Holiday relativism

About as predictable as Columbus Day lately is the protests against Columbus Day. As a bank employee I have to admit to some self-serving reluctance to do away with the holiday, though truth be told, it’s quite probable that even if Columbus Day were done away with the government would find some other holiday to anoint with Federal Holiday status. But I also have to admit to some difficulty understanding what the big deal is.

Not that I don’t try. I try to imagine how I’d feel if we celebrated Lilburn Boggs day every year, or Thomas Ford Day, with the justification being their great contributions to the settlement of the American West. It’s hard to say. Perhaps I’d just accept it with the justification, “Well, it’s about time he meant something positive to we Mormons.” Would I lobby for the holiday’s removal? Probably not.

I can certainly understand the Euro-centric complaint. The vikings and the Chinese both discovered the Americas first, and they apparently understood what it was they were seeing, not simply mistaking it for India. I don’t imagine I’d have a problem renaming it “Explorers Day”, perhaps.

As for the most prevalent complaint, that Columbus led the Pillaging of the New World, it’s technically true. However, to lay the blame entirely on Columbus for everything that occurred in the Americas ever since is far from fair. That’s like condemning Johannes Gutenberg for all bad literature written ever since he invented the printing press, or the Chinese for every person killed by gunpowder weapons.

Besides, the people who advance this argument tend to pretend that the indigenous populations of the Americas were living in innocence and peace, which is far from true. If Jared M. Diamond’s “Guns, Germs and Steel” is to be believed it was only an accident of random evolutionary factors that kept the Aztecs from showing up in Europe and trying to conquer the Europeans. Sure, by today’s standards the way the Spanish treated the Americans was horrible. But it’s no worse than what the Americans wanted to do to the Spanish once they found out their temperament–they only lacked the technological advantages to do so. And it’s no worse than what the native groups were already doing to one another, either. If we put much stock in evolution it makes no sense to expect the Spaniards to lay down their advantages and fight fair.

Granted, if we somehow had the opportunity to choose today what happened back then I would not support it doing what the Spaniards did. But I fail to see what value is to be gained by judging people long dead, and who were products of their era as if they were our peers of today. It doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t grant anyone their lives back. It doesn’t undo what has been done. And even if we possessed the will to try and pull a “Global Do-Over”, remove everyone from lands their ancestors invaded, and roll-back any “cultural contamination” that might have been introduced then and since, I think we’d find that most cultures would at least grudgingly have to admit they’d prefer to keep things the way they are.

What people seldom stop to think about is that the random factors of evolution being what they are, places like the Americas and Africa would likely still be far, far behind the Eurasian peoples in development if we had somehow managed to maintain their isolation. People get excited when they find indigenous tribes living in relative isolation somewhere, pointing at their lack of development as if the people had chosen to remain “innocent”, while forgetting that “innocent” usually means “one step away from starvation and extinction”, as if living hand-to-mouth is somehow noble and preferable to a more enlightened existence.

I would be among the first to admit that not all “development” is what it’s cracked up to be, but given the choice of “being exploited by soulless corporations in order to afford my basic existence” or “going back to nature and living off the land and my own strength and wits” I’ll take the exploitation, thank you. I went camping not long ago, and I am decidedly against freezing my wits in a tent. Give me at least a cabin, and if I’m going to go that far, I may as well insulate it and add central heating. Those who point to primitive existences as somehow desirable aren’t usually living them. The Western idea of “basic existence” is “living high” anywhere else.

It amuses me no end to see people today trying to force their belief on everyone that it was a horrible thing for the Spanish to force their beliefs on the American natives. “Forcing beliefs” is what people do–it’s like The species past-time, right up there with soccer–and the only thing that keeps them from using violent means is the effectiveness of lesser means. We like to think the “Global Warming Deniers should be rounded up and shot” rhetoric is only rhetoric, but it’s not. It’s only the battle-cry of the bleeding-edgers. The rest will follow if we can’t silence dissent by more currently-acceptable means.

