rAPE IS WRONG.
dON'T DO IT
iF YOU SEE PEOPLE DOING IT STOP THEM
iF PEOPLE SAY IT IS ok TELL THEM THEY ARE WRONG
bE CLEAR WHEN YOU DON'T WANT SOMETHING
bELIEVE THEM
cARE FOR THEM
dO BAD THINGS TO THOSE BASTARDS
rEMEMBER THAT THE ONLY WAY TO STOP RAPE IS TO CONVINCE PEOPLE NOT TO DO IT
dON'T PISS OFF YOUR ALLIES
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Morality, Israel and Gaza
This post is prompted by three things, the present news of the war in the Gaza Strip, my wife's passionate interest in the area, and a podcast on the subject by Sam Harris. While horrific in reality the situation also has a macabre fascination in terms of morality. Questions of right and wrong, who is more right or wrong, intention versus effects, the present versus the future, the basic nature of man.
I want to start off by saying pretty much everyone involved is insane. A plan to systematically kill groups of other people is insanity. If one person does it it they are a psychotic serial killer. I don't think getting more people involved should stop that being true.
The best justification you can have for such events is self-defense, that if someone is trying to kill you you can kill them first. However, the problem here is in at what point does self-defense become feasible? In some southern US states that can happen if you feel threatened. The US government pre-emptively assassinates people with robots who associate with people who are parts of organizations who have killed people. This is justified legally as an "imminent threat to the USA." Something over 200 people are murdered in the city in which I live, Houston, each year. That's 0.01 percent of the population, one in every 10,000. That's ten times higher than the proportion of Americans killed in the 9/11/2001 attacks, would it then be legitimate self-defense for me to defend myself by killing as many of the Houstonians I feel might threaten me?
Self-defense as a moral argument only works when there is certainty. Someone must be attacking you before you can legitimately defend yourself. This is because if it simply requires you believing that they have the capacity to attack you, then clearly you have the capacity of attacking them, and therefore they can legitimately attack you. There are a lot of people who don't get that, and a lot of the world's wars have been fought by two sides acting in "self-defense." If having the capability and willingness under certain circumstances to fight and kill your people is a legitimate reason for attacking them in "self-defense" then every country in the world has a legitimate reason for attacking any other country with a military, as in almost every country.
Here's what I think about self-defense, and it's not weird because it's a common legal concept. I believe in minimum necessary force. If you can run away, you should. If you can disarm the person you should. If you can incapacitate someone you should. You should only kill someone if they are killing you, or something equally horrendous. This is a more aggressive moral stance than that of the founders of two of the larger religions in the world, Christianity and Buddhism.
So, the only way that the people in Israel and Palestine are not criminally insane in my book is if they are killing people who are in the act of trying to kill them, in the very act. At the moment Hamas is trying to kill any Israelis they can hit with rockets. The Israelis claim to be trying to stop this, acting in self-defense, by trying to kill those shooting the rockets.
Sam Harris' position in his podcast is that the side with the moral high ground is the one whose intention is the less evil. He says that Hamas has a political document that proposes the genocidal killing of all Jews on the planet. This is as evil as you can get. He says that Israel would live in peace with its neighbors if they would do the same. He says that you can tell that Israel's intentions are less evil because they basically have the ability to commit genocide with regard to the Palestinians but have not done so. Therefore, in terms of moral intentions, the Israeli's are more moral. Should you accept these proposals as true (and as enormously broad generalizations I do) then I agree with his point. Yay! Israel more moral!
But wait. Israel, in its actions of self defense has killed somewhere between 25 and 70 times as many Palestinians as Palestinians have killed Israelis depending at what point in the war you are counting. If you care about the separation between combatants and civilians (I waffle on this one) then (at last count) 5% of Israeli deaths were civilians, and at least 25% of those in Gaza.
