[jasaloo]

I hear you. Liu's outlook is deeply pessimistic. His obvious scientific background knowledge seems to be infused with a dash of western, neoliberal ideology-- that it's just dog-eat-dog out there, and we're all in it for our own self-interest.

It's a bit ironic considering Liu is Chinese- wasn't China's Ming Dynasty the first to land on America in the early 1400s and historically demonstrate that exploration and discovery weren't necessarily accompanied by colonization/enslavement/destruction?

That example gets held up a lot when mainstream historians spin the narrative that Colombus et al enslaved/raped/pillaged because that's just what societies do (while ignoring that it was the debt that the explorers owed to their financiers that drove most of that bad behavior).

[westmeal]

>that Colombus et al enslaved/raped/pillaged because that's just what societies do (while ignoring that it was the debt that the explorers owed to their financiers that drove most of that bad behavior).

Would you mind extrapolating on that a bit? In my totally 'unbiased' and 'truthful' American public school they never mentioned a word of this. I've always wanted to learn more about the real origins of this broken country.

[davejohnclark]

I found the oatmeal's comic about Columbus enlightening (and disturbing) https://theoatmeal.com/comics/columbus_day

[TeMPOraL]

Wait until you discover that the story behind Thanksgiving is pretty much a proper alien invasion sci-fi, featuring technologically superior invaders landing in ships, and promptly unleashing biological weapons on the local population.

[westmeal]

Well I knew that part. <sarcasm> They did it to promote freedom of course. </sarcasm>