Throughout my English course so far I have been studying and analyzing Rights, whether it be constitutional, human, or in general, through historical yet objectionable events. A specific interest to me from this theme was the “powerful villains”, which were men who gained power through execution, theft, and lies. Christopher Columbus was one of these powerful villains, he is the man that is honored to have found the Americas but he is also the man who captured and enslaved Native Americans in the late 1400s. This specific theme interested me because I wanted to learn more about how the lack of empathy with self-selection influences people to attempt power grabs. Why wasn’t empathy an option for Columbus during his attack on the Native Americans? Empathy wasn’t an option for Columbus because he didn’t want an emotional connection between himself and the Native Americans.
Columbus didn’t want to identify that he and the Natives were alike. Throughout the readings of his journals, I recognized that Columbus usually referred to the Natives as “animals and property”. In my opinion this was a way to disconnect from the Natives rather than comprehend that they were the same in that they’re both human. This was significant during his attacks because he needed to detach himself from them in order to accomplish his goal, which was to steal gold from their land.
I agree with you that the idea of “Powerful Villains” is extremely interesting. Do you think this method of gaining it is a more effective way of rising to power? What other people have used this method to rise to power? I like your views on Columbus’s view and interactions with the Natives. Do you think he acted this way because he didn’t understand the Native’s culture and so as a defense mechanism called them savages?
Consider the dogma of the Crown: what the Crown wants belongs to the Crown, and it’s the duty of the Crown’s loyal subjects to seize such things. To Columbus, the Crown’s gold had ended up on this island, and all of these relatively animalistic natives were just in the way. Can we Americans consider us any better? We Americans who support oversea conquests to solve conflicts in the countries that happen to have the oil that we crave?
These conquests are quite common in every era, though for different resources. Is there any way that we proceed, as the tradition is often linked to economic success, without the horrific things that occurred upon the ‘discovery’ of the new world or the oil conquests?