White People are... Better?

[Stublore]

I never realized it was this much of a difference. How did it turn out this way? Am I imagining things?

Try reading Jared Diamond's Guns,Germs,and Steel for an interesting idea on why this is so.
Simplistically the answer is easy, the past was a shitload more violent than today. So the path to success was to be the most successful in warfare. Europeans were the best back then.

 

[BNguyen]

The European groups existed in Europe during the ice age and developed at over 100 times faster than everywhere else except the Chinese who developed paper and explosives before everyone. Why is it that these two areas developed so much better than everywhere else?

Because we didn't invent shit.

Arabic numbers, Roman Numerals, Calculus, Algebra, Geometry, Metallurgy...

None of these are "European."

We took the inventions of others and applied them, just like China and India are doing right now. It's easy to take an idea that already works and improve upon it.

Is it because these areas had some sort of unifying factor while the rest of the world suffered from conditions that caused divisions?

Ha ha ha ha ha ha...

Unifying factor? Have you LOOKED at a map of Europe? Does it look like there was a unifying factor?

Petty wars broke out ALL the time. The largest unifying factor Europe ever had was Rome, and Romans weren't caucasians so they're evidence against the OP's thesis.

I never said the Europeans invented anything like that, just that that area of the world seemed to develop faster than other areas. And to the point, I said the Chinese developed paper and gun powder. Every group in the world utilized imperialism in one form or another to get ahead but the Europeans were able to do it better and faster, why, because large portions of the people like the Franks, and Anglos, Saxons, and the Germanic tribes were able to work together toward a common goal. Groups around the world either had kings or religion to unify them and much of Europe was under both of those, like the Romans, or the Holy Roman Empire. Europe today may not be as unified as it once was, even if it was mostly forced, but still it seems the small tribes everywhere else couldn't use these factors to the same degree.

 

[Nadia Castle]

"But how did the white population, much, much younger than the others, manage to gain better technology, health and government that quick? We sort of went from zero to one hundred in five minutes, while everyone else struggled to get up to sixty. Then, with our technology that must have seemed godly to the poor natives, we took over everything."

The key was being united strongly enough to expand, but be divided enough that you had to do it before your rival did. When the French got to southern Africa, they did so to beat the Portuguese to the loot. The British built heavy industry to out gun the French. The worst phase of religious oppression was over and science was being explored as a new way to understand the world. In Europe the religions, technological and cultural changes all came at one perfect storm.

Compare that to the rest of the world at that time. The Chinese had technology, but were such a huge cultural monolith that there wasn't any reason to reach out and change. The Middle Eastern nations had a more fair culture, but were still religiously monolithic, the Africans had the right social and religious conditions, but no technology.

Today the world has just mixed around a little. Western civilization is now a content cultural monolith, China has the perfect mix of national ambition, technology and lack of religious influence, Africa is working on all of them, and Middle Eastern culture is going through its absolutely shitty phase of kicking the crap out of each other for religious purposes (Islam never really had a power mad phase until the 60's. They'll have it out of their system within the next 100 years).

Basically its just the case that Western civilization excelled at the right time. Also can we drop the stupid idea that the rest of the world was its poor little victim? The myth of the 'peaceful little native' is one of the most stupid hippie claims in history. Life in any country was savage, violent and short well before anyone heard of colonialism.

 

[Stublore]

Alright well I'll just say that you may be right but you're also wrong. Yes.

White people do arguably have it "better" in the world but that's their own doing and not in the sense that you'd think of. I can explain my point of view best with an example. In Spain during the 1400s the Islamic culture had territory in Granada with their crown jewel being the Alhambra which was a marvel of architecture and culture. Now during this time King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella were reigning supreme in Spain. They didn't like this. They went down to Granada and pretty much sacked the Alhambra and to display their dominance they built a very nice, but very Catholic, building right in the center of this Islamic structure.

The point of that story being that white people, generally Europeans throughout history, have always literally forced these other cultures to slow progression or stop all together. Apartheid in India was another horrible example of a culture being suppressed by "the white man". So in short I do believe that in many cases "white people" have it better. However I also believe that it's because other cultures were suppressed by those same "white people" and couldn't advance at the same rate.

Small nitpick, this

The point of that story being that white people, generally Europeans throughout history, have always literally forced these other cultures to slow progression or stop all together.

was not something exclusive to "white people", all conquerors did this.

