One thing Bob does that doesn't get the love it deserves IMO (and he did it again here) is say that what Israelis did after October 7( as well as what Americans did after 9/11) is human. Not to say "good" or the only way, but human, understandable. When we see evil, we prefer the easy way out. Hitler was a monster, not an underappreciated artist who embraced a toxic ideology. Israelis are a sick fascist society that we, the righteous Westerners, should condemn. Russians are subhuman orcs and slavish lemmings, slavishly swallowing their propaganda. It is much harder to humanise the agressor as well as the victim. We are all in these cycles, together.
Man, this guy’s audio editing is so sloppy and aggressive that it really makes me appreciate Bob’s “direct to tape” approach. Two smart guys talking is enough!
It is funny to listen to Buddhist ethics being applied to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
Of course, that conflict has nothing to do with and is completely outside the frame of reference of ethics or Buddhism. This is a longstanding, purely tribal conflict. Neither Hamas nor the Netanyahu government is in the least bit concerned with "ethics" and does not consider any ethical issues to be involved in the conflict. They consider only their own tribal goals and vengeance and don't worry about the effects on the other tribe because they don't care about the other side at all. Netanyahu would happily displace all of Gaza's population to Egypt or any other country that would take them but there are none. And Hamas would happily wipe Israel off the map. Neither side views ethics as having any role to play here as both sides are driven by zero sum tribal goals.
By the way, the young part Palestinian Vincent describes himself as a "full time meditator" "computer engineering dropout," and "geek" Vince provides coaching services for up to $840 per hour should anyone need any. Perhaps Netanyahu will take him up on it. And learn that he doesn't have a self.
The reason that ethics never solves tribal conflicts is that warring tribes have completely different ethical systems. Warring tribes do not consider their enemy to be included in their moral/ethical system and therefore feel free to abuse or kill their enemies without guilt or remorse. That is true of both sides in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The ethical beliefs of each side do not solve the problems of the other side. And since universal or objective morality is a childish fantasy neither side has any moral qualms about the violence they commit and there is no supreme godlike moral authority to tell them otherwise.
I think there's a much more parsimonious explanation of the Levant's political instability, in opposition to the contrived Pinker/Harris clash-of-civilizations narrative: The Levant has been passed between empires for millennia, engendering political instability. Lebanon is a good case study for this -- the French colonial government left the independent country with a sectarian constitution. This predisposed it to civil war. When the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Sunni Palestinians inundated Lebanon in '48 and '67, the government didn't proportionally represent the new demographics. Violence among sects, Maronite, Sunni, Shia etc., proliferated and the PLO was able to establish a foothold, giving Israel a pretext to invade and occupy for 20 years (even when PLO leadership fled to Tunisia). Do you think Lebanese sects have radically different ethics? Your hypothesis would suggest yes.
Thanks Conor but I was making a much simpler point. The conflict between Hamas and the Netanyahu government is a tribal conflict between two sides with completely different ethical values and neither side gives ethical standing to the other side which they have objectified and dehumanized. As a result, I pointed out that ethics have nothing to do with this conflict at all. That was my only point given Vince's emphasis on Buddhist ethics.
There is no question that the complex history you reference involving the Lebanese civil war and its aftermath involved numerous other tribal conflicts, including between Christians and muslims, between Shia and Sunnis all exacerbated as you say by the Palestinian influx and Israel's reaction to the resulting PLO military presence. There are tribal conflicts all over the place in the Middle East. And they are not about ethics.
"I pointed out that ethics have nothing to do with this conflict at all. That was my only point given Vince's emphasis on Buddhist ethics."
I don't think you're meaningfully engaging with anything Bob and Vince had talked about. Vince did not use ethics in an attempt to explain the conflict, nor did he suggest that ethics could be the basis of some kind of diplomatic solution.
I'm still not seeing it. For instance, the PFLP has an explicitly materialist, Marxist-Leninist secular framework (akin to "enlightenment" values). Are they "tribal?" Was the Lebanese National Movement (likewise leftist, secular materialist) tribal? What unites them is that their leaders were assassinated by foreign elements (Khanafani by Mossad and Jumblatt by Syria). Not everything is undergirded by religious extremism which is epiphenomenal in this conflict over land and sovereigtny.
