Something that i find prettyd disgusting these days is how certain people put their political ideologies / viewpoints over human lives, for example, celebrating the russian invasion of ukraine because it is “a blow against US / NATO imperialism” completely ignoring all the warcrimes, the deaths, and the suffering generated by that war, the same happening with the palestinian genocide because “Israel is the only working democracy on the middle east”, acting like their ideoligies are going to bring back to life all the dead people somehow
The people who boil complex geopolitical events down to “haha western imperialism is finally getting challenged, lol shitlib get owned” are immature teenagers arguing in bad faith or on things they don’t understand. That would be what we call a “tankie”.
The same goes for those blindly supporting Israel because “omg hamas is terrorist” or whatever the hell they even justify it with anymore. A lot of those may just be quiet racists or fascists happy to see a dictator like Netanyahu have his way with Western support- obviously never thinking for a second that they themselves have an equal chance of being on the receiving end of such treatment, not the delivering end.
Both of these situations are absolutely horrible. But neither can really be boiled down to simple ideology over human lives as much as the lower-quality people love to do so. People want things to fit how they think so that they can feel good about their thoughts. Many things get shaped in that lens and it gets worse every day. And, unfortunately, the only real solution is just not to interact. Their minds can never be changed once they set up their world view to be self supporting.
Your views mirror mine closely. Ukraine’s war is awful, but it never needed to happen if Putin wasn’t such a trigger-happy, imperialistic dictator. His war is purely for territorial and ideological expansion of control at the expense of human life. Same goes for Palestine, while the operation was framed as being anti-terrorism at first, Netanyahu has gotten completely unhinged and fallen out of line in some crazy drive to control all of Gaza and eliminate Israel’s competition. However, I support Ukraine and do not support Israel, despite these being philosophically contradictory in the terms of “preserving human life over ideologies” since Ukraine is still killing people. The context makes the conscience.
Ukraine is killing people to preserve their people’s lives, it’s not contradictory.
“Killing Russians in self defense is comparable to genociding Palestinians” is the take of a very, very sheltered individual.
The people who boil complex geopolitical events down to “haha western imperialism is finally getting challenged,
I mean that is what is factually happening right now. The US can no longer hold its diplomatic and military weight. The US and its allies are unable to prevent the Houthis from succesfull attacks in the Red Sea. On Israels genocide in Palestine the European countries are dividing. Putin is managing to divide the US internally and to have some European countries break away to his side. China doesn’t give a fuck about US sanctions anymore and there is elaborate systems to bypass sanctions. As a result both Russian energy exports are laundered before being sold to the EU and US and western components end up in russian military equipment.
Cheering on the current prospecting alternative is stupid, as it is just another imperialist system.
But it is urgently necessary to realise the changing reality and use the window to create a world order, that puts all imperialists to limits and embraces a rule based international order of equal countries with equal people. Especially the EU could take this opportunity to renounce the remnants of its imperial ways and the subtle and open supremacist believes.
The EU countries made the terrible mistake to consider Trump an anomaly and were all to eager to remain complacent on Bidens presidency. But Trump wasn’t just a pimple you wait to pass. He is the symptom of a deeper instability in the US.
Protecting democracy in the middle east, bud, might save 30,000,000 lives at the expense of 30,000. You mistake that people defending Israel’s offensive don’t care about human life, we can just see what is at stake for the region, and I think 30,000,000 is a conservative estimate…
Valuing human lives is itself an ideology/viewpoint. A great one obviously, and one I fervently agree with, but once you realize this it’s easier to understand how other people can put other viewpoints ahead of this one.
Speaking of the Russian invasion of Ukraine… A lot fewer people would have died if Ukraine had surrendered immediately. About 200,000 Russian soldiers’ lives would have been saved, and I find it rather unlikely that Putin’s repressive measures would have killed more Ukrainians than that. But somehow in this case I find myself putting my ideology over human lives.
Not all ideologies are the same, of course, but you should still consider whether you only see people you disagree with putting ideology over human lives because when you put your own ideology over human lives, it seems so obvious and natural that you don’t think about it.
Putin also could have … Not invaded ?? & the lives of those Russian soldiers would have been spared.
