I think it would be safe to call them scum without worrying about the sensitivities of pond organisms.
Well, actually, what they did was kick and stone a 17-year-old girl to death.
I called them a name as a means of expressing my disgust with their actions.
Slightly different, I think.
Of course you think it’s slightly different, and I don’t blame you. We all tend to judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behavior. (And no, that’s not to excuse the behavior of the stone throwers.) I don’t care if you call them names. I don’t even personally care if you dehumanize them. I’m just saying that the first step whenever people want to rationalize what they do to others — as these stone throwers have done I’m sure — is to dehumanize them. My ancestors were also sub-humans. Jews and the Roma have often been sub-humans. And the stone throwers likely rationalized that they were not throwing stones at a human being on their level.
You were kind enough to stop with the “sub-human” description only, and fortunately no one looks up to you enough to take up a cause or go on a rampage stirred up by your words. But I think that, on the Dope, it might be better to take a more informed approach. Even if one or more of the stone throwers were sub-human, it stands to reason that not all of them were. One reference has already been made to The Lucifer Effect. It doesn’t just happen to sub-human mindless savages. It can happen to good people like you.
I’d be curious to see what the perpetrator’s of this crime receive as punishment from the law. If it’s a slap on the wrist like 90-days in the local jail, I just don’t see it as any kind of deterrent to preventing it from happening again to some other woman, or laying the foundations for change in such a culture, such that “Honor Killings” become the quaint custom people talk about in the past tense a generation or two from now.
How does it figure that not all of the stone throwers were sub-human? Is it such a stretch to define someone who drops a boulder on a girl’s head as sub-human or a savage? 50,000 years ago, cavemen were dropping boulders on each other’s heads like it was going out of style. Were they savages? Was anyone ever a savage? What does it take to be classified as such?
And don’t tell me that it can happen to ‘me’ too… Pa-leeeez, you are giving me headache. The day I drop a rock on a girl’s head and mush her brains is the day I take my own life out of shame and I’m not exagerating.
Liberal
Well, when I wrote “Slightly different,”, I was actually being slightly ironical. I meant that there’s actually a world of difference between calling somebody sub-human, in response to their participation in an atrocity, and actually participating in an atrocity.
In regard to this, we are in complete agreement. I too could be reduced to a level of sub-human savagery if placed under enough duress. That’s also part of what caused my initial reaction in this thread: a sort of, “There but for the Grace of God” feeling, if you know what I mean.
But then I did a little reading, and was shocked to discover that in some societies the practice was even, until recently, legal, and that in many others the official laws are seldom enforced. For example :
And dig this :
So – not only were the perpetrators not punished, but the clergy demanded that her lawyer be put to death for trying to help her. That’s just over the top, isn’t it?
Legal systems are not an expression of societal mores under duress, but reflect (at the very least) the standard morality of the cultures in which they are embedded. I’m not one to compare cultures, but if pushed into a corner, I would have to say that this is one instance in which I would find it very difficult not to evaluate my own cultural heritage as superior to that of Pakistani or Kurdish culture.
Ex-Tank:
Let us hope that their punishment is proportional to their crime.
I don’t have time to resopnd to everyone, but why must people insist that just because a subculture that our forefathers had used to do equally bad things, we have no right to complain? Certainly it’s a given that lynchings were bad, mmmkay? Does that mean that I, personally, am part of a lynching subculture?
And does this mean we don’t get to look at the frequency of these crimes against humanity? Certainly, even amongst subcultures that specifically support unethical killings, for instance, pro-death-penalty Texans versus Killing-Field-era Khmer Rouge, if one of the subcultures engages in the behavior MORE OFTEN, it makes them WORSE, all other things being equal?
And, in general, rural MENA and rural Islamic societies do this much more often than any other subculture I am aware of. Which does not mean that everyone that lives in the rural MENA supports this, but it does mean that the attitudes of the subculture is inferior to mine on this particular issue.
Right, and apparently you just didn’t get that I meant “How can anyone STAND THERE IN THAT TOWN SQUARE AND WATCH AND BE OK WITH IT”
Yep, I must try to be more clear.
So you prefer to assume I am a bigot so you have someone new to argue with in the pit?
When was the last time you remember an entire town of people getting together for a fun filled day of stoning to death a teenage girl in “Western culture”
The point others have made here, is that just because my culture once did shitty evil things does not take away my right to be horrified by others. And further, as has also been said, occurences such as these are very rare in Western culture today, but are part of daily life in other cultures.
Thank you, in many ways that was the point I was trying make, though mine was more raw and less well thought out at the time.
Good lord, are you kidding me?
You think your example is anything like the stoning? Show me another cite where it talks about how the entire town helped out and watched while cheering, and the local police let it all happen, then we can talk.
There are bad people doing crazy shitty violent things in every culture and society.
but,
Not many societies/cultures do these crazy violent things together as big group, as part of the accepted mores of the group.
