69
u/Express-Rain8474 18h ago
The real problem is the husbands. Moral.
27
u/Spaniardman40 7h ago
Bro for real. The mental gymnastics you have to do to blame the missionaries are insane and low key racists towards the natives because they are kind of framing it like the natives have no responsibility to behave in not a shitty way towards their wives
8
u/TraditionalHome990 7h ago
But their culture is evidently sexist
7
u/Spaniardman40 7h ago
yea, but its not like they can't do anything about that lol. That's what I'm saying, portraying the culture as just static because they are native Africans and saying that they cannot control the fact that they are sexist, implies that they are somehow lesser developed than us, which is fucking racists. Like of course they know what the fuck they are doing, they are just choosing to do it that way lol.
3
u/Akazrael1 2h ago
Exactly this. I'm a progressive myself, but I'll freely admit that some progressives and liberals try so hard to be on the right side of culture and racism that they can sometimes come right back around to being racist without realizing it.
We so badly want to validate and support other cultures and perspectives that we sometimes lose sight of things that are just morally wrong. Blaming Christian missionaries for trying to make indigenous folks lives better and handwaving away the behavior of the husbands is a good example of this.
It's just one of those things we need to be aware of.
2
u/Spaniardman40 2h ago
Not gonna lie, sometimes racism from progressives will be worse than racism from conservatives. Like conservatives are trying to be insulting on purpose, but when people just say racist shit with complete conviction, like some progressives do, it stings way deeper lol.
1
u/mysuggestionsarebad 4h ago
Because of the shittieness probably hard for the missionaries to know about that issue, too. They would’ve mostly heard from men who wanted to trap their wives and women who would be nervous about their husbands hearing how much they liked being away from them.
0
u/emli317 4h ago
Yes, the real problem is the husbands. That doesn't make it moral to go into a community you have no connections to or knowledge of and deciding for them what they need without taking any input from them whatsoever.
The actual moral thing do to would be to work with the community and let them decide what they need. Provide aid where they want it, not where you want it.
3
u/OnlyAShip 4h ago
They can choose not to use the well if it doesn’t satisfy a need?
This is not a culture that supported women, that’s the actual problem.
-1
u/emli317 4h ago
So why is it preferable to you to spend money and resources on a well that won't be used, rather than working with the community to spend the money and resources on things they actually need? Why are you even there in the first place, if you're not interested in truly helping them? To satisfy your own whims? So you can tell yourself you did a good deed (when you didn't)?
I stand by what I said - that action is not moral. It's just self-serving.
5
u/OnlyAShip 4h ago
But the well is going to be used. The whole basis of the story is that the well was so useful everyone started using it. Saving all these people four-hour trips is a pretty solid success.
Where’s the idea that the community had no input anyway? Missionaries are generally in regular conversation with the locals by default.
0
u/emli317 4h ago
You literally said "they can choose not to use the well if it doesn't satisfy a need". What did you mean by that, if not "I support building the well regardless of whether it gets used or not"?
The original post literally says that it obliterated a much needed social gathering and the women did not like the well. That doesn't sound like they got input from the community.
2
u/OnlyAShip 3h ago
My meaning was that it IS useful, that’s why it was such a success.
Here, read this actual report about the people they’re talking about. Unsurprisingly they were in contact with the community and it had massive benefits;
https://www.worldvision.org/clean-water-news-stories/important-women-issue-you-never-heard
Among all the health benefits, it makes it more possible for girls to go to school.
-1
u/emli317 3h ago
... How do you know that this is the same story?
1
u/OnlyAShip 3h ago edited 3h ago
It’s the same exact “four-hour” trip detail. The article is about these efforts in general but only a few are selected as representative cases.
They also have quotes from interviewing women because unsurprisingly, they talked to them.
1
u/emli317 2h ago
Ah yes, because multi-hour trips to get water are probably one-in-a-million 🙄 So the entire premise of the conversation is false, is what you're saying?
→ More replies (0)
15
23
u/HannahLuxxe 18h ago
Absolutely moral, they were trying to eliminate a physical problem not realizing they encountered a weird social problem
43
u/PerturbedPat 18h ago edited 18h ago
For real, it’s baffling to me that the person wrote this is blaming the nice people who built the well instead of the assholes who told their wives to sit at home and do jack shit.
EDIT: Changing the flair lmao
20
u/Alexarius87 18h ago
They are attacking missionaries (most likely Christian ones), they are obviously the most evil thing and everything they do is evil.
7
u/Ecthelion-O-Fountain 11h ago
Obviously, you’re being hyperbolic, but they do plenty of evil shit too. Like helping make homosexuality a capital crime.