True but not relevant to the point being made.
It is perfectly relevant. Putin, and thus the rest of the Russian political machine that backed him up, chose to put ideology (his personal agenda of territorial expansion) over human lives (of both Ukrainian and Russian). Can one really fault Ukraine for making the decision to fight back when the decision was already made for them? From some philosophical point of view, one could then put the ‘blame’ on both- since both have chosen to put ideology above lives and extend the fighting. However, one forced the decision of the other. Blame cannot be equally assigned, when the blame didn’t even exist until the unilateral action of one party.
The concept of “ideology” is perhaps too narrow a definition for such a situation as Ukraine, however. Most people boil it down online to just “Western proxy war vs Russia”, but it is more than just politics, it is the threat of extinction of Ukraine’s independent self-determination, freedom of expression, and ethnic distinctiveness.
I think Timwi was getting at this part of ArbitraryValue’s comment:
Not all ideologies are the same, of course, but you should still consider whether you only see people you disagree with putting ideology over human lives because when you put your own ideology over human lives, it seems so obvious and natural that you don’t think about it.
Also worth emphasizing that they specifically say this preceding that:
But somehow in this case I find myself putting my ideology over human lives.
In other words, unless I’m mistaken, even supposing their thought might somehow hold true that Ukraine’s surrender would save lives, they maintain support for Ukraine’s fight against Russia as they’re putting their ideology over human lives. Nevertheless, they think it’s important to recognize that they are doing this, rather than think there is no ideology in play whatsoever in their position.
It’s not necessarily the best way to have approached this given the charged topic (particularly framing it as a certainty of far fewer lost lives), but I think that point is worth remembering. Introspection is especially important in serious matters, otherwise you lose sight of what you’re really fighting for.
Ah yes Russian soldiers are known for their mercy and self restraint. Even if Ukraine surrendered Russian soldiers would have continued committing crimes against humanity. Children would still be kidnapped, women would still be raped and men would still be tortured to death.
Neville Chamberlain called, he wants to club you over the head with a history book.
I got downvoted for saying AOC shouldn’t run for President because she’s unwilling to challenge the neoliberal ghouls in Washington. But somehow, I’m the bad guy for not wanting a representative that votes and funds a genocide. Blue MAGA is a joke.
blue MAGA
What is blud on about
Blue MAGA are the idiot liberals that insist we have to vote for Genocide Joe no matter what. Even if he bombs children or his brain doesn’t work. No thanks. I don’t like either option, so I’ll either vote third party or not at all.
I’m blaming you when we fall into total authoritarianism in a few months
I don’t care. Have fun.
Why not
Why should I care?
Politics sets the rules for how you live. Literally including things like whether you live or die. It’s hard to think about anything you should care about more.
Every political position mostly tries to define in which ways violence is to be used. Realising this and knowing power is already established before you were even born. Seeing violence being used against your oppressor(s) is often times the only thing we feel we can still hope for.
Or from another perspective, is the war in Ukraine worth it for Ukraine or Russia, can you really say a war with so many deaths is preferable to being a russian subject, or an international embarrassment of the Russian state. Is the self determination of Palestinians really worth the terror and the war. We’re the PIRA justified in bombing London for their brother’s and sisters discrimination and deaths in Ireland. It’s ultimately all subjective, wether the violence of the system you fight against is bad enough you can bring yourself to fight.
Nothing brings back anyone but as long as there are people who want to, and do turn us into their machines, we have to rely on our interpretation of that being wrong, and fight them for it.
I was at a skating rink this weekend. It was full of families bringing their kids so their kids could have fun. Even some kids birthday parties.
Oh, and the dad wearing an anti-Biden shirt. While hanging out and skating with his kid.
Priorities.
Being anti-Biden is literally giving priority to human lives. If palestinian lives matter, I mean.
Yeah we gotta get Trump into office, he’ll be MUCH better prioritizing human lives
Didn’t say that. I think u americans are fucked up anyways.
What a loser
Yea, and I extend that to all Politics. I don’t want to see anti-Trump shirts, I don’t really want to see pro Trump or pro Biden. Politicians aren’t sports teams. Save it for rallies, and what not. Just tired of seeing it.
