Yes, but as an example (whose effect is only stark because of our present world history), the Nuremberg trials were also a replacement of world history. Many people on trial said "I was just following orders"; mere world history.
Just because world history is symbolic, does not mean millions of people's duties do not depend upon which symbols are present.
We hit Hitler comparisons fast on this thread, eh?
It is fine to condemn it if you want, we definitely don't want to repeat it, but if you think any culture really has the moral high ground on this, you should look deeper.
The looking deeper is exactly not defaulting to moral relativism AND not defaulting to the belief that universal goods, as defined by one culture, are universal simply because any culture says so.
The two perspectives aren't even very different.
The "world history is just how the circle of life turns round" stance is to the moral high ground stance what a sitcom with canned laughter is to a comedy without a laugh track: with the canned laugh track, you aren't even expected to bring the laughter. To forget your dilemmas, all that is expected of you is just to stare at the screen.
I get that Nazism is a topic people tend to be skeptical of the possibility of using examples in discussions both honestly and seriously. Not only does it flare emotions, it also makes it more likely that discussion will just split around calling the opponent a Hitler-sympathizer/trying to distance oneself from the cultural taboo "evil is a subset of 'the set of Hitlers'" (which is not the same as "Hitler is a singleton subset of the set of evils".
The evergreen task is finding the deficiencies of historical signifiers we used to use, both the ones that brought the most prosperity, and the ones that brought the most ruin.
Godwin's law is not a law of nature, and Godwin himself stated that it is being abused to stifle debate;
From Wikipedia;
Godwin's law itself can be abused as a distraction, diversion or even as censorship, fallaciously miscasting an opponent's argument as hyperbole when the comparisons made by the argument are actually appropriate. Similar criticisms of the "law" (or "at least the distorted version which purports to prohibit all comparisons to German crimes") have been made by the American lawyer, journalist, and author Glenn Greenwald.
In December 2015, Godwin commented on the Nazi and fascist comparisons being made by several articles on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, saying: "If you're thoughtful about it and show some real awareness of history, go ahead and refer to Hitler when you talk about Trump. Or any other politician."
On August 13, 2017, Godwin made similar remarks on social networking websites Facebook and Twitter with respect to the two previous days' Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, endorsing and encouraging efforts to compare its alt-right organizers to Nazis.
It means there are people out there who believe they can win arguments by creating false analogies to Hitler, who is basically indefensible. Godwin's law then makes it really easy to identify trolls, and you can avoid feeding them by not taking the bait.
tbh, and not trying to dismiss USA in anyway. I find their situation in time and space pretty exceptional. They had no aggressive neighbors and half a continent. At a time where new knowledge was popping out, having such a playground was very timely.
The North American tribes had plenty of warfare and territory turn overs long before the Europeans arrived. The isolation of the americas did prevent diffusion of technology, but we also saw the same thing happen in Africa and even Asia to similar extents. It wasn't very unique.
Then why did the U.S. fare so well compared with Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, etc. India, Russia and China had close to the same landmass for several hundred to thousand years prior but they didn't achieve what U.S. did despite a huge head start.
> India, Russia and China had close to the same landmass for several hundred to thousand years prior but they didn't achieve what U.S. did despite a huge head start.
Uh they did.
"The Mughal Empire began a period of proto-industrialization, and Mughal India became the world's largest economic power, with 24.4% of world GDP, and the world leader in manufacturing, producing 25% of global industrial output up until the 18th century. The Mughal Empire is considered "India's last golden age" and one of the three Islamic Gunpowder Empires (along with the Ottoman Empire and Safavid Persia)." [1]
Can't find a similar citation for China but before colonialism, India and China were the world's two largest economies. It's telling that European explorers were searching for a sea route to India and not the other way around. Europeans wanted silk and spices from India and China. But Europe had nothing India or China wanted. Or at least, knew they wanted. Arguably they could've used the superior maritime knowledge[2] and gun manufacturing techniques Europeans possessed.
I guess if there's anything that history teaches us, it's that attaining a lead is no guarantee of maintaining it.
There's a whole Wikipedia article exploring why these two nations fell behind the Western World in the 18th and 19th centuries.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Divergence#Possible_fact...) I'd argue that colonialism was certainly a major factor for India. Being treated for 150+ years as a source of cheap raw materials and captive market for exports will do terrible things to a country's industry and economy.
Except maybe for Canada, these weren't invasion though. I have to admit there were lot more conflicts I knew about. We shouldn't learn history focused around our own country only .. it makes us foolish about the rest of the world.
Just because world history is symbolic, does not mean millions of people's duties do not depend upon which symbols are present.