The colonizers had a vision (this part seems very shaky, as the “vision” was very different at different point in time), that vision was good, they fought to achieve it, the price was very high, but the results justify the cost.
I don’t think I meant to imply here that most of the colonizers had a vision (though I do think this is more true in the colonization of the west in the 1800s which I am more centrally referring to here than the early colonizations). Indeed, I personally find grappling with the colonizers mostly not having a vision, being mostly recruited by some greater entities via their own self-interest and greed and various things like this, a much more interesting thing to think about, and more the kind of case I want to make in the post.
Indeed, my sense is if you want to do almost anything great in the world, you will need to find some ways to leverage unpure/non-good/selfish motivations.
I notice I’m confused now. Manifest Destiny makes sense in the context of this post—there’s something of value to be achieved, and there will be costs. I’m not sure if I agree with this, but it’s coherent. What I don’t understand is how egregores using people via their personal incentives (for lack of a better description) fits in? It would seem that people just being people and things happening is sort of the opposite (or at least orthogonal) to actively trying to make things better? Do you mean something about shaping incentives being the method of conquest? This seems obviously true (capitalism vs communism being an good example), but if so, then using colonialism as an example might be a bad choice, or at least would need more inference steps explained.
A big component of this post is trying to help me make progress towards the question “if you have a thing that you are part of that is good, how many fucked up things can you tolerate before you decide to leave instead of trying to fix it?”. The “good” part does not need to look like there being a big mission or glorious vision of “good”. It can also take the form of “spreading civilization in general even if the people actually doing that work are not motivated by that specific goal”.
I don’t think I meant to imply here that most of the colonizers had a vision (though I do think this is more true in the colonization of the west in the 1800s which I am more centrally referring to here than the early colonizations). Indeed, I personally find grappling with the colonizers mostly not having a vision, being mostly recruited by some greater entities via their own self-interest and greed and various things like this, a much more interesting thing to think about, and more the kind of case I want to make in the post.
Indeed, my sense is if you want to do almost anything great in the world, you will need to find some ways to leverage unpure/non-good/selfish motivations.
I notice I’m confused now. Manifest Destiny makes sense in the context of this post—there’s something of value to be achieved, and there will be costs. I’m not sure if I agree with this, but it’s coherent. What I don’t understand is how egregores using people via their personal incentives (for lack of a better description) fits in? It would seem that people just being people and things happening is sort of the opposite (or at least orthogonal) to actively trying to make things better? Do you mean something about shaping incentives being the method of conquest? This seems obviously true (capitalism vs communism being an good example), but if so, then using colonialism as an example might be a bad choice, or at least would need more inference steps explained.
A big component of this post is trying to help me make progress towards the question “if you have a thing that you are part of that is good, how many fucked up things can you tolerate before you decide to leave instead of trying to fix it?”. The “good” part does not need to look like there being a big mission or glorious vision of “good”. It can also take the form of “spreading civilization in general even if the people actually doing that work are not motivated by that specific goal”.