Yeah agreed. It’s so weird to make politics or politicians part of your identity like this and extend it to totally hnrelated situstions by wearing a message. I already barely understand when people do it for sports as if they personally have any connection to the team.
Really owned the libs xd
I mean, did wearing the shirt stop him from doing that?
I think you’re missing the point that it doesn’t really fit the environment he was in. It says a lot about how much free rent a politician seems to have in his head, when he’s likely never met said politician, likely has nothing directly to do with said politician, and was also displaying it in an area where I’m fairly sure the majority already agree with him (knowing this region).
It’s just a weird topic to flex in THAT specific environment.
Nice try equating those two conflicts, but it won’t work.
Is this “General”, or “General in the US”? I’m not saying it cannot be the latter, but if it is. I’m out. Best mentalt health choice I’ve done is reduce exposure to American “problems”.
This is a very grey topic for me. We can use the Russian invasion as an example since you brought it up. You can argue that more lives would have been saved had Ukraine just rolled over and surrendered immediately. But you can also argue their quality of life would be worse. But how do you compare that to resisting and fighting a war? How many lives would you trade for how big of an improvement in quality of life?
Btw I’m for Ukraine resisting, and I support them 100%. I’m just giving an example why it might not be always best to compare in human lives. Or at least, it’s really complicated.
I know, and it’s disgusting. People also do it by prioritising finance / career options etc over the lives of unborn babies for the sake of “bodily autonomy”
Without bodily autonomy you are a slave.
If they are unborn they are not alive.
That’s just flat out incorrect. There’s barely any difference between a baby that is in a body and out of it
Born - come into existence as a result of birth. So check mate fundamentalist. Not born, not existent. But sure if you want to argue on a more sane level - than how the fuck is a blastula the same as a whole developed human?
You are also existing in the womb… You don’t just magically pop out of thin air 💀
A one month old baby isn’t a whole developed human either. Doesn’t mean we should kill it. I don’t understand why we are drawing a line at all on when it’s okay to kill somebody. It’s never okay.
It’s never okay.
Definitely ok when someone is trying to kill you. But the whole point is that the concept of killing does not really applies well to a blastula to beginn with.
I think abortion is fine if the mother might die from giving birth.
So now it’s somehow ok and necessary to draw a line. So you draw the line when the life of mother is in danger - so you are just as pro baby murder as everyone else, how the tables have turned.
But at what point does it actually become a baby and not just a collection of cells? Is an unfertilised egg a baby? Is it a baby as soon as sperm touches it?
Once the embryo properly attached itself
Why that line? We’ve sorted out when a living human is a vegetable, why not use similar standards for fetuses?
Why then?
If you’re going to force a woman to birth a child, you better be willing to pay up to help support that child. Pro-Life shouldn’t stop at birth. All too often I see people advocating against abortion, but refuse to promote real sex education, birth control, or government assistance that would support that life and eliminate more abortions entirely.
If your goal is lowering the number of abortions, we can all agree on some simple measures for that desired result. Otherwise it just comes off as wanting to control women.
Based. We should make childcare free for a start. A lot of abortions appear to be done due to financial reasons. Sex ed should be a no-brainer.
As opposed to other people telling you what you can and cannot do with your own body?
Do you not see the implications of that?
But it isn’t your body though. And intentionally causing a miscarriage isn’t a normal function of your body.
And jailing people for unintentional miscarriages also isn’t a normal functioning society.
Exactly.
Your argument is that my body isn’t mine?
You’re so wrong it’s not even funny. Maybe try living without resorting to advice from a book sloppily written (and rewritten) ages ago to dominate people afraid of shit they don’t understand?
Then again, logic is clearly not your strong suit.
A foetus isn’t part of your body. It’s a separate being with it’s own blood type and DNA and can also feel pain. Just because it is in you doesn’t mean it is you.
Also, I’m sorry, but I’m really confused to what you’re saying? Is that a critique of modern medicine or something??? Like of course medical textbooks (what I assume you were referring to, unless there was a specific one) have been rewritten, we’re actively researching how to combat different diseases and prevent fatalities. Are you trying to promote homeopathy or something?
