I like Bindi's first three rules, but the problem with the Hippopotamus oath is that it leads to those who follow it sitting around ignoring all the bad stuff untill it's been done. Don't get me wrong I think it's great to help a man who has been stabbed, but all the better to prevent him from being stabbed in the first place. Sometimes you have to make a choice though, get involved even when you're not completely sure what you're doing and you know you don't everything there is to know about someone, or ignore a situation in which you know there to be immoral deeds going on or about to be going on. To apply this to the small scale, would I kick my neighbors door in if I heard someone crying "rape" from within? Yeah, I would. Is it possible I'd run in and kick the crap out of a husband who was simply role playing with his wife? Yeah, it is. Would I do it again? Yeah, I would. If you're faced with the decision to take a moral stand or ignore the world, you should take the moral stand, even if you don't know 100% how you're going to extract yourself from the situation. We did this in '39, and although we almost ended up losing the whole island because of it, it's absolutely the best example of interventionism the world has ever seen.
Re-reading, it appeared I was advocating pacifism. That wasn't my intention. I was happy to admit that intervening in your rape example was the right thing to do. I'm also happy to concede that action trumps inaction in a lot of scenarios. However, I want to clarify what I meant by "leading by example". I don't mean do nothing. I mean consider the impact of your actions beyond the immediate situation. I think Nexxo and I (plus anyone else still reading this) would probably agree with your stance with regard to interventionism. The thing is though, you're missing the point. We didn't invade these countries in order to sort out their morals. That much is obvious to anyone with their own mind (or perhaps the top 30% of the scale Nexxo has been referring to). As for hate. People aren't going to hate you for your intentions. Seems to me, you want to do what you feel is right and you advocate people making a proactive, rather than retroactive, difference in the world. That's great. Again - it's your language I have a problem with. It's the same language spouting by brainless idiots nationwide and it's gets them into fights and our country into fights. You're obviously not an idiot and you're capable of a decent discussion, so I just think you could make more effort to sound less confrontational. That's all.
The problem with people not following the Hippopotamus oath, we find more frequently, is that they kill patients by taking risks that the patient did not consent to. That they perform unnecessary procedures because they want the practice or the money. That they turn into Dr. Harold Shipman. Kick the neighbour's door down if you must, but don't kill the neighbour. Some mistakes are irreversible.
I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to call you out on that one. Violence is only ever a short-term solution. In kicking the guy in the head are you ensuring that he will never rape another woman? No, you merely fended him off in this instance. While that altercation may have saved one woman it may also decrease the survival rate of his future victims, while increasing the ferocity of his attacks, because he doesnt want to get caught, or kicked in the head, again. You have addressed a symptom of the guy's rapist tendencies, but not the cause. The only thing that will address the cause is therapy - The re-engineering of the guy's attitudes towards women. So, how are you going to realistically apply your final solution on an entire culture? Kick every father in the head who wants his daughter to conform to societal norms? Kick every mother in the head that feels the same way? Kill everyone who doesn't do what you say? Kill all the Jews for their tradition male gential mutilation on the way home? Don't be ridiculous. We need to address the cause; We need to re-engineer attitudes. What is female genital mutilation? Well, at it's core it's an idea. Luckily we have a framework to understand ideas. It's called memetic theory. Through this knowledge we also know that the most effective long-term solution to the Islamic extremist problem is the education and empowerment of women to give the culture as a whole a natural resistance to the more destructive mutations of Islam. All the application of violence has done in the middle east so far is make the environment more fertile for the spread of the Islamic extremist meme, which includes female genital mutilation. Think of it like like breast cancer. We're actually close to creating benign treatments for cancer through gene therapy. Our understanding of how genes work will allow us to address the cause of cancer, and not just the symptoms through our current, violent, medieval methods of cutting it out with a knife or burning it with radiation. So why should we continue to treat problematic memes with medieval techniques when we can apply a long term solution through meme therapy?