Don’t believe me? Look deeper at your own racism, then. Do you really think the peoples of the Balkans are ignorant barbarians? Do you believe ISIS is comprised of idiots? Or the North Korean regime lacks sufficient education? We like to think we’re so much better than these terribly violent peoples, but the distance is much less than we want to admit. It only requires that people believe lesser measures ineffective, that they have no choice but to take the road of violence.

And in that light I have to wonder if the movement against Columbus Day is really just an attempt to convince ourselves we’re so much better than that today. Look at how enlightened we are! We denounce people who didn’t know better at the time. Why couldn’t ol’ Chris have just turned around and sailed home, insisting “Nothing to see here!”? Instead he had to leave us such an uncomfortable reminder of what humanity is capable of. Quick, denounce him, lest we have to admit we could be him. No, we doth not protest too much!

The fact of the matter is that the people we hold up as public heroes were all just people, with all the good and bad that entails. From Christopher Columbus to George Washington, to Abraham Lincoln, to Martin Luther King, Jr., if we could see all their personal and public failures we’d likely be shocked and disappointed. Of course we shouldn’t try to emulate them too closely. But the presence of bad in them doesn’t negate the good any more than the good in them doesn’t negate the bad. It’s funny how we insist today that people shouldn’t judge, but we feel perfectly fine not only judging the dead, but judging them by our own standards of proper behavior.

When I celebrate Columbus Day–in truth, when I bother to think about it at all–I’m not celebrating his opening the gateway for the Conquistadors’ oppression and murder. I’m considering the amount of guts it took to put his life on the line to prove his theory. His only fault, acknowledging modern sensibilities, is that the Americas were accidentally in the way. Had they not been, and had he actually found the route to India, he would have been no more derided and denigrated than Marco Polo. Columbus didn’t set out thinking, “I’ll bet there’s another continent we haven’t yet discovered, and we’ll get there and find the people too primitive to stop us from taking control and looting the place”.

There’s no doubt that luck was against the American natives. But from what was known at the time, odds were at least evenly split that Columbus could have found a continent populated by people far more advanced than the Europeans, but who hadn’t bothered to sail in that direction yet. His arrival could just have easily drawn an invasion that could have put all of Europe under someone else’s thumb. Montezuma’s Revenge could have been Montezuma’s Conquest of the Old World. And most of us likely wouldn’t be here to feel smug about that reversal.

We love to look at history as if “what is” was a foregone conclusion, as if the people back then knew full well what would happen and chose to do their “stupid things” anyway. Oh, certainly there were those who knowingly did bad things even by the standards of the time, but we should not be too quick to lay too large a sin at their door. Columbus could not have foreseen and should not be held responsible for the British settlers’ treatment of the North American indians any more than he can be held responsible for European Colonialism in Africa or for World War I. Give the guy a break.

So no, I don’t at all condone what was done as a result of Columbus’ discovery, any more than I condone Henry Ford’s products being turned into car bombs. But that does not in any way diminish Columbus’ accomplishment in putting his life on the line to prove his point. Yeah, it’s too bad Leif Erikson didn’t tell more people about his discoveries. I’ll bet Columbus would have been more than happy to take the northern route where he could remain in sight of land for much of the trip instead of sailing for days and weeks on end into nothingness. And yes, it’s somewhat arbitrary we celebrate Columbus Day instead of Magellan Day or Juan Sebastián Elcano Day. So what? It’s the positive attributes of Columbus we celebrate more than the man himself.

As I said before, I really don’t care if we rework the holiday and give it a more positive message. But you’ll get me on your side faster if you go at it from a positive angle instead of the complaints I hear currently. Sorry, but it’s hard to take you seriously when you decry Columbus as a murderer, yet hold up Che Guevara or today’s brutal socialist dictators  as some kind of hero. Either brutally subjugating entire peoples (or in Columbus’ case, merely enabling the brutal subjugation thereof) is wrong or it’s not. Your moral relativism is amusing, but amazingly malleable, myopic, and self-serving.

I know you tend to ignore “folk wisdom”, but you’ll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.