[MAPC-discuss] The Edge

[MAPC-discuss] The Edge

born-digital

email

yes

no

2001-11-08

Hey everyone,

Of all the viewpoints that I've run across, this is one of the most
disturbing.  There is an internet group called "The Edge"
http://www.edge.org/documents/whatnow.html
and they are composed of a bunch of intellectual elite (from the looks of
it, middle-aged white males) that discuss philosophical and scientific
topics "to arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge".  Anyways, I ran
into this via the homepage of one of the contributors - a prominent
physicist David Deutsch.  I have included a little snippet of his reply to
the Edge question "What Now?" [regarding post 911 tactics].  It's really
appalling.  He is incredibly deluded to think that "moral relativism" is a
major cause of the 911 terrorist attacks.  He considers the acts of "the
west" to be purely in self-defense, while the terrorist acts were purely
evil.  I think that it is important for MAPC to understand these
arguments, and to systematically break them down.  In fact, I think it
would be a great move of outreach to start taking the best pro-war
articles and analyze them and post them on the web.  Regardless, here's
the link and a glimpse of the delusional state of mind representative of
many of the intellectual elite of the west - yikes.

http://www.edge.org/documents/whatnow/whatnow_deutsch.html

There is no "cycle of violence" that we have to "break" by making the
murderers and their sympathisers feel less angry with us. Their anger is
unjustified: To cleanse the Arabian peninsula of non-Muslims is an immoral
aim, violating the human rights both of non-Muslim residents and of
Muslims who wish to associate with them (and, perhaps more pertinently, to
seek their assistance in defending themselves). To cleanse Israel of Jews
is an aspiration similar in kind but much more evil both in its racist
motivation and in its intention to destroy an entire nation. To replace
secular or less-than-fundamentalist governments by religious
fundamentalist ones in all Islamic countries is an utterly tyrannical
agenda. And there is a fourth unjustified 'grievance' that goes implicitly
with those three: they demand the right to punish the West, by mass
murder, with impunity, if anyone in the West opposes them in pursuing any
of those other 'grievances'.

In contrast, the West's anger, and the West's restrained, careful and
humane response in self-defence, are justified. The problem is not to find
alternatives to defending ourselves against murderers. The exact opposite
is true: this violence will end if and only if we defend ourselves,
effectively. And effectiveness will depend in part on our saying
truthfully what we are doing, and why our stance is not essentially the
same as theirs.

You can perceive our stance and theirs as symmetrical only by expunging
morality from your analysis: seeing all political objectives as being
legitimate, all rival value systems as matters of taste, treating
murderers and their victims with evenhanded sympathy. You have to look at
tolerance and its opposite, intolerance, and pretend that they are two
versions of the same thing. You have to pretend that the richness and
diversity and creativity of our civilisation are playing the same role in
our lives as empty repetition, oppression, and pitiless enforcement of a
monoculture play in theirs.

People wring their hands and say that there must be "better ways of
finding solutions" than warfare. Of course there are. We have already
found them. The nations and people of the West use them all the time. They
are openness, tolerance, reason, respect for human rights -- the
fundamental institutions of our civilisation. But no way of finding
solutions is so effective that it can work when it isn't being used. And
when a violent group defines itself by its comprehensive rejection of all
the values on which problem-solving and the peaceful resolution of
disputes depend, and embarks instead on a campaign of unlimited murder and
destruction, it is morally wrong as well as factually inaccurate to
represent this as a case of our needing "better ways of finding
solutions". That is why we have to insist, by force if necessary, that
everyone else in the world also respect, and enforce, the minimum
standards of civilisation and human rights. Western standards.


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Thursday, November 08, 2001 10:20 AM

[MAPC-discuss] The Edge