Hello again.
Today is October the 12th, 2011. If my memory isn't wrong, on the same day, in 1492 an Italian sailor spotted for the first time, in recorded-mainstream western history a piece of land never seen before.
A lot of things changes because of him, and his little ''capriccio'' of proving a new way to the indies. To say that some of them are good and some bad depends of the 3+1 coordinates where you where born, kinda aleatory isn't it?
It is, if you think about. But I didn't star this blog to bore you with my ill defined, yet not complete, version of morality. I wanted to think for a bit what are we celebrating for. Just to mention the facts, without judging them., can that be done? Sure. Can that be done by me? Ill give it a shot.
When Columbus put his eyes on this part of the earth, I'm sure he had no idea what the consequences were. Furthermore, he might have died not knowing he had discovered a whole new continent!. After all, the name of continent came to be America, not Colombia, which means Land of Colon/Columbus.
Let's start with the facts related to the New World, and it's future; Well I would start with the enslavement, and religious indoctrination that followed. The lost of their sovereignty, and the degradation of their cultural statuses to the level of barbarians. Was this wrong? Would it be wrong today? If you carry with you a key to the truth, wouldn't you do what you can to tell people about it? Why not to spread the good news? Why not to tell the Indians about the good news? Why not make them understand the greater purpose they have in life that you already know, and they don't!. The means to do that, might have been a bit extreme, but for the sake of the argument, Ill give them the benefit of doubt; I mean, being 3months by boat away, is a great limitation when it comes to maintaining standards of colonization (here I assume there were), and keeping the ''Conquista'' from becoming the blood shed we know today.
Being the carrier of such a great truth is not simple.What do you feel your duty is when you are right, and everybody else is wrong? I guess in a way, Spanish Conquistadores could have felt the same. They could have felt like missionaries. Missionaries on charge of spreading the ''European ways'', why not. And taking some gold as their well deserved salary...again...why not.
What about the future of the Old World? Well it considerably changed....it was the equivalent of winning the lottery, finding oil in your backyard, solving one of Hilbert unsolved problems...the bad things are negligible. They got tons and tons of gold and silver, slaves by the thousands, fertile land by millions of acres (I know...mks), and the people who offered any resistance were poorly armed, and had no system of ownership (Opposed to the ''My flag stands, My home now'' European system).
(It's hard to find an convincing angle from which this might seem like a bad thing.)
I guess I have excessively gave the benefit of doubt in this blog. Hardly any of my non-existent followers (If you reed this, remember I said ''hardly'') will agree with me on what I said. But that's ok. I also grew up with history textbooks written in a whiny-style. I guess here come handy our natural disposition to dissipate the feelings in the bad memories, and do the opposite for the good times.
Let's just remember what happened, and commemorate the facts, not their judgment. Celebrate it if you thing they are good, but do not deny them if you don't like them.
Anyway, happy 12th of October.
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