Conor I am sorry but you are no longer making any sense. You are rewriting irrelevant historical details that have nothing to do with my points on the irrelevance of ethics to the current Hamas conflict. I never said anything about the organizations you mention.
But since you bring them up, PFLP founder George Habash was a terrorist who hijacked commercial airliners and certainly didn't subscribe to "enlightenment" values. Nor was he concerned with "ethics." In addition, Marxist Leninism is a quasi religion that can act very much like a tribal ideology. So yes PFLP had tribal goals, both pro Marxist & pro Palestinian and it wanted to wipe Israel off the map.
Further Jumblatt was never assassinated at all. He's still alive!
"Neither Hamas nor the Netanyahu government is in the least bit concerned with "ethics" and does not consider any ethical issues to be involved in the conflict."
Who is it that believes the conflict is driven by the ethics of Hamas and the Netanyahu government? In the recorded conversation, when Bob and Vince were discussing ethics it seemed to be in regards to the ethics of individuals (I think mostly outside of I/P), and the lack of activism from Buddhist organizations.
Then at another point, Bob talks about the asymmetry of power between Israelis and Palestinians, as if that is a significant factor driving the conflict. Edit: Vince cites the occupation later in the convo, and power more generally as well
...
And when you say the I/P conflict is "purely tribal", how do you think that contributes to anyone's understanding here? As far as I'm concerned, conflicts between groups are always tribal (by definition)...
It's important to understand that this has become an intractable zero sum conflict with ethnic, racial, cultural and religious tribal elements that cannot be solved and many of the participants view as a fight to the death. That was not always so. It was originally a dispute over land taken from Palestinians and the establishment of a state they didn't want on their land. Before Israel was founded, jews lived in Arab countries around the Middle East virtually undisturbed. Those communities have now been driven out of almost every country as the conflict became increasingly tribal.
But you claim to have been making a point in response to "Vince's emphasis on Buddhist ethics". Vince did not emphasize ethics over (or under) "ethnic, racial, cultural, and religious tribal elements" of the conflict. In fact, he didn't talk about ethics at all in the context of describing the conflict.
One thing Bob does that doesn't get the love it deserves IMO (and he did it again here) is say that what Israelis did after October 7( as well as what Americans did after 9/11) is human. Not to say "good" or the only way, but human, understandable. When we see evil, we prefer the easy way out. Hitler was a monster, not an underappreciated artist who embraced a toxic ideology. Israelis are a sick fascist society that we, the righteous Westerners, should condemn. Russians are subhuman orcs and slavish lemmings, slavishly swallowing their propaganda. It is much harder to humanise the agressor as well as the victim. We are all in these cycles, together.
Man, this guy’s audio editing is so sloppy and aggressive that it really makes me appreciate Bob’s “direct to tape” approach. Two smart guys talking is enough!
It is funny to listen to Buddhist ethics being applied to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
Of course, that conflict has nothing to do with and is completely outside the frame of reference of ethics or Buddhism. This is a longstanding, purely tribal conflict. Neither Hamas nor the Netanyahu government is in the least bit concerned with "ethics" and does not consider any ethical issues to be involved in the conflict. They consider only their own tribal goals and vengeance and don't worry about the effects on the other tribe because they don't care about the other side at all. Netanyahu would happily displace all of Gaza's population to Egypt or any other country that would take them but there are none. And Hamas would happily wipe Israel off the map. Neither side views ethics as having any role to play here as both sides are driven by zero sum tribal goals.
By the way, the young part Palestinian Vincent describes himself as a "full time meditator" "computer engineering dropout," and "geek" Vince provides coaching services for up to $840 per hour should anyone need any. Perhaps Netanyahu will take him up on it. And learn that he doesn't have a self.
Nothing is outside the scope of human ethics, so long as it has to do with human interaction, power, resources, history, etc.
The reason that ethics never solves tribal conflicts is that warring tribes have completely different ethical systems. Warring tribes do not consider their enemy to be included in their moral/ethical system and therefore feel free to abuse or kill their enemies without guilt or remorse. That is true of both sides in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The ethical beliefs of each side do not solve the problems of the other side. And since universal or objective morality is a childish fantasy neither side has any moral qualms about the violence they commit and there is no supreme godlike moral authority to tell them otherwise.
