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How to avoid war with China?
(lemmygrad.ml)
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this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023
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What you're saying is that children should carry the responsibility for the acts of their ancestors.
Who's the judge of whether it's "allowed" violence? If we say that the status quo of Franco-German relationship is built on the past injustice, and that this should be fixed, who will count all the past centuries of wars and massacres and calculate the outstanding balance?
Because if you let it both sides do it for themselves, then they both will naturally come to the conclusion that they've been unjustly treated and that the other side has to pay for that. In the end it will be the stronger one, not the morally correct one, who wins. For a time, then the sides will switch => cycle of violence is IMHO unavoidable if you hold the opinion that past sins are never forgotten.
History is basically never so nicely clear-cut. I mean, have you studied your family tree and made sure that all of that family wealth was gathered via perfectly moral means? What if it turns out that your grand grandfather was a soldier who brought home some gold of dubious origins?
No. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that people carry the responsibility to choose against unfairness if they have a choice. Whether the unfairness was created by your ancestors or someone else's is irrelevant. If you are in an unfair position thanks to past unfair acts, and you can choose to let go of that position (or do some other action) to remove that unfairness from the world, then you should. Or, put otherwise, you don't "deserve" that position, because it was attained unfairly.
Well, I'm just stating that forgetting the past is not a good ethical standpoint. It is reasonable to believe it's at least a practical one, and maybe it's interesting to reason about the role it should have in lawmaking, resolving conflicts on a case-by-case basis, etc., but that is far from applicable in this case, or in general. I find no reason to use that simplification (which gives different outcomes) unless we're in a situation where it's become really difficult to reach consensus.
Then I would have the obligation to act according to it (return it, etc.). I would still have the right to get that wealth back, but then I would be forced to do something with it.
Anyway, I think I might be overexplaining and making it way more complicated than necessary. Everything I said can be summarized as follows: people have the right to not be affected by anything outside their control. Managing to provide that right is equivalent to effectively deleting the effects of every past and present unfair action. For example, if you properly redistribute wealth, then all of this family wealth robbery stuff simply fades away over time, as redistribution favors differences of recent origin and smooths out older variations.