They killed Micky

[Skyman]

At least the Hamas version

http://tv.msn.com/tv/article.aspx?news=267405&GT1=7703

[jimmy corrigan]

crazy.

[Count Zero]

Fuck... I wish there was an easy way to resolve this sort of stuff.

[BlanchPrez]

I'm sick to my stomach about this. The fact that they decided to actually KILL a character, ANY character, on a CHILDREN'S show is just sick!

It's suck and disgusting.

Chris

[Skyman]

Well maybe this will cheer you up

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l2YuGAqNeg

[Count Zero]

[quote="BlanchPrez"]I'm sick to my stomach about this. The fact that they decided to actually KILL a character, ANY character, on a CHILDREN'S show is just sick!



It's suck and disgusting.[/quote]

When you have society where people die daily in your culture because of terrorist attack and military incursion, it really isn't suprising in that aspect. Yes, sick and disgusting, but I find it more disturbing that children would have to know violent death as part of their daily lives.



Think about it. They are trying to allow the children to be able to cope with this violent death that takes place in their lives daily. They are trying to make the suffering make sense and have meaning. So, when their friends and family die, they are martyred. How much different is that from when we tell children their loved ones died because it was "part of God's plan" or "God just needed them in Heaven"? When life is so fleeting like it is in that society, you get things like this.



I agree with our outrage, but some part of me thinks the outrage needs to be focused on the real cause.



Do I think a child should see something like this? Not at all, but when I consider the life these people lead, I can at least grasp the idea of why it is there.

[Scolopendra]

[quote="Count Zero"]Think about it. They are trying to allow the children to be able to cope with this violent death that takes place in their lives daily. They are trying to make the suffering make sense and have meaning. So, when their friends and family die, they are martyred. How much different is that from when we tell children their loved ones died because it was "part of God's plan" or "God just needed them in Heaven"? When life is so fleeting like it is in that society, you get things like this.[/quote]
[url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2075845,00.html]Some back-story on the Mickey Mouse ripoff.[/url]



Farfur's purpose wasn't so innocent as simply making death make sense. He was in essence a Hamas propaganda tool trying to groom the next generation of suicide bombers. Literally. Then there's the indoctrination of the lesser ji'had and selling the classical line (what Western reports generally inaccurately call 'fundamentalist') that the Dar-al-Islam ("House of Islam," self-explanatory) is destined to eventually conquer the Dar-al-Harb ("House of War," essentially "anyone who isn't us").



I only wish he were as mundane as you suggest.

[Neuro]

I recommend to you all a book called "Inside Hamas" by Zaki Chehab. Chehab really has the credentials to write about Hamas and I think it helps provide a rounded understanding of the operations of Hamas. I also recommend to you a book called "From Beirut to Jerusalem" for understanding the civilian impact of the conflict and its emotional weight for the people involved.

In any case, I assure you that our notions about childhood don't apply. Americans in their righteous indignation for children have lost touch with the value of life in other places. Childhood is only a magical, trouble-free place filled with supportive learning for the wealthy and the lucky. If you live here, you're comparatively wealthy and *very* lucky.

[branmakmuffin]

[quote="Neuro"]Childhood is only a magical, trouble-free place filled with supportive learning for the wealthy and the lucky. If you live here, you're comparatively wealthy and *very* lucky.[/quote]
Indeed. The lifestyle of the average lower-middle class American is probably as unimaginable to most of the world's population as the lifestyle of the Sultan of Brunei is to the average middle class American.



I'm sure even many poorer people in the U.S. have a microwave, a TV (maybe even two), possibly a car, a DVD player, an MP3 player, a cell phone, a computer, cable TV, etc., etc., etc.



In the U.S., we suffer from the "necessitization" of what used to be regarded as luxuries. Therefore many who have all those things don't view them as things that keep them (poor Americans) from being truly poor on an international scale.



That said, the ideal would not be to lower the standards of U.S. affluence so that the poor in the U.S. are as poor as the poor in most of the rest of the world, but to elevate international standards.

[Scolopendra]

That the Western child-concept does not apply goes without saying, but it isn't purely a problem with "Americans in their righteous indignation." That viewpoint is held by pretty much the entire First World and a good part of the Second as well; it's an almost universal concept in Western culture and in Far Eastern (technologically-enabled and thus projectable) culture primarily varies from the Western concept with the addition of a heavy emphasis on preparing for the rigors of adult life and organization... which was actually pretty common in the West up until about a hundred years ago.

One could argue that the Western value of life is extremely inflated compared to the rest of the world, and the universiality of not only child soldiery but the basic "life is cheap" concept in most Third World countries bears this out. It's been said that suicide bombing and other forms of active martyrdom are acts of desperation, which are of course not likely to be found in wealthy societies. Life gets cheaper as the average population gets poorer and governance becomes more precarious, even in the West (Volksturm, anyone?). The West can't handle 5,000 adult war deaths over the course of five years (when previously it complained about 50,000 over ten and millions over four-to-six depending on the part of the world in question); meanwhile, the extreme edge of Palestinian resistance is happily recruiting children.

