Why is it wrong to care more for our friends?

Great Debates
1

Gee, how stupidly self-centered of me. :wink:
I stand guilty of having more feelings for the countrymen of the countries most closely allied to us.
Culturally, Linguistically & Militarily, the Citizens of the UK, Canada & Australia are our best friends. :slight_smile:
I do get more upset at an attack on them then the constant mindless violence in the middle-east. :mad:

I never liked the fact we did not deploy our Navy in support of UK in Falkland’s war. :mad: :confused:

I have always felt Americans = USA & Canada and Latin American covered everyone else in the hemisphere.
I have seemingly silly hopes that someday, North America would unify in much the same ways that Europe has started to. :o
Of course I also hope that someday their will be a single benevolent world Government and all this hatred & fighting will stop. :dubious:

Bit of a rant, but is it really wrong to care for the British more than other non Americans?
Is it really different than caring for Family first, friends second, neighbors third, etc.?

This is in response to several other posts I’ve seen.

2

It’s a perfectly natural response but one to try to minimize. The innocent victims of 9/11, Madrid, London, and Bali were equally innocent. Virtually all had nothing to do with the political issues that the terrorists supposedly are fighting for. On a conscious level, I believe an innocent Iraqi life is no more precious than an innocent Briton. But since I have more affinity for the British people, I too have more sympathy for them. I try to fight this feeling because I don’t think St. Peter is going to ask me, “does the suffering of people you like bother you?”, rather it is going to be “does all human suffering bother you?”

3

jrfranchi: Culturally, Linguistically & Militarily, the Citizens of the UK, Canada & Australia are our best friends.
I do get more upset at an attack on them then the constant mindless violence in the middle-east.

“The UK, Canada and Australia”? Not New Zealand? What’ve you got against the Kiwis?

“Constant mindless violence”? You sound as though you think that Middle Easterners just go around being violent without thinking about it, like somebody dropping a gum wrapper on the ground. Whatever your personal level of concern for British victims of violence as opposed to Middle Eastern ones, I don’t think you can make a plausible case that the Middle Eastern violence is less significant because it’s “mindless”. (In any case, the London bombings are evidently closely tied to issues involving the Middle East—in fact, they were apparently perpetrated by the same people responsible for some of the violence in the Middle East—so I don’t see how you could argue that they somehow represent “thoughtful” violence as opposed to the “mindless” kind that doesn’t bother you so much.)

jrf: I have always felt Americans = USA & Canada and Latin American covered everyone else in the hemisphere.

Well, just FYI, Canada, the USA, and Mexico are generally considered parts of North America, while the Latin American countries other than Mexico are considered to make up Central and South America. The term “Americans” is generally interpreted to mean specifically the people of the USA, or less commonly all residents of all the Americas.

If you personally like to attach a special ethnic/linguistic significance to the term “Americans” so that it means only Canadians and USans, fine by me, I guess. But you should be aware that it’s not the standard usage and other people may misunderstand it.

jrf: Bit of a rant, but is it really wrong to care for the British more than other non Americans?

Far as I’m concerned, you can maintain whatever personal hierarchy of affection you want when it comes to ranking your fellow human beings on your scale of caring. However, I think you’ll find that lots of other Americans (by which I mean USans) feel more personally attached to other foreign countries than to the UK, so don’t expect everybody to share your preferences.

4

**Kimstu: ** “The UK, Canada and Australia”? Not New Zealand? What’ve you got against the Kiwis?
Oops, sorry, I would include them also, I have a very bad habit of thinking of New Zealand & Aussie as one, like I think of US & Canada as one.

**Kimstu: ** You sound as though you think that Middle Easterners just go around being violent without thinking about it, like somebody dropping a gum wrapper on the ground. …

Sorry, it comes down to constant reports of terrorism and suicide bombers and freedom fighters and religious zealots expressing their hatred of the west or the Evil Americans or Westerners or that Shiites worships the wrong ways or Kurds are infidels. It adds up to white noise for me. I’m not claiming and indeed acknowledge this is not an enlighten view. I’m just trying to be honest.

5

Hume viewed sympathy as a commodity. He then noted that like most commodities:

(a) most of us have a finite supply of it;
(b) it thus has a value to us; and
© it is innate human nature (and probably part of evolutionary psychological adaptations) to expend valuable commodities (money, labor, food, and also sympathy), disproportionately on (in rapidly/concentrically diminishing proportion) ourselves, our family, our friends, and our nearer neighbors. I don’t know that it’s ever been otherwise.

Paraphrased, but I find it a valuable analysis.

6

Ooooh, there’s gonna be some very pissed-off Canucks in here in a little while …

7

jrf: *Sorry, it comes down to constant reports of terrorism and suicide bombers and freedom fighters and religious zealots expressing their hatred of the west or the Evil Americans or Westerners or that Shiites worships the wrong ways or Kurds are infidels. It adds up to white noise for me. *

“White noise”? But American and British soldiers are dying there because of it. Are you saying that you feel more emotionally concerned about a Londoner killed by a terrorist bomb than about American soldiers killed by insurgents in the “white-noise violence” of the Middle East?

