"West is superior" / "right to colonize" / "moral obligation to colonize"
"We're not the only ones" / "It's natural"
"Goal was to help/support colonies"
Pro-colonialism article: "The Case for Colonialism" by Bruce Gilley
Utilitarian argument
Circular logic in Orientalism book: England knows about Egypt and that it doesn't have the ability to self-govern, so they can confirm that they should occupy Egypt, so they do, and then Egypt is not self-governing, so they must need to be colonized...
"Colonialism: Myths and Realities" article has notion of colonization being more complicated than "let's go exploit others.
Benefits of colonialism is a post-hoc justification, not a initial motivation.
"Everyone is doing it argument"
Serves to distract from who had the most impact
Conflation of different conflict processes
Even so, that doesn't make it right
Christine:
Natural law -- how humans should behave morally
Therefore other cultures are breaking natural law and need to be corrected
Natural progression from worse to betters
Is this really true?
Unbundle different achievements
Specificity of progress (e.g. aliens in SF always end up at computers and spaceships)
Where have the costs materialized?
Peter:
Made a hierarchy of different excuses
Ohana
Property
Ownership (up-for-grabs if not owned?)
Objectively better for land to be "productive"
Progress
Inevitability
How do you define "better?"
Paternalism
Racism is key to colonialism.
Key concepts:
Progress/inevitability/natural progression
"Level 99 Capitalist"
Racism
Space/land
Article on "Forager"?
Look for any contradictory arguments that might crop up as we go along?
Benefits outweigh the harm
Good for game contexts
This is common in games, but was it even true in real life?
What games to look at?
Might be good to compare 2+ games/genres?
Targeting games that people don't even think critically about already?
What are we trying to do that's different from a popular article?
Added design contribution?
Added technical contribution?
Would need some kind of lit review
Deeper analysis? (at the code level?)
Start with aiming for a design contribution
We need to be careful not to borrow cultures that don't belong to us.
We don't want to make a simplistic critique of racism either.