That doesn't change the fact that Farfur is essentially nationalist (not necessarily bad), resistant (also not necessarily bad), obligatorially violent (bad) propaganda by Hamas to prepare children, who are still qualitatively different from adults, to join the fight against the Dar-al-Harb. It's just like Barney being multiculturalist (good), acceptive (usually good), obligatorially pacifist (probably bad) propaganda for Western children to indoctrinate them in Western values, which are in an interesting state of flux right around now.

That BlanchPrez find things like Farfur repellant is good, in my opinion, because it proves we haven't gotten so Pollyannish as to not make value judgments on foreign cultures that are diametrically opposed to our own and thus become so milkwatered in the belief of moral relativism essentially proving nihilism that we cannot protect our own culture from aggression because "we're no more right than they are." I will be the first to admit that the self-defined Dar-al-Islam believes it to be defending itself against expanding secular Westernism/Christendom and cannot really blame them for that, but standard statements concerning the inevitability of the Dar-al-Harb (us) falling under the aegis of the Dar-al-Islam are by their very definition imperialist (or, to borrow from Banks, Aggressive Hegemonizing) sentiments against us which of course require us to counter-defend our way of life.

Crummy how that works, but so it is.

[Count Zero]

[quote="Scolopendra"][url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2075845,00.html]Some back-story on the Mickey Mouse ripoff.[/url]



Farfur's purpose wasn't so innocent as simply making death make sense. He was in essence a Hamas propaganda tool trying to groom the next generation of suicide bombers. Literally. Then there's the indoctrination of the lesser ji'had and selling the classical line (what Western reports generally inaccurately call 'fundamentalist') that the Dar-al-Islam ("House of Islam," self-explanatory) is destined to eventually conquer the Dar-al-Harb ("House of War," essentially "anyone who isn't us").



I only wish he were as mundane as you suggest.[/quote]

Oh.. I know all about that. But, the reason they "killed" him is probably the "mundane" concept that I am discussing. It isn't a good thing regardless, but I can start to grasp why it may have happened.



The idea of preparing kids for death and teaching them about the glory of martyrdom is really fucked up, but I figure on some level it gives the misery purpose within their own minds and perception. People who are happy and able to fulfill their basic needs generally don't think this way.

[Neuro]

It's good to reject violence and icky things, yes. We should all be shaken, but it's not fair to judge without understanding. These aren't horrible people, but they are horrible circumstances, and that makes people act badly. It's also important to understand that it's not just about material wealth - many suicide bombers can provide for themselves and their families. Many are educated. What they lack isn't food, or a roof over their heads, what they lack is hope and the ability to enact change in any other way.

[Scolopendra]

Hrm. Perhaps, but I'm still not willing to concede the thought that the intent was to give death meaning in the same sense as it is meant in Western circles, in those rare cases when children's programming deals with death. Everything should be analyzed in context: Farfur's 'death' was at the hands of a faux Israeli soldier and every opportunity was made to vilify and dehumanize the enemy. The net result is that he's -still- living to his purpose not so much as a "give death meaning" tool but as a propagandistic tool.

Think of it this way. In Western civilization, the goal of "giving death meaning" is to actually give life meaning. If your death has meaning, then you can live your life unfettered by the fear of dying (theoretically). In this case, "giving death meaning" only has meaning itself in terms of the conflict between Dar-al-Islam and Dar-al-Harb, with the intent of growing another generation of zealots to Fight and Die for Good. It isn't to give life meaning, oh no. Life has no intrinsic meaning to ideologies under the threat of extinction--if life had so much meaning, why do you think they emphasize martyrdom? Why did Christendom in the oppression period emphaisize martyrdom?

There's a distinct ontological difference in preparing people to die so they live well and preparing people to die so they die well.

[Scolopendra]

[quote="Neuro"]It's good to reject violence and icky things, yes. We should all be shaken, but it's not fair to judge without understanding. These aren't horrible people, but they are horrible circumstances, and that makes people act badly. It's also important to understand that it's not just about material wealth - many suicide bombers can provide for themselves and their families. Many are educated. What they lack isn't food, or a roof over their heads, what they lack is hope and the ability to enact change in any other way.[/quote]
As I said, suicide bombing is a tactic of desperation.



This is where expressing my opinions becomes tricky. The Palestinians, in general, like [i]anyone[/i] else, are not horrible people. They are, simply, people, with all the good and ill which comes with being human.



Those Palestinians who are zealously dedicated to the fight between the House of War and the House of Islam to the latter's eventual hegemony (such as "Hamas") are horrible people. I'll qualify this in a moment. Hamas and Hezbollah both operate charities and hospitals, which are [i]good[/i] things. They also kill innocent civilians and run schools which are no more than indoctrination factories for future killers, which are [i]bad[/i] things.



Still, as the profession of arms go, a pencil pusher in the Pentagon is still responsible via association when a USAF bomb blows up an orphanage on accident even if he's nowhere in the pilot's chain of command or has nothing to do with the procurement of that particular bomb or line of bombs. He may not be [i]as[/i] responsible, but for supporting the profession of arms, he [i]is[/i] morally culpable. Likewise, all of Hamas and Hezbollah suffer via association. Yes, they do good insular things, but they do horrible external things. I'm not going to fall into the thought pattern that a murderer is merely an extroverted suicide, and so yes, this makes them as a group horrible people to those external parties they threaten, such as us. As individuals, some are less horrible than others, but all are horrible for supporting the doctrine of the group they choose as moral free agents to support.