While it’s fun watching you trying to weasel your way out of the discussion at hand your comments in other threads betrayed your thoughts on the matter already. You know full well which fucking book I’m talking about, and it isn’t compatible with modern medical texts in the least.
If you want to believe in bullshit you’re free to do so, but why the fuck do you think anyone would be the least bit interested in what your imaginary friend thinks about abortion?
Who is using the Bible as a medical textbook, and at what point did I mention the Bible in regards to abortion? It’s completely irrelevant to this discussion.
Your whole stance on abortion is guided by your beliefs, you’ve made that much glaringly obvious. There’s not a single other reason for anyone to be against other people’s abortions like you are. Each and everyone is responsible for their own decisions, you don’t get to involve yourself.
It’s utter insanity, yet you spout it like it’s some sort of inherent truth. That’s what zealots do, not normal people.
A foetus isn’t part of your body.
If it’s not part of my body, I can just remove it and it will just survive on it’s own, it has blood type and DNA so should be ok.
If you abandon a born child on it’s own, it wouldn’t survive very long either.
So is a blastula also a child? You don’t see the difference between the ability of a foetus to survive outside it’s mother and that of a born child?
Don’t live inside other peoples bodies and you are safe.
And the people in Gaza should simply stop living in Gaza.
I see, you have difficulties differentiating things. I help you my friend: a human body is not a country. You are welcome.
And a factory is not a country either, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have safety standards or worker’s rights
Not sure how that is related to anything, but religious people come up with the funniest explanations - so entertain me.
I put human lives over political ideologies, and I’m pretty alone with that.
I’m a pacifist to the point that I’m opposed to the concept of “self defense” on a national level.
If someone tries to kill you, by all means defend yourself.
But this concept doesn’t translate to groups of millions of people, killing each other for years over who’s in charge.The issue is the popularity of tribalism. A lot of people see an attack on people they “identify” with as an attack on themselves.
Interesting. What do you think Ukraine should do then if not fight back against the Russian invasion?
What India did against the British – sabotage all Russian-led businesses in Ukraine, and refuse to cooperate with the occupiers.
It would lead to a great deal of suffering for Ukrainians, but the alternative against which this would have to be measured is the current war – with close to one million dead, several million displaced, and no resolution in sight anywhere.What will stop Russia from doing the same to more countries?
The same thing that lead to the decolonization of almost all countries that were once occupied - it’s neither possible nor profitable to rule over a populace that hates you and doesn’t identify themselves as subjects to your rule in the long term.
And next up on the Disney Channel: The fall of the bad man because teh peepo don’t like him.
it’s neither possible nor profitable to rule over a populace that hates you and doesn’t identify themselves as subjects to your rule in the long term.
Slavery in the USA South disagrees with that. It was very possible and profitable. It would have continued but armed conflict ended that.
Ah, so we should just let them attack countries until the internal problems get too big and the empire falls from within? And those countries should just suck it up in the meantime?
Look, I have no good solution for this. No one has, the currently accepted solution is killing millions until the problem disappears behind the problems caused by the war.
I’m not telling anyone or any country what to do. I’m just saying, I won’t ever support or participate in any war, defensive or otherwise.So you admit your position doesn’t solve anything.
Look, I have no good solution for this. No one has, the currently accepted solution is killing millions until the problem disappears behind the problems caused by the war.
No, the currently accepted solution is defending yourself against an invading force. Ukraine isn’t killing people to solve the problem, they are killing them to stop themselves from being killed.
And what if your solution doesn’t work? What if Russia just expands and the current regime stays in power? You’ll take away the sovereignty of possibly generations of people, and continually condemning more and more to the same fate, until maybe things collapse. And even then you have no guarantee that whatever comes after the collapse is, in any way, better.
There’s a quote on this topic that puts this into words better than I can:
You think you’re better than everyone else, but there you stand: the good man doing nothing. And while evil triumphs and your rigid pacifism crumbles into bloodstained dust, the only victory afforded to you is that you stuck true to your guns.
