Missionary work and genocide are founded upon a common premise. Only the conclusion from that premise differs. Genocide says: we are good, you are bad, therefore we will kill you. Missionaries say: we are good, you are bad, therefore we will convert you.
Email2 Comments
Leave a comment
Categories
- Arts (3)
- Beauty (4)
- Cities (3)
- Cosmos (2)
- Death (11)
- Emotions (5)
- God (6)
- Happiness (6)
- History (4)
- Language (2)
- Life (6)
- Love (1)
- Money (3)
- Nature and Science (9)
- Philosophy (5)
- Politics (6)
- Sea (2)
- Self (3)
- Sex (4)
- Society and Culture (6)
- Time (4)
- Travel (6)
- War (3)
- Weddings (3)
- Work and Leisure (2)
- Writing (2)
- Youth and Age (6)
Titles - All
- City Rudeness
- Getting Dead and Being Dead
- The Unlegislative Branch
- Life is High-Maintenance
- War Above Water
- Travel Proves the Merits of Home
- Waking to Weather
- Originality Through Borrowing
- The Plains
- Time Passes So Quickly Because It Passes So Slowly
- The Hell of Heaven
- On Cars Stopping for Funeral Processions
- We Turn Into Trash
- Life at Sea is Spacious and Cramped
- Abstinence as Abortion
- The Potential Energy of Despair
- The Cosmos of Thought
- The Vegas of Voting Booths
- The Pursuit of Happiness
- Outliving Your Lover
- Why Youth Feels Immortal
- We Love Our Life in the Wrong Order
- Sex and Suburbia
- Missionaries and Genocide
- The Missionary's God
- The Afterlife of Organ Donors
- Evaporating the Dead
- Theology of the Empty Universe
- Music Moves the Young and Old
- Medieval Moderns
- The Atheism of Computers
- Fireworks Can Convince Us of Any Cause
- Rural Density
- The Errant Power of Politicians
- The Pleasure of Talking to Oneself
- Memento Mori
- The Wilderness No Longer Feels Wild
- Luxury is Multiplying the Basics
- We Have Never Seen Our Faces
- Ignorant Authors
- We Were Gold Medalists in the Sperm Olympics
- The Rarity of Room Temperature
- We are Conquerors of Space but Captives of Time
- Modern Gold Rushes
- The Comedy of Sports
- False Apologies
- The Nouveau Pretty
- Election Campaigns, Then and Now
- Crying Ladies as Philosophers
- A Diamond Is Only a Rock Without Someone to Wear It
- The Melodrama of Young Writers
- An Insect Crawling on My Book
- The Sublime and Beautiful in Yosemite Valley
- Only the Loner Can Study the Crowd
- The Paradox of Sexual Liberation
- Nazism and Me
Maybe. It could be argues that the core premise is different, as in
Genocide = you are different from us, so we will destroy you
missionary work = you are different from us, so we will ask you to join us
Where genocidal groups seek to eliminate the Other by annihilation, the missionary impulse results in a diverse group that shares values or beliefs, but is otherwise quite complex.
Sigh, lost my original post.
Missionaries are saying "My beliefs are right, yours are wrong. You should change." They weren't asking, and in the past they had the backing of government and armed force. Sure, there were some who went into the deepest Africa or South America, to bring their word to the natives -- but the purpose was still to bring their religion to people who most likely already had one of their own, to bring cultural norms that were alien to the natives.
To say the missionaries aim was to bring about some nice little utopian diverse inclusiveness is to miss the point. "YOU should join US" isn't "WE should join TOGETHER"