Comment by c3534l | Hacker News Reader

Comment by c3534l | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure why the author lumps together so many of the attributes he does, and when he does acknowledge exceptions, rather than learn from them and understand why they exist, he simply waves his hands an says Japan wasn't honor-bound enough or not in the right way or whatever else.

His examples are cherry-picked and similar examples exist in the countries he holds up as exemplars. Saudi Arabia viewed cleaning as women's work, sure, just like nearly every country in Europe 100 years ago. Again, sexism is inexplicably considered to be part of this horoscope-level cultural complex of traits, as is apparently poor people excessively taking possessions from deceased relatives.

He blazes by picking one bad thing that happened in a given culture, offering no further analysis other than to gawk at how much better our culture is, then moves on to an entirely different society where he happens to know one bad thing about them and repeats the process.

The article appears to me to be little more than a post-hoc justification of the author's prejudices, with a few glib references and citations which give a glib appearance of being well-researched and substantive.

>"I'm not sure why the author lumps together so many of the attributes he does, and when he does acknowledge exceptions, rather than learn from them and understand why they exist, he simply waves his hands an says Japan wasn't honor-bound enough or not in the right way or whatever else."

He makes a very clear distinction between the two - one honor system is based on (external) shame, the other is based on (internal) guilt.

>"His examples are cherry-picked and similar examples exist in the countries he holds up as exemplars. Saudi Arabia viewed cleaning as women's work, sure, just like nearly every country in Europe 100 years ago."

With the difference that things he describes still happen at large in the middle east and Africa, while Europe has moved past them long time ago.

>"He blazes by picking one bad thing that happened in a given culture, offering no further analysis other than to gawk at how much better our culture is, then moves on to an entirely different society where he happens to know one bad thing about them and repeats the process."

He offers multiple examples of why contemporary western/Japanese culture is superior in many sections, most notably "Degradation of Women".

You provided no evidence to counter the fact that the western/Japanese culture offers rights, protections and (equal) opportunities that are far superior to the ones that come with the cultures criticized in the article. You have also labeled and dismissed the author's findings as mere prejudices, despite there being mountains of evidence to the contrary.

> With the difference that things he describes still happen at large in the middle east and Africa, while Europe has moved past them long time ago.

Well kinda depends what you define as "long time ago". Speaking for West Germany:

- 1954: Married woman are now allowed to work in public offices.

- 1958: Married woman are now allowed to work as teachers.

- 1958: The husband has no longer the right to single-handedly terminate the employment of his wife. Women still need the permission of their husband to start gainful employment.

- 1962 woman are allowed to have their own bank account.

- 1977: Woman are no longer forced to have a "house wife" marrige. They no longer need a permission by their husbands to start gainful employment.

===

source: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frauenbewegung_in_Deutschland#...

The weirdest thing was the drive by defense of the Confederate flag. That tipping of the hand was downright parkinsonian.

I’m glad it wasn’t just me that had a “hold the phone” moment there.

Was it a defense? I thought he meant that it's a sign of 'thar' that people have become so emotionally (1) attached and (2) opposed to it, when it should just be something to be seen in history books at most.

I guess I'd agree if the conflict over the flag was between "black militants" and "white supremacists" but it's not. The conflict is between citizens who feel the public usage of the flag by their state and local governments should cease because it is not appropriate and those who believe it should not cease.

In this context, claiming the flag as bit of historical inertia seems like a status quo defense.

At the very least, there is a moral equivalence implied that is bonkers.

Edit: I'm open to the idea that I'm over reading this particular position. As a point of style, doing a drive-by on a highly controversial subject in a persuasive essay is poor form.

There are historical views stating that the American Civil War was in fact a secessionist war against an increasingly powerful federal government and that slavery was just used as one cause, obviously the most "despicable" from today's view, in an effort to legitimize an otherwise illegitimate war against secessionist states.

You can see this partly in quotes from Lincoln, in constitutional law of the states (some explicitly reserved the right to leave the union) and the fact that equality before the law was not achieved until hundred years later (assuming the view point that it was achieved at all).

This view results in two things:

1. The confederate flag is not a racist symbol per se (it is used as one though as is the Swastika)

2. The war was just another war about power and money, such as pretty much every other war. Just ask yourself what was the last humanitarian war you witnessed?

Sources:

- Google for "Abraham Lincoln Racist". It is a very much divided topic.

- 2nd paragraph here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_American_Civil_...

- There was a fantastic seminar on this topic (with downloadable Audio files) by Walter Block (a Libertarian) but I cant seem to find it.

I'm not sure I follow. It may well be that the north had ulterior motives beyond humanitarianism but that doesn't take away from the fact that the explicit reason that a number of states gave for seceding was to preserve slavery.

I'm not sure I get your point about the flag either. Of course, it's not racist per se, it's abstract. But it's almost exclusively flown as a symbol of pride in the confederate institutions that it represents. Those institutions were explicitly racist. As you say, it has direct parallels with the swastika.

> what was the last humanitarian war you witnessed?