I think there's a much more parsimonious explanation of the Levant's political instability, in opposition to the contrived Pinker/Harris clash-of-civilizations narrative: The Levant has been passed between empires for millennia, engendering political instability. Lebanon is a good case study for this -- the French colonial government left the independent country with a sectarian constitution. This predisposed it to civil war. When the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Sunni Palestinians inundated Lebanon in '48 and '67, the government didn't proportionally represent the new demographics. Violence among sects, Maronite, Sunni, Shia etc., proliferated and the PLO was able to establish a foothold, giving Israel a pretext to invade and occupy for 20 years (even when PLO leadership fled to Tunisia). Do you think Lebanese sects have radically different ethics? Your hypothesis would suggest yes.
Thanks Conor but I was making a much simpler point. The conflict between Hamas and the Netanyahu government is a tribal conflict between two sides with completely different ethical values and neither side gives ethical standing to the other side which they have objectified and dehumanized. As a result, I pointed out that ethics have nothing to do with this conflict at all. That was my only point given Vince's emphasis on Buddhist ethics.
There is no question that the complex history you reference involving the Lebanese civil war and its aftermath involved numerous other tribal conflicts, including between Christians and muslims, between Shia and Sunnis all exacerbated as you say by the Palestinian influx and Israel's reaction to the resulting PLO military presence. There are tribal conflicts all over the place in the Middle East. And they are not about ethics.
"I pointed out that ethics have nothing to do with this conflict at all. That was my only point given Vince's emphasis on Buddhist ethics."
I don't think you're meaningfully engaging with anything Bob and Vince had talked about. Vince did not use ethics in an attempt to explain the conflict, nor did he suggest that ethics could be the basis of some kind of diplomatic solution.
I'm still not seeing it. For instance, the PFLP has an explicitly materialist, Marxist-Leninist secular framework (akin to "enlightenment" values). Are they "tribal?" Was the Lebanese National Movement (likewise leftist, secular materialist) tribal? What unites them is that their leaders were assassinated by foreign elements (Khanafani by Mossad and Jumblatt by Syria). Not everything is undergirded by religious extremism which is epiphenomenal in this conflict over land and sovereigtny.
Conor I am sorry but you are no longer making any sense. You are rewriting irrelevant historical details that have nothing to do with my points on the irrelevance of ethics to the current Hamas conflict. I never said anything about the organizations you mention.
But since you bring them up, PFLP founder George Habash was a terrorist who hijacked commercial airliners and certainly didn't subscribe to "enlightenment" values. Nor was he concerned with "ethics." In addition, Marxist Leninism is a quasi religion that can act very much like a tribal ideology. So yes PFLP had tribal goals, both pro Marxist & pro Palestinian and it wanted to wipe Israel off the map.
Further Jumblatt was never assassinated at all. He's still alive!
So what do you mean by saying Syria killed him?
Maybe you need some rest.
"Neither Hamas nor the Netanyahu government is in the least bit concerned with "ethics" and does not consider any ethical issues to be involved in the conflict."
Who is it that believes the conflict is driven by the ethics of Hamas and the Netanyahu government? In the recorded conversation, when Bob and Vince were discussing ethics it seemed to be in regards to the ethics of individuals (I think mostly outside of I/P), and the lack of activism from Buddhist organizations.
Then at another point, Bob talks about the asymmetry of power between Israelis and Palestinians, as if that is a significant factor driving the conflict. Edit: Vince cites the occupation later in the convo, and power more generally as well
...
And when you say the I/P conflict is "purely tribal", how do you think that contributes to anyone's understanding here? As far as I'm concerned, conflicts between groups are always tribal (by definition)...
It's important to understand that this has become an intractable zero sum conflict with ethnic, racial, cultural and religious tribal elements that cannot be solved and many of the participants view as a fight to the death. That was not always so. It was originally a dispute over land taken from Palestinians and the establishment of a state they didn't want on their land. Before Israel was founded, jews lived in Arab countries around the Middle East virtually undisturbed. Those communities have now been driven out of almost every country as the conflict became increasingly tribal.
But you claim to have been making a point in response to "Vince's emphasis on Buddhist ethics". Vince did not emphasize ethics over (or under) "ethnic, racial, cultural, and religious tribal elements" of the conflict. In fact, he didn't talk about ethics at all in the context of describing the conflict.