A Beheading In France
- Thread starter Specter Von Baren
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No, try again.
I refer to the French Revolution, the abridged version of which is usually told as after many years of abuse and maltreatment by Frances aristocratic classes the common people rose up, threw the lot of them in prison and started beheading them in the public squares in Paris. There's even a dark joke in there to made about showing them how its done.
The actual history and chain of events of the French Revolution are somewhat more complex and interesting. Well worth the study if you get the opportunity.
It does matter. These are formative experiences that create people's view of the world, and we know incredibly well that people take lessons from these experiences and relate them to similar situations. Someone's experiences of being bullied by one person will directly influence how they react to being bullied by another. It is absurd to think it has no relationship because they're being bullied by a different person.
This isn't about excusing people's actions. It's about explaining them in the context of society and individual psychology, in order to properly reflect on how we act responsibily ourselves.
You'll find the mainstream right are very much de facto saying we should not offend the far right. (I've picked on the right here, but of course the left also has its censoriousness.) Their politicians speak in parliaments and before cameras very precisely denouncing the sort of talk that the far right are incensed by. I can see my Conservative Party government doing it right now - trying to dictate how schools and universities should teach subjects, threatening funding of what they deem ideologically non-approved, lambasting lawyers, press and others for their insufficiently patriotic opinions. And as said, take a look at Poland or Hungary, it's an alarmingly short way before that sort of thing starts to have real teeth. So how different really is that from Muslim objections to blasphemous portrayals of their prophet - except of course that it has vastly more public support?
But we're not talking about policy, we're talking about feelings. We're talking about how you think people, on an individual level, should process feelings based on how you (believe) you process your feelings.
This entire thread is about one person, a single person, being murdered. Sure, murdered in a pretty horrible way, but still a single murder. Nationwide demonstrations over a single murder. This ten page thread over a single murder. Retaliatory violence and stabbings over a single murder.
LGBT people are murdered all the time all over the world. Not just by Muslims, but everywhere and by everyone. There's no national protest every time a transwoman is murdered in the US, of which there is at least once a month. Same with women. Women are murdered constantly all over the world by men who feel entitled to ownership of them because they are women. Heck, we're only just starting to absorb the sheer fucking scale of racist violence in the US (a debate which France, incidentally, urgently needs) and yet even acknowledging that is too much for some people.
And what that says to me is that, whether you like it or not, this is about feelings.
When I point out that only some people are expected to endure offence, that's relevant because those are generally the same people who are expected to endure violence. While I'm happy to condemn murder on principle, I find it very difficult to muster the sympathy in my heart to really care about people who are so divorced from the risk of violence that they'd have to go out of their way to insult someone's religion to have any risk being murdered.
The kind of person who will come and yell slurs at you is generally the same kind of person who will become violent if you don't give them what they want. The desire to offend is not necessarily a critique of authority, it can also represent the assertion of authority which will often be backed up with force if it cannot be secured with words. Using that kind of offence as the basis for self-critique is entirely self-destructive.
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I disagree.
The person hurling slurs at you is obviously very hostile to you.
That does not mean that this person is prone to violence. In fact in most of those western societies you dislike so much, people are less likely to resort to violence than in most other times and places. That is a cultural shift.
And that is because it actually works to discourage violence as tool. To make violence something special, far worse than just insults in the mind of people. There is a reason "fighting words" laws gradually are abandoned/no longer enforced worldwide. No kind of insult or slur should ever justify a violent reaction.
Has there been a corresponding shift in people hurling slurs as well?
Also, "less likely" isn't the same as "not likely", though it lets you say Terminal Blue dislikes the west, I guess.
That's a big maybe.
I can't help but feel there's potentially a huge perception difference here between heterosexual white males and various societally less favoured minorities. That perception is almost certainly representative of actual experience. I have almost never been abused and never attacked as I have gone about my daily business, throughout my whole adult life. But I know that is not what it's been like for friends of mine who are Asian, gay, etc.
I am not aware of any study of that matter. Getting reliable data about slurs is significant more difficult than getting data about actual violence and injuries. And there is less interest in the results as well.
But i don't have reason to assume that there are less slurs now than before.
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I'm sure it wasn't your intent, but this argument smacks of relative privation fallacy.
I guess that's a difference between you and me.
I love that meme, it resonates with me on another level.
Opinion on countries banning religious practices on the grounds of humane-treatment? Examples are attempts of bans on circumcision, halal and kosher slaughter of animals, etc.
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Because it's called the "relative privation fallacy" for a reason.
The argument of "why are people concerned about X when Y is worse" is an argument that could apply to literally everything except the objectively worse thing in existence.
They're going to grab a bunch of random french citizens and cut their heads off, while the muslims all fuck off to England in disgust?
Your logical fallacy is the fallacy fallacy
You presumed that because a claim has been poorly argued, or a fallacy has been made, that the claim itself must be wrong.
yourlogicalfallacyis.com
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Simply pointing out that your opponent has used a logical fallacy is not enough to rise to the level of the fallacy fallacy. I would also have to have stated that Blue's argument was wrong because he used a fallacy. I think his argument is wrong entirely unconnected from how he has argued it.Your logical fallacy is the fallacy fallacy
You presumed that because a claim has been poorly argued, or a fallacy has been made, that the claim itself must be wrong.yourlogicalfallacyis.com
Glad to get that cleared up.
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Slightly less bad than decapitating a person for showing a cartoon you don't like.
But worse than Nickleback.
I actually made a typo there - should have been "does" matter. But...
And?
Explaining actions doesn't excuse the actions. And even then, that specific example is tenuous - Russia oppresses Chechnea, so a Chechen kills a Frenchman over a cartoon. I mean, be honest - do you think his nationality or religion had more to do with the murder?
As far as I'm aware, most governments set the curiculum. But even that aside, the differences are:
-One approach is secular, one is religious, and the former tends to allow more debate
-The government doesn't assassinate people who object to its education standards (there's no equivalent to a fatwah in the governments that you mentioned)
We can debate what history should be taught, and how it should be taught, but that's a world of difference from what actually happened, where the mere act of showing Muhammad prompted murder. I mean, be honest - replace Muhammad with any religious figure from any other religion. Do you think this thread would exist?
First, there's no shortage of threads on this site about police shootings or whatnot. And no shortage of pages within those threads either.
Second, there's been no shortage of protests over all the things you've described - the protests in France have been nowhere in the scale of what you've described.
Third, we all agree that the things you describe up above are bad, but this is the one that goes down the route of "yeah, but..." when it comes to religious sensitivities.
Fourth, if we're talking about the scale of violence, violence is bad in the United States (worse than, say, France), but still absolutely dwarfed in other countries (going by homicide rate, over ten times in some cases). If you're going to use the argument of "scale of violence," then we can ratchet up the scale and move even further away.
Not really. Generally speaking, those expected to endure offence are those who are deemed more powerful. It's why you can have the idea of "prejudice vs. racism," or the idea of punching up vs. punching down. Offence and violence are separate, at least as far as consequences go.
There shouldn't be a risk of being murdered, period.
People have rights. Ideas don't. And if we're actually applying this to what's happened, again, the image was being shown in a classroom. The teacher wasn't setting out to offend anyone. He gave Muslim students the opportunity to leave.
This is kind of predicated on the idea that all offence is intentional.
People get offended by works all the time. There's no shortage of books that have been (attempted to be) banned because it offended someone's sensibilities. No short of works, period. The difference being that in this day and age, censoriousness often comes from the bottom up than top down.
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