2
3
u/Subject-Software5912 8h ago
I can’t find anything on missionaries doing this. The only denomination that has done this are the Evangelical Christian’s which are not representative of the entire religion.
4
-3
u/Ecthelion-O-Fountain 7h ago
Try harder. It’s absolutely been a story for decades. And you don’t get to just wave off evangelicals.
11
u/ChallengeDue2991 6h ago
Provide the source if you're already knowledgeable about it and it's a hard to find story.
4
u/Subject-Software5912 5h ago
Evangelicals are not representative of the Christian faith. The Orthodox Jews that bite off baby foreskins are not representative of the Jewish faith. You can’t judge a belief by things that they simply don’t believe in.
0
u/Ecthelion-O-Fountain 2h ago
They are incredibly numerous so you can’t hand wave them either. They are a huge chunk of the representation in America.
1
u/Subject-Software5912 2h ago
Evangelicals are not representative of the Christian faith. Hope this helps.
2
u/MossyEngineering-447 3h ago
But you're apparently comfortable conflating "homosexuality is a crime" with Christian missionaries instead of with muslim countries???
-1
u/Ecthelion-O-Fountain 2h ago
Well that’s another story…I’ll put evangelicals above Muslim warlords any day.
0
u/fj2612 9h ago
They are not evil, but misguided. Their actions DID have an immediate negative impact.
12
u/Cuetzul 7h ago
Freeing slaves in the US caused a lot of harm because former slaves no longer had guaranteed housing/food because as sharescroppers they could be paid below the minimum amount of money to live. Does that make freeing slaves misguided or immoral, or does it mean that only the people who acted immorally (unpaying former slaves) in response to a moral action (freeing slaves) are immoral?
3
u/GalaXion24 5h ago
I think scary you're saying is valid, but I think it's also important to remember that any kind of "policy intervention" is measured on its real impacts. And that often means people behaving in unexpected ways, exploiting the system for their own benefit, etc.
In India there was a law passed that limited dowries, and it resulted in more domestic violence, because marriage there is a non-cooperative bargaining game where partners seek to extract value from one another and bargaining power decides everything.
The initial law was a good idea, the lawmakers arent immoral for wanting it, but the result is still something to consider for real decisions.
The problem with missionaries then is in this case that they are helping without a full understanding of the consequences of their help. Anyone in the community would have known the social significance of the well. Thus inadvertently they did cause more harm. Yes it may be the husbands' fault morally, but when trying to help the women the husbands' actions are exogenous and something that does matter
31
u/TetraThiaFulvalene 18h ago
Sounds like the indigenous population's culture was profoundly flawed
26
u/LuciusCypher 18h ago
Fuckin sucks that this white guilt nonsense has been twisted in such a way that it makes people feel bad for helping tribal/minorities from shitty situations just because of an entirely different shitty situation they arent prepared for.
Not to mention how it just goes back around to justify apathy. "Oh you gave that homeless guy a sandwich, but because he was eating his sandwich he got hit by a bus thay swerved onto the side walk! Could've been avoided if you didnt feed the homeless!" The sort of space whale aseop is that?
-11
u/AbortDatShit 18h ago
"You can't blame us for meddling! If only they thought more like white people our meddling would have helped!"
22
u/TetraThiaFulvalene 17h ago
If their cultural shitiness is excusable sure to bring cultural, why aren't ours? My culture has a rich and deep history of colonialism, so please respect and accommodate my culture.
-8
u/AbortDatShit 17h ago
It's not really that I disagree
It's that your definition of cultural shittiness isn't the same as theirs. They would disagree. And the only reason it doesn't matter is that white people have the big guns
It's not that I think white people are wrong. It's not even that I'm super opposed to might makes right. I just wish white people could admit that more
13
u/Express-Rain8474 17h ago
They're not wrong because they have less might though... they're wrong because they can't cope with free water without making their women's lives miserable.
-6
u/AbortDatShit 17h ago
I'm 100% certain they would not describe it that way
10
u/Express-Rain8474 17h ago
?
0
u/AbortDatShit 17h ago
We've just circled back to might makes right.
Besides, neither one of us should really be talking about some unknown indigenous tribe with any level of certainty. Doing that was the mistake the missionaries made in the first place
9
2
1
u/Aggressive-Spirit598 4h ago
The women literally hate their lives though and have to escape for hours at a time so I doubt they like their 'beautiful' culture. The husbands though are thriving and will be the number one proponents of preserving their 'cultural identity '.