That doesn’t sound likely. I think that what you may be driving at is just that you’re more upset about victims who are more like you or personally closer to you (the “family first, friends second, etc.” analogy). The type of violence they’re victims of—“mindless white noise” vs. “thoughtful and serious”—isn’t the real issue.

In other words, the reason you’re more indifferent to Middle Eastern deaths isn’t really because you think that their violence is more “mindless”. Rather, you’re more indifferent about them because they’re less like you, or not as close to you.

As Bob said, that’s a perfectly natural feeling. But it’s probably not what we should consciously base our policies or concerns on. Our moral status in the world is based on our claims to adhere to universal moral principles of democracy, equality, justice, and all that. Those principles forbid us to treat any of our fellow human beings as second-class because they’re not like us racially or culturally, or because they don’t speak English, or whatever. So we should try not to do that, even though it may be a natural instinct.

8

Sums it up pretty well, I think. I’ve always felt rather exasperated with people who seem to think that everyone everywhere on the planet is supposed to be every bit as precious to me as my closest kin and friends. It just isn’t realistic to demand such an attitude of anyone. I understand and accept that I have certain moral obligations to other human beings simply because they are human beings, but I don’t think that means I should be constantly wracked by grief and pity because somebody, somewhere, is suffering.

It sounds harsh, I know, and it’s not like I’m completely devoid of feelings for my fellow creatures. But I mean, hey, come on, there are limits, folks …

9

The limits are those imposed by necessity, i.e., our recognition that if we tried to find, manufacture, expend, and effectively put into action ever-greater supplies of the limited commodity of sympathy, each time we learned of a suffering person whose sufferings we might be able to alleviate or commiserate with, we’d (quickly) become paralyzed with grief, guilt, and inaction – which can’t be good for society as a whole.

10

Your right, that has a lot to do with it. But the “white noise” part is if everyday you read about violence in the Middle-East, it is easy for a lot of people to tune it out.
The Bombings in London caused immediate reactions for me because it doesn’t happen very often, I do care more about the UK then the Middle East and bombings in London strike a cord in me like a bombing in NYC or even Paris or Tokyo.

Again, I don’t say this is right, I am just trying to bring to the table what I think is a fairly normal reaction.

11

Why do you think you needed to add “It sounds harsh, I know…”?

I think it means that humans are obviously capable of more than the tribal response of caring for only their “own kind”, and we know it.

Not attacking your reply personally here - it’s fully understandable. But I also think we are capable of more, and as your own post suggests, we are aware of and (in varying degrees) guilty about that.

Long story short: The day we are able to mourn and feel outraged by the deaths of any peoples, regardless of tribe (or “our kind”), is an evolutionary day for humanity.

Will it happen in our lifetime? Ever?

I don’t know, but I’m not holding my breath. Sadly.

12

Another vote for it isn’t wrong, exactly . . . but it isn’t exactly right either.

I’ve been thinking about this a fair amount since my mother told me that someone I went to junior high with died in Iraq. Mom found out by reading the list of dead on Memorial day, looking for towns that were familiar, and then decided based on age and familiarity of name that it was a former classmate of mine.

That guy, whom I had probably not thought about in at least a decade, has been on my mind ever since. Not all the time, but I’ve thought about him more than all our former classmates put together. It bothers me a lot that he died in Iraq. A lot more than the deaths of all those generic other soldiers.

It isn’t that my former classmate is more important in the wider scheme of things, it is just that he is more than a face and a name. He’s cute, and smart and I had a crush on him once upon a time.

More generally, I think it is natural to care more about people and situations that mean something to you. Some friends of mine are much more carefully following the story of the girl missing from Aruba- because they’ve been there and they have a teen-age daughter.

On the other hand, it is kind of selfish to only care about those who are like us- especially when you start thinking about large groups of people and are more concerned with people who look like you, or think like you or speak like you. If we treat those “like us” better than those who are “not like us”, how can we ever expect those who are “not like us” to become like us?

But the basic tendency to divide the world into “us” and “them” and care more about “us” is natural, human, and selfish but not truly wrong.