Does that make us horrible people too for (by association) supporting what our country does to Iraq? Yes. Such are the wonders of moral relativism. Does that make us horrible to [i]us[/i]? Only if we choose to define our worth that way.



Does that mean that Hamas and Hezbollah, to themselves, really are the saviors and freedom fighters they make themselves out to be? Yes.



However, we are not them and while we must understand their self-image in order to accurately gauge their motivations we [i]must not[/i] judge them by their own rules. Doing so weakens our ability to make moral value judgments on our own terms, which is the entire raison d'etre of our own culture--without the ability to make value judgments within our own society, society falls apart as it has no standards to adhere to.



I know Said pointed out in [i]Orientalism[/i] that the tendency to suggest the East/West divide as the conflict of diametric opposites is false, and he's right as far as that goes. There is still a qualitative difference in culture, however, which will inevitably produce friction and from that friction conflict, be it economic, political, social, or military. All of these conflicts are going on right now and always have been (except maybe the military ones; those appear more sporadic). More specifically, when a group defines itself by how it will attain hegemony against another group, those two groups [i]are[/i] diametrically opposed in ideals as on the battlefield of ideas they cannot coexist.



So yes, I stand by my thoughts that Farfur and the government that subsidized his creation are morally negative, wrong, bad, 'horrible' entities. In so far as the people associated with those entities support those actions, they are also morally negative, wrong, bad, and 'horrible.' That is not to say that they are not without their virtues, and that they are not in the greater scheme of things perhaps good people, but in the triumphalist policies of the ideology they support they are anathema to me and that status needs be changed: by rational dialogue and compromise and time if those are applicable (and I think, in the long run, they are), by force if it needs come to it to defend our own existence.



Is a suicide bomber a bad person? Yes. That person, as a free moral agent--no matter how desperate--[i]chose[/i] to put on a bomb vest or drive a car bomb and kill a bunch of people who speak a different Semitic language from himself. Is it unfortunate, nay, wrong that his circumstances are so hopeless that he felt--was not, but [i]felt[/i]--compelled to do such a thing? Yes. Is that partially our fault by supporting Israel and tacitly supporting its holding of the Palestinians as second-class citizens at best? Yes. There's plenty of blame to go around for everyone, and the chain of causality is oddly circular because the world's a messy place and that's how it goes.



Is a guy who dresses up like Mickey Mouse and tries to convince children that it's a good thing to go out and die for Islam a bad person? Yes. Follow the same argument as previous.



The world is an analog place. There are [i]always[/i] options, and very few people are truly [i]compelled[/i] against their free will to do anything. Does that mean alternative options are always visible or desirable? No. Human beings are very good rationalizers, assigners of guilt, and defenders of their own egos; they are perfectly good at convincing themselves that their course in life is set by powers not their own whether this be the case or not. Does that mean that humans are perfectly free and not limited by chance and reality? No. No matter what O'Brien says, he can't really float like a bubble and kiss the ceiling; how much power The Party has is irrelevant. In a two-stage switch question of whether people can blow themselves up or not blow themselves up, though, to me (admittedly existing outside the immediate system) the available options are pretty damn clear.

[Neuro]

I don't even think people dedicated to Hamas are horrible people or that a suicide bomber is necessarily a horrible person. I think that the people inside Hamas are running the best war they can with the materials they have. It isn't only the insurgent non-state entities that use the civilian population, all of those people are involved in war simply by being there, they have already been involved. You can't point at Hamas without pointing at Israel, or at Israel's supporters.

[Scolopendra]

Which I pretty much did. And pointed at us too.

To us, they're horrible people and should be lest we start calling their tactics acceptable. That would be hypocracy of the highest form: because they are the underdogs, they may use reprehensible tactics such as suicide bombs and child soldiery, but we may not.

To them, we're horrible people because we tacitly support (as a monolithic national bloc seen from the outside, relatively unaware of the amount of dissent in this country towards everything) their oppression under Israeli occupation.

I'm trying to be very careful to couch my value statements in terms that indicate, yes, they do only apply to me and mine. For as long as this continues, the entire world as a global community takes the blame for allowing it to continue. On the realistic side of things, though, there's not much for it to do but continue without some sort of sudden revolutionary shift towards an entirely new state of affairs.

(edit: My justification for calling suicide bombers bad people is the same justification I use for calling any willful murderer going out and killing noncombatants a bad person: choice and personal responsibility. If someone has a bad time at work, gets stressed out, and feels like he's pressured to go shoot up the place, yes, he's a bad person for he is still a moral agent capable of making the choice. As he got more and more stressed, he always had the option of seeking help. Even though he may be 'psychologically compelled' out of desperation, such an action is still malum in se given its absolute reprehensibility to the needs of maintaining a civilized society where people don't go randomly killing other people. He may indeed be a tragic bad person, but a bad person nonetheless lest we consider him not responsible for the consequences of his actions.)