So, the moral high ground of Israel was based on their intentions to stop their people being killed by selectively killing those attacking them, while Hamas was indiscriminately trying to kill any Israeli they could. The facts of reality are that Israelis are killing more people, and more indiscriminately, than Hamas. The results of the Israeli morality are worse than the results of the Hamas morality. I think what happens is more important than what people want to happen. I think not wanting to hurt anybody but spraying machine gun fire around for fun is worse than deliberately punching someone in the face.
I go back to the idea of minimum necessary force. Since the start of the Hamas rocket fire barrage six weeks ago two Israeli civilians have been killed. If you kept that rate up constantly, year by year, you would have less than twenty deaths a year. This is slightly less than the average number of accidental gun deaths a year over the last decade. Israelis kill themselves accidentally with weapons at the same rate as Hamas was managing to kill them with their rockets. If you go by terms of population, my chances of being murdered in Houston is 40 times higher than the chance of an Israeli civilian being killed by Hamas rockets, if they get to fire year round. Essentially Hamas rocket fire is a statistically irrelevant factor in the safety of Israel. The minimum necessary force against such attacks should be proportionately less than for ladders.
If you look at the history of the conflict in Israel after the British left (what a monumental cock-up that was) there was no "they started it." Both sides started trying to kill each from the get-go. Essentially the Jews were just better at it than the Muslims, and have been ever since. I believe that having greater capability means that you have greater responsibility. It matters whether you have a tennis ball or a hand grenade when throwing things at each other. The danger of your actions, the misery it causes, how much damage you do matters. Israelis have the capacity to decide on a moral basis how many Palestinians they wish to kill as a response to something less dangerous than me walking around my city, ranging from zero to all of them.
At a minimum it seems to me that if you kill more people than are killed on your side then you value the lives of your people more than you value the lives of people on the other side. This is completely, utterly standard for humanity. It is also basically a definition of bigotry. If you look at the facts of the situation it seems as though Israel values an Israeli at about 50 people from Gaza. How appalling. What might be worse is that Hamas are still fighting, and apparently value the lives of their own people at a lower rate.
It seems undeniable to me that the group with the greatest control over how much harm is done are the ones doing the most indiscriminate harm. The other side has worse intentions, which ain't easy, but don't have the capability to do as much harm, and strangely value their own citizens' lives less than anyone else. Then there are the ones who don't want sides, and they are getting killed anyway.
So, in the great moral question of the Israel and Gaza situation the answer is that both sides are bigoted, violent, insane bastards.
I want to start off by saying pretty much everyone involved is insane. A plan to systematically kill groups of other people is insanity. If one person does it it they are a psychotic serial killer. I don't think getting more people involved should stop that being true.
The best justification you can have for such events is self-defense, that if someone is trying to kill you you can kill them first. However, the problem here is in at what point does self-defense become feasible? In some southern US states that can happen if you feel threatened. The US government pre-emptively assassinates people with robots who associate with people who are parts of organizations who have killed people. This is justified legally as an "imminent threat to the USA." Something over 200 people are murdered in the city in which I live, Houston, each year. That's 0.01 percent of the population, one in every 10,000. That's ten times higher than the proportion of Americans killed in the 9/11/2001 attacks, would it then be legitimate self-defense for me to defend myself by killing as many of the Houstonians I feel might threaten me?
Self-defense as a moral argument only works when there is certainty. Someone must be attacking you before you can legitimately defend yourself. This is because if it simply requires you believing that they have the capacity to attack you, then clearly you have the capacity of attacking them, and therefore they can legitimately attack you. There are a lot of people who don't get that, and a lot of the world's wars have been fought by two sides acting in "self-defense." If having the capability and willingness under certain circumstances to fight and kill your people is a legitimate reason for attacking them in "self-defense" then every country in the world has a legitimate reason for attacking any other country with a military, as in almost every country.
