by AlicetheCurious » Tue May 16, 2006 6:35 am
You know, Sepka, "perceptual gap" is a very good way to explain why our views are irreconcilable. You and I both define the world in terms of "us" and "them", probably because what I call tribal instincts are something hard-wired into our brains.<br><br>We just define our tribes according to different criteria. I've had the experience of living among many very different cultures and have always had an ethnic patchwork of friends, acquaintances, co-workers; I've never known what it's like to live among "my own kind" in an ethno-cultural sense. No matter where I've been, I've been a minority, usually of one.<br><br>This used to be a real problem for me when I was a teenager, as you can imagine. Gradually, somehow, it became transformed into a great source of joy, as I realized that the members of "my tribe" are there to be found among all peoples, everywhere. It's so difficult to describe in words what my heart immediately and unambiguously recognizes in certain people. The words are inadequate: humanity, decency, fairness, curiosity, wisdom, that spark of intelligence...<br><br>I don't know if you have children, Sepka, but if you share the awe I feel for these amazing, miraculous beings, try for a moment to imagine the deep revulsion I feel towards anyone who would harm them, or kill them, or justify such a crime, or look with indifference upon it because they belong to the wrong race or ethnic or religious group, or for any reason whatsoever. Whatsoever.<br><br>You've decided that because I condemn war crimes or crimes against humanity against one group, that I accept them against another. In your view, apparently, it's the ethnicity or religion of the victim that determines whether or not a crime has been committed. Obviously, you're not alone. Your mirror image exists in every ethnic-religious "tribe", reflecting your hatred back and forth between yourselves, convinced that you're different from each other when you are just the same.<br><br>Heads or tails, it's the same coin. "You're either with US or you're with THE TERRORISTS". Yet "us" and the "terrorists" are indistinguishable from the perspective of their many, many innocent victims. <br><br>Somehow you've convinced yourself that I'm like you, maybe because you only see yourself and your reflection, and think that's all there is.<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I just can't see any moral equivalency between cold-blooded, unprovoked murder, and the acts of soldiers striking back to defend their homes and families against those same murderers<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>If only that were true! But I hope that you are too intelligent to believe that that is what is happening in Iraq and in Palestine, unless you are pathologically divorced from reality. <br><br>You must surely know that those whom you have defined as "murderers" include tens of thousands of innocent civilians, among them many children, including babies. You must know that the majority of those held in secret detention camps and tortured have no connection to <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>any</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> crime, let alone "murder". Are you arguing that the many people whose lands have been confiscated, whose homes have been destroyed, who have been murdered and maimed and deprived of basic necessities like medicine, food, water and electricity, are "murderers" and deserve what has been done to them?<br><br>What is the difference between an Israeli child who is harmed and an Arab one? What is the difference between an American thug and an Arab thug, both of whom believe they are serving a 'higher good' that places them above the law and above the basic principles of human decency? The difference between you and me is that I see none.<br><br>"Perceptual gap" indeed.<br><br> <p></p><i></i>