[Neuro]

I suppose the difference in my mind is that you perceive them as murderers and I perceive them as soldiers. Ultimately, there's not a whole lot of difference, it's violence resulting in dead people and it's evil. No question about it, killing people is evil. On the other hand, I just can't bring myself to condemn every soldier and every bomber as a bad person even if they are doing evil. Mostly, I guess my heart breaks for them.

[Neuro]

And yeah, you pretty much did say it, but I wanted it out there explicitly. We can't be so careful that we don't just go ahead and say what we mean.

[Neuro]

Also, we don't have a newbie of the week, month, year award, but if we did, I'd fork it over. Thank you for showing up.

[Scolopendra]

Aw, thanks. I just do what I do. ^_^

This is what I value about Western ideology: the open forum of ideas where people can disagree and, optimally, not hate each other for it. You may view a terrorist, a murderer, and a soldier as very similar points on the same line, but I see them as distinct entities based on purpose who occasionally share the same qualities when they spread out from their own definition and start poking into others... which is another way to say that they also lie on a continuum, although I don't see it as a linear one.

For this argument, let us say that all three sets {terrorist}, {murderer}, and {soldier} are all subsets of {killer}. All three kill people. In my view, what defines a soldier is someone who kills others under the laws of civilized warfare; at this point in time, those would be (to a large extent) the Geneva Conventions. By a code of duty or honor the soldier is obligated not to follow orders that contradict those rules. The helo pilot that trained his guns on the soldiers ordered to destroy a village in Vietnam and every soldier that's refused to follow an illegal order meets this ideal. The soldier's list of acceptable targets is thus distinctly limited to combatants. The soldier fights for a cause, usually a geopolitical, ideological, or natural (i.e. defense of homeland) one.

This definition is of course dependent upon 'the laws of civilized warfare,' which have changed as civilization has changed and of course varies from civilization to civilization. Under my own definition, Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists classify as soldiers, as you suggest, within their own societies. I accept that but refuse to accept it under my own judgment of the situation in my own meme. After all, seeing both sides of an argument is nothing like believing both sides to be equally valid, which I consider abysmally milquetoast for my own druthers (See Bradbury for similar thoughts on the matter). Judge not, lest ye be judged, but to judge is human and to judge is vital for any social interaction to proceed; what matters is the judgment be considered with whatever worth it has and never with any worth it doesn't. I may think someone's wrong and his opinions silly (to me, "silly" is like "wrong" but with no moral or factual connotation) and him slightly silly for it--value judgments, the lot--but that has nothing to do with the price of rice in Peoria; they aren't very important judgments and thus I must take care that they don't affect how I treat that person when it comes to giving him the respect he deserves as an equal moral entity.

But I digress, and rather badly.

The murderer kills, in hot or cold blood. The murderer has no limit on whom he kills, no minimum nor maximum in age or number. She may kill one person, she may kill twenty, she may kill a million. He may kill a baby, one of his peers, or an ancient on life support. What separates the murderer from the soldier is that the murderer's range of targets is unbounded, limited only by the motivation of the murder.

To me, the cringe-word "terrorist" is a subset of "murderer," albeit one dedicated to an ideology or goal-beyond-himself, like a soldier. The terrorist by his very definition wishes to enact change through fear, and aims to achieve this fear by attacking anyone and everyone he considers his enemy, be they men with guns, the families of the men with guns, people who look like the families with the men with guns, infants, the infirm, the elderly. People who have absolutely nothing to do with his state in life or his ideology beyond the most tangential and fanciful of connections and associations are his enemy, and they must be killed or cowed to change their ways to meet the ends he supports. Those sorts I refuse, as a moral decision with a clear mind, to feel sympathy for. I can and do feel sympathy for their families, their friends, their societies, the reasons why they fight, but they themselves I cannot support. Their methods are anathema to everything I believe in and strike me not as "silly," but as "wrong," and by that assertion I cannot but conclude that they are "bad."

There is a distinct qualitative difference between an organization that designs weapons to be more accurate to kill less people and an organization that designs weapons to be less accurate to kill more people.

And now I take a step back and be a bit more subjective, a bit more relative. Are they horrible bloodthirsty sociopaths lacking empathy and wanting nothing more but bathe in the blood of children? Of course not. Terrorists laugh, they cry, they tell ribald jokes, they probably worry about their kids inbetween telling them to go off and martyr themselves for the good of the cause, so on and so forth. Sadly, though, one trait that humanity has never been able to shake is that no matter how kind someone is to their own circle, to the people one knows and loves and who love one back, one can be the most vile, cruel, despicable being ever brought to this benighted Earth to those one hates. Stalin loved his niece like any doting uncle should. Hitler was a vegetarian concerned with the plight of animals. Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Heinrich Himmler, Lieutenant William Calley (My Lai if you don't recognize 'im), Captain Ernest Medina (his CO; remember what I said about the profession of arms), the list is too long to recount; all of these were human beings with their frailties, their laughs, things that made them as flesh and blood and human as you or I. Every bad man and woman that has ever, does, or will ever sully the planet with his or her existence had, haves, or will have.