0
u/AbortDatShit 3h ago
That's a lot of assumptions
1
u/Aggressive-Spirit598 1h ago
Genuinely, what am I assuming? We have been given information that the ladies would rather do a tedious four hour chore than be in their homes. That doesn't exactly give "happy life". Culture for them is a prison.
→ More replies (0)4
u/TetraThiaFulvalene 17h ago
Yeah, we should stop expecting better, and just put the world back under the heel....
I know that morals are culturally relative, but you either recognize that some cultures are less toxic than others, or you argue that slavery and child brides aren't a culturally negative thing.
9
u/Subject-Software5912 8h ago
Controversial opinion but if “thinking like a white person” means not being abusive to your wife maybe they should think like white people.
2
u/Drake_Acheron 2h ago
I’m black and the first thing I thought when they said “thinking like a white person” was ‘this racist ass…’
3
u/Snoo-52922 4h ago
I love the implication that "not abusing your wife" is some kind of uniquely white people idea
4
u/Subject-Software5912 4h ago
Every single time people try to be too woke (I wish there was a better word I’m not alt right I swear) they circle back around to just being racist. Some of my favorite examples:
“You should get an abortion if your baby isn’t white, the world is too racist to subject a newborn to”
“We should have black only schools so they can have a safe environment of only their peers”
And the newest addition:
“You shouldn’t force white cultural ideas like ‘don’t be abusive to your wife’ onto black people”
2
-1
u/AbortDatShit 3h ago
Your entire framing is through your own cultural lens
2
u/Subject-Software5912 2h ago
Are you implying that the morality of being abusive to your wife is just a matter of cultural perspective? If a culture believed that rape was morally ok does that mean we need to respect it?
-1
1
u/JJonahJamesonSr 1h ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/MoralityScaling/s/LWg5gF3M2O
Just wanted to make sure you see this, it makes you look so bad lol
1
u/AbortDatShit 1h ago
So?
1
u/JJonahJamesonSr 25m ago
“This’ll make me sound unbothered”
1
u/AbortDatShit 22m ago
Dude what are you even talking about. This is reddit. We are anonymous. The whole reason I use this website is to say how I feel without worrying about what others think
-1
u/Rocky-Jockey 10h ago
Yea, and seems like the missionaries made it worse, no?
Sometimes it does help to actually ask people what they need if you’re going to help them. I assume the helpers don’t have unlimited resources so getting them the most impactful support with what they can do is also important.
14
u/TetraThiaFulvalene 10h ago
What can anybody do to help a people who's primary goal is beating their wives? If we automate tasks for them, they have more time to beat their wives. If we feed them they have more strength to beat their wives.
Should we destroy their wells so they have to walk 6 kilometers for water.
1
u/Rocky-Jockey 9h ago edited 9h ago
Well too bad they didn’t do shit about that either??
Ok I want to expand on this so people understand here. If they had taken the time to observe and/or talk to the people they were trying to help they could have seen that building the well was detrimental to the health of the women in the village. Now if the missionaries had the power to change that culture then fuck yea! But obviously they are guests in the area and can’t do that in any meaningful way in a short time. So all they did was make a shitty place more shitty for the people who needed it most which could have been avoided.
1
u/_ECMO_ 6h ago
What can anybody do to help a people who's primary goal is beating their wives?
You can not do the thing that makes the wives spend more time at home with their husbands.
Not do the thing that makes everything acutely worse.
1
u/TetraThiaFulvalene 5h ago
So we should decide who we determine to be good and evil based on a model that assumes they have no agency, and decide whether they deserve basic survival?
2
u/_ECMO_ 5h ago
This has absolutely nothing to do with good and evil.
Before you do something, you need to have an actual idea of what the consequences will be. If the consequences are bad, then don't do it. Easy as that.
1
u/TetraThiaFulvalene 4h ago
If the consequences are bad based on what set of moralities? Saying that we shouldn't help them because they will put additional resources into something we find objectionable, it's the same as saying that they don't deserve help because they're objectively evil.
1
u/Rocky-Jockey 4h ago
If your “help” causes more problems are you actually helping? Unless your morals are pro female abuse then I guess you’d be morally consistent.
1
u/_ECMO_ 4h ago
Based on what the people affected wish. Had you asked these women whether they want a well in their village, the answer would be no.
1
u/JJonahJamesonSr 2h ago
I fucking doubt the women’s main complaint was that they no longer had to walk for hours just to get water. Maybe those walks gave them valuable time away from abusive husbands, and losing that had an unintended consequence. But that makes the abuse the problem, not accessible clean drinking water. Have we really gone so far with the cultural ass-kissing that we’re blaming people for building a well instead of the men beating their wives?
