Eliza
29d ago
We would not accept that as a justification for other acts of violence. If a very unfortunate man all in the same day got diagnosed with cancer, was fired from his job, crashed his car, got robbed walking home, and found his wife in bed with the yoga instructor - we would understand if he was in extraordinary distress to the point of howling insanity, but it wouldn't excuse him going on a killing spree. Suicide is not 'less bad' than other kinds of violence because it targets the self. It bereaves your family, it devastates those who loved you most.
Eliza
1mo ago
But both sides are backed by larger powers plus "The International Community" trying specifically to avoid a final solution. So there aren't any. I wonder if we've saved suffering this way or if after 80 years of intractable conflict the interest was greater than the principle.
The 1948 war and associated population displacement were nothing particularly notable, historically speaking. The refugee problem was grown and cultivated into today's intractable mess and political project of global prominence via the intervention of external parties, not least the UN which funded the refugees in perpetuity. Without that the displaced Arabs would have had to disperse and assimilate decades ago. Then having manufactured the problem, said international bodies have decreed that there is only one acceptable outcome to it, and refuse to see that it isn't viable.
Eliza
1mo ago
I was reading a horrible tragic news story recently and it got me thinking that the powerful taboo we once held against suicide - while it seems cruel and unfair in hindsight - had a certain cold logic underpinning it. When life was far more precarious, and difficult, and miserable; when people were dying of hunger or plague or because they got a trivial cut that went septic before antibiotics; when parents commonly, routinely lost the children they loved no less than we - it must have been brutally hard to keep going, at times. That maybe shame and stigma worked where no amount of positive encouragement would have.
Eliza
5mo ago
The Native Americans did not equal ~40% the US citizenry when their citizenship was granted. If they had, you can be assured reasons would have been found not to do it. They were demographically irrelevant and presented no threat to the security or character of the United States.
Insisting that any country extend citizenship to millions of violently hostile antagonists who have demonstrably no interest in sharing a country with them is so wildly unreasonable I struggle to imagine anyone suggesting it in good faith. If Palestinians want to be Israeli the onus is on them to act like non-insane humans one can conceivably share a country with. Which starts, at a bare minimum, with accepting the legitimacy of the polity they wish to join. But of course they don't want to join it. They never did. They want to replace it. And you're surprised when Israel is disinclined to go along with that.
Eliza
11mo ago
It's disorienting to realise that our media diet is selected and proportioned far more by the availability/prominence/outrageousness of those particular news stories, than any objective importance of the events they describe. News media, like everywhere else, is scrambling to keep broadcasting with squeezed budgets. It's much simpler (and cheaper) to repeat verbatim a report from some NGO than pay an investigative reporter.
Hard disagree. The honourable thing would have been for Arday to retire into obscurity, work on his character flaws, make amends where possible, give back to the society he wronged, and live with decency going forward. Seppuku might be honourable in some times and places where it improved the lot of surviving family who would otherwise suffer from stigma or ostracism or material deprivation. But here and now, in 21st century west, Arday has widowed his wife and orphaned his children for absolutely no purpose at all.
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