Does that make them not bad, but merely misunderstood?

That's a choice every individual must make on her own merits as a free moral agent. That's a choice every society must, consciously or unconsciously, come to terms with collectively as a superorganism made up of individual moral agents. For my own part, to say that these people are not bad but merely at worst morally neutral victims of their own circumstances--bad childhoods, miswired brains, situations seeming hopeless, following orders--is a dangerous thing. It robs them of their culpability... no, "rob" suggests someone doing wrong by them, turning them into victims.

It grants them moral invulnerability. It hands them excuses. It frees them from the obligations that fall upon all individual moral agents, the crime and the glory of being human. It grants them the boon of being less than human, no more responsible for their actions than dogs driven mad by thirst, wasps laying their eggs in living spiders to continue the species, hurricanes following the chaotic patterns of uncaring wind and heat transfer. It reduces them from a warning that any one of us could be like them into a mere force of nature or a pitiable cartoon villain. If only Wile E. Coyote wasn't so hungry, he wouldn't constantly chase the Roadrunner and get beaten up all the time. No comparison can be made, it's farcical.

In the end, yes, I cannot... no, that's wrong. I choose to feel that al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and their ilk are wrong, morally negative agents opposed to what is good. It's not just a matter of vilifying "the enemy," although I would be lying if I said that wasn't part of it. "Always look to the good in people," Pollyanna said. It's a noble ideal and I... understand those who try. I may not always respect them as I should, but I wish them luck nonetheless. I simply see looking to the good in someone trying to kill me and, more importantly, destroy what I believe in as somewhat counterproductive since as far as I know I'm not worth killing and, as I naturally believe what I think is right (a truism, even though I'd like to think those beliefs are held after a good deal of intellectual debate and philosophical thought), I would like those institutions and ideologies to not just continue but thrive. The presence of Fatah and all the poor stuck-in-the-middle Palestinian civilians who don't want to die for Allah, don't want to die for country, and just want to be left alone to live their own lives show that the choice is there. People choose to be terrorists; just as they choose to be soldiers and (most of the time) choose to be murderers... or choose to not kill at all.

[Skyman]

Damn dude. That was well written piece of post I have ever read in a long time. I'm truely impressed. I say this because I don't fully agree with everything you posted but you say it with such clarity that I'm afraid my perspective would not have any where close to the same coherent thought.

Here is where I think I diverge from what you posted. When it comes to passing moral judgement on someone/or group of people (in this case), I feel at odds because to do so I have compartimentalized, in my head, human beings into an entity that I can now distance myself emotionally from. This being based upon a behavior or decision they may endorse or have done. I don't think rationalizing the behavior or decision is a great idea either because it is what it is and devalues the impact or the consequence it has incured. I have problems incorporating that part of the Western ideology because the polarization of dualities implies a separation of me from them. It also does not doom the other person, IMO, from possibility for change or doing something that validates us as a whole group of people living on a twirling rock in space.

I like how you describe terrorist and the mode of intent by which it functions. If I could also add that with the certain actions it creates an oportunity for change in essence that it literally lays fear on the table for it to be exploited for change and is not exclusive to the 'terrorist' agenda. I say this because your statement made me reflect on the last presidential election and how fear played a role in who got elected and how fear has allowed many changes to be enacted in our goverment that would not have otherwise considered. Just some thoughts that you have stirred in me. The part that probably do not fully jive with is terrorism being part of a within group subset of Murders. Mostly because a person can be threatened with terrorism without actually killing. Like kidnapping, and hostages. But that's an irrelevant observation that just felt like pointing out.

At this point I'm running out of gas to write. I really like the way you discussed your points...that was just fabulous. Oh and I wouldn't mind throwing down some battle tech. It's been awhile.

[Neuro]

Oh, I'm saving this for after dinner. This is absolutely teatime reading.

[Scolopendra]

Joy, BattleTech. I wubs me my giant robots.

Thanks for the compliments. I do understand that no matter how firmly I hold my own views, no one else has or even should agree (it'd be nice, but no big deal). I understand the difficulty with intellectually compartmentalizing yourself from other people who are just as human as you; I was the same way for a long time. The thing is, though, that the human brain can't help but categorize, stereotype, and abstract people it doesn't have much direct contact with. If the monkeysphere postulate is right, any given person can only truly see 150-250 other people as full, complete people; everyone else is abstracted, even if it's abstraction in a positive light. Think how many times you've had to think "that person is just as much a person as I am," or something along similar lines; that's you cogently trying to work against the abstraction your brain forms. That's fine and natural and is just the way things are.

How I see it, if I am forced by the limitations in my physiology to abstract people and the "us" and "them" memes are nigh unavoidable, I may as well do it with forethought and make my distinctions based on reason. "Us" and "them" is inherently natural. People are different, groups of people are different, cultures are different even though they are all human and share the basic underlying principles of humanity. The mental necessity for such categorization is Darwinian; humans survive by cooperation, mostly, and those one grows up with and one is familiar with make up "us" and those outside that group are different and alien and "them." We're surrounded by "them," all kinds of "them," and its our obligation as free intellectual agents to think that over and determine whether such "them" feeling is reasonable or not and act accordingly.