13

::golf clap::

14

Well, but: maybe others will see that there are reciprocal benefits to being [like us] rather than [like them]. If we believe that there are certain benefits to being [like us] vis a vis [like them], this is an incentive for them to improve their way of life. Example: Westerners probably care more about Westerners dying in terror attacks than about Afghans being killed by Afghans in tribal warfare. This is at least in part because Westerners throw up their hands at being able to help, effectively, a part of the world in which people may be feuding with every countryman who isn’t a first or second cousin. So, the idea goes, eventually some Afghan sees that in Britain, someone in Manchester can be horrified by the death of someone in London, whereas in his country, he can expect not sympathy or help, but probable attack, if he ventures beyond that big rock at the end of the valley. Maybe (a grrrraddddual process, I’d strongly suspect), some wily Afghans decide they’d rather, on the whole, live like Mancunians or Londoners rather than how they’d been living. If at this point the Westerners begin to sympathize more with any ill that befalls Afghans (because Afghans are now polo-shirt wearing suburbanites with nice lawns, or at least some other [more like us] personae], then the “in group” favoritism has had a net positive effect for everyone.

15

IMHO No, it isn’t wrong to feel more for friends than for strangers. It is part and parcel of this “human nature” thingy we are all subject to in varying degrees.

We are most certainly a tribal society, beginning with the family and extrapolating outward. Always have been, always will be.

Having said that, it dosen’t mean that when I hear about a busload of Iraqui citizens being blown to pieces, it does not affect me. The useless waste of human life always pisses me off.

If, after reading this in the headlines, I then read a story about a busload of high school kids in my hometown whose bus crashed, went over a bridge and ten students were killed, would I or should I feel worse for one or the other?

I think the answer is obvious and inevitable.Human life was lost in both situations but I had a distinct connect with one and only a passing interest in the other. Am I a bad person? Do I have a disrespect for foreign lives? Of course not and don’t anyone who enjoys the view from the high road try and tell me different!

Oh, AndPolecat , No I don’t think y’all are going to see those Canuks you were talking about. When you live next door to the same neighbor for this many years, you tend to develope that “us” mindset. Doesn’t mean you agree with everythiny the folks next door do(sometimes they can right get on your nerves) but as a very wise man once told me, " Its easy to like the friend who has no faults, a true friend likes you in spite of them".

Mt opinion, FWIW

16

No, not at all, you’re simply being human.

OTOH, it would be callous to dismiss human suffering “just becuase” “it happened to them”.

So- as long as you care- you are allowed to care for for those closer, of course.

17

Part of me wonders if we would care more about the killing of “non-Westerners” if the media paid more attention to them.

If NPR covered every suicide bombing in Iraq like they did the London bombing, maybe our sympathy for Iraqis would be at the level it should be. As it is now, every suicide bombing over there gets about five minutes coverage on the evening news, about the same as baseball highlights. No wonder it doesn’t seem so important to us.

I suppose the question is kind of like asking “Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?”

18

I would guess that there are more Hispanics living in the United States than Anglo-Saxons.

I do agree that it is natural to find it easier to symapthize with people who are more like you. I had a journalism professor in school who kept a “Third-World Disaster Clip File.” Each year he would post the “winner,” which was determined by dividing the number of reportd dead by the number of column-inches for the story.

Neat quote on the subject:
“The central fact of this century will be that the Americans speak English.”

-Kaiser Wilhelm II

19

Well, we heard from Hume. . .

Bentham might point out that prejudice in your actions in favor of your friends is an impediment to the efficient distribution of utility – i.e., it gets in the way of achieving the greatest amount of human happiness. Applying this geopolitically, it’s understandable that you’d want to back up your friend’s property claims off the South American coast, but what if the world in general would be better off without his control of those islands? (Not saying that was the case – I know very little about the Falklands dispute).

This idea can be taken to absurd lengths, but I tend to agree with the sentiment. It’s certainly not wrong to feel more sympathy for those who are close to you, but you should try to minimize the impact that that sympathy has on your decisions. It’s unrealistic to expect it but, ideally, everyone’s interests would count equally when making a moral decision.

20

I care more about my friends and family than other people. And yes, that is human nature.

However, I don’t consider the average Londoner to be any more “kin” to me than the average Iraqi. Why should I? I’ve never been to London, I only know a few people who have been there (none of whom live there currently), I’m not even Anglo-Saxon ethnicity wise. How is an average English person more of my “friend” than an average Iraqi? Both groups exist outside of the group of people who are collectively my friends and family. I can see having regional affinity–after all, if my hometown was bombed I’d be pretty upset about it even if none of my family was killed or hurt, because it would be traumatic for them and chances would be good that the bombing did directly affect someone in my “personal network.” But England? That’s totally out of my sphere. (Not to say I didn’t feel bad at all, I did, it just didn’t affect me as much as a bombing in my hometown or current city would. And god, I hate having to tack eleven billion disclaimers on every post.)

And like someone said, if you’re judging a people’s “worthiness” to be mourned by the relationship they have to America, why are there no tears for victims of violence in Africa, Eastern Europe, or Central/South America? There are millions of Americans who have ethnic or cultural ties to those areas, some of whom have lived here for a much shorter time and so maybe have more connection with their homeland than Anglo-Saxon Americans. Or does common culture mean nothing, and the only reason you “support” England is the fact that they’re allied with us right now?