I think that it is an overall good thing that people can go to Internet and express themselves, and discuss. But there are problems. One problem is if we are even trying to find a common reality, some basic things we can all agree. The other is the way we discuss: Are we really argumenting with logic or are we just tryin to bully each other?
Bullying doesn’t work by logics, but by pressure. When someone bullies you in a classroom or any other place, if he succeeds to put you in a corner and make you feel that “everybody thinks you are a loser”, it seems like he won, and you need a lot of strength to get out of there. It doesn’t matter who is actually right, from a logic point of view.
Isn’t that precisely what a lot of people are trying to do in their “argumentations” nowadays? Sometimes people just choose words that are strong, to put the adversary on a corner, by pressure. Using strong words is not a crime per se, but we must must never make it more important than the logic of the reasoning itself.
But people a lot of times use words not to examinate the relations between things, but just to appeal to people’s emotions. Like, you say to some teacher, “you are being authoritarian because you push marxism to kids”. Then he says, “you are the one defending an authoritarian capitalism”. I was not saying I see no problems in capitalism, I was just saying that you can’t set people free with a monolithic thought solution. But he pretended he didn’t hear what I said, then just picked the word “authoritarian” and used it to turn it all into a meaningless ping-pong. He shuted the real discussion.
Of course this kind of “not-reasoning” happens all the time in Internet, especially in moments of great controverse. Words are chosen not after carefully examining their meaning, but for the power they have to push people to the corner, logics or not.
But we should care about the meaning. Like in a time of war, when someone accuses the side they don’t like of “genocide”. You may feel it will be wrong to say it is not genocide, because there were actual civilian deaths – because it is a war – and you may feel that, saying it is not genocide means that you don’t care for the deaths.
But the word “genocide” has a specific meaning. It means a slaughter with the intention of eliminating a population. Unfortunely, civil casualties happen in every war. I know that making this differentiation require that we touch something we would prefer not to.
If you can’t tell, I am someone who once thought I would never have to touch this matters, I thought I could live my life apart from it. But it is not fair with people who need to defend themselves, if we don’t take a realistic look at the reality of war.
Not every war is fought with the intention of eliminating a population. A war is not necessarily genocidal. A war is a confrontation of two opposing military forces. You are right if you think that, ultimately, people who cause wars are bad. But not everybody who fights wars is bad. Because if someone attacks you, a lot of times you need to strike back. I think a war is justifiable when defeating the opponent military force is really crucial for your own safety. Then, you try to act in the most ethical way concerning the civilians, but the casualties that happen don’t constitute “genocide”.
Intentions matter. If you have a neighbour who is sworn to your destruction, he says clearly that he wants to eliminate you, and make a diabolical attack aiming precisely the most vulnerable, he is the one with genocidal intentions. If you were pushed to a war, and you win, you will probably have less deaths on your side than the other, especially because you are the one not playing with your own people like disposable tools. You have to defeat that military force that is trying to destroy you. Sometimes there is no option.
Even the word “peace” can be used in a wicked way. It can be misleading if you don’t see the big picture. Let’s face it, a ceasefire imposed on the allies who were fighting Germany in World War II wouldn’t bring peace. It wouldn’t bring peace to the victims of the nazis, wouldn’t bring safety to the rest of the world, and wouldn’t even bring peace to the Germans, who would have stayed trapped in a spiral of hatred.
Do I have a clean conscience while writing this? Yes, it pains me but I do have a clean conscience. You have to see the big picture. You see some people in the news talking about confronts and it’s almost as if this big confronts came out of the blue, disturbing an otherwise peaceful world. Then, yes, all we have to say is “stop fighting” and everything is solved.
But the reality is not that. You have rich and powerful countries that don’t recognize the existence of the only democracy in the middle east, and work always against it, and support terrorist organizations. You have international “peace” organizations that overlook all the inhumanities of these countries, and more, “respect” everything that happens in other cultures, no matter how bad.
As I said before, I never ask nobody to change religion, but do you “respect” when leaders say fathers and brothers have absolute right to kill a girl because she kissed a boy? You “respect” throwing homosexuals from roofs? You “respect” teaching children that it is a good thing if they die, as long as it is for the “cause” of destroying their neighbours?
So, with all this “respect”, these international organizations hire people with the most bizarre beliefs, they give a salary and protection to people who want a massacre. And who work on massacres.
This is the big picture. And sometimes, some things happen in a way that, “letting it pass” is the same as lay down with your belly up and just wait for the final attack. Especially when you know that all the terrorist organizations hate a certain people. So, if the situation got this bad, then how can it be fair if we, from far away, just judge this people defending themselves, to protect our images of “pacifists” in the mirror, offering no solution, not even being able to criticize this big organizations, and these tyrannical rich countries?
The guy I see on my television talking about this, don’t give the big picture. He just share numbers. But he won’t even compare the rate of casual civilties per military ones of this conflict, with all the other conflicts in history, an information that could be enough to make any reasonable person see it differently.
But “genocide”, “peace”, these words keep being used just to make bold statements, without even thinking for what the words mean, or how ideals can be achieve in this world, or the responsabilities of each country and group.
When we live in safer places in the World, we can’t just go on believing that the same peace we have is in the immediate reach of every country in the world, just wish and it will happen. We can and must wish they have this peace, but not expect they act as if they had it, when it’s just not true. Before saying peace is easy, it wouldn’t hurt to check all the attacks that happened in a place.
We use words like “discrimination” to talk about what happens in a place we didn’t even took the time to find more about. We apply our standards as if their story was equal to ours. In America, you had people who were discriminated based on race and color, and they struggled to have equal rights. They wanted to be free and prosper and be happy inside America. Obviously, anyone denying that to them was wrong.
But this is totally different from people who want do destroy a country, kill people, and say it loudly. And act on it, actually killing , often. The muslim arabs that chose to live in peace in Israel have equal rights and chance to prosperity, but, when you have a neighbour nation that teaches kids in school that killing you is a good thing, watching out so that they don’t come in with guns is the least you can do. Of course no society is perfect, but, in that neighbourhood, Israel is the only country even trying to be just.
So, people can shout “genocide” to the side who had children kidnaped, while the other side says explicitly that they want to totally eliminate their opponents. People can say “peace” and call for a solution that would only make them look good but would bring no hopes of real peace. People can say “apartheid” to the only country in a vast region where religious freedom and racial equality are expressed rights, just because people in that land have to check for guns and bombs.
But these are not arguments, these are strong words used to bully. You look at a big crowd and think, “they all believe it, maybe there’s something to it”. But maybe there’s not. Maybe they don’t care for people – or they would be angry against people who preach martyrdom, which is human sacrifice – maybe they just got passionate about something they saw in tv or internet, and found a way to be in a group of “justiceers”, which does bring some adrenaline.
Maybe some people just got into college and finally found a little world they could belong to, and what’s more, some people don’t really give a good thought if they are wrong or right in relation to atemporal moral terms – if they look around and see a crowd agreeing that “that’s the enemy”, than it its.
But that’s just bullying. A lot of people are able to look for the big picture. If reason gets stronger – and this is not simply about numbers – bullying will become more easy to see through. For some misterious reason, the law of the stronger doesn’t prevail anymore, once people see it for what it is. That’s something to be thankful for.
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