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I think it’s still valid though. Audubon made birds go extinct because it was fun to shoot them. Humans are weird and selfish when they’re in power. Colonization is the same thing as a king cutting down the last tree, they wanted the resources.

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fubo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Except it isn’t “the same thing”.

The point of the myth of Rapa Nui ecocide wasn’t “watch out for ecological damage”, it was “primitive barbarians are too stupid to manage their own resources, even when it kills them; we civilized people have to protect them by taking their island away from them and turning it into a park.”

It was a pro-colonialism meme.

When, y’know, in reality those resources, and the people, were being stolen by slavers.

So the lesson really should be “slavers are bad” … which we already knew.

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- afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  primitive barbarians are too stupid to manage their own resources, even when it kills them
  
  I legitimately never thought of it in those terms. To me what happened, I was told, is what would happen to any group.
  
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