Ok, so… I think it’s possible to say “democracy good, colonialism bad, the set of circumstances you’re born into and the physical laws involved amoral”. In that context, you advocate for democracy, against colonialism, within the constraints imposed by the situation you find yourself in, which may mean you fight the battles you can win and don’t fight when you’ll lose (so maybe you put your energy into working for democracy, rather than against colonialism, depending on circumstances and strategic options), without losing sight of the distinction between is and ought. You don’t go “on net colonialism was worth it/good because it spread democracy”.
Colonialism as I understand it (speaking mostly about North America, where I’ve talked to some of the living descendants of the native population) was clearly bad. You may have a different understanding (as we have established in a comment of mine on your earlier post, history is not my strong suit, I may well be wrong), but here’s mine: This was a group of people who saw themselves as civilized and not-them as barbarians/savages, themselves quite often as good Christians and rival cultures as non-Christians who it would be best in the eyes of their god to do genocide against and take their children and put them in Christian schools for the good of their souls. Who signed peace treaties with resident nations in the new land, accepted help from them, and then broke the treaties because why not, we have guns and they don’t, and anyway they’re inferior savages who don’t really matter, it would be better for us to have their land than for them to have it. This is not a case of “some rape and looting and other bad things happened, but also democracy was promoted by the bad things in a way that’s inseparable”, it’s a case of “people did things I don’t think are good, for reasons I don’t think are correct, as a means to ends I think are bad, and also some people were working to spread democracy and other modern values I would endorse, in what would have been an awful situation to try and do that in, and that’s good.”
Similarly: We can work today to end factory farming and more generally extend the moral circle to nonhuman animals, without retrospectively endorsing all aspects of the current culture because that gave us the means to do the work to end factory farming etc. and if we were in a preindustrial society animal rights probably wouldn’t much occur to most people as an issue to argue about. Doing a good thing in a situation with many bad elements (which is nevertheless the situation that allows you the freedom of action to do the good thing) doesn’t make the bad elements of the situation good.
My take is: Don’t defend colonialism. It isn’t and wasn’t good, and if we never do anything like that again, that seems better than the alternative. Separately, spreading institutions that make society function better seems good and we should do that, but not by genocide, except in some really extreme hypothetical scenarios (I can see where the superhappies in this story were coming from, when they were like “humans, change or perish”.)
I mean, you can even go “this person, a key figure in the founding of America, was a slaveholder. Was he good or bad?” And I’d reject the implied premise of the question. I’d say holding slaves was bad, and a lot of the ideas in the declaration of independence are good. People are a mix of good and bad, and do things during their lives that are both good and bad, and don’t have to be binary-sorted into one category or the other, we can just say “the thing you/I did yesterday was bad, but the thing you/I did today was good”, and that is a perfectly logical position to hold. And similarly, “colonialism and democracy, or no colonialism and no democracy, take your pick” could be an option-set someone offers me, and I’d reject the premise and pick democracy but no colonialism. The fact that “no colonialism” might not have been a choice on offer to people in the past who wanted to found America, doesn’t force me to endorse colonialism. I’d hope that good people in the past would accept the existence of colonialism if they couldn’t do anything about it or chose to focus elsewhere, without calling it good.
Ok, so… I think it’s possible to say “democracy good, colonialism bad, the set of circumstances you’re born into and the physical laws involved amoral”. In that context, you advocate for democracy, against colonialism, within the constraints imposed by the situation you find yourself in, which may mean you fight the battles you can win and don’t fight when you’ll lose (so maybe you put your energy into working for democracy, rather than against colonialism, depending on circumstances and strategic options), without losing sight of the distinction between is and ought. You don’t go “on net colonialism was worth it/good because it spread democracy”.
Colonialism as I understand it (speaking mostly about North America, where I’ve talked to some of the living descendants of the native population) was clearly bad. You may have a different understanding (as we have established in a comment of mine on your earlier post, history is not my strong suit, I may well be wrong), but here’s mine: This was a group of people who saw themselves as civilized and not-them as barbarians/savages, themselves quite often as good Christians and rival cultures as non-Christians who it would be best in the eyes of their god to do genocide against and take their children and put them in Christian schools for the good of their souls. Who signed peace treaties with resident nations in the new land, accepted help from them, and then broke the treaties because why not, we have guns and they don’t, and anyway they’re inferior savages who don’t really matter, it would be better for us to have their land than for them to have it. This is not a case of “some rape and looting and other bad things happened, but also democracy was promoted by the bad things in a way that’s inseparable”, it’s a case of “people did things I don’t think are good, for reasons I don’t think are correct, as a means to ends I think are bad, and also some people were working to spread democracy and other modern values I would endorse, in what would have been an awful situation to try and do that in, and that’s good.”
Similarly: We can work today to end factory farming and more generally extend the moral circle to nonhuman animals, without retrospectively endorsing all aspects of the current culture because that gave us the means to do the work to end factory farming etc. and if we were in a preindustrial society animal rights probably wouldn’t much occur to most people as an issue to argue about. Doing a good thing in a situation with many bad elements (which is nevertheless the situation that allows you the freedom of action to do the good thing) doesn’t make the bad elements of the situation good.
My take is: Don’t defend colonialism. It isn’t and wasn’t good, and if we never do anything like that again, that seems better than the alternative. Separately, spreading institutions that make society function better seems good and we should do that, but not by genocide, except in some really extreme hypothetical scenarios (I can see where the superhappies in this story were coming from, when they were like “humans, change or perish”.)
I mean, you can even go “this person, a key figure in the founding of America, was a slaveholder. Was he good or bad?” And I’d reject the implied premise of the question. I’d say holding slaves was bad, and a lot of the ideas in the declaration of independence are good. People are a mix of good and bad, and do things during their lives that are both good and bad, and don’t have to be binary-sorted into one category or the other, we can just say “the thing you/I did yesterday was bad, but the thing you/I did today was good”, and that is a perfectly logical position to hold. And similarly, “colonialism and democracy, or no colonialism and no democracy, take your pick” could be an option-set someone offers me, and I’d reject the premise and pick democracy but no colonialism. The fact that “no colonialism” might not have been a choice on offer to people in the past who wanted to found America, doesn’t force me to endorse colonialism. I’d hope that good people in the past would accept the existence of colonialism if they couldn’t do anything about it or chose to focus elsewhere, without calling it good.