a reply to:
My_Reality
I think it is utterly DEVASTATING what emotion and prior commitments can do to reason.
You didn't "interpret it" like that? Seriously. Seriously?!! Please. Ok. I'm calmer. Please answer me this hypothetical. It's important.
You're talking to a good friend and you ask them: did you sleep with my girlfriend. He doesn't answer. You ask again: "hey, did you hear me? Did
you sleep with my girlfriend? He answers: "I haven't taken money from you".
HUh? Huh? You must be wondering. You asked one question and he sidestepped it altogether. Why?
Unless you are intellectual infant, or nave, you will probably understand (as an adult) that emotional dynamics control and organize human awareness.
By not answering the question and by offering an answer to a question that wasn't asked (I hope you're still following me) he is ADMITTING, without
saying so, just be doing what he's doing, to the presence of an emotion that cannot answer that question.
The emotion in the above example is: "Yes, I'm ashamed. I slept with your girlfriend".
In this case, by not answering the simply direct question, the Hamas spokesman is saying "yes, we approve". And in fact, it should be obvious. The
question IS designed to entrap him, but just by being asked the question and answering by his diversion to answer ITSELF CONSTITUTES AN ANSWER.
And of course it expresses something all informed onlookers know: Hamas approves of the kidnapping. Just as they approve and regularly carry out
terror attacks against the most vulnerable of Israelis citizenry.
The question is, can you integrate this fact? This is what interests me, and at the same time, depresses me. It depresses me because I already know
(at least probabilistically) how you will respond. Failure to respond. To integrate and relate to the information rationally and patiently. Looking
out for the presence of ulterior motives: the influence of ego and self-coherence on the views I take.
Just as an intellectual thought experiment, try it. See how you feel in acceding to what i've written. Is it easy, or do you feel a visceral
repulsion to it?
But, you know what. Let's assume he did what you said he did. I would rather have to deal with a person who admits to a killing(s) as opposed to a
person that carries out killing(s) and lies about it. The way I interpret what you are saying goes like this: It's OK if a faction kills people as
long as they lie about and sidestep the issue.
I don't know. i'm reminded of a statement I once read attributed to Hitler, that as fervent as national socialism could be, he found that Islam was
able to mobilize the passions and galvanize action far quicker and stronger than anything the Nazis could unleash.
So, in that sense, I strongly disagree with you. I am more afraid of someone who believes his evil actions reflect some intrinsic and superior moral
awareness to the criminal who acts wrongly but at least understands that his behavior is wrong.
Lying reflects a tacit concession to the other sides moral standards. In this sense, they recognize that they are 'below' challenging the status
quo. Islamists, on the other, make no effort in the least bit to acknowledge the morality of the west. They genuinely (and asininely) believe that
their ethic is superior to ours. And they would. They're chauvinistic. They've been out of the loop and outside the process that the west has gone
through. One could well argue that Islam is frozen in the middle ages; or as a political philosophy, Islamism is consonant with the totalitarian
creeds of the early 20th century: nazism, leninism, maoism, etc.
The west has learned from it's mistakes and has adopted a more reasonable and responsible conception of the human condition. Islam still thinks, very
stupidly, that the world is as the Quran and Sura describe it. They wholeheartedly think that Islams triumph is around the corner. Realistically
speaking, people who've exposed themsleves to other world views appreciate how utterly unreasonable this fixation is.