Our medias and politicians, i’m from Lemmygrad on my main account if my personal opinion ever mattered.
But we(sterners) have double standards.

I admitted my formulation was poorly written here

If i may, here’s an other excerpt from C.Johnstone who’s saying that even admitting this double standard between civilians and terrorists isn’t enough for us to currently support Israel/westerners :

No man, we care much more about deaths in the west than outside of it, e.g. in the u.s.a. instead of Iraq, or Israel instead of Palestine, partly because we divide between supposedly good western civilians and evil terrorists with human shields, tsk.
5.4 million people have died in Congo between 1998 and 2008, wouldn’t we have cared much more if they were westerners ? Because i never heard of that before, and the examples aren’t lacking, it only depends if they’re allies or enemies. And how many die because of our selfish/nationalistic neo-colonialism ?

You’re absolutely right, the truthfulness of this sentence doesn’t teach us that someone is tribalistic by assuming it happened locally.

It’s only my assumption that an answer to “in the Middle-East” would be “Ah ? Ok, i was afraid for a while(, i thought it was on our side)” that made me thought that. I understand that it was received as an unfair accusation yet i included myself in this and found this assumption more interesting by its truthfulness.

As i wrote in the selftext :

In the end, i found this statement more interesting than it ought to be, as if it taught us something. Our actions are tribal/destructive and there’s enough proof for this, but this statement isn’t one of them.

Thanks for asking !

I’ll take more time tomorrow to answer in more depth(, even if only for me[, edit : probably not in the end, unless you’re willing to have a discussion on this topic, i’d prefer to receive counter-arguments or engage in a conversation before developing this]), but for now i can quickly say that this set of rules/conditions won’t be defined by a single person(, much less myself), as i see it it would take at least 25 years to build, and 5 years before the first (theoretical )experimentations. It’d be, after all, one of the most important thing that humanity could do.
This disapproval of other values can easily be solved through propaganda, we naturally aspire to peace and thinking that our side is better than the other doesn’t imply we need to wage war against the “inferior ideologies”, even for their own good, we should aim to change them only through the proximity of our example(, if they accept such proximity).
An obstacle i can see is our leaders, they’ll think that they have to act for more supremacy while they still have time(, or continue with neo-colonialism to prolong it), and may honestly believe that the pax americana is desirable, or at least preferable to the alternative of an “anarchic” world. They won’t immediately believe that we could make rules that can’t be broken, such that “showing kindess” won’t turn up against us in the end.
Among many other goals behind the experimentation of such rules, we’ll have to think of every possible way to break these rules/conditions, and devise the most effective counter-measures ever thought of, i don’t see any other way. A world army is an example of condition(, ~only used for humanitarian reasons), and has the advantage of pointing out the need to have trust in such set of rules/conditions, including the promise to be allowed as much diversity as possible(, as long as it doesn’t break the unity).
The fear of a tyrannical world government forbidding diversity is also a reason for why such set of rules shouldn’t be able to be corrupted, such decision shouldn’t be taken lightly anyway, 25 years of preparation&testing seems long but may be too short, yet i don’t see a better way, and the status quo of states fearing for their security isn’t desirable(, i mean, i don’t think you realize how many wars&destruction we caused, in the name of our vaguely defined interests or whatever, we could do better if we want to( let go of hegemony)).
If we ever plan to be an interplanetary species then it’d be great to have solved the problem of war without uniformity/hegemony before that.
There’re certainly other problems to tackle, do you have one in mind ?

• We can harmoniously be united in diversity ;
• We can be united without diversity ;
• Or we can be disunited in diversity.

I obviously choose the first option, you’ll probably agree with me, but our western leaders somehow prefer the second one, and they’re the ones with the power to improve things.

Then we agree 👍

That’s a topic i love and i don’t often have the possibility to see someone not thinking it is possible(, i’ve never met someone arguing that it is not desirable).
If you pointed at our arrogant/selfish desire to be “on top” of the other, then my answer would be to explain why everyone would gain and be more powerful if we’re united, and it must be lonely at the top, with only one culture, if we have friendly countries who are really different in many domains then it’s better to be friends with equals, we have to think of infallible measures against treason but that’s not impossible.

And what would i gain by trolling(, in the sense of not engaging in a debate but simply responding by mocking the other ?). Here’s the context of the sentence i read(, it’s more that we don’t care about bombs falling on supposedly evil people who deserve it(, she knows that but since the victims are civilians who can’t be all considered guilty/“evil” she’s not wrong)) :

Tribes or nationalism, what’s the difference except perhaps size ?
I’m just explaining why i saw an interest in this sentence.

