Comment by lazide | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lazide | Hacker News Reader

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I don’t mind Islam at all actually.

I’m pointing out that a discussion about ‘high ground’ that ignores that it’s a subjective discussion where there are numerous other factions with wildly conflicting views of it is not a useful discussion.

And that the Islamic vs Western world split is a classic example where people seem to insist on projecting their western (often Christian derived if not strictly so) views onto a rather diametrically opposed set of values and then acting surprised when ‘the other side’ goes ‘WTF, no’ or even acts in ways that they consider abhorrent - but are not surprising if you actually know what is going on.

That people even consider this a religious flamewar (apparently) is quite hilarious because if you actually read the Koran and Hadiths, or have spent much time around many Muslim societies these aren’t even (generally) contentious things I’m talking about!

For example - you just don’t draw a picture of Mohammed. Especially not if it’s making fun of him, but even if it’s flattering, just don’t.

If you’re in a culture that has major Muslim influences, this is very very obvious. It’s not a flamewar topic, but it doesn’t come up much - for the same reason most people don’t talk about slapping strangers in the face either.

It’s still a thing. As are the calls to prayer. And not gooning on random Muslim women. And a hundred other things.

To my mind, you're misreading the "high ground" thing.

War pushes us into actions where we abandon the moral high ground, even as defined by us. That's part of the horror of war - we become monsters.

And when the ‘good’ thing by our standards is the monstrous behavior to someone else?

WW2 and the Japanese, as someone noted, provide many examples. For example, to the Japanese, the Allies taking prisoners was ritual humiliation - and death with a sword in their hand would have been preferable.

Sometimes, your high ground is another’s sewer (or even your own), and there is nothing anyone can do to change that.

Isn’t systematically humiliating an entire group of enemies being a monster too? It’s literally banned by the Geneva convention!

In the end when conflicts like this happen, realpolitik/pragmatic application of force wins regardless.

The janny smacked you but I thought you raised a valid point. The "moral high ground" is and has always been subjective. Do the ends justify the means? Depends on the ideology. Is a soldier surrendering a dishonorable act, or should he be treated with professional dignity? During WW2 the Japanese thought that surrender was dishonorable and treated POWs very poorly. They also deliberately shot at combat medics, they didn't have any sort of taboo against that. Nor did Europeans, until most of the way through the 19th century, think much about leaving wounded soldiers to lay dying in the field, or even casually murdering the wounded as they lay helpless after the battle was already decided (these sort of behaviors lead to the creation of the Red Cross.) In all of these cases it wasn't because those people were fundamentally evil. They were acting according to the norms and expectations of their culture. When two sides with radically different norms encounter each other in conflict, both can feel as though the other is depraved. But that's not necessarily an accurate reflection of the mental state of the other guys. American soldiers in the Pacific thought that the Japanese were savage animals, but with cooler hindsight we know that the Japanese had and still have a strong sense of honor. The catch is that it is, or at least then was, a very different sort of honor that held people to different expectations than Americans were accustomed to.

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