So you're going to have to call me out on being right? Umm, ok. I never said violence was a universal panacea, I simply said that in some cases it is clearly the best solution to a moral problem. Which it is, and which you seem to agree with. Also, not that I agree with it, but if you applied enough violence to the guy then you would address every facet of the problem completely. Wow, your comparison of myself to Hitler is as accurate as it is un-retarded. No doubt we need to address the cause, but until we're done re-engineering attitudes we need to kick every woman in the head who tries to lay a finger on her grandaughters ********. I agree completely that violence is not a desirable long term solution to cultural problems. Completely. But in the long period of time it's going to take to change attitudes towards raping women, or towards cutting your grand-daughters genitals up, or whatever other barbaric thing backward people desire to do, I suggest that it is downright immoral to let these things slide simply because we don't have an immediately actionable long term non-solution. Repeat my last. Long term non-violent solution = good. Short term violent solution in the absence of long term non-violent solution = good. And again, as I would have thought would have gone without saying, of course it is preferable to have benign non-boob-removey ways of curing breast cancer, but if those aren't present and you tell me that not cutting off the boob, letting the woman just die, is the thing to do because it's violent and medieval to cut boobs off then I'm going to tell you that you're guilty of at best amorality and at worst moral and physical cowardice. As for your question of why? Well because changing cultures through non-violent cultural influence takes a very long time. Christianity has been around for just shy of 2000 years, that's one fairly barbaric meme that hasn't exactly been quick to eradicate now isn't it? This **** takes time - it's imperative to work on it, but because it takes considerable time to change cultures, in the mean time we have to be willing to restrain them with force. edit: Also, kudos on liking Daniel Dennet - the man's pretty damn cool.
What I'm disagreeing with is your suggestion that invasion is a viable solution, even in the short term. All it does is serve to entrench the very attitudes that you're attempting to eradicate. Short term solution that undermines the long term solution = bad. Is it moral to cut off that womans breast if it means killing her male relatives and increases the likelihood of future generations getting breast cancer? Whose choice is it, hers? Does she have the right to refuse treatment, or do you know better? Also...
Don't get facetious, Spec. VipersGratitude makes a good point. Seeing as the cancer analogy came up, and I work in that field, and more specifically help patients make up their minds about certain courses of treatment open to them, I'll chip in. Most cancer treatments are barbaric. A few stand a good chance of killing the patient before the cancer does (even in breast cancer someone can have an acute lethal reaction to chemo. It is rare, but it happens). So what do we do? Stand back and let the patient die a horrific death of cancer instead? No, we ask them. We lay out their options and possible consequences. We educate and inform them. Then they make up their mind. It is their life, after all. Now suppose that the patient is not in a position to give informed consent. They are a child, or perhaps they have a mental illness. Perhaps they are Jehova's Witness and have religious prohibitions. Who decides for them over their life or death? And how much? Who had that right and who knows best? Here is where things get tricky. I can assure you it does not come down to a single professional's decision and that there are rules. Moreover, the patient's opinion should be taken into account all the time. And occasionally it means standing back and doing nothing; letting them die because of some dumb religious belief. Because it is their life and their dumb religious belief. Where children are involved this is particularly tricky and occasionally parents' wishes to do nothing (for religious reasons, or to save their child yet more harrowing and quite possibly pointless treatment) get overridden by force. But there are numerous checks and balances to that and it always starts with dialogue. Because people can resist force; they can sabotage attempts at treatment in all sorts of creative ways. They can even kill their child to save it from the perceived ignominity or horror you are about to subject them to. Also, your treatment might turn out to kill the child. And where are your good intentions then? In order to save the village we were forced to destroy it? Kind of defeats the whole purpose, no? And next week, for a similar scenario, you have to go through it all again. There is no blanket solution. Force may end up bombing the girls whose genitals you are trying to save. Force is a last resort because it can get very messy, very quickly. And you can't control how it will escalate and destroy what you were trying to save. It is also a very specific, individual solution. You cannot apply it on a blanket scale.
glad you mentioned this. women and children are, of course, disproportionally affected by war. "In war we often see only the frontline stories of soldiers and combat. AT TEDGlobal 2010, Zainab Salbi tells powerful "backline" stories of women who keep everyday life going during conflicts, and calls for women to have a place at the negotiating table once fighting is over." Zainab Salbi: Women, wartime and the dream of peace: http://www.ted.com/talks/zainab_salbi.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2010-11-23&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email
