Hacker News Reader

Comment by Alyan | Hacker News Reader

Why is that even a good idea at all? First most of these laws are a result of the culture here and if a vote were to happen are likely to remain or at least be controversial. Even the silly driving ban which have no religious basis is/was controversial even amongst women. Enforcing non popular laws from a foreign entity is a good recipe for disaster and may increase resistance to these laws and start wars or other bad stuff. Heck I think most Saudi citizens, even the liberal ones, would not want such actions.

In addition, I think they are also too many countries which doesn’t match US ideals, will US start WW3? For example there are many islamic countries with differing laws but I would guess most don’t match US ideals.

View on HN

The western world has sad tendency to believe its ideals are the only ideals, so you're unlikely to attract much productive comment. Fanaticism is found everywhere, it's just common for some cultures to give it another name when convenient

Not treating human beings as property is one of those things that doesn't fall on a gray part of the moral spectrum. The history on this is clear and it is universal.

Talk about child beauty pageants is textbook whataboutism.

It's not that simple to equate the two. Modern western ideals are modern western ideals. If living under an authoritarian monarchy were just another way of living, there wouldn't have been a history of revolt against it in the west, because western civilization is no stranger to this kind of society. Western societies have tried autocracy many times. How many times has Saudi Arabia tried liberal democracy?

There's nothing different about your so-called western attitude and Saudis' attitudes towards ideals -- they too think morality isn't a democracy.

Every society has that tendency. "The West" is just the only one in the position of being able to export their ideals.

I agree culture has to shift on its own time - however there will always have to be the brave who are first to peacefully protest, or expose themselves of their beliefs or their nature that they may have had to hid out of fear.

I think most difficult society to counter is that of censorship controls, however even then the population may be quiet and submissive, at the right moment that silence may break in a flash and rebellion occur - and then the control of not knowing who you should fear comes out; the terrifying aspects of this is when you can bring in armed individuals to an area they have no connection to engage in violence - brainwashed to whatever degree, and afraid of repercussions if they don't act as told, that protests or behaviour is seeded by a 3-letter agency by some government painted as an enemy. It's why everyone, especially police and military - those who are at the front lines, need to understand and be taught this manipulation that is possible, especially in heavily controlled societies with system-wide censorship capability; the next Nazi Germany scenario in a modern, high-efficiency scenario, and deployed at scale, isn't necessarily that far off of a possibility. It's why it all needs to come individuals practicing non-violence, and these patterns and mechanics needing to be learned, understood by everyone - or enough of everyone.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com