Actually the OP mentioned neither Arabs nor Muslims. Which is a good thing, insomuch as the perpetrators of the stoning in particular were neither Muslim nor Arab, but rather Yazidi Kurds.
I agree the OP teeters a bit on the edge, but I’d cut it him an at least initial break for shock. It is a pretty fucking horrifying scene and hell, I feel superior to the folks involved myself.
Sadly Kurdistan, like a lot of rugged backwaters from northern Yemen to the Hindu Kush to 19th century West Virginia, is very much Hatfield-McCoy territory as Ex-Tank alludes. It’s one of several reasons I’ve always been less than sanguine about the prospect of a stable Kurdish entity, despite the best hopes of many. It may be by far the most stable area in Iraq, but that’s grading on a very generous curve.
An unremarkable event, except for the fact it was posted on YouTube. Many Iraqis, like many of their ME neighbors, have very…interesting views on female sexuality.
Good point. Maybe we are all just fucked up. As I said, I am ashamed of being human in general. Superior does not mean perfect, just…well, superior perhaps.
But, on the whole, I still can’t but think its different - not that I condone of the prisoner abuse that went on.
Lets compare:
American soldiers, probably most not really wanting to be in Iraq in the first place, humilate and torture various adult “enemies”. People they think are out to hurt and kill them (whether that is true or not). These are mostly young adults who signed on not thinking they were going to actually be in a war.
or
A community of normal citizens, family members drag a 17 year old girl into a crowd and beat, kick, and stone her to death for for for for for “being seen with a Sunni Muslim man”
Both are wrong. Lying to my mom about taking a cookie from the jar is wrong. Both are wrong. But, there are levels or wrong, and this kind of thing is disgusting.
And both kinds of “wrong” can happen anywhere, regardless of nationality, religion or race. We’ve had our share of lynchings and other cruelties in this country.
A) I started with a statement of superiority, that is true. That I would not do, act, or think like these people - I would not kill innocent people for bullshit reasons - that makes me superior to people that would
B) I did not relate to race. I related it to the people that do these things. If that all happen to be a certain race, you tell me which one. I’m don’t think a race is inferior, as a generality, I think that people like this are inferior.
C) Yes. If thinking I am superior for not wanting to kill teenage girls for who they talk to is wrong, then guilty I am
D) No. I call to action against, no a race, but against a theory or thought that advances and advocates such brutal immorality.
Lets all stop being politically correct - some cultures/societies are brutal and harmful, some are less so (though none are perfect). Prentending that is not true, acting like we have to be fair to everyone, is intellectually dishonest.
Well, that certainly sounds like a racist, or bigoted, statement, and since I know you aren’t a racist or a bigot, I’m sure it must have come out wrong.
In all honesty, there aren’t many cultures as violent, vicious, primitive, and vengeful as the our own American one. What was it Coulter wrote after 9/11? We should kill all of their men and convert all their women to Christianity? Killing all their men is more than a 12 to 1 vengeance ration, my friend. Limbaugh said that Abu Ghraib was no worse than your run-of-the-mill fraternity hazing. crowmanyclouds posted an interesting bit of Americana. Even on these boards, Scylla has argued that we’ve been too soft in Iraq, and need to implement a policy of genocide if we really want to win.
Americans certainly don’t have a moral platform from which they can pass judgment on other cultures or races.
Where did I single out Muslims or Arabs? I pointed out that this particular brand of belief is horribly evil. Did I say all Muslims and Arabs are evil?
This, to me, is the problem. You try to point out that there is a group of like minded people somewhere who disgust most of humanity, and you are painted a racist. That is complete bullshit.
If this is mainstream belief of the Yazidi, then I condem them. Implying that I am implicating all Arabs and Muslims (which is a mix of religion and ethnicity) is a big giant strawman.
No, we shouldn’t tolerate it, nor do I think any reasonable person would. But for my part, not tolerating it doesn’t require me to assume any sort of inherent cultural superiority .
First, race is different than religion and culture. I am condeming the religious belief and culture that encourages this shit, and I admit that. It has nothing to do with where someone lives, or what color they are, are what thier name is.
And second, no shit. Did I not say I was ashamed to be human today? I know humans can be cruel, and that bothers me! But it has as much to do with culture, as it does with human nature. Yes, shit people in every part of the world do horrible things, but when was the last time you saw an entire town turn out to watch a teenage girl get beaten to death by her family and friends in the cultures of the US, Canada, England, Germany, Belgium, Japan…it happens in certain cultures and not others. Am I wrong?
You are sick of racist pussyfooting? I am sick of shit defending of ruthless cultures and religion that encourage this crap.
Its on? Let the argument be evils of certain religous and cultural belief, because accusing me of racism is a huge fucking strawman.
Not so sure we can tease these two factors apart all that easily. Some, at least, would argue that our picture of “human nature” is culturally determined.
I wonder if human nature, as a derivative of evolution, is to protect our own. When culture supercedes overall “human” we kill outsiders and defectors in order to protect our own. When “humanity” supercedes localized culture and belief, we see that we are not different, and maybe will protect our own - all of humanity.
I often find this argument perplexing and frustrating.
At what point would we be allowed to say, “You know what, those people (whomever) are inherently fucked up and their society is categorically inferior in this way: xyz”. Never? When is one society allowed to say that about another society?
The alternative, not being allowed to say that, is to say “Yay! Every society is different but equal, every society is no better and no worse than any other society. Yay World!” While virtuous, this approach eventually breaks down as one that is sensible.
