I recommend reading this section of the “Spanish colonization of the Americas” Wikipedia article, which has plenty of sources. Obviously they weren’t saints, but, at the time, they were “the dawn of human rights” (cited in the article) and took Christian values very seriously, which is also why they converted all the population forcefully. There’s no denying that, but, as a silver lining, education and religion were almost one and the same, and they did build many universities, schools, etc.
When I visited the United States, they always tried to paint it as “they were all equally bad” when it came to colonizers in the museums I went to. However, I feel like that is because the “situation” with natives was way worse in North America than it was in South America.
In the Spanish empire IIRC they were all given citicenship, so yes it could have been handled better, even in that era. In fact, the latino ethnicity is the result of the mix between the natives and the colonizers, which happened because they were integrated.
Father and mother are probably the two worst examples. Mother is “mamá” in Spanish, and “mama” in Japanese, not because they’re related, but because babies make that sound a lot.
That said, I agree with you completely. It’s just that that specific example bugged me.
I have so many “tumblr thoughts” throughout the day but since I haven’t got an account there I can’t post them anywhere else, they wouldn’t be accepted unless they were a screencap.
Ironically Plato takes this into account in his allegory. There are lots of levels to “knowledge” (which he equated with goodness); we could be in the same spot just with our heads turned, or right behind the wall, or outside the cave but looking at the reflections in the water. And in each stage everyone believes they’re right and that they know the truth (except maybe in the last one). Honestly I think with fedi we just managed to turn our heads.