- cross-posted to:
- thoughts_on
- cross-posted to:
- thoughts_on
North Sentinel Island is an island de-jure owned by India but is de-facto self-governing. It is illegal to visit the island due to how dangerous it is, along with the risk of spreading diseases that the inhabitants do not have any resistance to.
The island is inhabitated by around 50-500 (true number unknown) indigenous people who have inhabited the island for over 60,000 years. The Sentinelese people are well-known to attack most outsiders who dare to come visit the island. Apparently, one major catalyst was when a British man kidnapped an elderly couple and four children. The couple died and the children were returned but had serious diseases which may have spread to the rest of the islanders.
In 2018, an American tourist illegally visited the island in order to attempt to convert them to Christianity. He was later killed by the Sentinelese.
I don’t why, but for some reason, this island is quite fascinating. There is so little known about it. The very concept of an isolated society that wants to be left alone is something that I find interesting.
Have any two cents to give?
I wonder, in a hypothetical scenario where we achieve global communism, would it still be appropriate to maintain no contact? Let’s assume for argument’s sake that we can get around the practical issues like disease, would we not owe them some form of consideration? As it stands, I feel like contact with the rest of the world would only make their lives worse and probably end their civilization as they know it, but if we had a far more just and equitable society, would refusing to engage start to resemble a form of chauvinism? Or at least neglect?
I’m honestly not sure what the answer is, or if I’m just wrong and the answer is simpler than I’m making it out to be. I feel like it’s easy to argue for no contact, for a variety of reasons, but is there a point at which non-interference starts to look like a form of captivity?
If they want in on FALGSC, we welcome them with open arms. If they want to be left alone (which they clearly seem to want), we leave them alone. It’s not complicated.
They aren’t imperialists, or capitalists, or colonists. (But I repeat myself.) They pose no threat to a communist state. We leave 'em alone, lest we become imperialists ourselves.
The correct course of action for a post-communist world can only be decided in a post-communist world. Leave it till then, it’s enough for us to know that we shouldn’t do anything right now.
The question doesn’t necessarily rely on a post-communist society. Assuming so just makes it easier to answer by eliminating some obvious objections, like that they’d have the global financial system forced on them or inevitably become dispossessed and marginalized, all the things that exposure to capitalism does.
The question I have is more about whether there are conditions where non-contact becomes the more ethically dubious position. It seems clear that they don’t want visitors, but if they were suffering greatly or faced existential danger, it would get a lot harder to maintain a non-interference position as you start recognizing that interfering can’t possibly be worse than death.
I imagine that if there was a serious existential threat to the region and/or all life on Earth, it would be wrong to not contact them, such as a mega-tsunami of the century, an asteroid impact, a potential quasar blast, the eventual warming of the Sun, or of humanity needing to leave the Earth in space arks.