At a minimum, that should mean that businesses in our society should have to accept somewhat lesser profits (perhaps by being taxed) in exchange for better preservation of the environment.
Also, I have no problem with businesses that affect the environment negatively bearing much more of the cost to replace past harms. In the past, and even now, we've allowed businesses to pollute our environment (air, water, land) without them paying for the damage they've caused. They are among the prime offenders, although everyone does share some responsibility for being part of a society that's let those businesses operate as they have.
> Good question. Someone else pointed out that _all_ societies have benefited from destroying the environment. I get the feeling they were pointing this out to argue that "we" (modern day Americans) don't really need to feel responsible. "Everybody does it, so it must be okay."
Not quite. What I was getting at is this argument is usually presented in the context of blaming the West generally or the United States specifically for various atrocities, and gently eliding how the societies which were aggressed upon were usually no different from a morality standpoint: it was simply a matter of who got to who first with a bigger stick in their hand. Not "everybody does it, so it must be okay," just "everybody does it, so casting blame on a specific group is, paradoxically, unfair."
For that reason, our responsibility to properly safeguard the environment and to ensure the rights of all people cannot be dependent on one nation or culture atoning for some crime their ancestors allegedly committed in the past. That just builds a never-ending tower of recrimination and anger. It has to be simply our obligation as human beings to each other, right now, today.
I'm certainly not singling out U.S., or Europe as "culpable offenders". The U.S. is my society, so I know it better and I feel its societal obligations more strongly. As you point out, the Western countries were simply the ones that got there first. And they are also the first to be figuring out how to fix the problems they've caused. Doesn't make them morally better or worse than countries that for historical reasons (smaller economies and lack of technology) have caused less environmental damage.
Also, given that you seem to already agree we have the obligation, your insistence on dis-acknowledging our cultural past as a source of the obligation seems odd. Nobody said the obligation had only a single source. The only reason to get angry, so far as I can see, is if a person thinks current steps are perhaps nice to do, but not obligatory. I fail to see how a "never-ending tower of recrimination and anger" can arise from someone simply giving an additional reason that supports the decision we've already made (that we have an obligation).
> your insistence on dis-acknowledging our cultural past as a source of the obligation seems odd.
Well, look at it this way. If someone had killed my father, I wouldn't be satisfied with them saying "here, I'll pay for your college education and we'll call it even"; I'd want them in the electric chair. Similarly, a focus on alleged crimes of past cultures leads inevitably to angry demands for retribution for said crimes, followed by a lot of people replying -- with absolute justification! -- that they weren't responsible for these past crimes, or maybe the other guys were just as bad. Next thing you know everyone's screaming at each other and the formerly universal values have been turned into a political football. If you've got a concept that should be apolitical and universal, the last thing you want to do is prominently attach it to one side of a bitter cultural war.
Yes, you can support efforts to preserve remaining habitats and examples of that wildlife and conserve the cultural heritage of the victims. Or at least you could avoid actions that might hinder or prevent such efforts, such as by not voting for representatives that might de-fund them or pass laws hindering them.
Nobody's suggesting you should be tried for the crimes of your ancestors, or previous members of your society. What we can do is stop doing more damage and try to rectify some of it, where it is reasonable and affordable to do so.
I disagree. While I think your suggested actions are reasonable, nothing distinguishes them from actions we would take if our hands were clean, and instead another group were at fault.
I think it's just a matter of degree. I feel a general responsibility towards planet earth in general to preserve its environmental and cultural heritage. But I feel a greater obligation to contribute towards mitigating some environmental and cultural harms than I do towards others due to my nation and cultures role in exacerbating them.
There's no law at work here though. If there is some specific issue you are particularly concerned about that happens not to have any such historical link to you, but it bothers you so much that you take a special personal interest in it then that's fine. But even without dedicating our personal resources towards righting the worlds wrongs, as tax payers, consumers and voters we often make decisions that bear on these issues. I think it's worth bearing that in mind.
I'm pretty sure you know who "we" is and are just trying to make some point, but it would be nicer if you could just come out and make that point directly.
Not really, it's just an idea. But it's at about the right time (6kya) to transition between evolutionary and biblical history. Both are about a transition from living off the land to tilling the soil, and the rise of civilization. If you can figure out how moral responsibility ties in, you have yourself a pretty theory, if not a rock-solid one.
In the sense that agriculture, as well as triggering the ecological changes discussed in this report also allowed the formation of dense populations capable of building structures like that, yes.
The book doesn't embellish. (The Donner party took one sentence out of that guide, and made a mistake.)
My reason for posting here is when the author was describing California; it was almost like reading fiction. The amount of wildlife was staggering. We were all told about the Bufflo, but there were so much more wildlife. Wildlife that we destroyed. One sentence really got to me. It stated, 'Salmon are 10 lbs. to 60 lbs.' I thought 60 lbs--it must be an exaggeration, but I think it's true.