Do you believe she is right?

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by wegs, Jan 8, 2020.

  1. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    sculptor and RainbowSingularity like this.
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  3. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    It's largely true. Our government and their government do represent some people and that's a problem currently for both sides.

    People who aren't radicalized in each country are largely the same.
     
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  5. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Agree, I believe she is ''right'' in a broad sense. She speaks from her own experiences, and having left Iran, she can speak from a different vantage point, as well. Not everyone can do that, so her points are very real, for lack of a better word.

    I did a bit of research on her, and she identifies I believe, as a secularist. Her family fought against the Muslim fundmentalist regime in the past, and she learned how to stand up for what is right, not living in fear, largely due to her upbringing. She's interesting.

    I've shared here that I'm part Iranian/Syrian, so I have an interest in people who are born in that region of the world, and how they perceive Americans. Being born and raised in the US, one can only read so much about other countries' governments, but living outside of the US would provide us with a deeper education.
     
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  7. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    I've met, gone hiking with, etc. several Iranians here in the U.S. I went to grad school with many people from outside the U.S.

    It's my experience that the differences that we think of, when they are negative, are largely due to the poor, un (under) educated portion of whatever country we are talking about.

    The power of that country may be derived from that under educated class or it may just be a dictatorship that has little to do with the population but the educated middle-class of most countries are very similar.

    The poor, uneducated portion of our country can be a little scary as well, especially their views regarding those in other countries.
     
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  8. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    Last edited: Jan 8, 2020
  9. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    He's not misunderstood, although...even psychopaths like that guy have a backstory. Not that the backstory becomes a crutch or excuse, but to be that deranged...I imagine it took more than Hitler's propaganda and indoctrination. I read a book a few years back about one survivor's take on the concentration camps from his bird's eye view. He said that there were guards and Nazis who truly didn't want to be there, didn't want to partake in the gruesome abuse, torture and murders of others. But, they were too afraid to rebel. Then, there were others who seemed to enjoy every moment of it, and he said they were the ones he feared.

    I want to believe that we are all more alike than we are different, in terms of personhood and our deep desire to love others, and to be loved. But I'm not so naive to believe that everyone feels the same.
     
  10. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide

    ...

    hope of a small young (un-identified)half jewish child in a WWII concentration camp
    Vs
    hope of an LGBTQ+ teen living in the heart of American suburbia ...

    Vs .... ? what ?

    the lines are so easily and deliberately blurred by many people to assert their own ideologies.
    yet some things though spoken conjointly are chasm 's apart.

    while i may appreciate and admire some Iranian intellectuals(?) [ Artists] i am not ignorant to their positions of superiority and luck & privilege.
    no different to most other countrys and cultures.
    it is a crime punishable by death to be an intellectual in iran so it appears ... ?(is that not the case?)

    what countrys do not have secret police or religious police with power over life and death and unquestioned power and authority ?
     
  11. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    I agree. Republicans are theocratic and do not welcome dissent. They want to torture, assassinate, and reject immigrants.
     
  12. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/09/politics/is-iran-ukraine-plane/index.html
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...-history-deadly-stampedes-funerals-heres-why/
    https://en.radiofarda.com/a/iran-road-accident-high-casualties/29529286.html

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    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Iran
    http://www.iranchamber.com/society/articles/spouse_killings_iran.php

     
  13. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    The Republican voters in the US are radicalized, in general.
    They are not poor, in general.
    They are poorly educated, in general.
    The US has an unusually high proportion of reasonably prosperous citizens who are poorly educated - that demographic category provides a lot of the "negative differences" between Americans and others, and even between different Americans.

    Meanwhile, in my student days's conversations with Americans who had traveled in the Middle East and Asia Minor when an American could do that more or less at will, the unusual compatibility of ordinary Iranians with such American wanderers has come up more than a few times. According to these hippie types, who did not move in the circles of the well off or upper class, ordinary Iranians were notably easier for Americans such as themselves to get along with than Saudis, Kuwaitees, Yemenis, Afghans, Pakistanis, and the like - even Egyptians. The difference was striking enough to emerge spontaneously in conversations years later and half a world away.
     
  14. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    Is she right?
    Of course she is. That has always been true: rulers have more in common with one another than with the people they rule, while ordinary, powerless people, trying to make a reasonable life, are all much of a kind, the world over.
     
  15. kx000 Valued Senior Member

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    As a radical pacifist I definatly agree.
     
  16. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    i wonder what the usa is breeding in those caged south American children

    when you get to the point of "we cant afford them basic human rights or education or parenting"
    then you have to start asking some very hard questions about how your value of human life is balanced and if your morality remains the same.

    they could open up access and house them properly, put them into schooling classes and help raise them as creative productive independent thinking highly valuable citizens of the world, and then give them an american passport.
    making them an asset instead of a liability and breeding ground for terrorists

    but american conservatist thinking doesn't seem to have those morals
    they seem to think things should be kept as a law of the jungle survival of the fittest raffle ticket type of moral doctrine.

    i cant bring myself to look at pictures of them seeing the leader of the free world stealing thier quality of life away and simply flushing it down the toilet as they harden themselves into something that only wants to get treat the society how they have been treated.
    everyone for themselves and morals are anything you can get away with.

    on the close heels of the beginnings of public reforms of foster care and church groups that predated on children for personal slaves and abuse...
     
    Last edited: Jan 17, 2020
  17. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Another example: the stories of Paul Bowles (and other Western writers who spent enough time and paid enough attention, as well as Eastern and SA and ME writers who made the opposite journey) seem to present gulfs of misunderstanding and significantly disparate assumptions etc between regular folks in these different cultures.

    Example: I am forced to consider, carefully, whether I know who Marjane Satrapi is addressing as "you". My sources of experience in Iran reassure me that from an Iranian I can confidently take the "you" as including me, if the author has insight and integrity. Given a Balinese islander or Bengali or rural Afghan - even a demographically similar person (gender, status, age, interests, etc) - such confidence would be misplaced.
     
  18. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    27,543
    Interesting. Perhaps the following facts re nominees of "Australian of the Year" held every year on Australia Day may also be of interest.....
    Dr Munjed Al Muderis fled Iraq and ended up on Christmas Island in the 1990s
    When Professor Munjed Al Muderis fled Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 1999, he was focused purely on survival.
    After travelling from Malaysia to Australia in a leaky, wooden boat, he was held in detention for 10 months before being granted refugee status.

    Today, he is one of the country's top orthopaedic surgeons and a finalist for Australian of the Year for his contribution to medicine and his humanitarian work.

    "My mission in life is very simple. I fight for equality and tolerance and acceptance. I fight for the rights of everybody to get what they deserve and without any discrimination based on colour, race or gender," he said.

    "And I stand for help. I stand for people that help each other, help themselves, help their families, their community in order to live a better life in the future."

    https://www.sbs.com.au/news/these-are-the-finalists-for-the-2020-australian-of-the-year-awards

    He didn't win the award, but just being nominated is a great honour and more so in his case considering his past.
    A great Australian!!
    ......................................................................................................
    ps: Christmas Island by the way is not as the name may suggest. It is an Australian controlled Island in the Indian Ocean and used primarly as a detention center for illegal immigrants.
     
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