Quote:
Originally Posted by phetaroi
Apparently those in charge in North Korea don't see it your way.
You don't really know anything about the Sentinelese sentiments about satisfaction or dissatisfaction.
No, my mere presence doesn't give you the right to kill me.
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Yeah...my last statement was poorly phrased. Your mere presence doesn't give me the right to kill you.
I do have the right to defend myself though. If warn you to leave, and there's a decent chance your presence will kill me, and you keep coming...I don't think it's unreasonable for me to have the right to open fire upon you after a few warning shots. That certainly wouldn't be murder, if you're coming into my land, and you know that I'm hostile to foreigners, and I don't know enough about the world to tell if you're a demon or not, and you are well aware your presence may be deadly to me, and I'm also responsible for the safety of my kids and dozens of people I've lived with all my life, and I know of no laws preventing me from killing you.
If, on the one hand, I have the safety of everyone I know, and on the other hand, I have the safety of a dangerous, disease-ridden a-hole named Bob who my kids want to play with, and I don't speak Bob's language, and I fire arrows at Bob, and Bob swims out to a boat to escape...but then Bob comes back afterward, proving that he's not going to leave us alone unless he's killed...I don't see what other options I have than to kill Bob.
That's not murder. That's self-defense.
It wouldn't even be murder if they killed Bob on sight. If the North Sentinelese killed Bob on sight, it would something more debatable, regarding whether that was right or wrong. To judge whether that is right or wrong, we'd probably have to know more about North Sentinelese history and what sorts of reasons they have to fear foreigners…but at least based of all the information available to us, we have no reason to call that murder.
You have this incomprehensible mentality where you want to treat people who have nothing in common with people anywhere else on the planet, exactly like everyone else on the planet is treated. The North Sentinelese don't have social agreements with anyone else on the planet.
Except your mentality is even more incomprehensible to me than that...because many ordinary people elsewhere in the world would be behaving exactly like the North Sentinelese if their positions were reversed, and you'd probably support their decisions, just like many other people would.
Let's say everyone in Hawaii suddenly developed HIV...so the disease they have that causes HIV isn't harming them in itself, but their bodies won't be able to defend them from common colds or other minor ailments, because HIV has crippled their immune system. Somehow the Hawaiians are able to cleanse all viruses and disease-causing bacteria from their island. Never mind how. A wizard did it. So...they're doing just fine. They just can't have contact with the outside world.
One day, they see a boat coming up to a Hawaiian beach. It's filled with foreigners. You have some kind of cannon. You radio them to go away. They don't care. They say they want to be friends with your kids. You fire a warning shot (note that the missionary guy had arrows shot at him the first time he went to the island. He came back again later. They didn't miss that time). The passengers just smile and get confused about why you're so angry.
Do you let them play with your kids, or do get the police ready at the coastline and give them all megaphones and instruct them to repeat "Get back in your boat, or we'll open fire."
The North Sentinelese don't speak English, so they don't have that option. They don't have enough eyes to watch over their whole island either...so it's more understandable that they might want to kill any outsiders on sight, just so nobody's sneaking around without them knowing.
You're correct that I don't know what it's like on North Sentinel Island. You're correct that those in charge of North Korea probably don't see things my way.
Nobody cares about North Korea being isolationist though. People care about the North Korean government harming its own citizens and threatening other nations.
Regarding North Sentinel Island though…we don’t know enough about it to know whether or not the North Sentinelese have some kind of horrible culture. We already know North Korea’s system of government is screwed up. We can’t say the same things about North Sentinel island. People flee from North Korea talking about how horrible life was there. Nobody’s fled from North Sentinel island talking about how horrible life was there.
Your comparing of North Sentinel Island to North Korea is like comparing wooly mammoths to grapes. Yes…North Sentinel island is an isolationist nation and so is North Korea. Also, wooly mammoths and grapes were both once alive. That doesn’t mean they’re similar though.
Most outsiders would just screw things up if they interfered with the North Sentinelese too much.
We can't really help the North Sentinelese islanders. Our help would probably destroy them, given how hostile they are, how small their society is, and how vulnerable to disease they are, and they don't have any reason not to be hostile. Historically, it would probably be pretty beneficial to be quite violent towards outsiders. It's not their fault if they're incredibly violent if that's the only culture they know and they have no access to outside ideas...particularly if now that the world is so intertwined that nobody's going to get shipwrecked on North Sentinel island, except illegal fishermen, so their mentality probably isn't harming any outsiders except a-holes anyway.
I don't think it's particularly likely that there will be another shipwreck at North Sentinel island that isn't the result of illegal fishing. The last one I heard of was a Hong Kong freighter in 1981. The crew didn't shipwreck at North Sentinel island. Their ship crashed into a reef not so distant from it. They saw North Sentinel Island and moved to it, because they didn't know about the hostile inhabitants and had to defend themselves from the North Sentinel islanders.
Now, everybody knows about North Sentinel island though...and we can't change the North Sentinel islanders anyway.
Calling the killing of the missionary who went to North Sentinel island murder is nothing but silliness, at best, and a kind of bureaucratic cruelty at worst. It implies that people who have zero knowledge of or social contracts with outsiders should be punished for defending themselves against the actions of a fool, or at least judged harshly for it.
You'd probably defend your family from sufficiently dangerous fools too.
Also, yeah the North Sentinelese might not know about disease...but they might know about sickness. Or, maybe they just think virulent demons spawn from outsiders, which isn't so far from the truth.
Maybe the North Sentinelese have never even been afflicted with sicknesses from outsiders though. Maybe they're just extremely territorial. That's still just a way to protect themselves...and the fact that they don't have binding social agreements with other nations, or as much worldly knowledge as outsiders means it's an ethically valid strategy. When there's little you know about the world, you have to take some gambles sometimes. It's not particularly barbaric to put your family first. It's just a survival strategy, and one that seems to have worked pretty well for them so I don't think we can say they're bad people for continuing it.
As the more knowledgeable civilization, we outsiders have a duty to protect North Sentinel island. We owe them that, because we could so easily inadvertently crush them. We have a very similar duty to children for very similar reasons.
If we contact them, we have a duty to be extremely careful and put their interests very high on our list of priorities, and if we slip up and they kill us, we, as the more knowledgeable civilization entering onto their land never had to go there in the first place. Our deaths will be mostly our fault, regardless of how it happens. It will never be murder. The North Sentinelese don't have the knowledge of our social agreements for it to be murder.
Calling the killers of John Chau murderers would be accusing people of a crime, who had no knowledge of the law in the first place, much less consented to following it. It is a cruel and unfair label to give them, and doubly so because they were defending their land and their families, and triply so because even we outsiders can find some extremely compelling reasons for it to be illegal to travel to North Sentinel island.
Note that I like you as a person. You often make wise statements, so far as I've seen. I generally like you're ideas. I just have a very powerful venomous disagreement with you in this area...and you happen to be wrong
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