#13 Class Participation Post (ym)

     In Part 3 of The Conquest of America, the most noteworthy part (for me during the discussion) was:
"La Casas loves the Indians. And is a Christian. For him, these two traits are linked: he loves the Indians precisely because he is a Christian, and he love illustrates his faith. Yet such solidarity is not a matter of course. As we have seen, precisely because he was a Christian, his perception of the Indians was poor. Can we really love someone if we know little or nothing of his identity; if we see, in place of that identity,  a projection of ourselves or of our ideals? We know that such a thing is quite possible, even frequent, in personal relations; but what happens in cultural confrontations? Doesn't one culture risk trying to transform the other in its own name, and therefore risk subjugating it as well? How much is such love worth?" (168).

     So shortening this long quote, the question that we really could not spend time discussing was:
Can we fully understand people and still hate him/her?, which can be interpreted as: What goals are we trying to aim to understand?

     When I first read this question, I thought it was possible to hate someone even though you know everything about that person. Because hate is a kind of emotion, and it differs among people. However, as time passed and I think about this question, I started changing my mind that it might not be possible to hate someone after hearing all of their opinions and thoughts. Instead of hating that person, I think people would make a decision not to understand about the person anymore because they are walking different paths in their lives, and they do not have to interact with each other because they can choose not to.

     Also, I can understand his point of religion and christianity, that he does not consider religion true for him, but it is universal and it is valid for everyone. Although I think that the power of religion in order to unify people around the world have decreased, christianity definitely had power to control people in the 1500s when the book was published. I think people are arguing that a universal value such as christianity is needed in order to treat everyone equally. Therefore, if some people do not believe in religion and christianity and do not belong within the universal value, the world cannot achieve equality. However, it brings an interesting question of whether people can be equal (at the time) with having some people being non-religious or even atheists. It was interesting how Locke's Letter of Tolerance came up during class mentioning about how atheists are unacceptable because it does not get along with their principles about equality. I cannot expand this topic since I do not know much about religion and christianity, however I strongly think that the power of religion have definitely decreased as time passes, especially because people started valuing their own personalities and their choices each person makes, and now there are different religions that are unifying different continents or areas of the world.

     Going back to the quote, I still sometimes question myself with the first part of the quote. Is it not easier to love someone who has similar identities because you can understand each other well? It was interesting to read how La Casas loves the Indians because they have a different identity, and that has to do with religion and faith that makes their identity.