And if it’s a commentary on human nature, then we’re fucked, i like the current meaning of being humane. I know we’re capable of the best, we’re simply not perfect and must improve, abandoning tribalism/nationalism and helping each other has been asked for millenias and it may happen but i hope it won’t be at the cost of our diversity.

Don’t move the goalposts. You didn’t say we don’t. You said we aren’t able. We absolutely are.

Oh, i agree then, except in the case of apology of terrorism/enemies.

And indeed Palestine is easy( tell that to our medias and governments though), but i’d be interested if you know of a counter-example to our double standards(, at least once we’re interested in a conflict, it’s at this moment that we attribute a range of good and evil people, and are disinterested in the fate of the supposedly evil ones).

And the initial thread was more, since it is showerthoughts, that i haven’t thought of things that way, it is indeed a true statement, and more because of tribalism than the way language work, but w/e if i was wrong(, and one option doesn’t exclude the other anyway).

What i meant in my previous comment didn’t took into account the propaganda about other humans being evil, the logic was that once you refuse to kill a non-human it’s easier to refuse killing a human, and once you have non-humans it’s easier to accept the thought of having human slaves.
And it has to be sincere, i believe non-humans to be better than us, in enough ways for me to sincerely admire them.
But we may indeed still hate other humans because they’re evil and we’re liberating their population, or ourselves, yet every conflict could have been avoided if both sides agreed to unite in diversity, i don’t see an exception to this rule. And we’re still nowadays attributing the roles of good//evil instead of seeking solutions to please both sides(, usually because the strongest side, very often the west, refuses to change or make concessions).
It’s not that world peace is difficult, but that our refusal of unity is difficult to overturn, we(sterners) are the f*cking prime wagers of death&destruction, didn’t know that ten years ago.

Thanks, because that’s how we should behave, not only towards humans but non-humans as well(, and it’s easier to care about humans as a whole once you care about non-humans b.t.w.).

Yeah no, we don’t , double standard is everywhere. People would be surprised that you’re touched as much by something happening in your “tribe” than outside of it.

Just take the massacre currently happening in Palestine if you want the most recent example, some lives are more important to us than others, there’s a difference between what we proclaim our values to be and our practice of them.

We could be united in diversity though, instead of hating so many countries

Interesting, so criticising our tribalism makes me the one with a limited world view, how so ?

We care much more about what’s happening in countries we’re allied with(, whether they’re on our continent or not), that sucks, we should help each other and not fight [insert a way too long list of countries here…]

It’s not that world peace is difficult, but that our refusal of unity is difficult to overturn, we(sterners) are the f*cking prime wagers of death&destruction, didn’t know that ten years ago.

As i wrote somewhere else, the aim of my post would have stayed the same if i titled it :
« If you tell someone “There’s been a bombing in the Middle-East !” with anguish in your voice, they wouldn’t care nor be surprised as much as if it’s in the west. »
Such claim wouldn’t be less true. It still seems to me more linked to the word anguish and our lack of care than to the absence of a location(, but ok, w/e 🤷‍♂️).

Just saw this 5mn ago :

Yes and no, while i do agree that this is considered normal behaviour, i also long for a world in which we would be able to say “there’s a bombing !” with as much anguish whether its in ‘the U.S.’/Europe, or in the Middle-East, Africa, etc.
It’s not that much normal i think, and more the sign of a current problem.

👍

If it’s so obviously stupid, then your argument is… ?

Why do we not find strange that we shouldn’t say with anguish “there’s been a bombing !” for something happening in the Middle-East, but only in the west ?

And your answer wasn’t a counter-argument

But in the end, if i’m the only one finding this sentence interesting then there’s no point in discussing it, i’ve lost interest in it as well.

Just that it shouldn’t feel more normal when we’re bombing than when we’re being bombed, i guess that’s ~all i aimed to point out, yet we’re only surprised when we’re on the receiving end, nothing new.

And what you consider local is the countries you consider yourself belonging to, i.e., the west, ⟳ .
If you’re a separatist from southern France you can say “who cares about what’s happening in the rest of France ?”, there’s no need for anguish in your voice. Yet when the twin towers fell, or something similar, french people could say “there’s been a bombing there” with as much anguish as it happened in France, i think that you’re omitting the term “anguish” too much in this conversation.

For example, you wouldn’t say « There’s been a bombing in the Middle-East ! », because we(sterners) would say « Yeah. And ? », that was the whole purpose of this thread, yet you focused on the omission of the location.