Yep, one crazy guy killing a bunch of people is exactly like an whole town and police force killing an innocent girl.
Once is a crazy guy and one is a culture of voilence
Well, admittedly you’ve got me there. Historically, Western culture has largely abandoned stoning technology in favor of firearms, nooses, and pickup trucks. How far back do you think we would have to go before running into examples of communities banding together to deal out acts of brutal violence? Here in America, maybe back as far as the Civil Rights movement-- that’s what, forty to fifty years? Not even two generations ago. That’s not much of a legacy from which to condemn other populations wholesale. Who knows what the Yazidi culture will be like in fifty years?
Go ahead and be horrified; I am too. But when you say stuff like:
–you should bear in mind: the girl who was killed was also a member of that community, that society, that culture.
Therefore, according to you, she was also undeserving of respect or understanding, one of those people that should live in the dirt and be considered as worse than lower animals.
I know that’s not really what you meant to say. But if there’s any Yazidi kids out there surfing the net on their homemade, goat-powered PCs, and thinking to themselves: “Hey, maybe we ought to be a little more open-minded about the rest of the world,” they’re probably not going to be too encouraged by your standing invitation for Yazidi culture to eat shit and die.
And yes, our culture once did shitty evil things on a pretty regular basis, not too long ago at all. Are you also willing to condemn your parents or grandparents as people from a culture undeserving of respect, that you’re ashamed to be related to? I’m not. (Okay, I’ll say that about Texas, but that’s as far as I’ll go.) Likewise, I’m pretty sure that the entire Yazidi community doesn’t appear in that one video.
Bar B Q, Willie and EmmyLou. Renaissance Florence can bite me.
Being an ancient religion I’m sure Yazidi culture will be exactly the same in 50 years as it is now if they have anything to say about it.
Maybe, but that’s no reason to write them off yet. Judaism is also an ancient religion, yet they seem to be coming around.
I doubt that Haredi Judaism is going anywhere…
Admittedly, belief systems which rely heavily on stoning seem to have a frustrating tenacity. I think the real problem is that stones last so long. Any given stone in the Middle East has probably been used like 1800 times already. Somebody really ought to invent a biodegradable stone.
This event enrages me to the point I usually reserve for animal torturers and baby rapers. The facts are in front of us however. Western society, America specifically, is guilty, in it’s history, of mob-mentality murders based on religion, race, sex, and other meaningless shit that no one should die because of. To make it worse, those types of murders were SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE. ON A WIDE SCALE.
The question is, what of today? Does this society, does 2007 America, as a country, condone, allow, and even support these kinds of killings? Do large groups, upon discovering that some young woman of Christian creed has been seen and is perhaps in love with a young Muslim man, in, let’s say, (using a place famous for it’s crime) Detroit, go on murderous rampages killing, by any means at all, either of the couple? Further, if this DOES happen, does society, do OUR laws, here in America, and specifically in the state of Michigan APPROVE of it? Would a larger group stand around the group that was watching this killing happen and ALLOW the killing to continue?
I do not believe so. I think, as a culture, as a society, we are, that is western civilization is, in fact better than places where things like this are allowed. I think that a culture that condones this type of activity is inferior in it’s laws, inferior in it’s protections, and inferior in it’s societal structure. Yes, it is human beings that commit these atrocities, of course, because we do not consider animal-on-animal violence an atrocity, we consider it nature, we consider it simply “the way it is”.
We consider ourselves “superior” to animals, yet those that act as animals (as these people did) even though they do it upright with two arms and two legs, are somehow considered equal. This is frightening thinking, but it is truth. These people, who would, as a society, as a culture, be at best complacent,and at worst participants in such abhorrent and sub-human behavior are culturally inferior. I consider it then our duty to educate those who consider this type of activity acceptable.
The American south was, until the 1950s, (or a little later, depending on who you asked) culturally inferior to the north. Darfur is culturally inferior to the UK (specifcally Britain). Iraq is culturally inferior to Sweden. China is culturally inferior to Japan. And I mean this all in the aspect of human rights. America is not the absolute yardstick by which to measure human rights, but when our people, when those we charge with the protection of those rights violate those same rights, our society punishes them. Sometimes by death, completing the circle.
I do not, repeat, DO NOT consider those that commit crimes like these sub-human, or equate them with animals, however much their actions deserve that label. I condemn, and completely so, the culture that allows this behavior to continue unabated.
I do not believe that I, nor the people I know, work and generally associate with would gather together and stone to death a woman whose only crime was being seen with a man who was of a different religious creed. They may sneer, joke, even insult, and perhaps some of them might cast questioning looks toward the couple, and yes, we have a long way to go to prevent and change even the sneers, jokes and looks, but also we have come a long way, and evolution has proven superior the culture who does not condone killing someone for a completely superficial reason such as that.
buttonjockey308: Well said.
Smoke that, green lampers.