Let's say there's a white guy who grew up in a white neighborhood and he meets a black guy. The black guy is "them," but he's just a perfectly normal schmo like anyone else. The reasonable conclusion for the white guy is to ignore whatever discomfort he feels around "them" and work past that. Ingrained biases due to upbringing are inevitable; everyone is a little bit racist, a little bit sexist, a little bit ageist, a little bit -ist in general based on however they grew up. The sad thing is that all these phrases are instant cringe-words that stifle debate; rather than racism being identified as a natural result of centrism due to someone growing up in a more-or-less homogenous local society, having it to any extent is an evil thing which must be expurgated. What does that do? Drive it underground, repress it, and completely avoid actually solving it by addressing it.

Think about it this way: the Victorian English did their absolute best to stifle and control human sexuality into extremely narrow 'proper' channels. Women were supposed to be physically unable to achieve orgasm according to the science of the time; the legs of couches were covered in those little skirt things because it was afraid their shape and suggestion would arouse men (seriously). Is it any surprise that the Maquis de Sade, who wrote in the eighteenth century, only got a real underground following in the Anglophone world in the nineteenth? When even normal, healthy sexuality is right out, well, there's no reason not to go for the extremes, isn't there? You're already ashamed and frightened and certain to be shunned if your caught, so go for it, man. The moral of the story (to me) is that natural things should not be repressed, as they only tend to get worse. Controlled, most certainly. But vilified? Oh no.

You also touch upon redemption--I perfectly believe in it, and heartily support it. Okay, so I think Hamas is a bunch of bad terrorists, to oversimplify. If tomorrow they decided to completely change tack and try to change their circumstances through peaceful protest, the exchange of ideas, and other such Gandhi methods, well, they don't fit my 'terrorist' definition anymore and so I'm willing to let bygones be bygones. The Truth and Reconciliation Boards in South Africa were collectively one of the most brilliant ideas ever; forgiveness is a virtue, after all. Hell, in my eyes, they could resolve to be proper soldiers and limit their attacks solely to the Israeli government, military, and associated institutions--proper wars can be pretty terrifying too--and then they'd classify as 'soldiers,' which I'd be much more comfortable supporting.

Hm. You do have a point that terrorism need not be lethal, but it is inherently aggressive. The entire point of hostages is that one kills them if one does not get what one wants, though, so I feel that makes something of a weak counterexample.

Plus, allowing terrorists outside of the murderer circle allows a better domain diagram to be constructed... and I'm always one for domain diagrams which can be constructed in two-dimensional space.

(Edit: oh, wait, I remember why "terrorist" falls under "murderer." The set of "killers" was assumed, even though one can be a soldier without killing people as well.)

[Skyman]

Once again very nice
Yes I do agree it's part of the human cognitive function to group experiences and such together. Also the part about the cognitive dissonance. That's a given along with centric orientation. I think the part that gets me with the terrorist moral stereotype/categoriazation/compartmentalization of another is that once I do I lead myself down a path of making a person or a group of people a 'them' which makes it more easy to endorse or do behaviors that are no worse that the behaviors that the 'them' have commited...but I can now rationalize that it is them and not us to compromise a moral compass that I supposedly adhere to because them is the exception. I say this because I make the assumption that a terrorist must go down the road of making his target(s) a 'them' and have a distance emotionally away from 'them' to be efficient at the behaviour required to create terror. That's why being judgemental on the bad or good thing kinda rubs the wrong way. Just my opinion and I know this is probably not written with the most coherent manner. I appreciate your ability to follow along.

Fear is such a powerful piece of poo. As Yoda put it: "Fear is the path to the Dark Side;
fear leads to anger. Anger leads to
hate. Hate leads to suffering."

[Neuro]

I don't really feel greatly separated at all from many of those terrorist people. Inductive feeling permits me to identify with them greatly.

I'm only really very familiar with the workings of some of the groups Scolopendra talks about. It is certainly the case that there are whole groups of right unredeemable bastards. Hitler was mentioned, and I'm sure he was a right unredeemable bastard. He was, however, an aggressive conqueror in the great and ancient tradition of conquerers. Stomping on other people for fun and profit makes you an asshole, no question about it. Here we consider the intent of the aggressor, to stomp on other people for fun, profit, racial dominance, territory, resource, etc. Because people are very into us and them as noted below, you can't rely on your neighbors to peaceably trade and for everyone to get what they need. That's because we look out for ourselves first. That's why we have tvs and running water and many people south of the border don't. There's a judgment I'm willing to levy against the whole human race, that's the core of evil, right there.

Hamas was born out of oppression. No question about it. The Palestinians are an oppressed people in a place of almost unimaginable hopelessness. They had no lands, they were denied their holy places, many through the circumstances were denied the hajj, they were ghettoized, encamped, and marginalized. Faced with an enemy far more technologically advanced, far better supplied, and far better supported, let down by an ineffective government (what government could've been effective?) it was time to wage war. This isn't war as we understand it in our black and white view and I am unwilling to assign a value to our version of war and doing war that would make it better than this other version of war. War is hell. There has never been a noble war. There is no redemption in war, no true glory. There is just killing, the willful killing of another human being who has probably never done you any harm because someone told you to. Perhaps there's some kind of justifiable reason. It is the case that you can justify going to war. I believe the United States was justified in going to war after being attacked at Pear Harbor. It was necessary, but it was not any of those things people attribute to war in movies or in the propaganda. It was terrible. The things that happened were evil. Innocent people suffered. Not-innocent people suffered. Here, too, is a clear moral decision: acts of war are evil.