 

[General Twinkletoes]

Hey guys, what's going on in this threa-
Shit.

Because I have US citizenship, I am literally the spawn of satan?
This thread was already doomed, how did it become US=Nazi germany thread?

Get out while you still can!

 

[Axolotl]

I mean, we trace our cultural routes back to Romans, but do you think Romans/Greeks were white? Hell no, they weren't.

By what standards were the Romans not white?

 

[NightHawk21]

This was some of the quickest derailment I've ever seen. Thread gets derailed on its 7th post by the OP himself lol.

As for your post OP. First I would suggest you look into and read some basic physical anthropology courses cause the human expansion didn't happen exactly like how you say it did, and how I think (from the way your post is written), you think it did. Secondly you have to understand that competition is one of the greatest sources of technological advancement, even to this day. You have Europe which lets be honest is tiny, and hundreds of groups all trying to occupy the same small region of land. Combine this with the increases trade and communications of the Europeans with other cultures (primarily throughout Asia), and the subsequent incorporation of their tech and you have quite a good catalyst for continuous innovation.

As for your thesis:
"Or maybe I proved white people are worse than others, despite having better tech."

Well to be honest its A) racist and discriminatory.
B) So wrong it isn't even funny.

If you look at the history of any group of people you will see that they all contain things best left forgotten. In fact I bet with a little bit of research you could draw comparisons between what you claim the Europeans are at fault for and any other group (even some small tribes in Africa), albeit on a much smaller scale obviously.

It was what someone else was trying to point out when you mentioned the atomic bomb. Cities were bombed throughout the war (cities full of civilians), but you only draw issue with the bombings of 2 Japanese cities by the US. Does it really make that much of a difference whether 2 cities where bombed for say 200,000 thousand casualties total (those aren't the real numbers but Its been a while since I've taken history and I'm not looking them up because the numbers aren't important in the model), or 200 cities were bombed during the European theater for 1000 casualties each?

 

[Coolshark]

Are we really doing this, escapist?

Really?

 

[SciMal]

I never said the Europeans invented anything like that, just that that area of the world seemed to develop faster than other areas.

Which is a load of bull. Caucasians didn't develop any faster than any other culture which stole inventions and used them.

There's no inherently higher rate of cultural or technological development in Europe versus other countries (save ones limited by resources). Right time, right place, right attitude.

Every group in the world utilized imperialism in one form or another to get ahead but the Europeans were able to do it better and faster, why, because large portions of the people like the Franks, and Anglos, Saxons, and the Germanic tribes were able to work together toward a common goal.

As opposed to the Romans, the Chinese, the Ottoman Empire, the Egyptians... All composed of smaller states that banded together to create an empire.

The theme isn't uncommon, you're just talking from a viewpoint inside cacuasian dominance.

Groups around the world either had kings or religion to unify them and much of Europe was under both of those, like the Romans, or the Holy Roman Empire.

Most empires had that. Kings, almost by definition, are the divinely chosen - you really can't have one without the other throughout history.

Europe today may not be as unified as it once was, even if it was mostly forced, but still it seems the small tribes everywhere else couldn't use these factors to the same degree.

Sure they did. Some South American empires spanned areas rivaling the Romans. China is the 3rd largest country in the world (after Russia and Canada). Australia, the 6th largest country, was inhabited entirely by Aborigines until the last century.

Your view is warped because you're looking from within the fish bowl. It happens to everyone, so I'm not blaming anyone for being ethnocentric, but it is an extreme bias everyone should be aware of.

 

[Scorpid]

