People have been so trained to pick a team and stick to it that the basic humanity of the situation has become difficult for some folks.
It’s not hard. Killing or harming innocent people or causing death or harm to come to them indirectly is bad. Conflating different groups of people to justify harm or death is not an excuse.
Yknow, I won’t even say it’s not hard. It can be so hard when you’re bombarded by horrific images and stories every day. It sucks and it puts people into very passionate mindsets. Passion is the death of reason though, and we’d all be better served engaging our super ego a bit, taking a deep breath, and saying “Hey, I’m upset right now, but I need to try to look at this objectively”. You don’t have to shove anything under a rug. You don’t have to make excuses for anyone. Just… try to think separate from your feelings. It’s a useful exercise.
Israel is committing war crimes and genocide in Gaza. Hamas committed horrific acts of terrorism on Oct 6 and had continued to commit horrific acts concerning the hostages. We can keep going and listing every little thing going back millenia, but we cannot lose sight of the fact that both of these groups are religious extremism writ large, deserve condemnation, and are actively persecuting the Palestinian people.
I don’t think we should completely neglect our passions. They make us who we are and define our truest selves! Passion is blinding though. Anyone who has ever felt true passion about anything knows this. It takes both passion and cold logic to achieve truly good things. Passion is inherently the stronger of the two though, so you have to set it aside (temporarily) to truly indulge your logic. Then put those together.
I definitely do not agree with using passion as the center of your political movement. That’s demagoguery, by definition. It’s common and we’re all susceptible to it, but it’s not a good thing.
I agree with you re: the origins of Hamas. It truly could not matter less right now. Hamas exists, and they’re doing terrible things to Palestinians and Israelis alike, just like Israel is. They’re both issues we need to solve and I’m not willing to set one aside for the other.
I’m just not sure I’ve gotten my point across to you bc93. I’m not asking anyone to become an emotionless automation. That’s of course a nightmarish outcome. That’s full logic, no passion. Bad. In that same exact manner, all passion, no logic is also horrible. The history of people who have done that is also extremely dark. Nobody is advocating for either of those though!
When I tell someone to “put yourself in someone else’s shoes”, I am not asking them to lose their sense of self or to base their final decision entirely on that other person. It’s a thought mechanism we use to emphasize our sense of empathy, which gives us a new perspective that we fold into our amalgamation of ideas.
I’m not asking for anyone to turn their emotions off forever, or even deluded enough to think you can do that fully at all, in the same way that I don’t expect anyone to fully convert their brain into another person’s to empathize. It doesn’t matter, it’s still a useful exercise in part.
That’s all I’m asking for. There is a lot of nuance and complexity to all situations, and passion is blinding. I’m not a Buddhist, but they have a concept of Bonno, those passions that inspire us to actions that harm ourselves or others. I don’t think Buddhists are quite on the same level as Ben Shapiro and the Nazis just because they recognize that passion can be blinding.
I’ve never said that people should ignore any attempt at logic and just focus on their passions, but the modern cult of rationality and stoicism is ironically hugely lacking in self-awareness and rationality.
I’ve never said that people should ignore any attempt at passion and just focus on their logic, but the modern mobs of righteous indignation and fury are ironically hugely lacking in empathy, tolerance (not of intolerance, before that gets tossed at me), and pragmatism.
I agree that we mostly seem to be on the same page, but I really need to stress that I have not asked people to be soulless and I think that’s a mischaracterization of my asking for people to set their passion aside as much as possible as an exercise which is inherently temporary. We’re both just looking for balance here.
People have been so trained to pick a team and stick to it that the basic humanity of the situation has become difficult for some folks.
It’s not hard. Killing or harming innocent people or causing death or harm to come to them indirectly is bad. Conflating different groups of people to justify harm or death is not an excuse.
Yknow, I won’t even say it’s not hard. It can be so hard when you’re bombarded by horrific images and stories every day. It sucks and it puts people into very passionate mindsets. Passion is the death of reason though, and we’d all be better served engaging our super ego a bit, taking a deep breath, and saying “Hey, I’m upset right now, but I need to try to look at this objectively”. You don’t have to shove anything under a rug. You don’t have to make excuses for anyone. Just… try to think separate from your feelings. It’s a useful exercise.
Israel is committing war crimes and genocide in Gaza. Hamas committed horrific acts of terrorism on Oct 6 and had continued to commit horrific acts concerning the hostages. We can keep going and listing every little thing going back millenia, but we cannot lose sight of the fact that both of these groups are religious extremism writ large, deserve condemnation, and are actively persecuting the Palestinian people.
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I don’t think we should completely neglect our passions. They make us who we are and define our truest selves! Passion is blinding though. Anyone who has ever felt true passion about anything knows this. It takes both passion and cold logic to achieve truly good things. Passion is inherently the stronger of the two though, so you have to set it aside (temporarily) to truly indulge your logic. Then put those together.
I definitely do not agree with using passion as the center of your political movement. That’s demagoguery, by definition. It’s common and we’re all susceptible to it, but it’s not a good thing.
I agree with you re: the origins of Hamas. It truly could not matter less right now. Hamas exists, and they’re doing terrible things to Palestinians and Israelis alike, just like Israel is. They’re both issues we need to solve and I’m not willing to set one aside for the other.
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I’m just not sure I’ve gotten my point across to you bc93. I’m not asking anyone to become an emotionless automation. That’s of course a nightmarish outcome. That’s full logic, no passion. Bad. In that same exact manner, all passion, no logic is also horrible. The history of people who have done that is also extremely dark. Nobody is advocating for either of those though!
When I tell someone to “put yourself in someone else’s shoes”, I am not asking them to lose their sense of self or to base their final decision entirely on that other person. It’s a thought mechanism we use to emphasize our sense of empathy, which gives us a new perspective that we fold into our amalgamation of ideas.
I’m not asking for anyone to turn their emotions off forever, or even deluded enough to think you can do that fully at all, in the same way that I don’t expect anyone to fully convert their brain into another person’s to empathize. It doesn’t matter, it’s still a useful exercise in part.
That’s all I’m asking for. There is a lot of nuance and complexity to all situations, and passion is blinding. I’m not a Buddhist, but they have a concept of Bonno, those passions that inspire us to actions that harm ourselves or others. I don’t think Buddhists are quite on the same level as Ben Shapiro and the Nazis just because they recognize that passion can be blinding.
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I’ve never said that people should ignore any attempt at passion and just focus on their logic, but the modern mobs of righteous indignation and fury are ironically hugely lacking in empathy, tolerance (not of intolerance, before that gets tossed at me), and pragmatism.
I agree that we mostly seem to be on the same page, but I really need to stress that I have not asked people to be soulless and I think that’s a mischaracterization of my asking for people to set their passion aside as much as possible as an exercise which is inherently temporary. We’re both just looking for balance here.
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