Here's what I think about self-defense, and it's not weird because it's a common legal concept. I believe in minimum necessary force. If you can run away, you should. If you can disarm the person you should. If you can incapacitate someone you should. You should only kill someone if they are killing you, or something equally horrendous. This is a more aggressive moral stance than that of the founders of two of the larger religions in the world, Christianity and Buddhism.
So, the only way that the people in Israel and Palestine are not criminally insane in my book is if they are killing people who are in the act of trying to kill them, in the very act. At the moment Hamas is trying to kill any Israelis they can hit with rockets. The Israelis claim to be trying to stop this, acting in self-defense, by trying to kill those shooting the rockets.
Sam Harris' position in his podcast is that the side with the moral high ground is the one whose intention is the less evil. He says that Hamas has a political document that proposes the genocidal killing of all Jews on the planet. This is as evil as you can get. He says that Israel would live in peace with its neighbors if they would do the same. He says that you can tell that Israel's intentions are less evil because they basically have the ability to commit genocide with regard to the Palestinians but have not done so. Therefore, in terms of moral intentions, the Israeli's are more moral. Should you accept these proposals as true (and as enormously broad generalizations I do) then I agree with his point. Yay! Israel more moral!
But wait. Israel, in its actions of self defense has killed somewhere between 25 and 70 times as many Palestinians as Palestinians have killed Israelis depending at what point in the war you are counting. If you care about the separation between combatants and civilians (I waffle on this one) then (at last count) 5% of Israeli deaths were civilians, and at least 25% of those in Gaza.
So, the moral high ground of Israel was based on their intentions to stop their people being killed by selectively killing those attacking them, while Hamas was indiscriminately trying to kill any Israeli they could. The facts of reality are that Israelis are killing more people, and more indiscriminately, than Hamas. The results of the Israeli morality are worse than the results of the Hamas morality. I think what happens is more important than what people want to happen. I think not wanting to hurt anybody but spraying machine gun fire around for fun is worse than deliberately punching someone in the face.
I go back to the idea of minimum necessary force. Since the start of the Hamas rocket fire barrage six weeks ago two Israeli civilians have been killed. If you kept that rate up constantly, year by year, you would have less than twenty deaths a year. This is slightly less than the average number of accidental gun deaths a year over the last decade. Israelis kill themselves accidentally with weapons at the same rate as Hamas was managing to kill them with their rockets. If you go by terms of population, my chances of being murdered in Houston is 40 times higher than the chance of an Israeli civilian being killed by Hamas rockets, if they get to fire year round. Essentially Hamas rocket fire is a statistically irrelevant factor in the safety of Israel. The minimum necessary force against such attacks should be proportionately less than for ladders.
If you look at the history of the conflict in Israel after the British left (what a monumental cock-up that was) there was no "they started it." Both sides started trying to kill each from the get-go. Essentially the Jews were just better at it than the Muslims, and have been ever since. I believe that having greater capability means that you have greater responsibility. It matters whether you have a tennis ball or a hand grenade when throwing things at each other. The danger of your actions, the misery it causes, how much damage you do matters. Israelis have the capacity to decide on a moral basis how many Palestinians they wish to kill as a response to something less dangerous than me walking around my city, ranging from zero to all of them.
At a minimum it seems to me that if you kill more people than are killed on your side then you value the lives of your people more than you value the lives of people on the other side. This is completely, utterly standard for humanity. It is also basically a definition of bigotry. If you look at the facts of the situation it seems as though Israel values an Israeli at about 50 people from Gaza. How appalling. What might be worse is that Hamas are still fighting, and apparently value the lives of their own people at a lower rate.
It seems undeniable to me that the group with the greatest control over how much harm is done are the ones doing the most indiscriminate harm. The other side has worse intentions, which ain't easy, but don't have the capability to do as much harm, and strangely value their own citizens' lives less than anyone else. Then there are the ones who don't want sides, and they are getting killed anyway.
So, in the great moral question of the Israel and Gaza situation the answer is that both sides are bigoted, violent, insane bastards.
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