You're spat of history gathering is admirable but your getting the wrong impression. If you're approaching this from a genetics point of view then you'll be disappointed about how little difference there is between Europeans and other races. What you're ignoring is something important and that's a centralized belief system. The differences between ancient rome, the empires of africa and asia technologically speaking wasn't vast. And as other people pointed out it was China that had the lead for a very long time. It wasn't until Catholicism that things went in a different direction between Europe and the other continents and even then it wouldn't be for another 1000 years once all that nasty Crusades stuff finished. (crusades can't be ignored if you're talking about the advancement of europe). With Catholicism there was a general set of beliefs and norms between countries and its citizens and the popes managed to, to no small, degree bring them together under a loose band to form a their own distinct and similar nations with recognized borders. So now there were countries and citizenry that had a common set of beliefs and norms so that when wars happened and finished it didn't reset political/alliances advancements back to zero. England was still England, France was still France, Spain still Spain after wars came and went so there was still governments to pick up the pieces to put countries back together.
But Europeans even still weren't better at every thing. India, Iroquois confederacy, Japan, China, Africa, the Middle east. Europeans would be more advanced after each one of the meetings because they'd win and take these lessons like castle building, paper, rule of the citizenry over kings, metallurgy. Also if you ever want to read/watch Guns Germs, and Steel you'll probably find that interesting. One popular opinion you shouldn't listen to is that Europeans were simply the most savage and brutal of all societies and that simply isn't true. China right up until the 70's loved nothing more then a good genocide to clear things up. Not to say that Europeans were simply wonderfully peaceful people just that if China had decided to set about building ships and take off to build a global Empire they would of been about as violent as the Europeans.
It was a mixture of simple greed and stable long term governments that forced the advancement of Europe into the age of exploration that set Europe on the path of world dominance that is actually coming to an end as we speak. Interesting times we live in, there are no real indicators of any of this being genetic predisposition of being smarter that I've ever seen.

 

[Edible Avatar]

"The bomb was dropped by parachute and exploded 580m (1,900ft) above the ground. Between 60,000 and 80,000 people were killed instantly. The heat from the bomb was so intense that some people simply vanished in the explosion. Many more died of the long-term effects of radiation sickness. The final death toll was calculated at 135,000. As well as residents of Hiroshima, the victims included Koreans who had been forced to come to Japan as labourers, and American prisoners-of-war who were imprisoned in Hiroshima."

-http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/timeline/factfiles/nonflash/a6652262.shtml

Yes, the majority of people died instantly from the heat. Yes, the U.S. dropped a nuke on their POWs.

Did it end the war? Look up the firebombing of Tokyo, and you'll see that even with 100,000 civilians turned to ash, the government would not surrender.

"Approximately 16 square miles (41 km2) of the city were destroyed and some 100,000 people are estimated to have died in the resulting firestorm, more immediate deaths than either of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

The nukes convinced Japan to surrender.
Now look up 'total war'.

"In the mid-19th century, "total war" was identified by scholars as a separate class of warfare. In a total war, there is less differentiation between combatants and civilians than in other conflicts, and sometimes no such differentiation at all, as nearly every human resource, civilians and soldiers alike, can be considered to be part of the belligerent effort.[1]"


World War 2 was Total war. The Japanese bombed civilians (China), the British did (night raids), the Americans did (firebombing and day raids), the Germans did (The Blitz), hell, every warring nation did. Back then, you fought a war to win it, not prolong it by playing fair or nice.

 

[Animyr]

Europe dominated because they had an abundance of natural resources, the inventions of earlier civilizations (Greece, mid-east, China) to build upon, and the right cultural temperature and political volatility that encouraged constant competition and ambitious expansion and thus never resulted in stagnation that the East eventually did fell into, or descended into aimless chaos.

In short alot of advantageous factors aligned. As is always the case.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

Not really. The mongolian empire was the largest in the world for a long time. The 'white people' spent most of the past thousand years being crushed by the Church or trying to convert other people, usually with much bloodshed involved. Meanwhile, the technological and cultural heart of the world was somewhere much further East.
It was only when the advances of the Industrial Revolution began leaking across the whole Western world and slavery became a huge enough industry to make us wealthy that the West actually advanced past anyone else. Go back far enough and you'll find that pretty much every corner of the world has had periods of advantage or disadvantage.

 

[Exterminas]

Our Ancestors were lucky.
Human history is one endless chain of lucky coincidences, starting with the position and design of our planet, down to the distribution of its ressources.

Race has as much to do with that as the type of pets people tend to keep in a certain area.

 

[Saladfork]

I'm more inclined to believe that the constant war and threat of war in Europe spurred invention and innovation at a greater rate than in more peaceful areas of the world. Necessity is the mother of invention, after all; Why would the native Americans have developed gunpowder if their wars were mostly contained to small-scale raids on each other?

Under that reasoning, though, I can't really explain why the Aztecs failed to increase their own technological progress given how much they fought, but obviously there were other factors at work there.

 

[Daveman]

Because Genghis Khan never managed to reach Europe to fuck everything up. The arab world was miles ahead of us technologically and scientifically until Genghis fucked their shit up.

 

[Guybythestreet]

White nations were pretty lacking in technology but because the much more advanced China had isolationist policies they never felt the influence of China's power.

