In class on Friday I made mention to the idea of the explorers who discovered the Americas as victims of human subjectivity and I would like to expand upon it here.
I think that as we established in class, Columbus, Cortes, and the others were products of European society. They had strong feelings of religion, pride in their newly formed sovereign state, and a hunger for knowledge/wealth. Columbus was undoubtedly a very pious person and whatever his motivations his justification for the way he treated the Natives he came across was a mixture of all of this European ideology at the time. I don't believe he deliberately decided to treat them as objects rather than people, but that given his paradigm on the world, it worked for him to do so. Because he had preconceived ideas it was more difficult to think beyond those first impressions and even more so because of the depth of his belief in the European/christian values. Cortes had a more objective view in that he tried to learn more about them and see things from all different angles to include the side of the natives, but he wasn't objective in that he took part in the process and still used all the information gleaned for his own ends. It is beyond the scope of my blog to determine whether he was simply an evil person who decided to manipulate the knowledge to his own ends fully knowing the wrong he was doing, but what is more probable is that he had a justification for what he was doing as well. It probably had to do with what Todorov said as being the accumulation of wealth leading to a rich lifestyle in terms of material wealth as well as spiritual health.
We all have justifications for the things we do and the opinions we take. This is something I struggle with personally because complete objectivity is held as this enlightened, wise, state where complete understanding is gained of all sides and issues. I as an American having grown up here with specific values, with certain values, etc... would like to believe that my views and my country's actions are just and correct. By believing this I have lost my objectivity. However, as I was speaking with PTJ I realized that just because you have certain opinions and values associated with your identity does not mean that you can't be somewhat objective. This poses the question: Is complete objectivity a good thing if it means inaction? I think given that separating oneself from their own opinions and framework of looking at the world seems like a physical impossibility it is better to have an educated and well rounded framework to shape your opinion around. Basically first you must do the research and then form an opinion. Doing the opposite, you risk running into the problems of Columbus and others. Furthermore, even when you have a well rounded viewpoint, you must have the humanity and understanding to react in a responsible manner unlike what Cortes did.
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