And finally, this really doesn't take into account the period. It was not at all unusual, in the mid 19C, for countries to use military action for social aims. Now, I happen to think that an awful lot of it was on behalf of evangelism of "superior" values rather than humanitarianism. This was rife in British establishment thinking at the time and was prevalent in the northern states too.

In other words, I think it's justified to believe that these actions were driven by feelings of moral superiority rather than human equality. But to suggest that they can all be understood as power plays simply doesn't fit the facts.

Absolutely. The cause of the war was succession. There was no legally defined process for succession and the withdrawal of United States soldiers from the territory of succeeded parties. If there had been, would the North have fought a noble war sacrificing life and treasure to free black people? Absolutely not. For god sake, they barely passed the 13th amendment. Abraham Lincoln himself said that if he could restore the Union without freeing a single black he would.

What is fiction however is that any other issue besides slavery led the South to succeed. Here are the "Declaration of Causes of Succession" made by four of the states.

http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~ras2777/amgov/secession.html

These documents were intended as equivalents to the Declaration of Independence made by the U.S. in which Thomas Jefferson outlined a list of grievances the colonists had with the king. The grievances you'll find in these documents almost exclusively revolve around slavery. The one from Texas contains this little gem.

"We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable."

Yes, the war was about white people and their problems with each other but that does not mean the Confederacy was not a horrifyingly evil society. They desired to raise a nation founded on the principal of racist slavery. And people rightly object to being subjected to the symbols of that nation.

Free southerners (to massively oversimplify, and with recognition that this excludes the very different concerns of enslaved southerners) were worried about the federal government getting both strong enough and regionally diverse enough to abolish slavery, which they felt would be both culturally and economically disastrous.

Northerners (to also massively oversimplify) didn't really care one way or the other about the moral question of slavery, at least not until fairly late in the war. They were worried about the Union dissolving into a dozen perpetually feuding nation states (like they saw in 19th century Europe) and taking American prosperity and power with it.

Both sides were probably correct. Had the war not occurred, abolition via the political process was eventually inevitable. Demographics weren't on the Confederate side. And had the Confederacy succeeded there's almost certainly no Pax Americana in the 20th century.

The American Civil War was fundamentally about slavery. It was also fundamentally about states rights vs federal power. Specifically, it was about the inherent instability of a specific, geographically coherent region having a slave economy inside a larger nation where slavery was generally illegal and where they would no longer unilaterally held any political veto points. But more fundamentally, why should it be surprising that the people who disagreed strongly enough to shoot at one another didn't cleanly line up about the exact single issue they were fighting about? History's not under any obligation to be simple and coherent.

And since this thread is already Godwined, If you went back and polled the average German circa 1940 on whether their flag was racist, I suspect the vast majority would emphatically insist it was about national pride and cultural unity and whatnot. Most arguments about why the Confederate flag is fine also accidentally serve as compelling arguments as to why Swatstikas are fine, and I've yet to hear a compelling distinction between the two cases.

>> Saudi Arabia viewed cleaning as women's work, sure, just like nearly every country in Europe 100 years ago.

Gender equality is still a big problem in Europe, actually: https://www.oecd.org/inequality.htm#gender

>Gender equality is still a big problem in Europe

Men and women are equal under the law (in most or all European states) when it comes to labour.

Gender inequality in Europe is largely caused by individual choices. This is best demonstrated by the fact that in poorer countries of eastern Europe, women are much more represented in STEM as it's a good way out of poverty, while richer countries (such as Scandinavian) where women have more choice, the interest gap for STEM is much more skewed in favor of men.

It should also be noted that in countries where a company cannot fire you for going part time at work, it is women who overwhelmingly take advantage of this.

Also, equating the inequality of women in the middle east with Europe in any way is ridiculous.

Ah those famous “individual choices” which are perfectly spherical, and in a vacuum. /s

Are you saying those choices are influenced?

I’m saying they’re not made in the ideal case, free from external pressure, influence, and so on.

I think you missed the point, Scandinavian countries are closer to that perfect sphere in a vacuum, they are much more free of external pressures than those in poorer countries. They make their choices on what will make them happiest and not on some harsh economic realities.

...by eschewing individuality, being small and having the luck to have petro money. How is that “free from influence” when you’re talking about the people who invented Jante law?!

My point was that gender equality is far from a solved problem in Europe (unlike the previous post claimed in "just like nearly every country in Europe 100 years ago."). To me, what actually sounds ridiculous is to dismiss the problem by saying it "results from choices" when you have evidence (data on the website I linked) that demonstrates that - all things equal (experience, geography, etc) - women globally make less money, namely in STEM jobs, than their male counterparts.

"Men and women are equal under the law" in Europe, but the reality is far from text in law, unlike what was previously said.

> Also, equating the inequality of women in the middle east with Europe in any way is ridiculous

considering the part of their lifes exactly 18 years after birth.

Well, assuming that men and women would make the same choices given the same options, we must consider countries were the number of women in STEM fields is close to that of the men to be much more equal for women, than countries where this is not the case.

Otherwise, you have to explain why womens' "individual choices" would differ from those of men. I note that assuming that they do not is the simplext theory that needs the least complex explanation.

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