As previous people said the Arab countries were also much farther ahead of the white nations, but Genghis came and conquered them. This was the best thing for the white nations, Genghis had never really pushed into Europe but he established transcontinental trade (11th grade world history for the win). This let the Southern European countries flourish. Give about 500 years of technological and cultural development after this boost and then Europe went and fucked up everyone else.

 

[SciMal]

I mean, we trace our cultural routes back to Romans, but do you think Romans/Greeks were white? Hell no, they weren't.

By what standards were the Romans not white?

By just about every.

The Romans originated in the Mediterranean. The term "Caucasian" refers to the Caucus mountains between the Black and Caspian seas. While the Roman Empire did, eventually, reach that far, it didn't originate there.

The Romans were also a different Haplotype than the Celts, Nords, and Germanics. A Haplogroup is a term for specific mutations in the human genome that are traceable over several thousand years. Almost all of Europe has Haplotype R1b2 (if I'm remembering correctly) and the Mediterranean is E-V13. R1b had already spread throughout Europe before the Romans started absorbing the people with it.

Also, the Romans weren't white (German|Historically Accurate Mediterranean):

 

[CatComixzStudios]

We've actually watched some things that discussed this in my high school, and there was a special I saw on Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman about the possibility of a "better" race.

Guns, germs and steel are the common things people cite, but there are some other things I suspect had an impact. For example, European nations, in general, tended to be more united than African ones. When the British came along to "politely borrow tons of resorces and people", we were shown a map of all of the different groups and cultures. It was amazing to see just how many different groups lived in such small areas in some cases. In that case, the Europeans just had to divide and concuer the groups.

I would also cite geograpy as having at least a little impact. In Europe and places like that, the climates tended to be less extreme than African ones. Though I've never been there, I hear Africa tends to be not the most fun places to live. Compare that places like Europe. Again, I've never been, but I hear alot more things about Europe's beauty. So when living in a more "gentle" climate, you don't have to just focus on water and other sometimes scarce resources.

tl;dr version - White people tended to be more united in their conquest to take over other races, and if you live in an unforgiving climate, you're probably gonna be more focused on food and survival rather than advancing technology.

Obviously there would be tons of other factors as well.

 

[Clearing the Eye]

-snip-

people who make topics like this should be banned, this is just ... and you call yourself a philosopher? this is like the most basic of history + a stupid title to draw people in. White people arent better, and you didn't mean that, you just tried to get as many people in here as possible, is it the 10views "medal" you want?
Atleast the gun control topics make some kind of sense.
Easy agriculture + imperialist expansion = mostly europe spreading, that plus rich getting richer and poor getting poorer, 15 year olds know this. This isnt discussion worthy at all

You should probably calm down. It's a thread on the internet.

Well, Europeans civilizations basically raped, pillaged, and ruined many civilizations that were advancing at a decent pace. Then they colonized all the places that had the best resources, usually over the ruins of those civilizations they wrecked. It was how the world worked back then, really. It could have just as easily been any other geographically based ethnicity that did so. Nobody's really to blame for it, it was just how the world worked back then.

But how did the white population, much, much younger than the others, manage to gain better technology, health and government that quick? We sort of went from zero to one hundred in five minutes, while everyone else struggled to get up to sixty. Then, with our technology that must have seemed godly to the poor natives, we took over everything.

exactly, take a look at the Native Americans, the Incans, Mayans, and Aztecs. They came over to the Americans during the Ice Age and yet still lived like how the ancient Babylonians did. The European groups existed in Europe during the ice age and developed at over 100 times faster than everywhere else except the Chinese who developed paper and explosives before everyone. Why is it that these two areas developed so much better than everywhere else? Is it because these areas had some sort of unifying factor while the rest of the world suffered from conditions that caused divisions?

The Spanish sure did a number on the Inca people. At least they out up a good fight. Out numbered and grossly outmatched in technology, they still proved difficult to conquer.

I never realized it was this much of a difference. How did it turn out this way? Am I imagining things?

Try reading Jared Diamond's Guns,Germs,and Steel for an interesting idea on why this is so.
Simplistically the answer is easy, the past was a shitload more violent than today. So the path to success was to be the most successful in warfare. Europeans were the best back then.

A lot of people have suggested that book. It's getting harder to to refuse to buy it, lol. Wonder how much it is...