Well Putin for sure would be happy if Ukraine would choose this path. He’s quite used to brutally squash dissidents. Russia also has absolutely no qualm to disperse a group throughout their country to destroy their cultural identity. They are already doing so with the Ukrainian children they’ve kidnapped.
So sorry, but your proposal seems to be really naiv and not taking into account how fucking brutal Putin’s Russia is to people stepping even slightly out of line.
your proposal seems to be really naiv and not taking into account how fucking brutal Putin’s Russia is
Pacifists are always confronted with this criticism. Every time:
“This war is different. This war is justified, cause this attacker is truly evil. We need to stop this evil guy by all means necessary, even if it completely destroys the country we’re trying to defend and kills an entire generation of its inhabitants.”I’m not naive, at all. I have no illusions about Russia. I just believe there is no option available that will save Ukraine, and war is always the worst option available. No matter how justified it was in the beginning, in the end all that’s left is war.
Two things can be true:
- War is the worst outcome
- Fighting evil is the right thing to do
We don’t get to live in a world where doing the right thing is always simple and easy, or even a good option.
There is no peaceful discussion with fascism, the only language it understands is violence.
I’ll shut up about it if a fascist movement has ever once been stopped by talk.
Sure wish we could put you in front of a long line of Ukrainian bereaved so you can tell them their family’s deaths weren’t the act of an evil man.
I wonder how many of them will spit in your face.
Putin ordered a false flag strike that killed russian grandmothers just to propel himself into office. He IS evil and your bullshit both sidesism deserves to be slapped out of your brain.
Your comment has nothing to do with what I wrote.
But yeah, I’d rather have Ukrainians spit in my face than go to war.
I’d rather be killed by Russians than go to war, for that matter.It seems you have been so privileged to grow up in a country where mortal violence is not a pressing threat.
There are people in the world that would gladly kill you for your shoes, or for fun, or even for sexual pleasure.
What do you do when one of those people target you or your family?
There is no reasoning with them, there is no reaction except to run or fight.
Pooty poot sent orcs to kill Ukrainian civilians, the elderly, women, children. There are tens of thousands of people who will never see their families again, would any amount of talking or self-sacrifice stop them if they were breaking into your family house?
You have every right to choose to be a pacifist, and I guess there is some degree of self-satisfaction to it, but pacifism will not stop an violent madman if he chooses to target you or someone you love.
Tell me you 19 years old, without telling me your 19 years old…
I’m old enough to have talked to people who experienced WW1, as an adult.
You can be 19 and still talk to people who experienced WW1…
If you’re 19 and had a meaningful conversation with people who experienced WW1 as an adult, those people would have to be at least 113 years old and still mentally fit.
In my case it was my grandma who hacked off the hand of a home intruder with a fire axe and threw it in a nearby river cause there was no police you could call in 1918.
People have this problem where they subscribe to Us versus Them thinking. They dehumanize certain groups of people and see them as something less than human, and therefore they don’t care if they are harmed. Militaries all over the globe do this to train their armies to kill without discrimination.
We see it in the USA all the time with the two party political system. I think if the extremist liberals and extremist conservatives had to share a room, it would turn into a blood bath before any common ground could be found. It’s disappointing and disturbing to me that people can’t seem to act in a civil manner. People get tunnel vision and lose sight of the fact that we all have to share this planet and we have to compromise on a lot of things. Seems like most people don’t want to compromise anymore, they want to destroy the opposing side instead and rule the world. That’s so delusional I can’t even…
Politics should put people first, I struggle to understand progression if it isn’t human focused.
Oh, it’s focused on humans! Just not in a way that benefits most humans ಠ_ಠ
Too true, its focused on the 1% of humans :3
Yeah, I get you. Just remember though, they’re trying to take us back in history.
Some people just see humans, all humans, as just another random member of the animal kingdom. Just clumps of cells doing a thing. These people usually end of believing in power, and nothing else.
You know all those villainous chars from films, books, etc? Those attitudes are not limited to fiction. They’re inspired by our real life history, that’s what we grew up from. Some people want to go back.
Hello, i am a large clump of cells doing a thing. I don’t only believe in power though and your comment has left me confused.