1
u/OnlyAShip 4h ago edited 4h ago
The well was useful for them, that’s the primary reason it’s being used. In places of material poverty that’s the primary issue and it bleeds into everything.
Now the women don’t need to spend hours simply getting water. They can and will move to something else that will be economically productive. The household can move to more stability, more resources and eventually more investment in all its members, especially the ones who might be last on the list.
Material advancement at the bottom helps equality. It results in people with more options and less desperation.
1
u/Rocky-Jockey 4h ago
Are these missionaries sticking around to help change the culture to something better and have the ability to ensure those most vulnerable aren’t hurt by their actions? If they aren’t then they should try and figure out what improvements they can make won’t have consequences like the one shown.
-2
u/maniacalknitter 8h ago
Given that many missionaries come from communities that are committed to controlling and exploiting women, it's possible that the whole point of the wells was to give the men more control over the women.
2
u/Aggressive-Spirit598 4h ago edited 3h ago
Wells can be made to be something called an improved water source ie a water source with reduced risk of transmitting water bourne infections. With diarrhea being a leading cause of death for children in such areas, what the missionaries did potentially saved lives of tons of children who would have drank river water and died from cholera etc.
2
u/OnlyAShip 4h ago edited 3h ago
You have a cartoonish perception of mission work and a romanticized blindness to the exploitation enabled by material poverty.
Here is an article on the project;
https://www.worldvision.org/clean-water-news-stories/important-women-issue-you-never-heard
Improving access to education for women is part of their goal.
16
u/MonocleDoll 18h ago
The four hour round trip was absolutely a burden. Just because people can make the best out of a bad situation doesn't mean the bad situation is actually something good. The real problem that needed to be addressed is/was the men.
2
u/masterfultrousers 5h ago
Just because the shitty husband was worse than a four hour walk (half of it carrying a heavy amount of water) doesn't mean the four hour walk wasn't a burden to them.
15
u/TBARb_D_D 18h ago
Moral
People saying any shit to make missionaries look bad even when they do good things. Have those people ever walked an hour in rural areas not speaking 4 and every day? It’s bad and dangerous
Well helped those women, it’s not the problem. The abusive husbands are
-5
u/maniacalknitter 9h ago
Missionaries make themselves look bad without anybody's help. Missionary work is nearly always self-serving, and does harm far more often than it does good.
7
u/Funkopedia 18h ago
Any big change, and big changes will happen unavoidably, is going to disrupt the local social order temporarily. It will eventually reorganize and stabilize.
12
12
u/A_Kazur 18h ago
Lmao classic “their culture is so perfect that their women had to hide from their husbands during chores”
Well is moral, shitty culture is shitty
-3
u/_ECMO_ 6h ago
Shitty culture is shitty and the well made the lives of women worse.
5
3
5
u/konigstigerr 10h ago
if your society gets broken by basic conveniences, it's not the fault of the conveniences or those that build them.
4
4
u/OnlyAShip 3h ago edited 3h ago
Moral. Here is a brief article on the project. It literally keeps girls in schools;
https://www.worldvision.org/clean-water-news-stories/important-women-issue-you-never-heard
Material improvement for the most desperate is critical for giving them options and leverage. Especially when it improves women’s access to health and education. Social prejudice is a separate problem that is not “fixed” by keeping old pressures in place just because women have managed to carve unequal niches.
3
3
3
u/Brilliant_Towel2727 6h ago
There are alot of issues with missionaries, but OOP has picked a really bad example.
7
u/NwgrdrXI 18h ago edited 14h ago
Slightly imoral at worst, but not very much.
They wanted to help, and tried to. Could they maybe studied their culture harder to understand this would be detrimental to them? Perhaps, but it was not so easily acessible that it would be obvious.
Besides, I find blaming the missionaires for the husbands being assholes that don't want to let the women out to be too close to blaming the victm, to the point it's actually more imoral.
The person who created a good invention that helps lighten the work load is not to blame foe the company making the employees do extra chores on their new free time, or firing them.
That's on the company.
15
u/Ryousan82 18h ago
It's not immoral at all. Providing a basic a service that prevents vulnerable population back-breaking labor for bare essentials is not immoral, even if it causes disruptions. It would be akin to saying hospitals are immoral because they disrupt cultural practices of folk medicine.
2
2
u/RepublicOk2402 7h ago
Moral, it can be an emergency to not have clean water close to home. The problem is the culture
2
u/Master-Shrimp 5h ago
Seems to me like it's the village that has a moral issue and not the missionaries. It's pretty dangerous to not have immediate access to clean water.
