In this blog post (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/25/david-mitchell-burqa-ban-tattoos) David Mitchell manages to capture rather accurately what I think is wrong with arguments to ban the burqa or tattoos or for that matter anything which does not directly harm another person.
This seems to be a rather important issue as one of the fundamental cornerstones of liberal thought. (Liberal in the traditonal sense rather than the mordern.) Is that the goverment shall not restrict an individuals freedom untill the point when that freedom violates another. So for example I am free to learn boxing, and indeed use it but I can only do so in a specified area against people who consent to fight me. I'm not allowed to go up to someone on the street and beat them up because then my freedom to punch is less important than their freedom not to get beaten up.
Sunday, 25 July 2010
Thursday, 22 July 2010
Thoughts on Isreal Palestine
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an issue that seems to generate an unusually high level of controversy compared to many others. I’m not particularly interested in why this is, but I thought a look at the various stances would be interesting. This comes in part from the observation that so many of my friends and family have passionate and vastly differing views about it. For the sake of this article I’m going to make distinction between stances and views. Stances I will take to mean that extent of support that an individual gives towards one side or the other, whilst the view is the side that they support. So for example the first stance that one side is always right and the other always wrong. So this stance can have either a pro Israel view or a pro Palestinian view. For the sake of convenience I will use (I) for Israeli and (P) for Palestinian to refer to these respective views.
I suspect and hope that few people actually hold the first stance. At least in principle it should be obviously wrong to anyone who is capable of rational thought; why? Because both sides are human and will therefore make mistakes, act out of spite rather than a sense of justice and so on. For those who do hold such a stance it seems that a debate is unlikely to be productive because they have already decided the answer. There is a slightly more rational way that this stance may be articulated, which is to say that the respective cause is such that any action is justified in furthering the cause.
The second and more interesting stance would be that one side’s cause is right and the other side’s is wrong. Those who hold this stance acknowledge the possibility that their side might perform actions that are wrong, even if they deny the actuality of it. So for example (I) might think that the Israeli cause is correct but that the Blockade of Gaza is wrong. This stance could be held in a variety of different strengths so for example (P) at its strongest in this stance would say that every action taken so far to advance the Palestinian cause is justified but would accept that there would be some possible actions that shouldn’t be taken. In contrast (P) at its weakest would hold that whilst the cause is justified nearly all the actions so far undertaken have been wrong.
The third stance is the ‘plague on both your houses’ stance it quite simply states that both sides are as bad as each other. I have a strong suspicion that many who adopt this stance do so to avoid actually having to argue about the issue; an understandable motivation given the passion with which it is usually debated. At this point I would need to point out that an error I have deliberately been making. I have talked about the Israeli and Palestinian cause as if each one was a single unified thing. This simply isn’t true. There are a variety of Israeli and Palestinian causes with different objectives and motivations. The reason I have allowed this to slip by is because its a blog post not an academic essay!
But I need to remind you of this for the final stance I shall outline. This stance is that neither side is simply right or wrong but rather that there are several causes and some causes are justified and some aren’t. So for example someone with this stance might hold that Israel is right in aiming to provide a homeland for the Jewish people whilst at the same time Palestinians are right in feeling that their land has been stolen. Now I feel that this is probably the write stance to adopt for a couple of reasons. First I suspect it is the closest to reflecting the actual situation. To dismiss Palestinian grievances or Israeli worries about security would be foolish and fail to appreciate both current issues and historical grievances. The second reason is that it seems like those who hold this stance will have the best chance of reaching agreement and proposing a compromise. So this is rather long but here is a simplified version of my thoughts on a situation that I’m totally unqualified to talk about. Lets see how many people I’ve offended ;-).
I suspect and hope that few people actually hold the first stance. At least in principle it should be obviously wrong to anyone who is capable of rational thought; why? Because both sides are human and will therefore make mistakes, act out of spite rather than a sense of justice and so on. For those who do hold such a stance it seems that a debate is unlikely to be productive because they have already decided the answer. There is a slightly more rational way that this stance may be articulated, which is to say that the respective cause is such that any action is justified in furthering the cause.
The second and more interesting stance would be that one side’s cause is right and the other side’s is wrong. Those who hold this stance acknowledge the possibility that their side might perform actions that are wrong, even if they deny the actuality of it. So for example (I) might think that the Israeli cause is correct but that the Blockade of Gaza is wrong. This stance could be held in a variety of different strengths so for example (P) at its strongest in this stance would say that every action taken so far to advance the Palestinian cause is justified but would accept that there would be some possible actions that shouldn’t be taken. In contrast (P) at its weakest would hold that whilst the cause is justified nearly all the actions so far undertaken have been wrong.
The third stance is the ‘plague on both your houses’ stance it quite simply states that both sides are as bad as each other. I have a strong suspicion that many who adopt this stance do so to avoid actually having to argue about the issue; an understandable motivation given the passion with which it is usually debated. At this point I would need to point out that an error I have deliberately been making. I have talked about the Israeli and Palestinian cause as if each one was a single unified thing. This simply isn’t true. There are a variety of Israeli and Palestinian causes with different objectives and motivations. The reason I have allowed this to slip by is because its a blog post not an academic essay!
But I need to remind you of this for the final stance I shall outline. This stance is that neither side is simply right or wrong but rather that there are several causes and some causes are justified and some aren’t. So for example someone with this stance might hold that Israel is right in aiming to provide a homeland for the Jewish people whilst at the same time Palestinians are right in feeling that their land has been stolen. Now I feel that this is probably the write stance to adopt for a couple of reasons. First I suspect it is the closest to reflecting the actual situation. To dismiss Palestinian grievances or Israeli worries about security would be foolish and fail to appreciate both current issues and historical grievances. The second reason is that it seems like those who hold this stance will have the best chance of reaching agreement and proposing a compromise. So this is rather long but here is a simplified version of my thoughts on a situation that I’m totally unqualified to talk about. Lets see how many people I’ve offended ;-).
Wednesday, 21 July 2010
Up again
I know no one is reading this yet, but I thought I'd restart this blog as a current affairs-philosophy style thing. So hopefully I'll get some readers at some point.
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