So, if my land were attacked, I would fight back. I do not have the moral fortitude to lay aside conflict. I am not Christ, I am not the Buddha, I am not Gandhi. I have a shotgun. Like all people, I possess the capacity for evil.

If I were a Palestinian and felt that my land had been threatened and taken and my people oppressed and my family crammed into a refugee camp that crammed 23K people into an area under 1 square km, and my government failing me, I might pick up that shotgun. Except there, they don't get them. They're not permitted. Hamas' military operation started with one old Carl-Gustav, an unreliable Swedish weapon, and a few knives. Guns could not ever develop into the mainstay of their armament because of the logistical situation. These people could not openly train soldiers, could not openly arm them, can not even raise a military in the way that we have discussed military conflict in these posts, with conventions and soliders and regulations that must always be enforced. These people were doctors, even pediatricians, educated people, people trusted to make principled decisions in society. These people have determined that a war is necessary and they must wage it. These people are civilian soldiers. They are Husbands, wives, parents, children, people of all ages who have banded together to fight their war. Tell me why on earth the husbands, wives, parents and children of the other people shouldn't be on the line for the sake of an armchair observer's tender morality? There is no greater evil in the actions of these soldiers than in the evil of the man in the trenches. They are all contributing to the same evil for their own principled, desperate reasons. I am sorry they are doing evil. I wish that we all had the strength to be a Buddha or a Christ or a Ghandi. I know that I do not and that if I were in their shoes, I, too, would do evil.

Are some of these people right unredeemable bastards? Absolutely. What unredeemable bastard doesn't love a little slaughter? Wars are often driven to great success by these real fuckheads of the human race. If there is a hell, these fuckheads are going there. If you're going to fight a war and engage in evil, win the war. Don't ever fight a war to lose it. If you're doing something truly necessary, then you need to do it by whatever means. If you have time for comparative morality in the middle of slaughter, you should maybe reconsider the necessity of the whole thing. Like, maybe you could sit down and talk. When that's not at all possible, then you might as well turn the unredeemable bastards loose because you need to win a war. Don't fuck it up.

So it may be fair to compare some individuals in Hamas to Hitler, because they're really that kind of fuckhead. It isn't the case, though, that everyone who straps on a bomb and walks into a cafe or through a checkpoint is like Hitler. They're participating in a principled struggle where there are no boundaries, only a need to win or die in a greater sense than individual death. They're also doctors and engineers and workers and housewives and people like me. They don't have a shotgun and they don't get to join a military like people here do. Why would a high school girl target only soldiers? She wouldn't, because she isn't a soldier, herself, only a person thrust into a war, soldier de facto.

[Scolopendra]

Well, in my thinking, Yoda is an idiot. Fear is, again, natural and serves a very important purpose: one who truly lives without fear tends to not live very long. Anger is the same way. When in a crisis situation, one without a lot of training otherwise can only respond with fear dominating or anger dominating; more often than not, a scared man is far less effective at dealing with the situation around him than an angry man. Anger need not lead to hate; count the times you've been angry at a friend and not ended up hating them.



Hate... hate is a cancer on the soul and does lead to suffering all-around. But that's the only part of Yoda's little schpiel that makes any sort of sense. Goes right up there with "Only the Sith deal in absolutes" (which isn't Yoda, but it goes to show Lucas generally can't write dialogue to save his soul).



Neuro, I completely understand your argument, but it seems based primarily on emotional sympathy with those involved. I still reject it, though, because the fact that these people are justified to themselves to do what they do does not necessarily make those actions justifiable to me, even if I may act the same way in a similar situation. I maintain the choice to do otherwise still exists, and certainly the terrorist strategy hasn't been particularly effective compared to the negotiative strategy or the compromising strategy. You say that in their place you would do evil; perhaps this is honest. It is still your [i]choice[/i] to do evil.



What I think we have here isn't so much a failure to communicate so much as a disagreement on principles. Does Hamas have its own principles? Undoubtedly. However, they do not stop at liberation from Israel. They continue to the complete conquest of the Dar-al-Harb. That means us. Are they really that much a threat? No, but it is still a clear-cut statement of opposition, and with the glove thrown down I can't agree with the proposition of deciding that they're just as good as we are because they have their own set of principles they're fighting for. That weakens our resolve to defend our own institutions, because with that reasoning our institutions and principles are no better and no worthier of defense than theirs. Just because someone is principled does not make them immediately equivalent to anyone else with principles. I already pointed out that, to themselves, they are soldiers, and that's fine. To me, they aren't.