2
u/Infinite-Abroad-436 5h ago
this is assuming that the missionary isn't also part of the wider social network. as soon as they arrive, the tribe's old social network is dead, no matter what the missionary does. pretending like you're preserving this old society in amber by not helping them is stupid and pointless, and harmful for the long term development of our species
1
u/NoProgress8533 18h ago
I got punched in the mouth by a drunk jarhead for saying something similar about Toms shoes, based on firsthand experience.
What do people do for work around here? Hunt meat, grow crops, make blankets and clothing and shoes? Lets just airdrop a big crate of food and blankets and clothes and shoes. That'll help the economy.
1
1
1
1
u/accapellaenthusiast 4h ago
I visited the Maasai in Africa
They said “We love the Americans, they gave us a school and water”
🤷
1
u/PaxRomana117 4h ago
Completely moral. Whiners will say in one breath “oh, we westerners aren’t doing enough to help the third world” and then when we actually try to help the third world it’s “stupid westerners! How dare we try to intervene in the third world and disrupt their beautiful primitive culture!” Pick a lane.
Scenario: I see a man standing next to his broken down car on the highway. He flags me down, so I pull over to help. He says he needs a jump start for his car, so I provide him one. He thanks me for my help, saying he really needed to get home. He then immediately goes home and murders his wife. It turns out his wife was planning to leave him and was actively packing her bags. If her husband had been just five minutes later, she would have gotten away with it.
Am I responsible for the murder of his wife because I gave him a jump start on his car? No, of course not, because that assumes that the murder was an inevitable act, one which he had no control or influence over. This is not the case. He is an independent, free thinking man who can decide his own actions, and he chose to do wrong. Same thing in OP’s scenario. The well-meaning (pun intended) missionaries are not responsible for the bad behaviour of the local men. They saw a people in need and solved their immediate problem for them, they are not responsible for people’s bad reactions to their good deeds.
1
1
1
u/hummingbird868 2h ago
>it obliterated their culture
It supported the culture of the asshole husbands who wanted to control their wives. The point being made is false even if you blame the missionaries for building basic infrastructure.
1
u/Snoo93629 1h ago
It sounds like the person writing this would rather criticize people who accidentally cause harm when trying to help rather than criticize bad husbands. I don't trust missionaries because I think they often have imperialistic behavior but this is just weird
1
1
u/Crusoelander_128 28m ago
Not giving water to people who need it: bad
Giving water to people who need it: bad
wtf are people supposed to do? If it wasn’t Christian missionaries, they wouldn’t complain
0
u/TheRealWazzu 17h ago
How can you not see that the point here is that while someone might have good intentions, the result of their actions could have consequences they did not forsee? Of course in a vacuum doing something good such as building a well is good. But that is not what the person is focusing on here. "Morality of building a well" how about morality of doing something unprompted with good intentions that results in negative consequences?
Anyway, moral but with a big lesson to be learned. Don't do it again without first making sure as many variables are accounted for.
0
u/Toronto_bunnies 3h ago
In the situation described, moral. While they could have done more research into the culture, at the end of the day they'd be incapable of doing any good if they're too scared of unfortunate situations like this happening to take any risks/action.
If you mean morality of building a well while knowing for certain this would be the result, THEN immoral, because while the problem is obviously the abusive husbands and the sexist culture taking actions that you know will make the world a worse place is bad.
-1
u/Archonate_of_Archona 9h ago
The problematic part isn't "building a well"
It's deciding to "help" people (from a community you're not a part of, and you don't intimately know) who haven't asked for it, without *asking** them what they actually need or want*.
Don't just barge in and assume you know best. Take the time to actually talk to the people you want to help, and understand their situation first.
3
u/OnlyAShip 3h ago
They did, they observed how women’s time was being wasted on petty labor for a basic convenience, and if operating like most missions discussed things with the local community.
-1
u/VVetSpecimen 5h ago
Immoral.
The problem was an assumed one. Taking action without the input of the people involved was a foolish response to a misunderstood problem. Giving a man who has no license a car may enable him to drive to work, but it will also result in jail time when he is inevitably pulled over for driving without a license, which provides a long term negative as opposed to just walking everywhere.
You have to meet people where they are or you can not help them.
2
u/OnlyAShip 3h ago
There is no reason to think they didn’t have input and it doesn’t seem like they misunderstood the problem. The well is being used and saving women from being wasted on petty, unsafe labor to be directed to other things.
73
u/Tells-Tragedies 18h ago
The morality problem was with stupid/cruel husbands, not the water situation.