I’ll point to Darfur. Darfur is a vast wasteland of horror: Mass rape, killing and child sexual slavery. And no, I’m not going to provide a cite. Are we to say, “You know what? That sucks. But hey, that’s how they do things over there. And who are we to judge, to interfere? They have the right to construct their society as they see fit. So kill and rape away. Vivisections? Sure, it’s your right.” It’s sounds stupid, doesn’t it? Because it is.
I daresay that those who commit the horrors of Darfur are on the other side of the line, the line where we dare to judge. Where do we draw the line? I don’t know exactly, but I know Darfur’s on the other side of it.
In this regard, I certainly “DARE” to say that our society is better than their society. Call me self-righteous, call me judgemental. Whatever. I could not care less. Darfur is inherently, catagoricaly wrong, and so is caving in a girl’s skull as socially accepted punishment.
Well, let’s try to tease apart what I see are two separate issues:
Condemning an atrocious act of violence.
Asserting that my culture is superior to another culture.
The problem I’ve got is that I just don’t see where I need to assert 2) in order to justify or assert 1).
It’s obviously easy to condemn this act and the values that led to it. I can even condemn the culture or set of beliefs, religious or otherwise, that support the act or require it. But I’m not sure why doing so would necessarily entail asserting the superiority of my own culture, especially when I know that it has its own history of gratuitous violence, and in some quarters still advocates hate and violence even today.
I don’t think anyone has shown up in this thread thus far, at least, to argue that we shouldn’t pass judgment on the event, or to defend it as an example of cultural diversity. I’m guessing that the overwhelming majority of Kurds in the world are as sickened by it as I am – maybe more so, since it was an act committed by their own culture group.
Shrug. Okay.
You’re self-righteous and judgmental.
Yeah. I agree.
Celebrating cultural diversity ought not extend to defending the stoning of 17-year-old girls. Nobody in this thread is arguing that it should, as far as I can see. You, Ex-Tank, and Fat Chance seem to be arguing against a figment of your own imaginations.
Let’s try this statement on for size: Canadian society is superior to Yazidi Kurdish society because we never (or at least very rarely) have “honor killings”. If and when one is attempted in public, nearby police officers don’t stand back and watch.
Tell me how this statement is incorrect and/or racist.
Yazidi Kurdish society is superior to American society because our young men do not take up a rifle an indiscriminately murder 32 of their fellow students.
Would you consider that to be an incorrect or racist statement?
In fact, following your logic – that entire cultures can be reasonably blamed for specific acts of atrocity committed within that culture – one could reasonably claim that virtually all Europe cultures are superior to American culture as well, on the basis of my statement above.
One would, in fact, be hard pressed to find a culture inferior to that of the US.
There are no words to express how disgusting this is. Honour killings are prevalent in so many Islamic countries - Pakistan, Saudi Arabia - and is even state-sanctioned in places like Iran and Afghanistan. There was even one recently a few miles from my house in Oxford.
It’s something that needs eradication from the cultures in which it exists. Amnesty has been campaigning against the practice for decades, but nobody listens.
(Assertions of cultural superiority are subjective, no matter how awful the practice. IMO this looks unspeakably barbaric to any right-thinking person. But the US looks quite barbaric to me because there is state-sanctioned execution there, and they bomb the living shit out of innocent people in countries they choose to diddle in. Does that make European culture superior to US culture? I suspect most Americans would disagree that it did.)
Your example references the actions of a single mentally and emotionally disturbed individual. The stoning discussed in this thread was the act of many people, and was allowed by the police who were present at the time. There’s a world of difference. While a single event is by no means a representative sample, the CNN link provided states that an average of twelve of these “honor killings” are reported every year in Iraq alone; over a thousand are reported every year throughout the world.
So yes, in the context of this thread, your example is incorrect.
Besides, if I were to sincerely declare the superiority of any society, it would be of European society, not American society.
Fair enough. We can’t use a few dozen examples here or there to characterize an entire culture. We need something that is both large in effect while also enjoying mainstream popular support. Oh, I got one!
Yazidi Kurdish society is morally superior to that of the U.S. because it doesn’t get into pointless, greedy wars of aggression which results in the dissolution of entire societies and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.
I think I understand what you are saying: That violent acts can be condemned without the necessarily requirement to judge the culture in which they occur as inferior, and that any given culture or society is sufficiently faceted, substructured, and subjective in its interpretation that it is impossible to distill absolutes based on analysis of said culture for the purposes of determining a suggested cultural inferiority. Do I have that right?
If so, I ask for argument’s sake whether it could ever be appropriate to absolutely judge one culture as superior to another. Could we even conceive a hypothetical where this would be true? For our purpose, I’ll invent a society where the population makes it a point to (Oh, I don’t know, something totally horrid) vivisect three quarters of newborn infants sans anesthetic. Would it be improper to judge such a society as inferior as compared to, say, Sweden? Why or why not? If not, might it nevertheless serve practical purpose towards overall wellbeing to do so?
I mean, let’s take the notion of crime. In my society, there are opposed cultures in terms of determining grounds for imprisonment. The dominant culture is able to imprison those who do not share their views regarding those grounds. One culture is absolutely judging another as inferior and is acting by throwing the weaker culture in jail. Whether absolute judgment is proper seems to be academic in this case and practically I would say it works out pretty well from the overall society’s perspective in that there is less crime. Overall, the larger society which is comprised of the two smaller, crime-polarized societies is better off through said absolute judgment.
This point leads back to one I made earlier where I suggested that, at some point, for practical purposes and to serve overall wellbeing it serves to dispense with academic arguments and to judge absolutely. Am I wrong in arriving at this conclusion? If so, how?
