Religion and war
Someone attacks the place where you live. They do terrible things. Really bad. Many agree that the people who attacked were inhuman. But there are different perspectives on why the attackers did it. You, and the others who were attacked happen to have a religious identity. You identify with that religion very strongly. It's determines your clothes, your food, where you choose to live, what you do with your time when you are not working, and most importantly, your thoughts. You do not consider living outside of your religion. Nor how someone outside might perceive you. So you think: we are X. The people who attacked us are not X and they have attacked us because we are X. How can you find peace while you continue to conflate your religious identity with the reason you find yourself under seige?
If you were serious about peace, the fact you were attacked does not matter. More killing will not wipe away your loss, it will only result in more death, and push peace further away. Do you want peace?
Religion and war
@spmatich but if you know the source of your threat and you can eliminate that source, then the fact that you were attacked certainly matters as it proves the danger of the source and also informs whether or not peace can be promoted by eliminating the source promising future attacks.
Religion and war
@volkris surely a justification for more death, more loss, more grievance. If you want peace you must accept that it has the opposite goals.
Religion and war
@spmatich unfortunately, in reality, sometimes the only way to stop a person from killing a bunch of other people is to kill that one person.
To put it bluntly.
In such circumstances it sure would be nice to have another option, but sometimes that's just the choice the world gives you.
So it's a trolley problem, if you're familiar with the philosophical concept, except in this case, the one in the target of the alternative trolley path is the one who set up the situation in the first place.
Religion and war.
@spmatich Oh, you're missing my entire point here.
My entire point is that religious identity has nothing to do with it. And I think you're getting hung up on that when that is not the situation at all.
It sounds like you are focusing on religious identity in an equation where religious identity is entirely beside the point of a group of people identifying a threat thinking that they can address the threat and in the process minimize death and suffering.
Notice that I said nothing about religious identity in that equation.
I'm not acting like peace isn't important. In fact, I am acting as if peace is the entire goal. What is the way to gain peace when there are factors intent on opposing. peace?
There are no easy solutions in that kind of environment.
@volkris "What is the way to gain peace when there are factors intent on opposing."
This is the question that must be answered. I think we agree it is beyond us, discussing in this thread. Surely to arrive at an answer it is necessary to ask what cost are the parties are prepared to pay in order to achieve peace. In the world today war is very profitable. So the price of peace should clearly be a good deal, even so it's still too high.
The point of bringing up religious identity is that it is the main reason people identify as a group, and therefore feel attacked as part of a group. So it's part of the justification for war. But the religious/group identity is not nearly so useful outside the group as it is inside it. When people say we are attacked because we are X, it always sounds disconnected from reality.
@spmatich Well, part of the reality is that sometimes the attacker makes it explicit, they say they will attack the certain group, and it doesn't really matter whether that grouping is based on a religion or hair color or last name or anything else, if an attacker declares that they will be coming after your group and then proves it by coming after your group and then declares that they will continue coming after your group... Well, it doesn't really matter whether it's about religion or not.
If there is a proven threat that seems likely to kill a whole bunch of people based on their own warnings, it's reasonable to say killing the threat would save a lot of lives.
So that's the unfortunate situation.
It's a trolley problem. Do you actively kill a few people to in the end save a whole lot more people?
Religion and war
@volkris "Well, it doesn’t really matter whether it’s about religion or not"
It does, when the content warning on the thread is "Religion and war". War does not happen in a vacuum. If peace is to be achieved, the justification for war must be dismantled. The price of peace cannot be more lives lost in an endless cycle of aggression. Peace is not obtained on one side. Peace must be achieved by negotiation and maintained by actively striving to breakdown the justification and machinery of war.
Who would accept a promise of peace from someone offering more war? Who would put out a fire with gasoline?
Religion and war.
@volkris so how's that working out? People have used their religious identity to justify war for aeons. So I realise that pointing out how complely unfounded it is, will not change anything.
But if you don't want peace just admit it. Don't pretend that you want it only if you get to drop the last bombs. Don't continue to act like peace isn't important. Don't claim your religion justifies the killing. Don't promise everyone will feel safe only if you stop the other murderers by killing them all (and the collateral).
If war was the answer to achieve peace, there would never be any peace.