War is certainly hell, no doubt about it. But [i]their[/i] desire to win by any means necessary does not obligate [i]me[/i] to consider their strategies legitimate by any stretch of the imagination, even if I consider a small portion of their goal (Palestinian freedom) a very good thing. They certainly don't consider Israeli airpower or armor legitimate strategies.


[quote]These people are civilian soldiers. They are Husbands, wives, parents, children, people of all ages who have banded together to fight their war. Tell me why on earth the husbands, wives, parents and children of the other people shouldn't be on the line for the sake of an armchair observer's tender morality?[/quote]
They shouldn't be on the line for my armchair observer's tender morality. They shouldn't be on the line because they are [i]not[/i] civilian soldiers. They did [i]not[/i] choose to fight. It's reprehensible (and somewhat self-defeating) enough Hamas is willing to sacrifice its own children to fight a war; simply because it is willing or 'has' to stoop to this level does not mean everyone else has to as well. Let's go back to the issue of choice. Assuming you actually would do evil, would you [i]choose[/i] to pick up that shotgun and, oh, kill an Israeli kid because he's part of the Enemy's United Army against yours? When you know your own doesn't extend beyond the borders of your own group? Hamas isn't a self-sustaining organism, it needs to recruit from the outside, and sometimes it has as bad a time recruiting as the US Army does.



The Palestinians are not this monolithic bloc of a people united in the glorious fight against Israeli oppression, after all. Hamas and Fatah [i]both[/i] share portions of the popular support. Most Palestinians would very much prefer that they and their children would not die in any conflict from anyone, and this citizen-soldiery you speak of is a sham outside of Hamas and similar organizations.



Yes, I mentioned Hitler. I also mentioned a US Army captain and one of his lieutenants. The names of the NatGuard at Abu Gharaib would do just as nicely. Yes, any one of us can be evil, but never did I say irredeemably so. Nature abhors infinities almost as much as it does vacuums. I did not mean that Hamas was a bunch of Hitler clones; that was a statement concerning the nature of people who choose to be bad, even if they thought they were doing it for the good (a very St. Augustinian concept, after all).



You see, the inherent difference between our viewpoints of this lies in our disagreement on the power of free will. Your verbage seems to emphasize lack of control: "thrust into a war, a soldier de facto" (many people have been 'thrust' into wars and never fought; those were people hiding in houses quietly crying and waiting for the fight to go away, which seems reasonable to me). I emphasize that at all times people have the choice to do this or that, that the choice to pick up the shotgun would be yours, the choice to take that bomb vest and walk into a crowd or run away... choices abound.



It's a free country and this armchair moralist can call them terrorists while you can call them principled soldiers from your own armchair. We clearly come from very different angles and more like than not aren't going to convince the other of our talking points, and in the end it's really sort of moot anyway. I'm basically saying that to me and me alone their actions are reprehensible and why I think that way; I gather your argument is that they to themselves are justified and you can commisserate; because these are statements of opinion and not fact, they don't actually conflict.



Hmmm. I'm thinking we should have a conversation about comparative philosophies over a bottle of port at some point. I think it'd be rather enlightening.



(edit: it's sort of tangential, but I want to be sure I understand: your judgment on the core of evil is economic inequality, or the tendency to look after ourselves first?)



(edit #2: whenever I say "us" Israel is not included.)

[Dragonkin]

I'm going to put in my two cents and then leave this be, as even I find it to be too hot a topic:

We, as Americans, will condemn the actions of those we feel are wrong, or sympathize with the actions of those we feel are wronged, but we cannot truly understand those actions. As anyone who has travelled will no doubt tell you, other countries are like a whole different world unto themselves. Until you have lived in those countries, and experienced what those who live there experience, it is hubris to the extreme to judge their actions.

This is a major reason I don't weigh in on international issues. I can't possibly fathom what goes on in the heads of "terrorists," or "religious extremists," or "insurgents," or whatever bloody name you want to give them that makes you comfortable. I don't know these people from Adam, and I don't share any common ground with them, other than species.

Do they have choices? Indubitably. But they aren't the same choices that you, I, or any other American have to make, nor are they influenced by the same sources that our decisions are. The long and the short of it is this: we're all entitled to our opinions about what happened (and continues to happen), but in the end, that's all they are; opinions.

[Skyman]

Yeah Lucas blows when it comes to dialogue. My understanding of the Yoda phrase is in regards to the dominating fear that you pointed out...but it's irrelevant because I put it up there on a tangent anyways

The whole evil thing is such a slippery slope. I'm glad you wish to clarification because it would help follow along better

[Scolopendra]

[quote="Dragonkin"]Do they have choices? Indubitably. But they aren't the same choices that you, I, or any other American have to make, nor are they influenced by the same sources that our decisions are. The long and the short of it is this: we're all entitled to our opinions about what happened (and continues to happen), but in the end, that's all they are; opinions.[/quote]
Ding! And the big kewpie doll goes to the dragon in the fetching silver scales!


[Quote=Skyman]The whole evil thing is such a slippery slope.[/quote]
Yes, but the fallacy of any slippery slope is that one need not inexorably slide down it.

[Skyman]

[quote="Scolopendra"]


Yes, but the fallacy of any slippery slope is that one need not inexorably slide down it.[/quote]

especially if that one is aware of it